CORRESPONDENCE
Correspondence PRESIDENT MCCAIN? There is no question that Sen. John McCain is a man of great courage and character (Andrew Ferguson, "The Media's Favorite Republican," July 6/July 13). Yet what...
...I gave them what they wanted...
...In other words, since the discipline of anthropology began, anthropologists have pursued the prime injunction of "know thyself" by studying the human physique along with human behavior— not only across space (cross-culturally) but also through time (historically), and in comparison with our primate relatives, both living and extinct...
...Goldwater was up at the appointed time, as he always had been from the beginning of the 1964 campaign...
...In an otherwise solid piece of writing, Novak made an error regarding who was in Sen...
...How could a magazine that calls itself the "independent voice of the information age" so blatantly take on the role of presidential defender...
...To elevate his national profile, such a candidate would do something like introduce campaign-finance reform with a Democratic senator so as to demonstrate the sweet virtues of bipartisanship...
...The middle includes moderates, the liberal media that are always on the lookout for an acceptably civilized Republican, and the soccer moms whose lonely eyes scan the desultory horizon for a man who is sensitive and nice...
...The world Brill has created is populated with sinister journalists and government employees and their associates, all of whom are out to get the president...
...What has become of our nation's moral arsenal...
...But believe me, Watergate was just an excuse...
...CHARLES H. JUSTICE BLOWING ROCK, NC HISTORICAL WHAT IFS In "Nixon and His Monica" (June 29), Noemie Emery states that Nixon said the following: "Those who were after me . . . weren't interested in Watergate as much as they were interested in getting me on Alger Hiss...
...He would propose tobacco legislation knowing that it would eventually be killed by the greed of liberals and the poison-pill amendments of other opponents...
...Yet what if he is also a very shrewd man...
...After the Clinton presidency, imagine what a load off it would be to have a president who doesn't have to formulate linguistic jujitsu to justify oral sex with interns...
...Is this our Dreyfus Affair with a twist...
...Or is he in the early stages of coming out of the closet as a flaming, raging Jimmy Carter...
...And but for Watergate, would there have been the various Clinton-gates...
...Lip service is easy...
...Still, I am pleased that Novak is published in your magazine...
...Then I returned to Goldwater's suite, talked clearly of the morrow, and retired to my adjacent room...
...The Weekly Standard and many other fine publications do that quite well...
...The review indicates that the book deals with human nature, but anthropology is not mentioned, despite the fact that this discipline has had, unlike any other science, the nature of mankind as its central concern since the founding of the discipline more than a century ago...
...With all due respect, it is possible Novak may have played one-upmanship with his fellow reporters and talked about how and why he was hung-over, to their envy...
...That trumps any armchair litmus test, in my book...
...His discernment in seeing how he was hoodwinked at the time has probably sharpened his intuition to detect political phonies as they come along...
...I know my life would have a hole in it should you ever cease publishing...
...In order to progress toward a better understanding of ourselves, I prefer to rely more on juried research than on consulting chicken entrails (i.e., supposed revelation) or contemplating our navels (i.e., pure reason...
...DAVID CHAIM ALAN WASHINGTON, DC BRILL'S SWILL Thank you to David Tell for setting the record straight on ^¦rill's Content ("Bill Clinton's Lap Dog," June 29...
...Or, for that matter, a candidate who does not judge right from wrong based on whether there is a "controlling legal authority...
...But his independence makes him perhaps the most attractive conservative candidate for president...
...At the same time, they are disregarding centuries of Christian and Jewish religious teachings in their macabre celebration of Dr...
...Jack Kevorkian...
...He overlooks one key finding of economic historians: The most important single factor in allowing Italians and millions of other new immigrants to rise up the economic and social ladder was the congressional action of 1917, 1921, and 1924 that cut new annual immigration by roughly 80 percent, and kept the numbers low for the next four decades...
...This ill serves a movement that seeks majority status...
...Knowledge of any phenomenon, including the nature of humanity, seems to come mainly from the three R's: revelation, reason, and research...
...JACK T. HUGHES CANYON, TX...
...Talking tough is facile...
...Brill's Content would have better served its readership by holding itself to its self-imposed standard of independence...
...It may have been hypocritical journalism, but it was an excellent example of successful marketing...
...Judging from Mansfield's review, Manent's book would have been better titled something like "Opinions of Philosophers about Human Nature...
...Is it still a factor in domestic politics...
...But, unlike others, when his country called, McCain served with incredible valor...
...Let's be clear: Sen...
...The tenor of Brill's essay made it clear that the president couldn't have found a better apologist for his behavior if he had paid for one...
...Present were the senator, Novak, and me—and I was as abstinent then as I am now...
...At a late hour, I escorted Novak to the elevator to keep him from wandering the halls, and pushed the button for his room floor...
...Otherwise, it should trumpet its bias without shame...
...In the wake of these inevitable failures, he would emerge as a moderate Republican, a sensible Republican— not a dangerous, threatening Republican...
...Yet in the final analysis, Americans, at once religious and libertarian in their beliefs, may decide that assisted suicide and partial-birth abortion are "freedoms" they don't want revoked...
...What if he really is running to the mushy middle with the intent to govern to the right...
...But for the Hiss affair, would there have been a Watergate...
...The suggestion is that this is nonsense, but Emery never says so—and for good reason...
...GREGORY GIORDANO NEW PORT RICHEY, FL GOLDWATER'S TEETOTALER Your magazine is a constant source of excellence in news and feature writing...
...Given the infinite complexity of such phenomena, and the fact that anthropology must be mainly an exploratory science like geology, an attempt at comprehensiveness would seem to be absurdly ambitious...
...I have to admit that I was impressed with the new publication, perceiving its non-political stories to be informative and objectively written...
...Goldwater's suite after all other guests had departed...
...Probably...
...It is true that we have made much less progress than have the physical sciences...
...Regarding the following morning, Novak is in error again...
...John McCain has proven over a 16-year congressional career that he is a conservative by any meaningful standard...
...Of course, Novak was young then, and he assumed everyone had imbibed as much as he did and would, like him, have a hangover...
...Now comes the caveat: I refer to Robert D. Novak's fine article "Barry and Me" (June 15...
...Paradoxically, Americans are expressing revulsion over partial-birth-abortion procedures while countenancing, as Wesley J. Smith notes, Kevorkian's "increasingly gruesome killing spree" ("The Serial Killer as Folk Hero," July 6/July 13...
...He read his condition as being everyone else's...
...MARSHALL WITTMANN SILVER SPRING, MD A PEOPLE OF PARADOX THE WEEKLY STANDARD has helped to shed light on Americans' confusion over the fundamental ethical questions of birth, death, and the health of body and soul...
...JOHN CLARK SALYER STERLING, VA Andrew Ferguson points to a disturbing tendency among some conservatives to impose rigid ideological litmus tests...
...But Congress shows no sign of willingness to cut annual legal immigration numbers back to the traditional levels that existed before 1965...
...What if McCain possesses such per-spicuousness...
...One thing Brill has definitely accomplished is getting publicity for his magazine...
...His honest confession of voting for LBJ is well received...
...Suppose he decided that to be president, he would have to gain the support of the vast, vapid middle without giving up very much of anything on the right...
...As Christopher Stump points out ("Prayer with Their Prozac," July 6/July 13), Americans are seeking to have their religious beliefs incorporated in their health care...
...With so little agreement on the basic questions of life and death, it is small wonder that there are so few moral voices left to point out the appalling nature of these "freedoms...
...Suddenly, objectivity was no longer in sight...
...ROY BECK DIRECTOR, AMERICANS EOR BETTER IMMIGRATION ARLINGTON, VA POST-ENLIGHTENMENT CITY Harvey Mansfield's "The City of Manent" (June 15) was another painful reminder of how hopelessly inadequate the public-relations work of American anthropologists has been among scholars...
...It's a possibility...
...Nixon, educated in a red-brick college, exposed one of the luminaries of the Eastern Ivy League establishment as a traitor...
...If the disproportionally poor Latino Americans are to have a chance at the good economic life that fell to the Italian immigrants, they too need a respite...
...I received my premiere issue of the magazine just as Kenneth Starr was responding to the now-infamous article "Pressgate...
...That perception lasted until I read the Starr/Lewinsky/Tripp "expose...
...Either way, I would hope that more scholars would occasionally consult an anthropology textbook...
...CECIL J. BURROWS PITTSEIELD, IL THE POT OVERFLOWETH Michael Barone assumes that recent massive Latino immigration will turn out just fine for America and for resident Latinos because massive Italian immigration at the turn of the century turned out fine ("Back into the Melting Pot," July 6/July 13...
...Moreover, I would argue that he has demonstrated his conservative credentials in a far more profound way than his potential opponents for the Republican nomination in 2000...
...Sure, he has deviated from the party line on occasion...
...Perhaps McCain sees that such a candidate would exhibit no strongly held opinions such as would leave him open to attack from the left...
...Too good to be true...
...The messenger must be killed...
...What seems to be lost in the mess is the president's unwillingness to come clean about yet another scandal in which he is the central character...
Vol. 3 • July 1998 • No. 43
