CORRESPONDENCE
GREAT GOTHAM Fred Siegel's review of our book Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 is generous and insightful, but it includes some puzzling assertions ("New York, New York," Feb. 8). He...
...When President Clinton lies, obstructs justice, and defies the law, but yet still has the support and commendation of organized trial lawyers, the future indeed looks bleak...
...For that matter, Dickens was no fan of capitalism...
...In those years, she believed (as such people often do) that she was entitled to "make up the moral rules" to fit her own personal "lifestyle preferences...
...Dillard, GA ON THE DOLE Danielle Crittenden raises some valid concerns about the sea-worthiness of an Elizabeth Dole presidential candidacy ("Giddy for Liddy," Jan...
...But Clinton apologists who hope to gum up the wheels of justice with sanctimonious Republicans have not considered the hypocrisy of having a felon as chief magistrate...
...The very reverse is true...
...This disdain for Dr...
...Schlessinger deserves particular praise for her uncompromising and courageous witness to the sanctity of marriage and the dignity of unborn human life...
...Siegel suggests that contemporary class disorder is to some degree a function of New York's declining attention to infrastructure creation...
...Vincent uses the same unsubstantiated allegations that appeared in the Vanity Fair story on Dr...
...If conservatives condemn Cultural Studies as a radical wasteland, they should at least recognize the canon as a decidedly liberal enterprise...
...In fact, New York has not witnessed the end of class—Siegel himself makes reference to today's "dangerous classes"—but rather has experienced yet another recomposition of its class ensemble...
...Shame on you...
...LAURA SCHLESSINGER PROGRAM SHERMAN OAKS, CA Laura Schlessinger deserves better treatment than she received at the hands of Norah Vincent...
...Vincent really hits the skids in accusing Schlessinger of "spotting a hunger in America for moral discourse and deciding to feed it, instead of coming to certain moral conclusions and then turning back to help people...
...The original objective of tort law was to see that injured plaintiffs with valid claims were justly compensated...
...So were Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and a host of others who wrote before the modernist elite branded monetary success as the root of all evil...
...It should come as no surprise that traditionalists are just as contemptuous of popular culture as Mitchell...
...A century from now, when the masses are no longer flocking to his movies, academics will recognize that Spielberg possessed a gift as rare as Shakespeare's...
...Hence, her willingness to pose for the now infamous nude photographs...
...KRISTEN A. NELSON CHEVY CHASE, MD THE BIGGEST HYPOCRISY Hypocrisy is the new scarlet letter in Washington, as Matt Labash points out ("Clinton's Hustler," Jan...
...An "embarrassment" she may be to people who blush at plain speaking about basic moral truths, but such people are not made to blush often enough these days...
...If she's a serious candidate, we'll soon learn that she's also opposed to crime, for education, and—let's hope—against immorality...
...As to our current predicament, I quite agree with Siegel about the need for new maritime infrastructure in order to resuscitate New York's commerce and manufacturing and provide jobs for the many unemployed...
...Conservatives believe the resulting literary canon supports their cause...
...I was a charter member of the National Association of Claimant's Compensation Attorneys, which became the American Trial Lawyers Association...
...PHILLIP MINK NEWARK, DE DOLLARS FOR TORTS Matt Labash does a good job of pointing out the kind of conduct that has brought discredit to the law and lawyers ("Lawyers, Guns, and Money," Feb...
...They are wrong...
...Nor have they considered the long-term consequences of having a guilty president remain in office...
...The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God's Love in Everyday Life by Dr...
...The fundamental premise of modern literary studies is that aesthetically superior "high art" must be distinguished from vulgar "low art...
...Finally, Elizabeth Dole's sphinx-like strategy may be her best ally for the foreseeable future...
...Considering that Vincent classifies the book as "Morality for Dummies," there must be a lot of them out there...
...After all, as polls continue to show, voter support has little to do with what the president does or thinks...
...Laura's millions of listeners is really the point of the review, which also calls them a "profound embarrassment...
...Indeed, he finds our recounting of Irish Catholics' radicalism in the mid-nineteenth century somehow undercut by their greatgrandchildren's having become conservative in the mid-twentieth century, an oddly anachronistic argument coming from such an astute historian...
...I knew Melvin Belli and Lee Bailey when they were getting started...
...Why muddy the waters with nasty policy debates now...
...It is in its fourth printing...
...It was when she came to her senses about the need to acknowledge the God of the Bible and live in accordance with the divinely established moral order that she turned her talents to helping others discover (or rediscover) the same truths...
...True enough, but in those days they had dramatically different visions about what "betterment" was and how to go about achieving it...
...Vincent cites Vanity Fair as her authoritative source on Dr...
...I'm a bit unclear as to how—given his general political perspective—he can in good conscience call for massive government intervention in the economy, with the attendant increases in taxes that would inevitably follow...
...KEVEN BELLOWS VICE PRESIDENT/GENERAL MANAGER THE DR...
...Those allegations were contradicted by four or five other people interviewed, who were never quoted...
...By her own account, Schlessinger led most of her life as a religious skeptic and (not unre-latedly) a moral-political liberal...
...MIKE WALLACE NEW YORK, NY I can't remember ever reading a "book review" that dedicated so much space to repeating third-party gossip about the author before getting to the ostensible subject, the book itself—the point being, I guess, to justify Norah Vincent's contention that "there's not a line in the book worth quoting" ("Paper Tablets," Jan...
...Class-action suits have become travesties, with the lawyers on both sides the big winners and the real parties at interest the losers...
...But George was as far-sighted as Hewitt about the need for infrastructure...
...But in general we found the working class opting for collective "social mobilization" rather than individual "social mobili-ty"—via such vehicles as labor unions, radical political parties, ethnic associations, Tammany Hall, and the Catholic Church...
...THOMAS M. BEATTIE MT...
...Siegel chastises us for implying a perduring existence of class divisions, which have supposedly been overcome by "social mobility...
...Read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and you find a Marxist tirade comparing Thomas Paine to Karl Marx, Lenin to Jefferson...
...she even mentions the reporter, Leslie Bennetts...
...Immigrant entrepreneurialism (to which we pay considerable attention) was certainly part of the story...
...Read The Great Gatsby, and you find that American prosperity flows not from creative entrepreneurs, but from criminal conduct...
...Unfortunately, the American Bar Association, from which I also resigned, is dominated by money and politics...
...But, she neglects to point out that, after a long season of partisan bickering, high-level dissembling, and relentless waffling, Dole's apparent shortcomings could make her the best candidate of all...
...ALBERT MIMS WILKINSON JR...
...he just wanted it organized differently, and its benefits distributed more equitably...
...Vincent criticizes Schlessinger for the "thinness of her moral and religious imagination...
...That goal has been lost in the morass of money...
...Mitchell's contempt for popular culture in The Last Dinosaur Book ("Jurassic Marx," Jan...
...He claims we overstate the importance of nineteenth-century class divisions, as rich and poor alike simply wanted to "better themselves...
...He hails Abram Hewitt's defeat of Henry George in 1886 as a defining municipal moment, because Hewitt-backed public works helped create a booming economy, which in turn allowed immigrants to make their "fabled journey up into the middle class...
...Buried in Cantor's review, however, is this contradictory nugget: Traditionalists are "outraged" when a professor stoops to writing about Jurassic Park...
...Laura...
...Laura Schlessinger and Rabbi Stewart Vogel has been the subject of a PBS special and on the New York Times Best Seller list for 20 weeks...
...Let voters project their hopes and aspirations onto her...
...ROBERT P. GEORGE PRINCETON, NJ POP GOES THE CANON Paul Cantor scores an important point in revealing W.J.T...
...Conservatives should also recognize that both academic camps are mistaken about popular culture...
...By mourning George's defeat, Burrows and I (he says) "lose [this] larger picture...
...I disagree...
...So far, we know that Dole is in favor of safety, opposed to child labor, and handy around disasters...
...Her bluntness in exhorting people to live up to their moral responsibilities undoubtedly puts some people off, but there is nothing "off" about her understanding of what reason and revelation tell us people's moral obligations are...
...Judging from her radio broadcasts and appearances on public television, Schlessinger's moral and religious understanding is neither thin nor, for that matter, flabby—it is, rather, robust and disciplined...
...Now, however, thanks to The Weekly Standard's giving Vincent space to repeat those false allegations in the guise of a book review, they continue to circulate...
...Laura hadn't seen in seven years...
...George proposed, for example, that rapid transit be built, owned, and run by the city itself, that people be allowed to ride free, and that expenses be covered by taxing profits unfairly garnered by speculative real-estate interests...
...As a woman, beyond the "safe for family viewing" factor, Dole alone could stake out a Republican vision of feminism—where economic growth, respect for common values, and a lean, responsive government build an equality based on strength...
...But I stand shoulder to shoulder with him in applauding such initiatives...
...VERNON, VA...
...I resigned long ago...
...And, while conservatives bristle at her "feminist" record, she may offer the best chance to shake the so-called "problem with women" that has plagued the GOP since Nixon...
...Laura—allegations by a "close friend," who, in reality, was a casual acquaintance whom Dr...
...Urging late-twentieth-century Americans not to "shack up" or "suck their babies down a sink" is hardly the equivalent in moral advice of "tofu burgers...
...Dickens, like Spielberg, was enormously popular in his day...
Vol. 4 • February 1999 • No. 22
