Correspondence
Correspondence THe LAND OF THE HYPER-ENTERTAINED I anticipated something very different from Michael Anton's "The Hyper-Entertaining of America" (April 15). The development of a very important...
...But they are trying in their philosophically occluded way to save lives...
...Jeffrey Apfel Newton, MA Throw the Rookies Out Matthew Rees's tribute to the four freshman Republican representatives who were responsible for defeating badly needed, meaningful immigration reform is way off base ("Rookies of the Year," April 15...
...That would be attributing too much power to the highbrow class, which was already on the way out...
...David Inglis Loma Linda, CA Fighting About Judges I was pleased to see that you have joined the Alliance for Justice in asking for a national conversation about the appointment of federal judges ("Let's Have a Fight About Judges," April 15...
...Second, the author states that the four representatives worked closely with Democrats in Congress and the AFLCIO, avowed foes of Republican conservatism...
...We are starkly reminded of that point when the Centers for Disease Control use taxpayer dollars to conclude that restricting the Second Amendment rights of citizens is the only answer to gun violence...
...It was in that same context that we cited her words...
...First, Rees admits that the bill's sponsors, Lamar Smith and Alan Simpson, "had public opinion on their side...
...And, by the way, there were plenty of car chases...
...Gun violence is like racial segregation circa 1950...
...Many of the ideological forebears of THE WEEKLY STANDARD were quite content with the southern solution to the Negro problem...
...April 15) hits the nail on the head...
...The Venona files show that the Manhattan Project, at which I was a physicist, was more deeply penetrated than Haynes and Klehr write...
...Tucker Carlson's article "Handgun Control, M.D...
...The difference is, Anton doesn't care...
...The phenomenon is brilliantly outlined in Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death...
...It shows how naive many eminent personalities, in government and out, remained for a half-century Will they be "outed...
...Glen Hochkeppel Leesburg, VA Middlebrow Zeitgeist David Brooks's "The Importance of Being Earnest" (April 15) is absolutely the best explication I have ever read on our Zeitgeist conundrums...
...By going light on murderers, we are encouraging their behavior...
...Arnold Kramish Reston, VA Language of Punishment William Tucker makes a critical point which should be emblazoned everywhere: When the punishment for murder-median time only eight years-is just slightly more than that for rape-five years-or even robbery-three years-then we are encouraging criminals to murder and rob other victims ("Punishment Is a Language," April 8...
...Police and prosecutors, already demoralized by daunting odds against the capture, trial, and conviction of criminals, are further discouraged by the system's penalty structure which mocks law enforcement in many additional ways, e.g., early release due to prison overcrowding...
...I differ with Brooks only on the reason that irony reigns supreme as the era's dominant mode of expression and understanding...
...I would be astonished if Anton could name 10 pictures that were produced by MGM in the 30s...
...Following Anton's reasoning, the increasing efficiency of capitalism in delivering cultural product may simply require ever-escalating levels of Joseph Schumpeter's "creative destruction," with irony employed as the dynamite...
...Glen A Caroline Centreville, VA The Butcher of Dunblane had never been arrested before he killed 16 children...
...He was not the sole person to blame...
...It came as a surprise, however, to read that the Alliance has backed off of our longstanding commitment to such debates...
...These so-called heroes have done a tremendous disservice not only to their party but also to the American people, particularly those who live in states where immigration does generate a lot of passion...
...To the contrary, the Alliance sees its role as ensuring that the public, along with the Senate, is fully informed about the records of judicial nominees...
...I should like to know what the new conservatism is doing toward the same goal...
...There's another horrendous cost...
...On the other hand, Michael Anton describes the dumbing down of middlebrow even further, concluding that the hyper-entertaining process is inevitable...
...That particular public would have been bored, and probably repelled, out of its socks by the dinosaurs of today...
...Hal Riedl Baltimore, MD Manhattan Project Outing In their article "Outed from the Cold" (April 15), John Haynes and Harvey Klehr say that Theodore Hall, who graduated from Harvard in 1944 at age 19, is 76 today...
...Orrin Hatch took credit for Judge Baer's changing his ruling...
...Aron's quotation ("There's no reason for the administration to engage in a discussion that is such a threat to judicial independence") appeared in a recent New York Times "news analysis" of partisan conflict over judicial appointments generally, not over Judge Baer's specific ruling...
...Carlson exposes those in the medical community who treat gun violence as a public health issue...
...But let's agree that such a debate should not involve pressuring judges to make specific rulings, a trend that is nothing less than a threat to the constitutional role of the judiciary...
...We're pleased to correct the record and delighted that the Alliance for Justice believes federal judgeships are a legitimate and necessary subject for political debate...
...Conservatives should realize that the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is, and must continue to be, a bedrock principle in the conservative philosophy...
...It just doesn't ring true that highbrow "did in" middlebrow out of envy, embarrassment, or spite...
...The public ate it up, its entertainment value was strong enough to pull 80 million to 90 million people out of their houses once a week for many years, and it made Mayer, Warner, and a whole lot of other people very well-to-do...
...Doctors, Guns, and Politics Bravo...
...Nan Aron President, Alliance for Justice Washington, DC The Editors Respond: Ms...
...Your readers might want to consider this: The values of family, community, and country, all of which commend a person to loyalties greater than he, are in a certain tension with the precious right of the individual to bear arms...
...Historically, we saw such threats to the judiciary when powerful segregationists attacked southern judges over their courageous rulings in desegregation cases and when members of Congress sought the impeachment of Justice William O. Douglas because of his liberal rulings...
...These attempts by doctors are just pure political posturing to ban guns...
...Anton's point about Walkmans was made by Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind...
...He seems to be a victim of the shattered epistemology that he believes is "no problem...
...high-spirited, ignorant, exuberant, and annoying...
...All deplore it, none knows what to do about it...
...Dead victims can't identify criminals...
...I hope that these traitorous Republicans will get what they deserve in the fall of 1996, when the voters return them to the private sector...
...Finally, Rees says that three of the representatives come from "districts with small immigrant communities," and the fourth is from a state where "immigration [does not] generate much passion...
...What we object to, and what I was referring to as "a threat to judicial independence," is the bringing of direct political pressure on judges to rule in a specific way...
...John Podhoretz laments the middle-browing of Las Vegas ("Vegas Needs Hookers," April 15) on the grounds that gambling, perhaps like pornography, should be marginalized so as to keep its physical manifestations in conformance with its proper place in our mental life...
...By taking a quote of mine out of context, you suggest that the Alliance has somehow changed its view on the appropriateness of public discussions about the role of the courts and the men and women on the bench...
...This is what happened when President Clinton's press secretary, Mike McCurry, called for Judge Baer's resignation and when Sen...
...He celebrates our incessant bombardment by chunks of art-product- disconnected, content-deprived, easily forgettable, yet ever-diverting-as the "first truly popular culture in human history...
...The doctors waging war on firearms violence as a preventable disease are sitting ducks...
...Please keep pounding away at this subject...
...The relevance of his analysis to current cultural and political issues is apparent by reading the rest of the magazine...
...David Goodwin Miami, FL...
...Brooks manages his task quite effectively in an essay...
...But inside the cars were characters the viewer cared about...
...The development of a very important subject was not there...
...Reformers expose themselves to the ridicule of the smug...
...Eleanor Shaughnessy Brattleboro, VT Michael Anton's observations on our culture of "hyper-entertainment" are accurate but hardly new...
...Is this over-entertaining new or ancient...
...Actually, Hall will turn 71 this coming October 20...
...Some people write books...
...Neither had College Republican Robert Harwood, who shot to death another College Republican, Rex Chao, on the campus of Johns Hopkins University...
...The likes of Louis B. Mayer and Jack L. Warner," as Anton refers to them, did not force "their fascination with manor-house dinner parties and mahogany speedboats" on an unresponsive public and, by implication, wind up terrible business failures...
...Recently, in speaking with one of the Project's wartime security officers about Venona, he, seemingly depressed, said, "It only shows how bad a job I did...
...We're losing the war against crime, and many Americans are blithely unaware...
...In the next sentence, he refutes this statement by invoking the pop culture that "in every time" has been "loud...
...The output was of infinite variety...
...Let's have a fight, in the context of confirmation hearings or elections or in the press...
...and George Bernard Shaw, early in this century, said of the impressive glow of lights in Times Square, "It must be beautiful, when one cannot read...
...I suspect it has to do with a more complex web of issues...
Vol. 1 • April 1996 • No. 32
