REVIEWS
Jr, R. Emmett Tyrrell
by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. REFLECTIONS U P O N A SINKING SHIP (sic) by gore vidal Little, Brown $5.95 cabin. So professor vidal is an historical illiterate and false prophet to boot....
...Not that required texts and suggested readings are so academically ponderous — many of the readings, especially in the social sciences and humanities, are so light as to defy the laws of gravity...
...It threatens the state religion, it drips with Evil and one just does not want to be superannuated by Evil...
...As to how he developed into such a transmogrification of the H o m o sapiens I a m uncertain...
...And naturally it was this confidence that has made The Conservative Mainstream a refreshingly unequivocal program for conservative politicians, a stimulating challenge for Liberals and for almost anyone, an enlightening analysis of the last twenty years or so...
...Not long ago our N e w York bureau chief...
...Meyer's deep erudition, broad yet incisive views and unfailing confidence...
...People watch and read him for the same reason they attend wheel chair basketball, but where the disabled ballplayer is only a physical cripple, vidal is a moral and spiritual Practically everyone, David Brinkley, Staughton Lynd, Jerry Rubin, oh just everyone, agrees that American universities are unwell...
...Actually in spite of all their delightful foolishness they have become an annoyance to most civilT Y R R E L L (continued from page 7) ized men...
...The book, divided into three sections ("Conservatism and Liberalism," "Political Affairs — Domestic and Foreign" and "Ideas, Forces, People") aboimds in fresh insights to whose explications I could hardly do justice...
...The title's metaphor would have been hackneyed had vidal used it in the last century...
...But The Alternative n (continued on page 13) barrassingly ignorant as exhibited by their suggestion that our Vietnam syndrome will be relieved if President Nixon will just put his army onto little boats and sail away...
...W e have gladly advertised this book as a selection of For awhile I contemplated nuclear destruction of the the Conservative Book Club...
...Over twenty years ago he moved to Woodstock seeking refuge from the urban zanies, and now the Vandals had ravaged the town, potheads squatted on every street comer and Bob Dylan had become his closest neighbor, about a mile down the mountain...
...said, "the most violent nation on earth...
...Surely The Conservative Mainstream will be banned from university book lists...
...And finally direct election would increase the threat of a tyranny of the majority's disregard for minority rights...
...Mr...
...But still they continue to cavil and annoy the Jew...
...As the night matured one could not but be impressed with Mr...
...Surely even among arabs he is a certifiable cretin...
...Herein is another political virtue of the Electoral College system: it would be necessary to tamper with the votes on a nationwide scale in order to elect an unpopular candidate...
...For instance there is the arab's distaste for government...
...Further it would destroy the heart of our system of federalism...
...Meyer's bill must be the pride of the Woodstock Telephone Company), Mr...
...The Eisenhower Commission might extirpate violence from children's programs, but what will it ever do with the six o'clock news or the Johnny Carson Show...
...Some evidence indiciates the poor wretch suffers from abnormal ton of depravity, gives himself away in the very title of this silly book...
...Such balderdash may sound like the A n n Landersization of the American Academy, but it is the standard obstacle course one must cross in pursuit of a degree today...
...Meyer is senior editor) laced with heresy...
...Following his work while all the world sleeps (breakfast around 4:00 P.M., to bed by 8:00 A.M...
...Is he in these jaded two hundred pages of nonsense cautioning us all to steer clear of the stunting lubricity of his self-indulgent life...
...And so a lively seminar commenced and professor Meyer amiably albeit rigorously discoursed on subjects ranging from the Israeli struggle for survival to the Russian presence in the Indian Ocean and from the founding of National Review to Bill Buckley's karate lessons...
...in Business 223...
...misery...
...Nonetheless The Conservative Mainstream has found an audience — the thoughtful minority...
...Direct election is incompatible with our American governmental system...
...William Kristol, and I had the honor of dining with Mr...
...Whatever the anomalies of his genesis, today the Mandarins of the Media have given him top billing along with miscreants like James Foreman, Jerry Rubin and John T H E C O N S E R V A T I V E M A I N S T R E A M by Frank S. Meyer Arlington House, $8.00 Lindsay, reminding us once again that the Mandarins are not so interested in truth as in vendibility or in beauty as in its perversion...
...Meyer was still smarting from the influx of idiots...
...For A B C to feature gore vidal as a political commentator is as absurd as to portray gore vidal as a male, or a female or an articulate fungus, vidal is a freak show, the macabre product of a disfigured youth...
...Meyer's commentary an invigorating respite from the intellectual aridity of the University, and though not everyone agrees with his utterances, The Conservative Mainstream has engaged their minds and it is with that organ that intelligent persons do their things...
...And consider their ridiculous U. N. representatives who in the foolish attire of dirty bed sheets and sandals sempiternally outdo even the native New Yorker...
...Meyer has sharpened his social criticism abutted by a philosophy that grows yearly in coherence and influence...
...glandular secretions...
...n 13...
...Meyer was unhappy with Nixon, distressed over the universities, ruefully confident of Czechoslovakia's fate, and unrepentent in his hawkish prescriptions for Viet Nam...
...So it is that his book has the unique quality of serenely analyzing the anxiety of our time and assuredly offering solutions to our afflictions...
...Hence Frank Meyer's The Conservative Mainstream is about as likely to appear on university booklists this fall as the Dead Sea Scrolls...
...his Liberalism is merely a panoply of rationalizations for his pathetic incapacities...
...Join the M L F and work for these demands: NO MORE athletic undershirts NO MORE work „„„,, NO MORE holding doors for THEM NO MORE stingy deodorants NO MORE demeaning proposals NO MORE women's liberation fronts For further information write Dr...
...Yet it seems he has made the adjustments...
...vidal, television's Royal Daulgore vidal, a very slick dandy with something very sleazy to sell (himself), is many things but one thing he is not is very intelligent...
...Then too let us remember he is the runt of a decadent litter, who if not eaten by his father was gnawed by his mother...
...they communibate I. U.'s Professor Morris on 13 November at 7:30 cate so well with the lower organism...
...Liberal and conservative alike...
...That the Senate will ignore Senator Bayh and his nesciently idealistic plan is, to paraphrase Shakespeare, a consummation devoutly to be wished...
...In the Age of Relevance bibliographies are not to be scholarly, informative and provocative...
...Such criticism is dividing many professors between the older provincials who compulsively mouth their exhausted platitudes and the young nitwits who babble "Relevance," indoctrinating their pupils with the latest "Relevant" propaganda...
...Still mining absurdity from his title, consider the position from which this famous cripple has titled his book...
...And now we shall dive arab sand pile, but there just does not seem to be even deeper into Hades, we have invited Mr...
...Diagnosticians m a y point to the incidence of student-led guerrilla warfare, faculty incivism, racial conflict and an infectious distrust in identifying the contemporary university syndrome, but unless they analyze a bibliographic specimen from their campus book store they will miss an essential pathogen...
...Consider the present Jordanian monarch, Hussein...
...In fact, the very word has been pirated from their simian mode of communication...
...The American universities with all their lavish facilities, potent lobbyists and promise of excitement are, alas, agonizingly dull...
...Certain of his traits are admirable and the civilized world might profit munificently by acquiring them...
...Meyer's work as his brilliant intellect...
...examining hundreds of books and periodicals from all over the world, methodically calling any embattled point on the globe (Mr...
...Meyer, as one of the chief catalysts and formulators of the new conservatism is, then, as interesting from a personal standpoint as he is for his ideas...
...Indeed, the arab form of government is a delight that might profitably be adopted by all mankind...
...If students wish to learn about the American political system, then they must read monographs by Professor Norman Mailer, to understand "Amercripple...
...Sadly I admit that even I am in the dark...
...And there is their style of choosing leaders...
...From this brief discussion of arab life, it must appear obvious that a) they are no match for the Israeli and b) they do not deserve one granule more territory...
...Come sin with us...
...But how delightfully amusing...
...n PLUNKITT (continued from page 4) Yet, it is not m y intent to pass unfair judgment on the arab...
...With direct election, however, a monumental vote fraud in one state or even one metropolis might conceivably elect an unpopular candidate...
...Perhaps we will have to rely on Alternative Week (11-14 November) where he will deHuntley and Bunkley to solve this one...
...So professor vidal is an historical illiterate and false prophet to boot...
...Rather, most of these books are posing the same overworked questions and averring the same tired answers in a time when the questions are derided as "irrelevant" and the answers have become a little mangled...
...Nonetheless that was but another skirmish in the battle for preservation of Western civilization, a battle Mr...
...It was the same confidence that for almost fifteen years has spiked his National Review columns, undaunted by the gusty vicissitudes of world politics...
...D P.M...
...His latest book of essays...
...DOBIUS (continued from page 5) where the counting of nonexistent votes from graveyards, unoccupied buildings and phony addresses is not an imcommon practice...
...capitalism) they must read Professor Galbraith, and Professor Noam Chomsky has the last word on foreign policy...
...Rarely do they choose the most enlightened of the tribe, but rather the most ignorant and therefore the most entertaining...
...Or is it that he would like us all to slip into the same cesspool in which he finds himself...
...When the savants exhibit him as a Liberal they serve no cause other than their own venality...
...This week Lindsay was crumbling in N e w York, there was talk of exhuming Senator Kennedy's embarrassment, Libya was in revolt, China rattled its bamboo spikes at Russia, an American Negro businessman launched a new brand of Scotch Whiskey entitled "Soul," with "racial identification" for Negro consumers, and someone had written an article in National Review (of which Mr...
...This seems to he it...
...For after reading this eloquent collection of essays one cannot help but wonder what sort of m a n would deliver such effrontery to America's ritualistic Liberals...
...What can we do to put them out of our has always held great fascination for this kind of Evil...
...REFLECTIONS U P O N A SINKING SHIP (sic) by gore vidal Little, Brown $5.95 cabin...
...On this particular evening the battle entered his very living room, for one of the guests (Dr...
...H e lives on a mountain far above decadent N e w York...
...Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship, certifies him as an ignoramus, and how cruel it is for reviewers to urge him to continued endeavors as an essayist...
...his confidence has revived...
...In fact, he is so hideously misshapen that on many counts, not the least of which is aesthetic appreciation, he should be dispatched from his misery or perhaps immured quietly in an asylum...
...Yet this American ship has a way of not sinking, not sinking when it battles Brittania, not sinking when fraught with mutiny, not sinking when in the doldrums of depression, and, I expect, not sinking when vidal's rats are quartered in the captain's 6 ica's economic crisis" (i.e...
...His discussion of America the Political is too likely to jar the complacent provincials, unnerve the disciples of relevance and provoke the well-adjusting pupils to muse beyond their intellectual barbed wire...
...It was this confidence that characterized his several books...
...In fact confidence is as important an element in Mr...
...And his extravaganza is far more cruel...
...They must serve ideology...
...Throw off the shackles of female exploitation...
...They are to be eudaemonic and pop...
...America's tin-pot prophets have been foretelling the imminent submersion of America since the earliest days of yore...
...This sorely oppressed audience is finding Mr...
...This fear is reinforced by the realization that under the direct election system a candidate could conceivably be repudiated overwhelmingly in fortyfive states yet be elected to the presidency oft "supposed" popular support from the right five states...
...It is a chrestomathy of the new conservatism, evolving at the end of World W a r II out of a revulsion with the N e w Deal, and often featuring more hope for the future than reverence for the past...
...Primary litigation alone could last months, with the appeals stretching into years...
...Their reading lists guarantee this tedium...
...Kristol) was of the Liberal persuasion...
...I have often wondered how a man growing up in an era shaded by a Lost Generation, spending much of his early life as a leading functionary in the Communist party, chiliastic and suffering the disillusion of World W a r II, could ever renew his faith in anything...
...Robert Galm, Governor's Youth Council...
...H e is not to be smashed in the goddam face but covered like a festering wound, preferably under six feet of dirt...
...Indiana University's last Homecoming Queen Annoimces the: MEN'S LIBERATION F R O N T Sponsored by (Partial listing) York Barbells Ellettsville Athletic Association Non-Chalant Athletic Association Saturday Evening Club Moon Mullins Study Group and Choral Society Ripon Society Dear Fellow Male: For over a lot of years now, women have exploited our brawn in making this, as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...
...Repelled by government in the indignities of politicians, they have made a national pastime of assassinating public officials...
...Meyer to much to destroy...
...You might remember that last summer Woodstock hosted a neoteric form of the "sock hop," and Mr...
...Meyer at his fortress in Woodstock, N e w York...
...Today, not surprisingly, the nitwits have the upper hand...
...Meyer has waged for years...
...If vidal really is reflecting up on a sinking ship, he either has an indescribable anatomy or must be himself treading at the mercy of that very same sea about to entomb the fated ship...
...Clearly, direct election lends itself to corruption...
...Rather, he is a mongoloid...
...The university must not cultivate discriminating intellects, but robots activated by pop culture's tensions of crisis and Utopia...
Vol. 3 • November 1969 • No. 3
