Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES A s t r a n g e l i t e r a r y creature caught inh a b i t i n g one of TRB's wonderful colu n r l n s -. Income distribution in America is violently unequal. --The...
...Librarialas, bar the doors: here come your average vigilantes...
...Of course, the degree to which White House officials may have been guilty of totalitarian attitudes is far less than in Stalin's Russia...
...St...
...However, failing to get underway by the count of 10, the person is "out...
...A person is also "out" if he mentions something which someone else has already suggested...
...These spiritual exercises have been lifted from the Sunday school guide of New Creation, a how-to-do-it book for saving souls published by the General Board of Education of the United Methodist Church, I n c . - - t h e very same United Methodist Church which in an earlier era promoted such civic causes as the Volstead Act, Ku Kluxery, and lynch law for the heathens...
...Weicker's presentation is enough to pacify the disgruntled soap opera fan...
...Nation POPULAR OPPRESSORS Another of those curious slips that makes even gullible readers of the Nation a bit suspicious: Many Americans, then, did have reason to be upset by the direction of education reform in the 1960s, but they took out their grievances by supporting politicians who would only make the situation worse...
...Mike Byrne --Indiana Daily Student 26 The Alternative December 1973 "'Whom the gods destroy they f i r s t make mad" Euripedes...
...and to see how many ills can be mentioned in a few minutes...
...So deep and pervasive was this paranoia thatmlike the Southern commitment to slavery before the Civil War and to white Supremacy after the war--in time it came to dominate our lives and our thoughts, to color our views of politics, economy, education, science, and morality...
...Hallelujah!: Ask the Volunteer Committee to listen to popular or recently popular protest records, to hear musical references to the ills of our times...
...Imagine the mostlymale State Legislature of Georgia deciding whether the raft of new books on female sexuality is obscene, no matter how important such explorations are to women, including Georgia women, for a rehabilitated consciousness...
...The New Republic SUNDAY SCHOOL CHIC As yet a n o t h e r service to our readers, we present, unexpurgated, two intellectually challenging, games, guaranteed to reawaken the spiritual appetites of all New Age Methodists and their asinine cousins in Christ...
...New Creation DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS A chilling analysis of Nixonian America by the UPI's Nicholas Daniloff, Kremlinologist and fictioneer: For this former Moscow correspondent, one of the sobering reflecturies of democratic practice, there is no guarantee against the development of totalitarian attitudes in the White House...
...For example, even though there may be many unusually effective war protest records, it would be of little value to play these protests while ignoring the ecological, human rights, poverty, and alienation problems which confront us...
...Be sure a fairly broad range of the sicknesses of our society is included in the record excerpts selected for playing as class members arrive...
...By dwelling on human ideals and ethics, Weicker has an automatic "in," since the authoritarian Nixon administration has always displayed a noticeable lack of real human values...
...But there are some startling similarities...
...John Leonard, defender of freedom and spokesman for the oppressed: So the First Amendment has been parceled out to 50 states for 50 different glosses according to 50,000 community standards arrived at by 200-million average inferences...
...Of course, Weicker does have a few axes to grind with the Nixon administration, particularly its attempt to pin illegal campaign financing on him...
...Imagine the differing perceptions, in Baton Rouge or Trenton, of what's patently offensive in a novel featuring black-white sexual relations...
...to listen to what others say...
...After the record excerpts are played, list the "signs of sickness" in our society which class members suggest are illustrated in the records which have been played...
...New York Times Book Review THE DEMOCRATIC LOVE AFFAIR Telltale elitism from one of the most conspicuous organs of p a r t i c i p a t o r y democracy: Constitutionally it is absurd to argue that the "average" person in the local community-which the Court did not define...
...The person who gets the ball must, before the count of 10 is completed, begin to mention "something which is wrong with us" as a nation...
...And he has two prominent friends---former presidential counsel John Dean and former FBI Director L. Patrick Gray--who now probably rank at the top of the White House Enemies List...
...Weicker's approach is gratifying, first of all, because waiving correct courtroom procedure enables him to get to the nitty-gritty of the misconduct of the Nixon administration, much of which transcends illegality...
...he straightarms the legal abstraction and lays it all on the line...
...We've seen what California did to its textbooks to keep kids from being brainwashed by the theory of evolution...
...Yahoos everywhere are already telling us we can't mention "Mafia" and that "HucKleberry Finn" is racist...
...As in the worlds of Kafka and Orwell . . . . --New York Review of Books A YAHOO LOOK AT YAHOOS The h o r r o r s of democracy as imagined by Mr...
...The obvious purpose of this game is to do quick,on-the-spot thinking about the ills about us...
...Louis Post-Dispatch SPEAKING IN BUGABOOS While l e c t u r i n g about Watergate, the eminent historian, Henry Steele Commager, lays it on thick to his spellbound audience: The roots of our current malaise go back to the paranoia about communism--first Soviet, then Chinese--that obsessed Americans after 1947...
...it could be the state, a county, a city, a town, a village or part of any of these---can decide, with only the loosest guidelines, what is allowable and what is to be banned...
...Suppose AI Carmine's new musical, "The Faggot," were to tour: okay, maybe, in New Orleans, but in Lubbock or Pierre...
...looking at this nation, Ezeckiel saw . ,, OR Do some "ball brainstorming," as an alternative to playing excerpts from protest records.Secure a small rubber ball or tennis ball...
...Nation DEPARTMENT OF THE SECOND RATE An effortless fountain of bosh from one of the millions of undistinguished louts who will soon be graduated from the great universities of the land and dropped back into the nation's vast welter of nameless secondraters, there to simmer: With the exception of Chairman Sam Ervin, Republican Sen...
...Lowell Weicker is the most gratifyingly uncool interrogator on the Senate's Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Practices...
...There have been no purge trials, executions or sentences of exile...
...Compare the list on your chalkboard with that in New Creation which begins...
...It is not the first time in history that people have supported their oppressors out of fear of change...
...Proceed with the "ball brainstorming" as follows: The person who is "IT," throws the ball to anyone else around the circle ~nd proceeds to count to 10...
Vol. 7 • December 1973 • No. 3
