SCRAPBOOK
Scrapbook MORAL ABSOLUTISM INHOLLYWOOD Last week’s Daily Variety brought word that lying is not, after all, okay. The ends don’t justify the means. If people feel “conned” by someone’s lies,...
...A TV writer you’ve probably never heard of, “18-year-old Riley Weston” who helped create this fall’s hot new series Felicity, turns out to be 32-year-old actress Kimberlee Elizabeth Kramer, who legally changed her name because she was in the “entertainment business” and then lied about her age because it made a good story for someone selling a drama about a college freshman...
...Whether we teach children to read, mentor young people, work at a food bank or homeless shelter, or care for people living with AIDS,” it read, “citizen service calls forth the best from each of us...
...A week later, sitting on a panel moderated by Justice Antonin Scalia in Washington, the national president of the ACLU, Nadine Strossen, was surprised by a question about the action of her organization’s Southern California branch...
...Coming next October: It’s the Thought that Counts Week...
...And San Bernardino county coroner Brian McCormick didn’t know what to do with the “evidence...
...CHARACTER COUNTS Last week was National Character Counts Week, and the White House issued a sugary proclamation, as it has every year since 1994, when Congress created the happy occasion...
...In the first such proclamation in 1994, a younger and more carefree president argued that “our concern about character and ethics is one of the great strengths of our Nation...
...Wow...
...Last year’s proclamation, like the ones before, described the family as “the cradle of character, giving children their first crucial lessons in attitude and behavior”— this year, who wants to talk about character formation...
...THE SCRAPBOOK was fascinated at the spectacle of the ACLU’s national headquarters excommunicating its anti-religious branch offices...
...In the works: tax cheat Al Capone, it turns out, was probably a mobster...
...Unable to think of any civil-liberties justification, Strossen insisted that the ACLU is actually a supporter of religious rights, and besides, “many groups call themselves branches of the ACLU when they’re not...
...Weston’s defense: It’s “an accepted practice for actresses to lie about their age...
...Indeed, the coroner’s office faced “the embarrassment of having an injunction issued against it and damages being assessed...
...Tenured academics by and large comprise a timid and self-censoring careerist herd...
...After all, the ACLU’s intimidating letter declared, the “discarding of fetuses in this manner raises concerns about the county coroner’s failure to adhere to California health laws...
...An unexceptional sermon on the Social Gospel, yes, but what a contrast with past proclamations...
...Oh, by the way, it’s still okay by show-biz types if the president lies about sex...
...The burial, by the way, took place on October 11...
...The discussion at Harvard, we are told, was indeed robust—running the gamut from gasp to hiss...
...But Strossen, it turned out, was simply using the time-honored tactic of the ACLU’s national presidents, temporarily distancing herself from a local group’s actions until she could think up the convoluted, counterintuitive sort of justification that allows America’s most famous self-proclaimed defenders of civil rights to argue that religious believers have no rights...
...so did Daily Variety...
...And if ever a man is going to find himself in need of tenure, it will be Harvard’s Kenan professor of government (and occasional contributor to THEWEEKLY STANDARD) Harvey C. Mansfield, who stood up last week in a full meeting of the university’s arts and sciences faculty to denounce the politicized choice of commencement speakers...
...The 1997 proclamation featured the president’s request that “all Americans demonstrate in their personal and public lives . . . the high ethical standards that are essential to good character and to the continued success of our nation”—this year, the continued success of our nation depends on volunteering, especially for the president’s AmeriCorps boondoggle...
...THE VIRTUES OF TENURE The classic defense of tenure for university professors holds that the pursuit of truth and the robust life of the mind would be empty ideals in the absence of such extraordinary job security...
...NEWS FLASH The New York Times editorial page last week concluded that “Alger Hiss was most likely a Soviet agent, despite his denials...
...Exactly whose civil liberties were being protected in the effort to keep the corpses from being buried...
...Why, if this were the beginning of a trend, religious believers might even have to stop thinking of “ACLU” as a four-letter word...
...Everyone does that...
...THE SCRAPBOOK feels the pain of the White House writer who had the task of ghosting the annual character proclamation for the signature of William J. Clinton...
...If people feel “conned” by someone’s lies, someone they trusted, then heads should roll...
...Daily Variety, you see, uncovered a scam...
...But a lawyer for the producer who felt “conned” by the age thing said, no, the issue is one of trust: “If a woman is willing to misrepresent herself, how do we even know her work is really her own...
...Why not honor a woman of historic stature, such as Margaret Thatcher, he pointedly inquired...
...ACLU DIVERSITY The case was finally over...
...She made a mistake,” says Elizabeth Schroeder, the local branch’s associate director, who then quotes the official pronouncement from the national headquarters: “Nadine Strossen now fully understands and supports the position of the ACLU of Southern California...
...With honorable exceptions...
...so did the production company and numerous others...
...Entertainment Weekly got taken in...
...The truck driver who in March 1997 had casually dumped cardboard boxes full of aborted babies in a California field was sentenced to 71 days in jail for “illegally disposing of medical waste...
...Is it the established position of the ACLU that anyone who thinks unborn children are human beings must be operating from a religious point of view, and that anyone who operates from a religious point of view is to be banned from public action...
...No word yet on whether one of the rogue local ACLU chapters will sue to have the 54 tiny caskets disinterred...
...With exemplary concision, he summed up the succession of celebrity speakers—former Irish president Mary Robinson, former president of the Philippines Coraz?n Aquino, and Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland—as “three women, three liberals, and three mediocrities...
...But that was too much for the Southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, which immediately threatened a lawsuit over the handling of “this fetal material...
...This year’s proclamation wisely stuck to a theme—citizen service—that wouldn’t give rise to cognitive dissonance...
...The irony is that the faculty lounge is the last place one goes looking for courageous non-conformity these days...
...The words “trust,” “responsibility,” “honesty,” “accountability,” and “respect,” all of which showed up in the earlier proclamations, didn’t make the cut this time...
...So there...
...So he jumped at the opportunity when some pro-life groups called in early October with an offer to “dispose” of the bodies respectfully by burying them in Riverside’s Crestlawn cemetery...
...that fear of reprisal would lead to intellectual conformity...
Vol. 4 • November 1998 • No. 8
