Editorials
CONTENTS Volume CXVIII, Number 21 Correspondence 706 Editorials 707 Since the coup: John P. Hogan, Bruce MacDonald 709 Kissing in public: David R. Carlin, Jr. 711 Comparisons that...
...Those who blame government for all these ills are missing the misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance of tens of millions of individual citizens as parents, managers, workers, teachers, preachers, bankers, journalists, etc., and of the thousands of formal and informal institutions making up the "private sector...
...Their assignment, should they wish to undertake it, was to read and understand a Commonweal editorial...
...Display advertising correspondence should be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, 11 Graffam Rd., So...
...Telephone: (212) 732-0800...
...Yes, it will be a good thing if Johnson's tragedy brings a greater awareness of AIDS and more direct government involvement...
...Should we not lower our eyes in the presence of such human frailty and pain...
...Recent news photographs of scavengers in a Moscow dump--some of them members of the Red Army--underscores our visitors' sense of the desolation within the Soviet Union...
...First, the military made the coup appear an uprising of enlisted men...
...His six-foot nineinch frame didn't hurt, nor did his generosity and personal warmth...
...We talked of many things, and observed a normal range of differences...
...Not needing party support, they need not yield to party discipline, so that the parties increasingly lack any identity, agenda, or message for the voter...
...It is a blunt weapon, all stick, no carrot...
...for it offers no reward to any incumbent but punishes all of them--not just those who are deadheads, senile, venal, and/or arrogant but also those (and there are many of them) who are able, hardworking, and responsive to constituents, as well as thc~se indispensable few who are wise and courageous beyond the call of duty...
...708: Commonweal THE MAGIC TOUCH In the wake of his candid announcement that he had contracted the HIV virus, Earvin "Magic" Johnson has been called a hero and inspiration by many, a hedonist by some, and a tragic figure by nearly all...
...The initial and strong reaction of the United States, the Caribbean nations, and the Organization of American States (OAS) included a condemnation of the coup, a demand for Aristide's reinstatement, and when that failed, an economic embargo of the island nation...
...The networks' recent and laudable initiative to accept and divide among themselves a responsibility to provide air time for political debates could be given legislative support...
...In a way that most Americans, more critical and cynical about their own politicians, may find hard to credit, the priest-president embodies whatever hopes the poor retain for some redress of the economic and political injustices that mark that sad land...
...How that will now change is hard to gauge...
...Indeed, Johnson is championed as the "mainstream" heterosexual figure who will remove the stigma attached to AIDS because of its current association with homosexuality and drug use...
...Fortunately, they guessed our stance correctly...
...04106 (207) 799-4387, classified advertising correspondence to 15 Dutch St...
...To question our obsession with sex, and especially with celebrity sex, is not to condemn Johnson, or any other AIDS victim...
...General Raoul Cedras and Major Joseph Michel Francois, the coup leaders, supported by Port-an-Prince's elite, have mounted a public relations battle to counter the claims of Haiti's first popularly elected president...
...What is to be hoped is that the impetus behind it can be channeled into a focused effort to make campaign reform a critical issue for all office-seekers at the national, state, and perhaps local levels...
...Incumbents attract contributions from aggressively self-serving interests precisely because they are incumbents...
...6 December 1991:707 That said, it remains true that we are, by and large, badly governed, and that one very significant reason for our plight--apart from the cynicism, opportunism, venality, cowardice, incompetence of particular officeholders--is the extent of unearned privilege conferred by mere incumbency in office...
...the Constitution gives Congress, not local voters, the power to determine qualifications for its members...
...One wishes they would visit the U.S...
...and the poor, who supported Father Aristide--with 70 percent of their vote--last December in Haiti's freest election, wait for his return...
...Term limitation, in our view, would certainly change the situation, but for the worse...
...ambassador to Moscow, was dismayed at Congress's inability (and, we should add, the administration's ineptness) to transfer the $1 billion from the Pentagon...
...This tactic had some early success with incomplete and inaccurate accounts in both the New York Times 6 December 1991:709...
...Following his doctors' suggestions, Johnson has retired from basketball...
...But, though term limitation is a nonsolution, the contemporary problems it is supposed to address are real...
...The two live in political symbiosis...
...Portland, Me...
...We have all the technologies and they're going to be used...
...Divide the margin [95,401 votes], by the number of supplements sold [35,540...
...Is the carnival to continue, only with more foolproof accouterments...
...AIDS is not a punishment for sexual incontinence, but neither is the HIV vires a source of moral wisdom...
...Thus far, only a minority have enough courage (or safe-enough seats) to work for reforms that would open up the process and promote reasonably fair electoral competition...
...Some think that line on the ballot would encourage cynicism rather than participation...
...there was no counsel from this corner...
...the military remains in power...
...It belittles the need for experience in grasping the intricacies of legislative procedure and of all contemporary governance...
...Beyond the undeniable pathos of seeing a young man grapple with mortality well before his time, there has been something hyperbolic about the media and public reaction to Johnson's tragic fate...
...Finally, and most frustratingly, the power to address and correct these ills directly and sensibly rests with the incumbents themselves, who share a common interest in maintaining the status quo...
...And perhaps one day, when stability and prosperity have settled on the former Soviet Union, our visitors will want to return home, no doubt to translate Commonweal editorials for the waiting masses...
...Abstinence, they assert, is the morally correct and medically reliable answer...
...Most people involved in the battle against AIDS have welcomed Johnson's advocacy and praised his honesty...
...and it is an attack on Congress's institutional memory, the care and keeping of which would be handed over to unelected staff members, lobbyists, and journalists...
...Letters should not exceed 250 words and are subject to editing for clarity and spacing limitations...
...the answer is 2.762, which correlates precisely with our field reports on the number of actual readers per copy...
...By exploiting his battles with the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, they quickly made Aristide's human rights record the pivotal question...
...But it can also be a tool of self-respect and personal accountability...
...Walker Percy thought the American preoccupation with anonymous sex symptomatic of our modem loneliness and despair, our estrangement from ordinary human allegiances...
...POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Commonweal, 15 Dutch St...
...GUNS FOR BUTTER Not long ago, we had the pleasure of chatting with a group of recent Soviet 6migr6s--four young women from three different republics, brought to lunch in our offices by their English instructor, Commonweal author Lee Siegel...
...Already, one Soviet trading company, Chetek, has been set up to market what it calls "peaceful" nuclear explosions...
...Given the size and diversity of the electorate in most districts, election campaigns are inherently expensive...
...Johnson has been perhaps the most dominant basketball player of his time--he led the Los Angeles Lakers to five NBA championships--and certainly one of the most congenial spirits ever to have played the game...
...COMMONWEAL Ir&~ ~ rAvJ~ I I I k l Real problems, wrong fix areful calculation by disinterested amateur analysts on our staff has found a close correlation between (A) the margin of defeat for the Washington State referendum that would have legalized physicianassisted suicide and (B) the widespread distribution of Commonwears special supplement [August 9] opposing the initiative...
...Language did not appear to be the chief barrier...
...Then their civilian allies promoted the claim that the middle class was fed up with Aristide...
...Still others retort that any discussion of sexual morality is just an excuse for venting prejudice, ignorance, or prudery...
...Sex often seems the only "real" thing in a world suffused with material distractions and meaningless entertainments but starved for human connection...
...As Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga...
...The concern is real enough, the price manageable...
...It's a matter of numbers...
...President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's president, remains in exile...
...As it happens, the same voters in the same election had no clue about where we stood on the notion of term limitations for elected officials...
...REPORT ON HAITI SINCE THE COUP THE CHURCH'S SIGNAL FADES ore than two months after the military coup of September 29-30, the prognosis for Haiti is dismal...
...711 Comparisons that help: Abigail McCarthy 712 Who decides what's safe?: Francis Flaherty 713 Screen: Richard Alleva 715 Dance: Bruce Fleming 716 Stage: Gerald Weales 718 Poetry: Dixie Partridge 719 John Nixon, Jr...
...In the era of AIDS, there is nothing abstract about sexual morality...
...But, unlike term limitation, as writer John Fund points out, this device would not limit but expand the voter's power of choice...
...But there is something disorienting about keeping our gaze fixed upon a man in the throes of an almost unimaginable agony--it is still not known whether he has passed the virus on to his new bride and unborn child, or how many women he might have infected...
...Term limitation at the national level is dubiously legal...
...Others have questioned Johnson's smiling endorsement of "safe sex...
...that initiative also failed...
...10038...
...The problem is that I can't pinpoint the time, the place, or the woman," he says...
...728 BOOKS Critics' choices for Christmas: Molly Finn, Robert Coles, John B. Judis, Thomas Swick, Abigail McCarthy, Paul Baumann, Fanny Howe, Elizabeth Shannon 720 'Ecclesia semper reformanda': A further exchange of views 729 STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Paul Baumann Production Editor: Jacqueline Dowdell Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Movies: Richard Alleva Stage: Gerald Weales Poetry: Rosemary Deen Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, Abigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...He says he contracted the fatal virus as a result of years of promiscuous behavior...
...it is not a rifle but an unaimed blunderbuss...
...Staff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen Alava, Pamela Quatse Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...Have we not been reminded that, unlike the emptiness of promiscuity and celebrity, the prospect of death confronts us, not with anything larger than life, but with life itself...
...But one question put to the group got the same answer from each of the four: Not one of them wished to be back in the USSR...
...Versions of it have already been enacted into law in some jurisdictions, there is agitation on its behalf in many others, and its proponents will no doubt benefit from studying the mistakes made by its backers in the great-but-small state of Washington: It was not bright, for example, to make the measure retroactively applicable in the very next election, thereby dictating the retirement of a popular and powerful Speaker of the House...
...Even out-of-work Americans wouldn't object to that...
...Johnson plans to use his fame to help fight AIDS, to educate the public about the deadly disease, and to preach the necessity of what he calls "safe sex...
...10038...
...At the same time, the House did approve $4.2 billion for a limited ABM system, up 29 percent from last year...
...Amy Wilentz in In the Parish of the Poor (Orbis), summed up this relationship: "It is sometimes difficult to know which comes first, the people, or Aristide...
...All incumbents have, and many abuse, the franking privilege...
...His athletic accomplishments, with all the attendant wealth, celebrity, and social prominence, made him seem larger than life...
...Lacking a strong sense of community, we increasingly lack concern for the common good...
...No wonder Robert Strauss, U.S...
...so could the notions of limiting or eliminating the use of thirty-second sloganeering spots in campaigns, and of imposing truth-in-labeling requirements on allegedly independent campaigns paid for with "sewer money"--funds spent on behalf of a candidate but not channeled through his or her campaign committee, thereby not subject to reporting requirements...
...Another reform worth exploring, briefly discussed in the New Republic for November 25 and reportedly endorsed by both (!) the Nation and the Wall Street Journal, is a measure permitting voters to mark their ballots "In Favor of a New Election" when they find all candidates for a particular office unacceptable...
...Strauss said that some risks are worth taking to help improve the chance that a "moderately stable government and society" will emerge in the Soviet Union...
...America did not invent promiscuity, but we have brought a characteristic entrepreneurial zeal to its promotion...
...True, guilt sometimes consists of an ugly psychological coercion...
...That, in our view, ought to be a chief guiding principle for any electoral reform proposal...
...But it is hard to suppress the suspicion that a little more guilt might prove surprisingly effective in the fight against sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS...
...a supporter of the transfer bill, observed: "We're facing the breakout of the largest arsenal in the world, and people in economic distress will be selling things...
...His condition will remind us that we need a franker and less judgmental attitude about sex...
...But it may take more than words and an economic embargo to quell this outbreak of lawlessness on the part of a corrupt military used to the easy profits of the drug trade...
...Not to put too fine a point on it, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl told a NATO summit meeting in November that the disintegration of the Soviet Union's centralized military control was an "explosive situation," and the Pentagon warned that thousands of Soviet scientists, experts in nuclear and chemical weaponry, are likely to lose their jobs soon and would most likely try to sell their talents to the highest bidder...
...Public financing and limits on campaign spending aren't the only possibilities...
...Less fortunately, the idea itself hasn't died...
...but the consequences of doing nothing or too little could be bizarre...
...I did my best to accommodate as many women as I could--most of them through unprotected sex," Johnson said in describing his sex life...
...Power...
...Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly, except monthly Christmas, New Year's and July and August, by Commonweal Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y...
...The company's Canadian representative boasted to the New York Times: "We're willing to entertain all ideas...
...Congress, which is having such a hard time deciding whether $1 billion can be transferred from our $291 billion military budget to help insure the Soviet republics don't slip even further into economic, political, and perhaps military free fall...
...There seemed to be no sentiment of longing for Mother Russia, even at her mythical warmest...
...With all the bravado he displayed on the basketball court, Johnson has become evangelical about condoms...
...New York, N.Y...
...Not only would the $1 billion be used for humanitarian purposes--transporting food and medical supplies on Air Force planes--but some would be assigned for a joint U.S.-Soviet effort to destroy nuclear and chemical weapons in the USSR...
...In terms of political theory it is antidemocratic, disempowering the electorate along with incumbent candidates...
...If there is little agreement among Americans about what is to be done, there is near-consensus that, as nation and as society, we are in several kinds of a mess (think of the economy, health care, education, race relations, criminal justice, homelessness...
...It doesn't matter who, where, or when...
Vol. 118 • December 1991 • No. 21
