CURRENT WISDOM

...now-you-seehim-now-you-don't Bush campaign worker Ken Cordier...

...If you're living in a dictatorship or under kings and princes or in a place run by murderous bishops, you'd better take that view or you're in deep trouble...

...September 29, 2004) Rolling Stone In bleak and worrisome times Professor Bruce Springsteen reveals the source of his legendary obliviousness—and you thought it came from a needle: I am a dedicated [New York] Times reader, and I've found enormous sustenance from reading Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd on the op-ed page...

...September 22, 2004) New York Review of Books Americana as envisaged by a balmy reviewer at the esteemed NYRB macerated in pictures from sexy Abu Ghraib: They have long since taken their place in the gallery of branded images, as readily recognizable in much of the world as Marilyn struggling with her billowing dress or Michael dunking his basketball: Hooded Man, a darkcaped figure tottering on a box, supplicant arms outstretched, wires trailing from his fingers...

...August 18, 2004) Boston Globe From historic Duxbury, Miss Sally Austin-Runci—apparently a career lifeguard—files her interpretation of the Strange One's apparition off Nantucket beach: 64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2004 CURRENT WISDOM Using John Kerry's windsurfing as an indication of his waffling and changing with the wind is proof that Bush and his campaign lack an understanding of not just the sport of windsurfing but the real world...

...However, delegates to this month's Republican National Convention shouldn't expect to be treated to our standard out-of-towner treatment...

...CURRENT WISDOM The American Prospect Michael Tomasky, another really nice liberal journalist and full-time Good Samaritan, takes time off from walking old ladies across the street and doing other good deeds to lament the doings of Bad People: George W. Bush famously claimed that he would be a "uniter, not a divider...

...Americans are allowing so much to get past them because of the lack of character within the decision makers and those in power...

...Is it not equally important in the global arena to do the same and make deliberate adjustments in response to changes...

...What Bush was really saying during the 2000 campaign was, "Elect me, and our side won't have to spend eight years attacking and dividing as we did during Bill Clinton's tenure, because we'll be in power...

...August 16, 2004) Common Dreams News Center Another failed prophecy from progressive columnist and militant philatelist, Ted Rall: Tourists are pleasantly surprised when New Yorkers act as friendly and polite as the people back home in Maybury...

...Objects will be thrown in their direction...

...June 1984) NOVEMBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 65...

...Van Odell with his sorrowful Wyatt Earp mustache...

...What if all the brilliant advertising was directed toward nutrition, consumer awareness, and regulating, or toward educating people to get the best medical care they can...

...May 2004) From the Archives Timeless Tosh From Current Wisdoms Past: The Nation Chivalry denied as the he-man of Campaign '84 asserts herself that inimitable cosmopolitan wit: But even in the midst of an uproar that would have made less stalwart candidates quail, Ferraro continues to be taunted by men seemingly unable to cope with the fact that the Vice-Presidential nominee is a woman...

...Noam Chomsky spins his ancient wheels and reaches for the hallucinogen that he calls ratiocination: Q: Why do so many people in the United States just go along with U.S...

...As the vets talk and talk on the cable shows, the inevitably black-and-white blowup in the background of the young Kerry's big, melancholy chin and soulful eyes gives reproachful testimony to better selves buried in the watery past of Vietnam...

...It's something that is of tremendous consternation to me...

...October 2004) The Novascotian In the oddly named Novascotian, possibly a technical journal, Justin Trudeau, son of Margaret Trudeau, the cartoonist, waxes inscrutable: I don't think things are getting worse, but there is a certain amount of frustration...

...I consider his ability to make adjustments an asset for any leader...

...Even power hasn't disturbed the conservative impulse to attack and destroy...

...The Republican delegates here to coronate George W. Bush are unwelcome members of a hostile invading army...

...August 26, 2004) New York Times A disappointed reviewer for the venerable Times reviews a Manhattan intellectual's equivalent of Roller Derby: For the better part of an hour and 40 minutes, without intermission, in Irvine Welsh's play "You'll Have Had Your Hole," a petty criminal from the Edinburgh underclass is tortured and molested by two lowlife cronies in an abandoned recording studio...

...Kerry stayed on his board despite gusty conditions because he detected changes and was prepared to respond to them...

...It's just so deeply embedded, deeply instilled, that without any meaningful coercion it comes out the same way it does in a totalitarian state...

...In windsurfing it is important to keep a keen eye on the water to detect wind shifts and changes in conditions...

...But the awkward, tentative production, directed by Francis Kuzler, is drained of adrenaline and ultimately tilts toward sentimentality...

...In the West, you don't get in any trouble if you tell the truth, but you still can't do it...

...September 8,1984) University of Iowa Spectator Gastronomic outrage from a noted epicure, Ralph Nader, at the University of Iowa: Madison Avenue's most successful advertising ploy is the hot dog, that you can sell such slop—fat, water, miscellaneous debris, including Reagan's latest allowable additive, crushed bone, and rope string—and have you like it, and defend it...

...And "You'll Have Had Your Hole" is a similar head-inthe-toilet shocker laced with grisly humor...

...After she told columnist George Will on national television that he should apologize for a piece he did on her disclosure problems, Will sent her a dozen roses with a note saying she was "cute" when she was mad...

...For me, the most glaring one is the American right and the atrocities against character and ethics that take place in the States...

...But it's also a moral failure to not be properly informed as a general public...

...Like the hapless saps whose blood they sent to be spilled into Middle Eastern sands, they will be given intentionally incorrect directions to nonexistent places...

...Welsh is the boundary-pushing Scottish writer who gave us "Trainspotting...

...But even that hasn't turned out to be...

...They will not be greeted as liberators...

...Vice Presidents aren't cute," Ferraro informed him by phone...

...With a gag in his mouth, the victim Dex (Zack Calhoon), is punched, slapped, and forced to listen on headphones to a loop of Engelbert Humperdinck's "Release Me," played at deafening volume...

...shifty George Elliott...

...September 12, 2004) Washington Post Tina Brown, mashed on John Kerry's "melancholy chin," defends her guy: The worst thing about the Swift boat moment has been the steady march of aggrieved sexagenarians across our TV screens, banging the hollow drums of their pasts...

...Children will call them obscene names...

...It was already a bit surreal when he said it on the campaign trail in 2000...

...For this kind of hard-boiled play to register, the relentless violence must have a semblance of physical credibility...

...Not only can't you tell the truth, you can't think the truth...

...Chomsky: What's striking is that this view is accepted without coercion...

...They were heroes once and young, but look what politics has wrought: Gabby, flabby John O'Neill, the author of Unfit for Command...

...and Leashed Man, face American female in camouflage pants who gazes down at him without expression, holding the leash casually in hand...

...You get burned at the stake or thrown into the gulag or something...

...policy...

...October 7, 2004) The Progressive Confronted by the vast majority of free and contented Americanos, who differ with him hugely, Dr...