CHILDREN OF THE TIMES
Children of the Times On Nov. 16, just in time for the holidays, the New York Times Book Review treated its readers to a special round-up of the year's best reading for children. This sort of...
...This sort of section is meant as a guide to readers shopping for gifts...
...But he has only identified his own shallow understanding of the American creed (or his weakness for a faulty debating point...
...And of course there are always the many works of Judy Blume, whose lifetime achievement is the subject of an adulatory essay that concludes, "In 1975, when the [teenage] heroine of [Blume's] Forever decided to go on the pill, the book was daring...
...Discrimination on grounds of race has a unique place in the catalogue of American sins...
...Now it is quaint...
...Weak-kneed parents are reassured that it turns out all right: The older man is murdered in the girl's arms by her mother's ex-boyfriend, who then kills himself...
...But it's a mistake to dignify Farr's sniping with a rebuttal...
...Our hope is that, as they wean themselves from the political culture, both Dellums and Fazio will master the art of speaking a sentence without resorting to cliche—especially of the New Age, senseless-acts-of-beauty variety...
...Did Newt Kill Capps...
...For those who say preference systems are bad," Powell sneered, "I would love to take you through all the preference systems which are acceptable...
...Instead it reveals the Times Book Review's peculiar view of childhood—and of its readers...
...Walter Capps, Farr sent a sarcastic "Dear Colleague" letter to other congressmen complaining about the hectic legislative schedule Gingrich had set...
...In this age of Heather Has Two Mommies, we clearly live after the flood...
...Powell listed things like tax benefits for mortgage-interest payments and college-admissions bonuses for student athletes...
...Empower myself to regain my life...
...Colin Powell on Race Gen...
...one of the issues he was asked about was affirmative action...
...If so, The Scrapbook would like to recommend that this holiday season readers make the heroic "sacrifice" of ignoring the recommendations of the Times Book Review...
...For starters, there's "a delicately wrought piece of fiction": Norma Fox Mazer's When She Was Good, which the Times blurbs: "Em's mother is dead...
...Truth be told, the "hectic pace" is as much due to Democratic obstructionism as to any sort of busy GOP agenda...
...Congressmen of the New Age Last week, two veteran Democratic members of Congress, Ronald Dellums and Vic Fazio, both from California, announced they would not seek re-election next year...
...There's nothing, it seems, that Democrats won't blame on "mean-spirited" House speaker Newt Gingrich...
...Calling the book "a rich resource for educating little girls" and "an important book for boys as well," Quindlen gushes: "It illumines and honors the sacrifices made, not in the service of our country, but in the service of our families and ourselves...
...Whenever politicians quit office, they almost invariably repeat the same old alfalfa about closing a rewarding chapter in their career, spending more time with their long-suffering family, embarking on a new adventure in life, etc., etc...
...Well, yes, precisely so...
...I don't think of heads of state as good guys or bad guys...
...Finally, former Times columnist Anna Quindlen finds her true metier, reviewing Betsy Hearne's Seven Brave Women...
...Both were party leaders...
...Hitler and Stalin were greatly evil in the enormous ignorance of their attitudes and behavior...
...Powell recently sat for an interview with USA Weekend...
...Powell apparently believes he has identified the hypocrisy of those who espouse a policy of color-blindness...
...It's hard to know which is worse in this statement: the intellectual vacuity or the moral obtuseness...
...Fazio must be flattered to learn that she ranks so high among her husband's priorities, and who would turn down a chance to watch Ron Dellums empower himself...
...This sad truth has been emerging in dribs and drabs, in brief passages in college commencement addresses, in asides buried in longer newspaper interviews...
...For, as Socrates once said, the unprioritized life is not worth living...
...Jude V Saddam_ Jude Wanniski, the one-time supply-side guru and lead adviser to Jack Kemp, is following his new hero, Louis Farrakhan, deeper into the fever swamps of American politics...
...Her abusive sister has just died...
...And then there's Brock Cole's The Facts Speak For Themselves, the story of a 13-year-old girl having an affair with a middle-aged real-estate broker...
...My mother does not believe that wars should be fought at all," the book's narrator declares...
...Too bad Powell doesn't get it...
...To me, evil is ignorance...
...Sam Farr, a California Democrat...
...They are the products of their times, their cultures, and their people's needs and concerns...
...Colin Powell is the most admired of all Americans and therefore a man unusually well positioned to bring much-needed clarity and candor to the debate about the status of race in the nation's life and laws...
...Shortly after the death from a heart attack of his 63-year-old California colleague, Rep...
...Alas, he is not providing either...
...Fazio declared, that "I have come to a season in my life when I believe it is time to prioritize what matters most to me: the need to put aside the relentless pace of congressional service so I can give more time to family life...
...But it's clear all the same...
...For more serious-minded children, there's Naomi Shihab Nye's Habibi: Reviewed under the title "Where Rage Lives" (ages 10 and up), it tells the story of an apolitical little Palestinian girl who moves to Jerusalem and learns the proper attitude when Israeli soldiers break into her grandmother's house and smash her bathroom...
...It sounds as if these two statesmen just stepped off some of Tony Robbins's hot coals or spent the past few weeks in a sweat lodge with Robert Bly...
...We might pause to thank the author who opened the gates...
...We're just against any preference that is related to the color of a person's skin...
...The effort to extirpate it in public policy has, as well, a unique place in American law...
...What next...
...She says history should be her story, too, and she tells stories about all the women in our family who made history by not fighting in wars...
...The Civil War was not fought to end football recruiting, and there is no constitutional amendment to ban discrimination against people who rent houses instead of buying them...
...So some explanation was called for...
...both are relatively young, by congressional standards (Dellums is 62, Fazio 56...
...So we're not against preferences," he continued ("with a tinge of bitterness," USA Weekend adds...
...Prioritize what matters most to me...
...As is often the case with such sales jobs, Wanniski keeps a straight face because he first managed to con himself: He is, on the evidence, an enthusiastic convert to Farrakhanism...
...In fact, this session had fewer votes and lasted fewer days than most...
...For the last year, Wanniski has been trying to sell Farrakhan as a misunderstood political leader whom Republicans should be warming up to, and not the paranoid, anti-Semitic hatemonger that Farrakhan's words and deeds show him to be...
...Talk about "mean-spirited...
...One example should suffice: "I do not believe Saddam is a demon, nutcake or madman...
...Her father is long gone...
...Is it really brave, a "sacrifice" even, to do things that serve not just our families but ourselves...
...If there was any doubt about how his letter was to be interpreted, Farr settled the matter by attaching a newspaper article headlined "Farr: Hectic pace helped kill lawmaker...
...Dellums and Fazio touched upon these familiar themes, but in decidedly unfamiliar terms...
...Thus during the showdown with Iraq, Wanniski has been bombarding the political class with memo after memo urging appeasement—and, indeed, making the case for Saddam...
...The latest example comes from Rep...
...Now I choose to make a personal decision," said Dellums, "and to empower myself to regain my life...
Vol. 3 • December 1997 • No. 12
