Correspondence
Correspondence Keep the Arts, But Abolish the Nea I have received grants from the NEA both as a photographer and a curator, and I share many of Joseph Epstein's anxieties ("W.C. Fields Was Wrong,"...
...However, judicial application of the rational-basis test has been even more lenient towards the government because the court has repeatedly defined the standard so as to authorize the judicial fabrication of a rational purpose even if such purpose cannot be reasonably gleaned from the legislative history...
...Do we have an enlightened government, or what...
...Pyle conjures up and praises a Navy where the "real sailors" "understood" Boorda's suicide as the honorable thing to do...
...The article hectors the health-conscious, concluding that "low-fat means low-taste," a dining generalization only a comic could love...
...Effectively, it targeted anyone who could be spotted as a homosexual, whether that person committed any particular sex act or not...
...The amendment banned anti-discrimination laws based on homosexual "orientation, conduct, practices, or relationships...
...Somewhere in the chain of duty, honor, country, Boorda's family got smacked the hardest...
...That's like saying if Clinton wins reelection he'll be the greatest president ever...
...True...
...Fields Was Wrong," June 3...
...These players are long on flash and short on fundamental skills...
...Colorado is permitted to treat all sorts of people unequally," he notes...
...But Frum here misses the distinction that underpins the majority opinion...
...Ah, says Frum, but disapproval of homosexuals-as opposed to "suspect class" minorities or, perhaps, people living in Aspen-is constitutionally sanctioned, because in Bowers v. Hardwick the Supreme Court upheld laws against homosexual sodomy...
...Food is more than eye-popping, lippleasing taste...
...The problem is a paucity of new and vital ways to inhabit the world...
...An individual's money and property belong to him by right and are not for the federal government to divvy up to further the so-called public good...
...John Shalikashvili gave at the Naval Academy, one would have thought that Boorda had expired in his sleep or had been killed by a crazy seaman (which, in a real sense, he was...
...Postmodernism and multiculturalism are not great ideas (certainly not as good as modernism), but what else is new...
...For every trendy museum exhibition there is at least one with "impressionism" in the title...
...Treating suicide with benign indifference is a most dangerous development...
...The best thing about the new Republican majority is the heightened awareness that taxes and government are, at best, necessary evils to be minimized...
...Meanwhile, for every grant to artists that offends elite sensibilities there are scores of NEA grants for exhibitions of work that Epstein would put into his pantheon of great art...
...And it gets worse...
...The majority's analysis is more befitting of a sociological thesis than a sound constitutional interpretation...
...In two important ways, he misses the decision's thrust...
...But Justice Kennedy was not unreasonable in insisting that identifying and fencing off a class of persons cannot properly be viewed as "rational" if it is based merely upon aversion to the class itself, rather than upon the behavior of individuals...
...Screw 'em...
...Supreme Court in Romer v. Evans was an unfortunate and disturbing display of judicial activism by Justice Kennedy and his happy band of rights-creating legal eagles...
...But it is hard to know what is important about the present and what about the present has enduring value...
...Gregg M. Turner Keene, NH A Kulturkampf in Court The recent decision of the U.S...
...Like so many other high-culture institutions, art museums have refined the art of pandering to just the "public" that Epstein feels is being left out of the conversation...
...The problem is not the bad or small ideas that grate on me and Epstein and soon will be forgotten...
...The Los Angeles Lakers of the 80s, as well as that decade's Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons teams, even the Bulls' three-peat team of the early 90s, would have trounced the current Bulls...
...Colorado could, if it wanted to, outlaw homosexual acts entirely, in much the same way that it can outlaw marijuana smoking...
...Pyle's article, acknowledging Boorda's suicide but virtually declaring it "honorable," goes even further down the path of this madness...
...The shocking thing about Boorda's death is not that he took his own life- this is tragic, but not shocking-but that official Washington did not treat it as a suicide...
...It was saying, "If you're a homosexual, shut up about it...
...John Podhoretz makes "chewed on stogies and downed martinis" look glamorous ("Dole, the GOP and the Genetically Endowed," May 27...
...I grant that open homosexuals are likelier to engage in homosexual conduct than heterosexuals...
...David Frum's commentary on the Romer ruling was on point ("Suspect Jurisprudence," June 3...
...As Novak points out, the league's talent has been grossly diluted by expansion...
...Big Deal" (June 3...
...Laurence Jarvik Washington, DC Boorda's Samurai Honor I've come to rely on THE WEEKLY STANDARD for principled arguments regarding the issues of our time...
...Nicholas Dujmovic Sterling, VA Albert Pyle's piece nearly canonizes Jeremy Boorda, when really a kaddish would have been more fitting...
...The truth, of course, is that Amendment 2 was not saying, "Don't commit sodomy...
...What the Chicago Bulls have done this year is impressive but must be regarded in light of the current dismal condition of pro basketball...
...More distressingly, however, it indicates that intellectual dishonesty has now infected a majority of the court...
...Jeff Jacoby noted the message in his Boston Globe column: "If you stuff an American flag in the toilet and invite people to look at it, Uncle Sam will send you money...
...Jonathan Rauch Washington, DC Healthy Conservatives I am sure the "Casual" column is just fun and games, but Victor Matus's "Mom and Deep-Fried Apple Pie" (May 27) brought out what I feel is the Achilles heel of the conservative movement...
...Food is a building block for your physical body...
...It is another to pass a constitutional amendment saying that Aspen, alone among all Colorado cities, may have no highways built to it, not even highways built at the locals' own initiative and expense...
...However, Albert Pyle's treatment of Admiral Jeremy Boorda's death ("Naval Justice," June 3) perplexes me...
...The intellectually honest (but nevertheless indefensible) approach for Justice Kennedy would have been to read homosexual rights into the Constitution and strike down the Colorado law on the basis that it discriminates against a "suspect category"-homosexuality-without the extremely high level of justification required to meet the strict-scrutiny standard...
...Tom Bamberger Milwaukee, WI I greatly enjoyed Joseph Epstein's informative and evenhanded overview of American arts policy, but I cannot stomach his conclusion that an arts policy is worth the trouble...
...Daniel R. Peterson Livingston, MT...
...Boorda deserted his post, abdicated his responsibilities, broke his oath of service, and shamed the military and his country by killing himself...
...As correctly implied by Frum, a court applying the rational-basis test will examine legislative history to determine the purpose of enacting the law at issue and decide whether that purpose was rational...
...Suicide does not restore honor...
...In an earlier age, there was a stigma attached to suicide...
...The best team ever...
...Even if Pyle had some evidence that Navy enlisted men all harbor this samurai mentality, why would he write a near-endorsement of suicide...
...It can build a highway to one town but not another...
...Surely many reasonable courts would take a dim view of such a law if it were based on nothing more than the state's dislike of Aspen...
...But he neglects to state the logical conclusion: Federal "arts policy" has failed because the NEA bureaucracy's decisions conflict with the genuine artistic needs and desires of the American people...
...Boorda's suicide is not justified by the end of restoring honor...
...Jim Skeese San Diego, CA Not the Greatest Team I couldn't agree more with Robert D. Novak's "72 Wins...
...The fact that the court overturned the Colorado law upon application of the rational-basis standard indicates nothing more than that the justices did not look very hard for a rational purpose underlying the majoritarian will of Colorado voters...
...If dance or classical music dies out without public funding, then so be it...
...It is one thing not to build a highway to, say, Aspen...
...The NEA recently awarded $35,000 to the Phoenix Art Museum soon after it opened a show featuring various forms of flag desecration-including a flag made out of strips of human flesh and hair...
...A shameful, cowardly act of suicide is the ultimate surrender to failure...
...And Chris Caldwell likes mass-produced "function food" that even the "pickiest diner would be happy to eat" ("Five Ways America Keeps Getting Better," May 27...
...The court's feeble search for a rational purpose is a striking deviation from the court's consistent application of the rational-basis test in a long line of other cases...
...Frum states that laws subject to the rational-basis test, such as Colorado's Amendment 2, will be overturned only if the distinctions drawn by such laws are "entirely irrational...
...Epstein gives no examples of overlooked artists who deserve recognition, nor does he offer a sense of what should replace contemporary ways of thinking about culture...
...It is more important that policy be just, in the Lockean sense so agreeable to the founding fathers, than spiritually edifying...
...Ray Beeman San Pedro, CA David Frum's normally acute legal mind fails him in his discussion of Romer v. Evans...
...However, even Frum's scathing indictment does not do justice to the preposterous reasoning of Justice Kennedy...
...Of course that is true...
...Those who truly care about improving the quality of American art should insist upon the abolition of the NEA...
...From the eulogies at Boorda's memorial service to the commencement speech Gen...
...James Silverglad New York, NY Joseph Epstein gives eloquent testimony to the failings of the NEA...
...But again Frum misses Justice Kennedy's point, which is that Colorado's Amendment 2 was far broader than could be rationally justified by a desire to curtail sodomy...
...The honorable way out is to face the music, accept judgment of peers, and have courage to survive with dignity...
...I have seen younger and younger people lined up at the doctors' offices...
...Also, since salaries and endorsement income flow disproportionately to hyped players rather than more talented ones, popular college players, and now high-school kids with visions of millions dancing in their heads, are leaving school early to enter the big leagues...
Vol. 1 • June 1996 • No. 39
