CORRESPONDENCE
Slavery in Our Founding Regarding Dinesh D'Souza's "Slavery and the Founders" (Feb. 3): D'Souza's defense of the Constitution's recognition and sanction of slavery, and his associated attack on...
...Ward Connerly is in a class by himself, and Newt has pointed this out...
...The New England delegation always got its way...
...There is no heresy inherent in saying that the Constitution was not a perfect document...
...The founders were wrong to have sanctioned slavery, and the Constitution would have been better if they had grasped the nettle and outlawed slavery from the start...
...People do not go around saying, "That's as American as Capitol Hill and apple pie...
...I struck out again...
...ALL...
...Once again, it is hard to see how D'Souza could characterize this as a "democratic" act...
...Why do you think the First Continental Congress chose to meet in Philadelphia in the fall of1774...
...We won...
...Modern American life is very different from ancient Greek life...
...Of course not...
...Caller...
...Yogi Berra, the Dan Quayle of baseball, predated Dan Quayle, the Yogi Berra of politics...
...And what message does the Medium of All Media send...
...Indeed, sports's dominance over politics predates the Constitution...
...They cover 'horse race politics.' Strategists lay out their 'game plan.' As election time nears, the campaign that is behind faces a 'fourth and long' situation with the 'clock ticking down,' so in desperation it tries a 'Hail Mary' play...
...But when he moves from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to Abraham Lincoln, his concern for sympathetic analysis of historical figures seems to carry him away...
...Sports are important...
...Rather they say, "That's as American as baseball and apple pie...
...Sports trump politics...
...COULD...
...When some of the southern states decided that they didn't believe this promise and seceded from the Union, Lincoln took action to prevent the secession of Maryland by arresting and imprisoning 19 state legislators and the mayor of Baltimore...
...What is the official sports network...
...Everybody speaks the language of sports...
...That meager plurality was won by promising that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists" and acknowledging that he had "no lawful right to do so, and ...no inclination to do so...
...For years journalists have talked about public affairs using sports metaphors," says Fallows...
...Michael J. Maher Stony Brook, NY Bill Bennett's article was a thoughtful reality-check for Republican leaders and activists even at the state and local levels...
...Although professional athletes might act like money is everything, it isn't...
...Television is...
...Not to nitpick one of our movement's leading thinkers, but Bill Bennett was wrong in an assertion about Newt Gingrich...
...This could hardly be described as "working through the democratic process...
...3): D'Souza's defense of the Constitution's recognition and sanction of slavery, and his associated attack on blacks who criticized it, is also misguided...
...Whereas the Greeks esteemed truth and justice, we esteem Elmo...
...Sportswriting (as practiced by such masters as Tom Boswell and the late Red Smith) is some of the best writing there is...
...That presentation was a home run," we say...
...There's a reason for this...
...We should be so lucky...
...Richard J. Christofferson Chester, CT One Last Shot On sports and politics, the more things change, the more they stay the same...
...So it really comes down to Chris ("HE...
...If anything, journalists—political journalists in particular—use too little sports lingo...
...I applaud his efforts to promote a better understanding of the framers' farsightedness in the face of our politically correct age...
...It is largely due to the successful scorched earth strategy invoked by President Clinton and the Democrats in Congress last year...
...Sports are real...
...Considering the abuse heaped on the speaker over the past two years, it is no surprise that he decided to accept the judgment and get on with governance...
...Not until C-SPAN can come up with a zippy PoliticsCenter to rival ESPN's SportsCenter can they even be considered in the same league...
...But there is a more serious point...
...C-SPAN...
...Never has Newt showered Rangel or Norton with these accolades...
...And what is the congressional network...
...This is done by habit, and no one takes it seriously...
...Political campaigns would really come to life if the journalists covering them more freely employed such literary gems as "tater" and "wormburner" and "kidney punch...
...And speaking of the Continental Congress, was it any accident that members chose to call themselves patriots...
...News & World Report, criticizes journalists in his book Breaking the News for, among many other things, appropriating the lingo of sports...
...After describing him at length, Newt placed Connerly "in the same league as Havel, Dubcek, or Mandela or any other courageous person...
...In God's great scheme of life, sports have always trumped politics— from America to ancient Greece...
...After the government shutdown in the early part of 1996, the president was able to coopt Republican ideas and at the same time hang on to a few governmental Golden Eggs...
...Stanley J. Watson Helena, AL Ennui, Not For Me Ibelieve Republicans have become diffident rather than stricken with ennui, as William J. Bennett claimed in "A Cure for GOP Ennui" (Feb...
...Furthermore, Black History Month is an innocuous month when the government issues stamps honoring distinguished black Americans, and when school children learn about blacks who helped America fulfill its promise...
...Whereas the Acropolis was the epicenter of Greek society, Wal-Mart is the epicenter of ours...
...I for one applaud the speaker's drive to achieve a realistic, supportable government that benefits all Americans...
...All these issues have the Republicans thinking very negatively about what they can accomplish...
...You need to take a time out...
...Let's not kid ourselves...
...In fact, Newt recently described Ward Connerly as "a genuine American hero...
...When Lincoln finally broke his campaign promise and issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he applied it not to the states that elected him (several of which still allowed slavery), but only to those states he was seeking to subjugate by military force...
...We need leaders of vision and character who have long held honest principles...
...Abraham Lincoln won the presidency with only 40 percent of the vote...
...Case in point: "Dang, I got stuck in a bad filibuster up there north of I-64...
...THE...
...By contrast, it defies the laws of nature and of nature's God to drop political buzzwords like "filibuster" and "recuse" into normal conversation...
...And furthermore, who ever heard of the All-Meyers Team...
...Shortly after hanging on to Congress for the first time in 68 years, Republicans found themselves in another fix when their leader, Newt Gingrich, was harassed with allegations of ethics violations...
...Best chili dogs of any ballpark north of Williamsburg," Washington wrote...
...Beyond the prima facie evidence of preferential media coverage, there's the broader, more damning case of general language usage...
...Scholars say George Washington's own diary confirms it: "Great seats along the first-base line...
...Even George Washington knew it...
...The Greeks knew it...
...For the American media in the 1990s, public life is sports The entire press has become the sports page...
...They always have...
...Yogi proclaimed that 90 percent of baseball is half mental long before Dan proclaimed that it's a terrible thing to lose one's mind...
...Let's deduce...
...For one thing, they're all dead now, and we're not...
...The '74 World Series, a classic match-up between the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees, might have had something to do with it...
...But there is one thing our two cultures have in common: In Bill Gates's America, just as in Alexander the Great's Greece, sports trump politics...
...Berman versus Brian ("Caller, you're on...
...Easy call...
...It's just not done...
...James Fallows, the newly installed editor of U.S...
...When he praises Lincoln for "working through rather than around the democratic process" to abolish slavery, he has gone beyond sympathetic analysis and headlong into historical revisionism...
...Bennett writes that "when he [Newt Gingrich] talks about issues of race . . . he reserves his greatest praise for Democrats like Charles Rangel and Eleanor Holmes Norton instead of colorblind Republicans like Ward Connerly...
...Christopher Slone Virginia Beach, VA...
...3), how is it that the Republican members of the 104th and 105th Congress did not stand up and fight against an obvious miscarriage of House justice...
...Reg Brown Tallahassee, FL Dinesh D'Souza writes incisively about the framers' enlightened language in the Constitution...
...Such language is as natural as the air we breathe in 20th-century America...
...Caller...
...The final assault came in the form of the "Mediscare" tactic that sent Republicans reeling back to their districts hoping to avert an electoral disaster...
...Given our nation's persistent and tortured struggles with issues of race, taking some time to honor the likes of Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson is appropriate...
...GO...
...ESPN...
...Michael A. Ciamarra Montgomery, AL Newt and the Truth Given the fact that William Tucker writes the truth in "The Truth About Newt's Class" (Feb...
...If Congress is so hot, why don't any of its color commentators—like, say, Lisa Meyers—use a telestrator to chart its action...
...Lamb, doesn't it...
...A fact not without historical significance...
...While they went gaga over columns, we go gaga over columnists...
Vol. 2 • February 1997 • No. 23
