Editorial

...May my tongue curl into a tight little ball if that was not the title of what must now be certified as a classic rendering of this great American myth...

...But Tyrrell's zealous researches for next issue's symposium on beers brought him very near the point of death, and I, the newly-arrived assistant managing editor, was left the job of filling his page...

...Bosh...

...As I read, an awesome truth loomed large...

...A plan suggested itself immediately —excerpt some of Tyrrell's commentary from the early seventies and let the readers judge for themselves whether charlatanry is not, as I adduce, a hardy American perennial...

...Our AP poet begins his fable by contrasting young Elmer's grisly achievements with an obviously contrived personality profile drawn supposedly from his neighbors' reminiscences...

...Joseph P. Duggan When Elmer Wayne Henley admitted his complicity in the homosexual torture-slayings of 27 Houston boys, many in the press wailed over the guilt shared by bourgeois society as a whole, but Tyrrell took exception: Young Elmer's bemused confession had hardly been uttered before the Associated Press bilged forth with an idiotic article by some frustrated creative writer entitled: "Who Is Elmer Henley...

...According to the authors of this elegant, fully-illustrated mailing, I have known about the endangered species for years though my conscience has not given me the slightest pinch...

...For one thing, it is with deep and inflexible dubiety that I observe the Pecksniffs' claim, that, for instance, DDT has driven the bald eagle to impotency, frigidity, or worse...

...June-September 1973 On the Americans for Democratic Action: Does anyone actually believe that the average ADAers assemble in a national convention to elucidate matters of democratic process like so many latter-day Madisons and Masons...

...So there you are...

...Chet Powers and Wallace Stevens...

...They congregate to pickle their tonsils in booze, swap lies, and hopefully fall transiently in love with some $25-an-hour lady of delights...

...Bicentennial fever had bludgeoned me into a historical mood, and I turned to reading editorials provoked by the events of the early 1970s...

...It vexes me not at all...

...It seems that one of those Pecksniffian cliques, which periodically gathers to do good at the expense of the less sensitive majority, has discovered that the white rhinoceros, the lowland gorilla, the snow leopard, the monkey-eating eagle, the spectacled bear, the coppery-tailed trogon, the Arabian oryx, the okapi, the orangutan, and the Pere David deer all share a common predicament with Chiang Kai-shek and the Galapagos tortoise—their prospects are not encouraging...

...The Greening of America is a surprising accomplishment for eleven chimpanzees and one Yale law professor...

...He is "reflective," a man whose "memories were his own," and who sought a change of cell because the boorish prisoners "were abusing him...

...He had a deep sense of responsibility and felt he was a breadwinner...

...Whatever the case, DDT probably does more good than harm...

...For New Yorkers, congestion may be an annoyance, but for the whooping crane it has meant only disaster and loneliness, and according to the missive received today the blame rests squarely with you and me and the tragic course of Western Civilization...

...Beyond being well written the book displays considerable erudition—at the very outset one of the chimps has seen fit to quote such abstruse Western philosophes as Mr...

...from "The Sorrows of Young Elmer," November 1973 From a review of Charles Reich's celebrated Greening of America: Not very long ago, a regiment of East Coast writers mostly from the Long Island pulp Newsday, was mustered to contribute individually lascivious vignettes on the general theme of the drippings of one woman's glands...

...Bonanza...

...The ADAers assemble for the same reason any other conventioneers take leave of their wives' cuisine...

...The very same population explosion that has mankind in a pother, has conduced to population implosion for the less intellectual of the earth's creatures...

...I have spread superhighways over our forest friends' most magnificent civilizations, sprayed DDT on defenseless flora, flushed toilets with abandon, broken sound barriers, used soap extravagantly, and gone on numberless trigger-happy treks through the vanishing wilds, wantonly blasting fauna and playing transistor radios to terrify those too small for my artillery...

...Charles Reich and Daniel Ellsberg may have retired to their happy hunting grounds, but our lunatic causes still have the same bogus metaphysics, the same sham moralism, and the same quack prescriptions as they had five years ago...

...Though the heart-throb causes of today have had a drastic change of cast and scenery, the plots are almost unchanged...

...So what...

...The whole mess was eventually palmed off to American devotees of belles-lettres as a novel titled Naked Came the Stranger, by Penelope Ashe, and no one was the wiser...

...Matt Chambers, is sum-moned to scotch those readers inclined to snicker: "he was not different from any boy...

...Elmer Henley, future astronaut...

...Perhaps the birds have come under the spell of an arcane religion and are practicing abstinence or maybe, having been taken in by the charlatans of Women's Lib, the young female eagles are becoming career-minded and simply do not want young...

...Let a gallows rise from every center field...

...Naturally he is "intelligent," "always gentle," and "always polite...

...Youth's Life Has Been an Uphill Struggle...

...Let the halftime at the next Super Bowl feature the Manson Family, Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, and H. Rap Brown...

...Indeed most Americans living today are responsible for the hard times of endangered species, and our only hope (continued on page 32) 4 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/ September 1976 TYRRELL (continued from page 4) for exculpation lies in sending to this high-minded group of animal lovers our cash, checks, or money orders...

...Endangered species have been drop-ping off since the Ice Ages and before...

...When in concert, the ADA is not much different than the Shrine except for the fact that, whereas the Shrine's interest in little children is contained to little children, the ADA' s solicitude for little children is directed at all mankind.— January 1974 From an editorial, "Hard Time for Endangered Species": Today an urgent missive bestirred the stillness of this distinguished editorial sanctum...

...No less an authority than his minister, the Rev...

...And now a committee of eleven chimpanzees and one Yale professor of law have combined to write a book criticizing the Great Republic's indiscretions while vaticinating on its rosy future...

...With the care of a master craftsman the author has stuffed into his story every idiotic variation of the myth, including the claptrap about how the alleged criminal's life has been fraught with imponderable ironies...

...Woody Guthrie, Mr...

...I doubt there is much we can do about it, and I am not persuaded that it would be prudent or even benign to try...

...In warm weather I bastinado baby seals and when the elements turn against me I head south to molest the gentle sea cow...

...Further, the tome rests on such a complex vertebrae of psycho-socio-economic terms I have come to conclude that the Yale law professor was allowed access to Psychology Today by his doctors—the frontiers of mental therapy are truly boundless.—April 1971 From an editorial, "On Taking Slobs Seriously": Capital punishment should be reinstated...

...From the literature received I gather that I am not the only American given to such divertissements...

...I shall be no more disconsolate when the last monkey-eating eagle assumes room temperature than when the last Austrian Archduke croaks...

...Progress in the healing arts has been a blessing for the Homo sapiens but a cruel bane for the prairie chicken...

...May 1972 1:1...

...What do they know about the intimate affairs of thesegreat birds...

...Now I am a bit suspicious of these furious allegations...

...Shortly thereafter an American art gallery displayed the dauberies of a chimpanzee and the fans of contemporary doodles formed queues in front of the gallery, so eager were they to compare the chefs-d'oeuvre of an anthropoid ape with those of their trendy masters...

...And it should be carried out during intermissions at professional athletic events...

...Accordingly, we are given glimpses of the fabulous young Elmer as " the considerate elder of the family, trying to fill an absent father's role, going to his brothers' school to check on their progress...

...Any charlatan who bellows about the elegant sensibilities of common criminals should be boiled in oil...

...According to a recent University of California study, over 100 million species of animals have returned to the goo since the world began, and archaeologists estimate that endangered species have been exiting terra firma at about the rate of fifty per century since this globe opened its doors to life...