Editorial
CORRESPONDENCE No.Dell P r i z e Milwaukee, Wise. To the Editors: Gene Bell [Nov. 5], for all his literary prowess (where does he get time to read all those books?) comes through to this...
...In this context, Carter must not be timid about full employment, just as he must understand that it is not enough to stimulate business and presume that the benefits will trickle down to the poorest...
...Commonweal is Indexed |n Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, and Book Review Digest...
...His observation that literature owes a debt of gratitude to LBJ and Nixon for their bursts of realism gives the heretofore stiff ruminations a delightfully hysterical finish...
...The realities of governing will quickly force particulars on Carter, so that it will not be long before he stands before us all as a man learned and a President known, rather than man and President whom there must still be some guessing at and speculating about...
...telephone: I2121 MU 3.2042...
...Second class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...Single copies 7Sc...
...Wait...
...Foreign $33.50...
...The remainde[ was, appropriately, diminuendo, with a coda consisting of the new/old Carter Secretary of Defense reiterating 4 February 1977:68...
...00|6...
...As that of the past administration was the rescuing of the office of the presidency (and here give Ford high marks for what he accomplished), that of the new will very likely be jobs...
...48106...
...The plans for the Carter Inaugural provided the most widespread popular entertainment and cultural manifestations within memory--and provided most of them free or at nominal cost, in sharp contrast to the traditional top ticket at $1,000 a head and not very far down from that for the cheapies...
...All of this gave way to the big set piece of the show: the CIA report on the Great Soviet Arms Build-Up of the last decade or so...
...Here it was at last: the voice of ultimate authority, the Charlton Heston of government...
...WILLIAM SELL Nuclear B l a s t Stanford, Cal...
...Roy Scheele 7 5 ; Felix Ste]anile 86 TRE MULTIFARIOUS IIORSES OF INSTRUC~rlON: Doris Grumbach 87 UPDIKE & GARDNER: DOWN FROM T I l E IIEIGIITS: Thomas LeClair 80 RO01~S: John Garvey, John Druska, Michael Zeik, Raymond A. Schroth, James R. Kelly O0 JAMES O'GARA: Editor JOHN ,DEEDY: Managing Editor RAYMOND A. SCHROTH: Associate Editor ANNE M. ROBERTSON, Editorial Assistant COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR.: Movies JOHN FANDEL: Poetry FRANK GETLEIN: Washington BRIAN WICKER...
...We find it especially ironic that Carter should have persisted against intense opposition on this, the poorest of his nominations, while acquiescing so readily to the withdrawal decision of Theodore Sorensen as director of the Central Intelligence Agency...
...After the opener, individual divertissements began the build-up all over again, in traditional, George Abbott-Leonard Bernstein style...
...One entertainment not listed in the Concourse of Events and at least as expertly choreographed, rehearsed and conducted as the best of those that were, was the Soldiers' Chorus lifted in the last days of the Ford administration warning the Carter administration and the country at large that The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and the only way to stop them is to inundate the militaryindustrial-flackery complex with money from the U.S...
...This is very funny, you see, Mort, because Gene says the counter-culture was made up of barren intellects while everyone knows it fashioned a creative, thoughtful (and fallible and fumbling) response not only to the war but also to the society and institutions that fostered such a war...
...But they do point directions----or can...
...Yes, Mort Sahl, someone does listen, someone does care...
...The overture was sounded in letters to The Times, swelled to a brilliant opening number, everybody on stage, in an Op-Ed Solemn Warning about the Soviets signed by everyone the military-industrial flacks could dredge up, including such an honorable former naval person as Elmo Zumwaldt and several less so...
...Retiring officials appeared before congressional committees, others made addresses to citizens' groups...
...Printed b the USA and published hi-weekly by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...He's not done...
...Now that the Nobel Committee has spoken, let's hope for Mr...
...WASHINGTON REPORT TO ARMS...
...National Serials Data Program No.: ISSN 0010.3330...
...The mark of a human is one who eats them with a sense of humor...
...We trust it will not be so with jobs...
...Forecasters are predicting a moderate early pace for the Carter administration...
...Here is serene Gene who puts down Bellow for ignoring the Vietnam war, and then puts down Vonnegut for high-priesting the "barren" intellects the anti-war movement spawned...
...85 VERSE...
...To the Editors: If memory serves, the issues from my first subscription to Commonweal were read in the Army (Continued on page 94) NEWS & VIEWS: GG CORRESPONDENCE: G7 EDITORIAL: 6 7 WASRINGTON REPORT: To A t o l l To A r e s ! : Frank Getlein G8 AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL: Peter Steinlels 70 THE DEVJ[L, DEMONS & DOGMATISM: Ronald Modras 71 T I l E TASTE OF QUEBEC: Erazim Kohak 7G AFTER DALEY, WIlAT?: Ralph Whitehead, Jr...
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...to date available through University Microfilms...
...O 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 000 THE CARTER BEGINNING Jimmy Carter officially moved onto the stage of presidential history with an inaugural ceremony remarkably reflective of his character traits---deft touches of populism, strong strains of pietism, a comparative simplieitym and with an inaugural address which, for all its personalist and welcome Democratic-party tones, left some persons uncertain that they know yet the man elected 39th President of the United States...
...He must recognize that there is a hard-core unemployed in this country, particularly among urban black and minority youths, and that direct affirmative action is necessary on many levels and in numerous job-skill areas if these groups are to be reached...
...79 RICHARD J . DALEY~A PERSONAL MEMOIR: Michael McAuliffe 80 PRESS: Rack t o t h e Cold War: Thomas Powers 83 T I l E SCREEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...The latter objection is crucial...
...A jobless percentage rate of near 8 percent is intolerable, the more so when one group comprises 20 percent of the jobless, as do blacks...
...The interregnum President did his own number with variations in a masterpiece of timing just when, for a change, everyone in the country wanted to think well of him...
...Each new administration seems to have its special challenge...
...comes through to this reader as the craven box-top kid down the block who can say "I was here before you...
...This is a skepticism not dispelled, be it said, by the amnesty program announced his first full day in office...
...Of course, inaugural addresses are not infallible indicators...
...Anyone who attempts to deal with his ~hemes in his grab-bag (his word), glib (my word) scattershot reviewing of 31 (I counted) books, surely has in mind serving his reader a treat, helping his reader laugh at the grim seriousness that brings us together to balance fantasy and history...
...We look positively to this better acquaintanceship, although with a certain skepticism that the Carter of the presidency will be the miracle man of his political evolution and his promises, or the liberal of some popular persuasions...
...Bell, as he re-reads the reprints, that his salt hasn't lost its savor...
...If the burglars, liars and letter-openers of the CIA said it was so, how could anyone doubt...
...This is tenuous criticism, however...
...they do not lend themselves readily to specifics and hard guidelines...
...Nor are doubts relieved by some high-level appointments, notably that of Griffin B. Bell as Attorney General, a lawyer and judge with a widely publicized obstructionist reputation in civil-rights cases...
...Microfilms from u I , 1924...
...Granted the very real problems connected with the Sorensen nomination, yet if intelligence and a sense of what is needed to restore integrity to the Agency are prerequisites for the post, Sorenson possessed both in ample measure...
...Great Br/fain ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome JOHN COONEY: Dublin EDWARD S. SKILLIN: Publisher JOHN BRUBAKER: Advertising Manager Staff: LINDA F. KAYLER, PAMELA J. FITZGERALD, HARRIET'rE EALSKY COMMONWEAL A review of Public Affairs, Literature and the Arts...
...Sides splitting...
...Almost inevitably, therefore, there were those--including, it seems, representatives of foreign governments at the inaugural--who would have preferred an inaugural address that eschewed tone for a more concrete statement of the means by which this administration will move towards the goals of the campaign speeches...
...Besides, there is the seductive thought that nothing might have helped more in rehabilitating the CIA in those areas of the world where it has been a fomenter of coups and practitioner of unsavory arts than the presence of a pacifist as its head...
...So there it all was, out on the stage...
...300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mich...
...If there are citizens who honestly think, on the record, that the CIA has done more, much more, to "erode the cause of freedom" in America than the Soviets have dreamt possible, such observers simply don't understand the true nature of American freedom: our freedom lies, not in citizens' freedom from having the CIA climbing in their windows and rifling their letter-boxes, but rather in their freedom to have CIA reassurances that those things don+t really matter compared to the Agency's ability to cope with the dread Soviet menace, as it did so brilliantly at the Bay of Pigs, in Indochina and elsewhere...
...The mark of a scholar is one who puts down words that do not have to be eaten...
...Similarly questionable is Carter's choice of Charles Schultze as chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors--a man who last summer helped block passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Bill and who, in the words of economic analysts Robert Lekachman and Michael Harrington, is "evidently prepared to accept a whole decade of extraordinarily severe unemployment...
...The predictable howls of the "patriots" notwithstanding, the program is ungenerous towards hundreds of thousands most in need of generosity--the poor and undereducated, for Commonweal: 67 instance, who in Carter's earlier words didn't know where Sweden was or how to get to Canada...
...Copyright ~ 1977 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.m/JS and Canada: $17 a year...
...Treasury, the more securities the more security, the sooner the better, not a moment to lose, damn the cost overruns, full speed ahead, and curst be he who first cries, Hold, enough...
...TO ARMS...
Vol. 104 • February 1977 • No. 3
