CURRENT WISDOM
c u R R e n T w I s d o M Msnbc While reporting on the February 12 primaries the excitable Chris Matthews reveals what happens to him when he forgets to shave his legs before pulling on...
...I wept for Mark and his family and for our country...
...So far, no negative reaction...
...Tears and heroics as divulged on the correspondence page of a respected Janer Eldridge Prescott, Arizona (april 2008) new york Times book Review Scott McLemee, another genial man of the left—in fact a self-confessed “old fashioned socialist”—departs from an otherwise optimistic assessment of present political conditions 7 6 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a y 2 0 0 8 to note the gruesome pathologies cultivated by the hellish Republicans to win elections and enslave us all...
...We also noted that following the market correction GNP in the last quarter of 1987 grew at 4.8 percent...
...None of this was about Jesus—Christmas is not a tradition in this Buddhist and secular-Marxist country—but all about corporate branding...
...With the fire alarm wailing on Wall Street and the country anxious for leadership, it gets an astonishing rerun of Herbert Hoover...
...This week we reached the mark of 4,000 American dead in Iraq...
...I mean, I don’t have that too often...
...november 2, 1987) new york Times In a statement issued last night, the White House asserted that the “underlying economy remains sound...
...March 16, 2008) new york Review of books Happy flatulence from a NYRB reviewer after her discovery of a new lingo scratched on the walls of the caves of cyberspace: Of course I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure that bloggers have fouler mouths, tougher hides, and cooler thesauruses than most of the people I’ve read in print...
...The architects of the Republican Party’s 30-year project to consolidate the conservative evangelical vote have been the country’s most outlandish conservative (and hypocritical) figures, but in our flag-lapelpinwearing, my-walk-with-Jesusimmunizes-me-from-criticism environment, they are given a free pass...
...Once again the current wisdom is a dunce...
...My— I felt this thrill going up my leg...
...As I walked through the busy Christmas streets, however, I was gripped by the question of why the Vietnam War was necessary in the first place...
...one does not abandon an orientation so tried and true...
...Now, suddenly for me, it was Christmas 2007 and Vietnam was ablaze with festive holiday lights, from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City...
...It will be no surprise, of course, if the Republicans continue to beat the drums of fear and resentment...
...Fonda: The last time I had seen Hanoi was in 1974, when Jane Fonda and I walked through the hospital debris and interviewed still-furious victims of the Christmas 1972 bombs...
...Here are two representative yawps from that historic Current Wisdom: newsweek News story titled, “Panic of ’87”: If it felt like the end of the world, that’s because it was: last week’s global crash has created a whole new financial reality...
...I can’t do a lot for Mark except to try to display similar courage and integrity...
...For any American citizen with faith in the possibility of progressive reform, these are exciting times...
...flag in my carport...
...The nation A gloomy Tom Hayden returns to North Vietnam, 33 years after fraternizing with his Marxist-Leninist kin, and discovers the Chamber of Commerce has triumphed and all the poor sucker has is an occasional alimony check from Ms...
...They’re mirrors...
...Why kill, maim and uproot millions of Vietnamese if the outcome was a consumer wonderland approved by the country’s stillundefeated Com mu nist Party...
...When will Mr...
...For them, the photos from Abu Ghraib are not pictures...
...Though billboards of Ho Chi Minh were pervasive, the most ubiquitous bearded one this Christmas season was Santa Claus, beckoning shoppers from department store doorways, seen incongruously riding motorbikes, waving to little children...
...october 20, 1987) M a y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 7 7 (March 17, 2008...
...Here’s a sampling of words gleaned from some of my favorite blogs: anyhoo, bitchitude, fan-fuckingtabulous, hole-esque, nastified, alternapop, coffin-snatching, YouTube-ization, touzing, Dad-dio, manky, nutters, herapised, Boo-Ya Nation, dildopreneur, dudely, flava, haz-mat, nut sac, sexbot, underwearian, fugly, vomit-y, consciousnessjumped, tear-assed, fetbryo, grapetas- tically, mommyblogdaciousness, Nero-crazy, Engrish, pidgin-ized, votenfreude, angsty, malgovernment, bejesus, JumboTron, man-dresses, babealiciousness, droit de senny...
...March 27, 2008) american Prospect (web only) An inscrutable communiqué from Miss Sarah Posner to the world beyond her cubicle via hyphens, a multitude of hyphens: In the mad, mad world of politicians competing to out-Jesus each other, the chickens come home to roost—but only for those without the Jesus (March 26, 2008) c u R R e n T w I s d o M Shield...
...Social science research shows that the candidate who pushes the fear button most tends to have an advantage...
...It is a sad milestone in a grinding war that can never be won and is already lost in so many ways...
...february 14, 2008) washington Post Another confusing bull from columnist Richard Cohen, who seems to be telling us that when President George W. Bush views pictures from Abu Ghraib, he sees himself with women’s underpants on his head, right...
...Of late, the Democratic presidential campaigns have often had the air of revival meetings...
...If you take it down, “they win...
...I mean, to me, that stuff is considerably more offensive than decrying racial violence and intolerance in this country, which members of the black com munity have some firsthand knowledge of...
...c u R R e n T w I s d o M Msnbc While reporting on the February 12 primaries the excitable Chris Matthews reveals what happens to him when he forgets to shave his legs before pulling on his pantyhose: I have to tell you, you know, it’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech...
...Restaurant goers applauded Christmas carols sung by young Vietnamese women strapped in Heineken Girl sashes...
...No one could blame Mark if he took the flag down, but I think his wife is right...
...Spectacular strings of red and green lights were draped over the streets and stores, blinking at thousands of Vietnamese rolling along on bicycles and motorbikes, parting smoothly like schools of fish around pedestrians crossing the street...
...I have a U.N...
...Pat Robinson and the Rev...
...AmSpec devoted its entire May 1988 Current Wisdom section to reprinting hysterical media reactions to the stock market correction of the prior autumn, a correction that supposedly presaged the end of the Reagan Boom...
...february 12, 2008) The Progressive loony bin: I just read the story about Mark Karol-Chik and his flag (“Anti-War Activist Rocked,” by Matthew Rothschild, February issue...
...March 10, 2008) goddamning of America elicits visions of the Rev...
...Jeremiah Wright’s theory of the CIA’s invention of AIDS and from the archives Timeless Tosh from current wisdoms Past Mirabile Dictu...
...The fancy Diamond department store next to Independence The situation Room (cnn) The Rev...
...Palace was filled with shoppers, gawkers and Santas wandering the aisles of Lego, Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret, Nike, Converse, Estée Lauder, Ferragamo and Bally...
...Whither hath gone the Angry Left of recent memory...
...Jerry Falwell in the mind of commentator Jack Cafferty, who insists he swore off firewater long ago: How is this different than John McCain chasing after Pat Robertson or the late Reverend Jerry Falwell, who talk about how we have a culture of murdering unborn children in this country and that we’ve turned into Sodom because we coddled the gay community in this country...
...But even when this war, like Norman Bates’s mother, is gussied up by its embalmers and declared a glorious effort, the shame of Abu Ghraib will forever stain George Bush and his top aides...
...Reagan start fighting the fire...
...In disquieting echoes of Herbert Hoover, Reagan and his men proclaimed that “the economic fundamentals in this country remain sound...
Vol. 41 • May 2008 • No. 4
