Category: Vital Signs

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for all his hauteur and condescending ways, had an absolute genius for driving people crazy, as if there were an Inspector Clouseau within him trying to get out. In 1993, he went to Sarajevo and told those who had lost their families and homes to stop their bellyaching. He “could name 10 places...

Experience teaches us that dictatorial regimes are anything but indestructible. They are inherently irrational and therefore unstable. Sooner or later they collapse. To reach ripe old age and die in bed, like Tito, is exceptional for a dictator; to set his country on the steady road to democratic reform, like Franco, is unique. The method...

In my day, and my day was not so very long ago, boys respected and even feared the fathers of the girls whom they dated. Growing up, I went out with a lot of Italian girls. I knew that their fathers ruled their households, their daughters, and me when I was with their daughters. If...

In 1994, two employees filed a lawsuit against the oil company Texaco, claiming that they had been denied promotion because of their race. Such suits are common now, and this one garnered little media attention until, in late 1996, the New York Times broke the news of the Texaco tapes. Richard Lundwall, a Texaco manager,...

When I hear all the talk about tobacco, I think of my Uncle Rollins, a green-visored straw hat on his salt-and-pepper head and a two-day stubble on his seasoned farmer face. He is standing in a field or by an unpainted barn as he crumbles a yellow-brown leaf and sticks a wad of ‘bacca in...

There is an unattributed quotation that says, “The average taxpayer is the first of America’s natural resources to be exhausted.” The American people have turned away from a big, activist federal government because they feel they have been forgotten; in fact, taxpayer resources have long been exhausted. Today, average Americans, forgotten by the bloated bureaucratic...

Albany, Kentucky, has a stay of execution for at least a little longer. But more than a few townspeople are preparing to mourn her passing—and leave before the funeral. Albany is a town of 2,000 in the rolling limestone hills of southern Kentucky, just north of the Tennessee line. Founded in the early 1820’s, it...

Sometimes it takes distance and time passed before we can look back and laugh at the situations that take place in our lives, but Tom Fleming’s run-in with the busybodies in his hometown who objected to his bushes made me laugh, because my wife and I had a similar encounter. Here’s some background. The Village...

In 1941, Edmund Wilson published a small book of pieces about several contemporary writers, tied together under the tide, The Boys in the Back Room. It was a typical Wilsonian production—insightful, wrongheaded, and regal—synthesizing as “Hollywood writers” James M. Cain, William Saroyan, John Steinbeck, and others now forgotten, along with John O’Hara. That this linkage...

Item: An American of Greek origin calls a congressional office to protest United States policies in Bosnia that would place Christian Serbs at the mercy of a hostile Muslim regime. “So-called Christians,” corrects a member of the congressman’s staff, ignorant of the caller’s religion. Item: A national opinion magazine carries on its cover a harsh...

The Greek and Roman classics had a great influence on George Gissing, not least because the literature and history of antiquity provided him with a kind of refuge from the grim realities of the modern industrial and commercial world. Gissing was a highly cultivated man who was at home in several foreign languages—French, Italian, Spanish,...

Surely anyone looking at film with an eye to understanding American pop culture or, for that matter, American serious culture, lately, would have to be intrigued by the recent spate of “whitetrash flicks.” Every season over the past three years seems to have produced its brace of movies set in either the South or a...

He “was a product, even more than most men are, of his time, soil and circumstance. He was an intent, practical man of driving and determined purpose. . . . But most of all he was an unreconstructed rebel.” B. Byron Price, executive director of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, in his eulogy for...

The Kennedys are an American institution. No, not the Massachusetts rabble, but the Louisiana Kennedys, James Ronald (of Mandeville) and Walter Donald (of Simsboro), self-described “Scotch-Irish crackers” and authors of The South Was Right! and Why Not Freedom! America’s Revolt Against Big Government, both available from Pelican Publishing in Gretna, Louisiana (phone number: 1-800-843-1724). Born...

In his closing argument before jurors in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, Deputy District Attorney Christopher A. Darden described Simpson as being “out of control” when he allegedly killed his former wife and Ronald Goldman. Mr. Darden pointed to a series of events in the hours before the brutal killings that, having ignited the short...

On a rainy July afternoon I stood on the Promenade at Rockefeller Plaza and beheld Prometheus unbound. There he was, his golden self sprawled against the wall of the erstwhile skating rink (in summer it is transformed into an outdoor cafe), holding the flame in his right hand, his gift to mankind. Above him is...

Actors Theatre of Louisville started its new play festival 20 years ago—that’s a long life in the American theater, and the Humana Festival of New American Plays achieved institution status several seasons back. Unfortunately, the festival is now a little like a fully endowed congregation that no longer has to look to itself to underwrite...

A Time to Kill Produced by Arnon Milchan, Michael Nathanson, Hunt Lowry, and John Grisham Directed by Joel Schumacher Based on a novel by John Grisham Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman Released by Warner Brothers A Time to Kill, Joel Schumacher’s new film about race relations in the South, has drawn plaudits from many critics. Stanley...

As federal cannon boom from the smoky ridge to the west, a rebel foot soldier darts through underbrush, scrambles over a fence and crouches warily behind a tree. Raising his rifle to fire, he takes a volley of grape-shot in the chest. Tumbling, tragically, from the coffee table, he lands on the floor among the...

There has never been an election conducted above the local level in which one single ballot determined the outcome. And even if there were, I doubt it would matter. Suppose you could cast the deciding vote in a contest between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. Can you honestly say that you would bother? Visiting the...

Steve Forbes may not have won the Republican presidential nomination, but the Forbes millions are helping to shape the political culture of Brown University. The Forbes Foundation donated $2 million to Brown’s most Marxist department, Modern Culture and Media. When Tim Forbes announced the donation in 1991, just as I was graduating from Brown, the...

Last June, the 19,000 delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention voted to boycott the Walt Disney Company for its “promotion of homosexuality” and the other “anti-family” values. The convention pointed to Gay and Lesbian Days sponsored by Disney theme parks; to such twisted fare as Priest, Powder, and Kids, all films produced by Disney’s Miramax;...

Eagle Forum, the national political organization headed by Phyllis Schlafly, once selected me Massachusetts Homemaker of the Year. My husband nominated me by filling out an application form. I was touched. Hubby, I assumed, wanted to highlight my attempts to homemake, homestead, and homeschool. Sort of. Wid was proud of my domestic endeavors, but he...

For several months, the nation has been wracked by the widespread perception that black churches across the South were under widescale attack by racist arsonists. President Clinton dutifully visited a victimized South Carolina congregation, and Congress speedily voted increased prison terms for church burners. Groups from across the political spectrum, from the Ford Foundation on...

Imagine this scenario: at the end of a boxing match between two fighters— one white, the other, a visiting African black—the black boxer, clearly winning the fight, is disqualified on dubious technical grounds. Instead of protesting he walks peacefully over to a neutral corner, where he is suddenly set upon by the white corner crew,...

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.” Tolstoy’s remark shot to mind this summer, when supermodel Linda Evangelista won 80,000 French francs in damages from her lawsuit against Jean-Marie Le Pen and the National Front Party of France. The controversy stemmed from Le Pen’s campaign posters, which depicted a Joan...

Once in a while I have to go to a hospital. Most people do. Of course, I go for medical reasons and don’t expect it to be a pleasure trip. Fortunately, the medical care I have received in New York hospitals is superb. But hospitals also function as hotels and restaurants. Patients must be lodged...

While most of us would deny that the United States has an official ideology, much of our daily life is profoundly shaped by a body of principles that are manifested in policies known as affirmative action, multiculturalism, and “diversity.” These decide matters as fundamental to one’s life-chances as access to jobs and education, to social...

It was in 1942 that John Crowe Ransom coined the phrase “The New Criticism” by publishing a book under that title, a book about the most respected literary critics of the first half of the century, notably T.S. Eliot, LA. Richards, William Empson, Yvor Winters, and R.P. Blackmur. But actually, he was criticizing the critics...

Ten years ago, federal district judge Leonard B. Sand ordered the city of Yonkers, New York, to integrate its public schools. Sand accused the city of 40 years of discrimination by concentrating public housing projects in southwest Yonkers. To comply with Sand’s ruling, many neighborhood schools closed their doors as busing became de rigueur. Parents...

Pitting the state of Texas against four students who had been denied admission to the University of Texas School of Law because of their skin color, the recent Hopwood v. Texas case could spell doom for racial preferences in public education if affirmed by the Supreme Court. The Sth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, whose...

The state of Colorado recently did something revolutionary, at least it tried to. Last November, Republican State Representative Russ George introduced an amendment to Colorado’s “Children Code”—a set of laws dealing with child welfare issues, including the education of Colorado’s 650,000 students—that would have abolished that state’s compulsory school attendance laws. A similar proposal was...

Talking to musicians or composers has its values, but it seldom adds much to what we know of music. Mozart’s letters to his father give you a few insights into the creative process, but Beethoven’s are merely a peep into his psyche. Of all the composers who have written about their work and that of...

Those earnest “neoliberals” at the Washington Monthly have again gotten religion, which, every few years, seems to be their wont. The putative convert this time is Amy Waldman, who writes that the left (her term) has needlessly neglected to “draw on a religious tradition” when trying to persuade others to support its political program. The...

One hundred years ago this May, Plessy V. Ferguson was decided. The Supreme Court’s 1896 decision upheld Louisiana’s law that required all passenger railways operating within the state to have “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.” Over the years, the import of the decision and public perceptions of such state regulations...

Somewhere toward the middle of The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Moral Stories, William Bennett has included “The Funeral Oration of Pericles” from Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War. To Bennett (or to his ghostwriter), this “speech reminds participants of democracy two and a half millennia later that the character of the state is determined by...

This November may not turn out to be as dull and depressing as it once appeared. Ralph Nader’s charmingly quixotic bid for the White House, based on getting the United States out of NAFTA, GATT, and Bosnia, will doubtless add some substance to the presidential contest, but the most exciting race this November will occur...

Trapped in their Montana farm, trying to fend off the feds, the worst crime the “Freemen” are accused of is attempting “to compete with the Federal Reserve,” according to the New York Times. Imagine. These people thought that private parties could, on their own initiative, issue checks, print notes, and extend credit without monetary backing....

When Aeneas lands, after seven years of wandering, shipwrecked on the shores of Africa, his great concern is to discover the nature of the country into which fate has cast him, and the temper of the people who live there. His fears are put to rest when he stands in the rising city of Carthage...

Until last summer, Michael New was an unknown 22-year-old Army medic, three years into his eight-year enlistment contract. But in August, New learned that he and his battalion were being assigned to Macedonia, where they would serve under the operational control of the United Nations commander, and wear the baby blue U.N. beret and a...

Last August I wrote an article in these pages, “Radio Days,” in which I described WABC talk radio as the only conservative voice to be heard in New York City and the tri-state area. That voice is now gone; although WABC remains on the air, the station has lost its teeth. On April 17, the...

Dead white males did not invent the rules of science; they discovered them. These rules enable science, and science alone, to make successful prediction. And prediction is only evidence acknowledged by science to demonstrate that one is on the trail of the truth. One may, of course, invoke anything one wishes in attempting to come...

An all-night homosexual “circuit” party called Cherry Jubilee’s “Main Event” took place in Washington, D.C., on April 13, 1996. The dance party featured public nudity, illicit sexual activity, and illegal drug use. Among the sponsors of the gay festivities were a GOP congressman and a host of corporations. A federal building, the Andrew W. Mellon...

Kings and dynasties seemed to be buried and forgotten when two recent events revived interest in them. On a frivolous but historically significant level, it was the series of scandals of the House of Windsor that brought Europe’s ruling families brutally in the limelight. The general trend of desacralization is voracious for frequent feeding, and...

I was to meet Cap Pearce at his office at 12:30, for discussion of a book contract and for one of our lunches at a small Italian restaurant in the East Thirties where the veal scallopini was well pounded and the wine muscular. But Cap called and said, “Come early. Conrad Aiken will be here...

When still relatively small, I sang in a church choir whose quality was the envy of our whole capital city diocese, so that its members, who included a chorus of boy sopranos like myself, were recruited, auditioned, trained, and paid. This last feature helped reconcile to plain song and Palestrina my career army officer father...

When the Cuban air force shot down two unarmed civilian planes, killing four men, there followed yet another round of senseless debate over how to handle Fidel Castro and his aging revolution. Cuban exiles renewed their call for vindication of still more deaths, while Time magazine ran Castro’s justification of the “defensive” act. The Clinton...

The 1996 Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C., in March may be remembered for shock-jock Don Imus’s tasteless diatribe, but the real discord occurred behind the scenes. Interviews I conducted with top news players at the dinner revealed a media sharply polarized. Network news titans clashed over the present state of the media....

A newsman, being thrashed about in the middle of a media mob, shouted, “Don’t push me!” Another newsman responded, “You gonna get pushed.” A shoving match ensued that would have made any schoolyard dispute look highbrow. An exchange of expletives followed. The press coverage of the 1996 New Hampshire primary was in full swing. This...