CURRENT WISDOM: Assorted Jackasses
CURRENT WISDOM Washington Post Miss Tina Brown takes a break from her daily regimen of prayer and meditation to pen a despairing column on the rise of Benedict XVI... and then back to...
...Religion is apassion of hers along with Pilates: Cardinal Ratzinger...
...Peter was the founder of the Roman Catholic Church...
...April 2005) The Nation A deservedly uncelebrated Professor Russell Jacoby from the History Department of UCLA takes on the conservatives' charge of liberal dominance in Academe with a popular liberal sophistry equating the purposes of the FBI, the Pentagon, and the fire department, with the cultivation of learning among the young...
...Hell, he was just a good of boy, wore white, blessed folk, prayed for peace—why not...
...And instead of taking these bloggers for the political activists they are, all too often the established press has accepted their claims of being a new form of journalism...
...So the prayer, so to speak, was that the new pope might miraculously turn out to be a shot in the arm not just for anti-materialism but also for anti-religious humbug, anti-medievalism and anti-repressive orthodoxy...
...May 4, 2005) BE A SPECTATOR ACTIVIST...
...The Vatican is not a charming Monaco for tourists collecting Ruhtanian stamps or gazing at past glories in the Sistine ChapeL It is a modern, potent force for cruelty and hypocrisy...
...Curiously, the celebrity nature of this event—a must-do for 200 world leaders—signifies the opposite of what it seems...
...The American Spectator Dept...
...If you come across published non-sense worthy of submission for this page send it on to us at "Department of Current Wisdom," and if we agree and entomb it on this page we shall send you an AmSpec desk calendar, printed in New Orleans, Louisiana, in an authentic women-owned, union print shop...
...they also increasingly provide cover for professional operatives to conduct traditional politics by other means—including campaigning against the established media...
...April 25, 2005) From the Archives Timeless Tosh From Current Wisdoms Past (June 1985): Washington Post Columnist Colman McCarthy, in a scholarly review ofRichard M. Nixon's latest monograph, spots RN's libertarian drift...
...It shows how far people have forgotten what the church really is, how profoundly ignorant and indifferent they have become to history and theology...
...Have a drink, Tommie: The party's nominal purpose was an episode of the talk-radio program hosted by Michael Reagan (the more conservative of the late president's sons), but the majority of the action seemed to be the generous dispensing of top-shelf liquor to satisfied corporate lawyers and Wall Street types...
...of Current Wisdom 1611 N. Kent St., Ste...
...His very name was ominous, a cross between Ratso Rizzo and William Zanzinger...
...No More Vietnams" is a call for no more laws, no more media, no more peace movement The book has one asset: an alert to the nation that it needs no more Nixon...
...His election was like the sharp rap of a ruler across the knuckles by a punitive nun...
...Secularists, humanists and quiet worshipers of an unpoliticized God have felt beleaguered, frustrated and unfairly disrespected...
...April 2005) Washington Post Ex cathedra from the Washington Post Articles on April 25 and 26 about Pope Benedict XVI said that St...
...From the "Personals" section of The Progressive's Classified page, a sexual solicitation notice finds itself on the editorial page: If you wink at torture, if you don't mind mass slaughter, if lying is of no concern to you, you can go far in this world...
...Info: Gray Panthers (212) 799-7572 http://www.geocities.com/ GrayPanthersNY...
...It is all perfectly plausible to the Prof The Guardian On the occasion of John Paul II's funereal services columnist Polly Toynbee has yet another nervous breakdown, or as those familiar with her work say, "Polly Goes Crackers": Bill Clinton had it right yesterday: "The man knows how to build a crowd...
...According to the church, Jesus was the founder...
...Jane Fowler, 69 year-old HIV-positive grandmother/retired journalist, and Susan Forlenza, MD, NYC Health Dept., epidemiologist speak on personal and public health issues for sex after 50...
...While the chosen ones sank comfortably into high-end inebriation, a string of famous right-wing talkers could be seen mounting the balcony where Reagan sat and taking their turns before his micro-phone, each one no doubt switching on the anger and giving virtuoso performances of their trademark anti-elitist routines for the listening hinterland...
...April 1, 1985) JUNE 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 73...
...This will have to change—or it will prove serious journalism's undoing...
...March 23,1985) More leftists undoubtedly inhabit institutions of higher education than they do the FBI or the Pentagon or local police and fire departments, about which conservatives seem little concerned, but who or what says every corner of society should reflect the composition of the nation at large...
...April 8, 2005) The Nation In the historic pages of The Nation (in its long history once Republican, once Stalinist, now sheer Nudist), a notice of the gruesome divertissements its readers might abandon themselves to, thanks to Viagra and other miracles of the American Pharmaceutical Complex (APC): Gray Panthers Sex, Seniors & the HIV Crisis Wednesday, April 20, 7 PM...
...Free event...
...Nothing has shown that higher education discriminates against conservatives, who probably apply in smaller numbers than liberals...
...and then back to church services for Tina and doubtless more fasting and abstinence...
...April 21, 2005) New York Review of Books Young Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas, attends a convivial reception at the 2004 Republican National Convention, hosted by AmSpec and a half dozen other patriotic organizations and clutches his breast as fire water is served to a few hundred writers, political activists, and other members of the American majority whom he recognizes only as "lawyers and Wall Street types...
...It was as if you expected Barack Obama and got Bob Dole...
...901 Arlington, VA 22209 72 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2005 C U R R E N T W I S D O M The American Prospect Prospectologists everywhere rejoice—another right-wing conspiracy has been found But unlike traditional news outlets, right-wing blogs openly shill, fund raise, plot, and organize massive activist campaigns on behalf of partisan institutions and constituencies...
...New York Historical Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street @ Central Park West, Manhattan...
...May 12, 2005) The Progressive How weird is this...
...April 4, 2005) New York In reviewing Heartbreakers, "a sweet comedy of erotic bafflement" the venerable film critic David Denby remembers the lengths to which he had to drive his Volkswagen beetle just for one more embrace: The picture made me recall the most pleasurable sensation of myown time in the sun (in the San Francisco Bay area)—the feeling that if you wanted to do some-thing you could just go out and do it Sex can be easy, soft, and dreamily irresponsible in California—surely if New York is the place where you go to get serious about your life, Los Angeles is the place, for women as well as men, where you go to get laid...
...There's no energy on the non-zealot side of the cultural debate...
...This is a contribution to American civilization that should not be overlooked...
...There's no Voltaire, no Clarence Darrow, not even a Lenny Bruce to balance the stifling, censorious religiosity—not even a Bill Clinton or a Jimmy Carter to show that religion doesn't have to resemble some Tom DeLay combination of contempt and pious hypocrisy...
...C U R R E N T W I S D O M Washington Post Miss Tina Brown takes a break from her daily regimen of prayer and meditation to pen a despairing column on the rise of Benedict XVI...
Vol. 38 • June 2005 • No. 5
