CURRENT WISDOM

Jackasses, Assorted

C U R R E N T W I S D O M Esquire Esquire A rude book by Dinesh D’Souza brings testosterone to a boil in this great literary journal’s executive editor, Mark Warren, a recent émigré from...

...of Current Wisdom 1611 N. Kent Street, Suite 901 Arlington, VA 22209 C U R R E N T W I S D O M masters, approach yet another crisis, this time inspired by the otalgic warblers of U2, as reported in the highbrow pages of RS, among advertisements for head lice treatments and colonic irrigations: From 1980’s “I Will Follow” to “Yahweh” in 2004, U2’s music has always had strong religious overtones...
...You know where to find me...
...Dry those tears and repeat after me: Ha...
...I can’t wait to read the papers every morning...
...And every 20 pages or so, he writes a sentence that reminds you why you’ve got to read him...
...Defend your ideas with your blood...
...We owe it to ourselves to know the difference...
...Smoke more...
...Think about the ways you are glad that you are not Russian and only have to read about being Russian...
...In a week of tall ships and remembrances of patriots past, Reagan captured the imagination of a nation accustomed to his heroic turn of phrase and reassuring ways...
...Returning Hussein to power will take guts...
...This is our home...
...November 9, 2006) From the Archives Washington Post Funeral services performed once again on a favorite corpse by Pastor Lou Cannon of Washington’s Church of Good Scriveners: When President Reagan rededicated the Statue of Liberty in a blaze of light and celebratory fireworks last July 3, he seemed to personify the American nation, which he described that night, in Lincoln’s words, as “hope for the world, future for all time...
...Today, after reading your despicable book, the enemy again feels close at hand...
...January 1987) F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 7 7...
...Daniel P. Quinn St...
...And you’re going to need the help, my friend, what with being hospitalized for what would have been your book tour...
...In the Siberian cold of January, be glad for Martin Amis...
...He is the only one who can stabilize the region...
...So read this book...
...Now a Eucharist based on the band’s songs has spread from a tiny Episcopal church in Maine to 260 congregations in seven countries...
...If you 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 Politics & More, a collection of AmSpec hits from the past decade...
...November 30, 2006) Chicago Tribune An audacious communiqué to readers of the correspondence page of a great Midwestern gazette brings to mind the melancholy adage: too little, too late: …Hussein has already been vindicated as being guiltless in the accusations that he had weapons of mass destruction...
...For the sake of peace and better relations in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein should be reinstated as leader of Iraq...
...I’m in the book...
...Alsup’s imbecilities appeared on the same page as the previous blather...
...I’m entitled to this satisfaction...
...Seldom in our history have we been offered a better chance to learn a more useful civics lesson, and by holding up to the light the malfeasance, nonfeasance, and “all the other rot” embedded in the character and conduct of the Bush Administration, we might discover what we mean by America the beautiful...
...The American Spectator Dept...
...And the enemy is you...
...To be clear: Let’s fight...
...Cry over the inescapable certainty of death and the impossible beauty of women...
...A romanticized portrait of Reagan appeared on the cover of Time magazine the following week accompanied by a caption that asked, “Why is this man so popular...
...We had the taste of ash in our mouths, and we were so angry, we wanted to kill somebody...
...Put that one up high, D, because with your crowd, that’s going to move some serious books...
...Where does The Post get the arrogance to disgrace a nation’s hero and father with the picture of one of the worst war criminals in modern times...
...Come on, Dinesh, let’s fight...
...December 21, 1986) Timeless Tosh From Current Wisdoms Past (February 1987): and daddy: New Republic In his little sailor suit with his patent leather shoes sparkling in the sunshine, young Michael Kinsley proffers a knock-knock joke to mommy The only irritating aspect of the otherwise delightful collapse of the Reagan administration is the widespread insistence that we must all be poker-faced about it...
...military so badly tried to defeat, albeit unsuccessfully...
...Drink more...
...The approved attitude is to don the mask of tragedy: oh, woe is us, another failed administration, policy-making in disarray, etc...
...Paige Blair...
...The “U2charist”—which features a PowerPoint presentation displaying lyrics and sermons about global poverty and other issues championed by the band—was conceived by York Harbor, Maine, priest the Rev...
...Petersburg, Fla...
...December 22, 1986) The Progressive Still more hilaritas [about Iran-Contra]: I know some of you humorless old lefties think we shouldn’t gloat publicly over Reagan’s difficulties...
...I love this...
...So come on, Dinesh, don’t just stand there on the mass grave in lower Manhattan and spew your astringent hate at your own countrymen and—women...
...Peter Koenig Bethesda (November 25, 2006) Harper’s Belletrist Lewis Lapham is again made tipsy by taking aboard one metaphor too many: Democracy is born in dirt, nourished by the digging up and turning over of as much of it as can be brought within reach of a television camera or a subpoena...
...Here’s your blurb—I think it works: “Dinesh D’Souza does for liberals what The Protocols of the Elders of Zion did for the Jews...
...We were here on September 11, 2001...
...All the glitter is now gone, all the magic lost...
...Their music served as a spiritual resource for me at a time when the church wasn’t a particularly large part of my life,” says Blair, who’s been a fan of the band since her teens...
...C U R R E N T W I S D O M Esquire Esquire A rude book by Dinesh D’Souza brings testosterone to a boil in this great literary journal’s executive editor, Mark Warren, a recent émigré from the blogosphere where fantasies of masculinity mix with delusions of heroism in the troubled minds of pajama-clad momma’s boys: DEAR DINESH, Just read your new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 (Doubleday, $27...
...Dinesh, my wife and I live in Manhattan...
...January 2007) Washington Post The Post’s Letters Editor is again played the fool by the gifted Pete Koenig of Bethesda, satirist and arch-Republican: How dare you put on the front page a photo of President Bush in front of a statue of Ho Chi Minh [“Bush in Vietnam to Bolster Business Ties,” front page, Nov...
...The freedom fighter whom the CIA so desperately tried to kill...
...And when you’ve finished, drink a bottle of vodka...
...Smoke cigarettes...
...January 2007) 7 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 And just to prove that adolescent prose is now standard fare at Esquire, here is young Benjamin Alsup’s mawkish peroration, concluding his review of a book on the Gulag by Martin Amis...
...Within months, word spread and churches from Columbus, Ohio, to Belfast contacted her about holding their own U2-based services...
...We can’t “lay out a new agenda for America” unless we know which America we’re talking about, the one that embodies the freedoms of a sovereign people or the one made to fit the requirements of a totalitarian state...
...January 2007) Rolling Stone The schism-prone Episcopal Church, its lady bishops, its poofter pontiffs, and its nudist choirBcome across published nonE A SPECTATOR ACTIVIST...
...The liberator whose country the U.S...
...It has not been easy to be antiReagan in Texas for the last six years...
...The cover story described Reagan as “a Prospero of American memories, a magician who carries a bright, ideal America like a holograph in his mind and projects its image in the air...
...Listen, my momma may have raised a mean child, but she raised no hypocrites...
...The Washington Post, second-to-none in moral dudgeon over the Reaganites’ misdeeds, nevertheless declares that anyone who enjoys or is entertained by the spectacle is “reprehensible,” no less...
...This is where we are raising our children...
...The enemy felt close at hand that day...
...Damn right, I’m gloating...

Vol. 40 • February 2007 • No. 1


 
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