Letters
He's drunk and he's got a modem!
Steven Levitt, an economist at Uinv of Chi and John Donohue III Stanford Univ Law school prof study, 'Legalized Abortion and Crime,' cites legalization of Abortion in certain states ahead of the supreme courts Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized it nationally, and the drop in crime rates two decades later. Conclude abortion may explain up to half of the decrease in crime from 91-7. Time: 'Fewer offenses are being perpetrated by people ages 24 and younger - those born after abortion was legalized.' (Aug. 23, 99)
Michelle Malkin, Creators Syndicate/Denver Post 11.17.1999
Michael Gough, a former federal researcher, and Steve Milloy, risk analyst and editor of junkscience.com, evaluated a sample of Ben and Jerry's "World's Best Vanilla" ice cream for the presence of 2,3,7,8-tetrachloribenzo-p-dioxin. The tested scoop had 0.79 parts per trillion of dioxin. That's roughly 200 times greater than the "virtually safe" daily dose set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Rational scientists will tell you that this negligible amount of dioxin is perfectly safe to consume. But Ben Cohen (a member of the Greenpeace board of directors) and Jerry Greenfield deserve to have their products judged by their own irrational health standards. They are purveyor s of a mindless, zero-tolerance mentality when it comes to man-made chemicals. Ben and Jerry's spokeswoman, Chrystie Heimert, admitted to me that Ben and Jerry's environmental agenda "is kind of out there, but that's the culture."
Thomas Sowell, Rocky Mountain News, 12.1.1999
Economics and politics must both deal with a basic fact of life: What everybody wants adds up to more than what is possible. Economics deals with this by rationing through prices. Politics deals with it by lying and promising more than it can possibly deliver.
Sean Wilentz, New Republic, 11.22.1999
[Lenora] Fulani first attracted public notice in the early '80s as a perennial candidate of the New Alliance Party. The NAP was, in turn, the offspring of the Institute for Social Therapy and Research, one of a number of peculiar psychological sects that arose in upper Manhattan after the New Left's demise in the early '70s. . . . Behind the Fulanites lies a lush history of left-wing efforts to unite the class struggle with the liberation of the psyche. Frustrated dissenters of the late '40s and '50s climbed into Wilhelm Reich's orgone boxes to overcome the respression of self and society. Campus New Leftists in the '60s fondled volumes of Herbert Marcuse and Frantz Fanon, charting the devious connections between capitalism, colonialism, and mass pathology. Poking around any bookshop in the early '70s, you were bound to find further variations on the theme in the manifestos of left-wing drug mavens and left-wing nudists and left-wing psychoanalysts. But only a hardy few kept the tradition alive through the Reagan-Bush era; Fulani was among the hardiest.
New Politics, Summer 1999
Kerry Appel: Has living here in Chiapas with the indigenous people changed you and, if so, how?
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos: Well, first it was a process of colliding. We came from an urban culture, and the urban culture, above all, teaches you speak, "you must speak, speak, speak and nothing to listen to." You don't learn to listen, only to speak and to impose your point of view. At the time, we came upon a culture that was different, and as much as you spoke and argued no one understood you. You had to detain yourself and learn to hear, to understand, to learn to listen to a language and learn what it had to say. . . The principal result of this encounter was recognizing that we had much to learn, almost nothing to teach. . . .
Andy Merrifield, Nation, 11.22.1999
Might one sometimes judge a book by its cover? A most telling image adorns the front jacket of Marshall Berman's new book, 'Adventures in Marxism': a dancing Marx. Despite his aging years and huge gray mane, the old prophet still knows a few slick dance moves. He might be grooving to sixties rock and roll, a streetfighting man demanding the world and wanting it now, but his gleaming blue zoot suit suggests a jazzier Marx, a fifties retread, mellow and free, perhaps improvising and syncopating to a bebop alto sax. Berman has his millennial sage straddle both decades and affirms a Marxism that is melodic and ironic, yet somehow loud and rough and sexual, too. Here Berman's Marx isn't merely a "poet of commodities"; his whole body is animated by commodities, contorting and twisting, matching their inexorable flow, trailing them as they exchange and circulate and shape the world in their own image.
The Limbaugh Letter, October 1999
Rush: Camille, thank you so much for your time.
Paglia: We met once, you know. We were at the 25th anniversary of "60 Minutes" back in 1992. . . . We sat at the same table and you gave me a Cuban cigar.
Rush: Steve Kroft set that up, and I happened to notice him during dinner stroll by the table three or four times. He was expecting fireworks. . .
Paglia: It was the opposite.
Rush: And it didn't happen. And it turned out we liked each other. . . and Kroft was disappointed as he could be.
Paglia: Well, he had no idea that I already admired you and knew your influence. By the way, when I was speaking at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard about four years ago, someone dared take your name in vain at the dinner. . . and I went ballistic in front of the entire room. I chewed them out. . . . It was like a total scene!
Bomb, Fall 1999
Raymond Pettibon: Everyone is going to go through this. . . rite of passage. Like punk - I believed in it for about two weeks somewhere between the ages of 15 and 18. But there are teenagers nowadays who are actually killing people because they're wide-eyed idealists about straight edge. I mean, Jesus, what a hell of a battle that must be. You know, at least in the 60s there was a war going on. There were tens of thousands of your peers dying, and millions of Vietnamese, at least that was a real battle. I mean, what the fuck is a battle to punk rockers? Against long hair? Jesus. It's a really decadent mockery, when you think of it. . . . If punk is just an excess of hormones, fine. Confine it to the slam pit, or whatever. But to make it political - what does it manifest itself as? Bruised tattoos?
Robert Snyder, Proclaiming Jubilee - For Whom?, The Christian Century June 30.1999
If a country is governed by a small, corrupt power elite and the national debts really the debt of that elite, then let them face their people without foreign aid. . . . [W]e in the West cannot 'fix' the problems of the poor countries. The people themselves must rise up and say no to their corrupt power elites. . . . Until this is done, debt relief will provide only a temporary respite, a time when leaders can rest more peacefully in their expensive villas.
Michael Fonda, Astoria letter/NY Press November 3.1999
What was the incest/Satanic ritual scare if not a communal rape fantasy on a scale undreamed of by the most malign misogynist? The idea that thousands upon thousands of daughters were being forced into sex by their fathers, or that children were being forced into performing animal sacrifice while having spoonfuls of peanut butter shoved up their rectums, was never a fear, it was a hope - albeit a hope based not on erotic arousal but a desire to prove once and for all the intrinsic evil of (mostly) male sexuality (paging Thomas Aquinas). They didn't merely want it to be true. They were desperate - belligerent, even. Irony of ironies: While feminists were congratulating themselves on exposing a side of patriarchal culture that the rest of society refused to face up to, they were actually exposing the very things about themselves in which they are in the deepest denial.
I'm for G.W. Pabst, I mean Bush.
When I listen to Gore speak I shake my head and say, it's only a matter of time before his secret gay life is exposed. What if the Chinese know?
Numbers game:
150,000 women die of anorexia every year. As roughly 80% of this number are in the prime fertility segment of the overall population of females (age 14-28) this trims the overall fertility rate from the 1980 average of 2.3 average births to women by an astonishing 38% a year! Simple extrapolation to the year 2011 yields the point at which no children, female or male, will be born at all in the United States. Only immigration at levels three times higher than that estimated for 1994 (both legal and illegal) will allow the nation to limp into the twenty-second century with enough populace to man the cemetaries. Beyond that, if Gender Studies departments insist on this statistic they'll have to start active measures such as starving female immigrants as they enter the country or even starving them in situ overseas.
National Review, June 14, 1999
Janet Reno and the Justice Department announced that they had shattered a Swiss vitamin cartel. After shattering the American nuclear-weapons cartel, it was easy.
Wall Street Journal, June 24, 1999
Computer-chip shrinking can continue at the current rate for 10 to 12 years, longer than earlier estimates, according to findings by Bell Labs scientists. They determined the smallest possible thickness for silicon dioxide film is five atoms, 10 for practical purposes. The thinnest out now is 25 atoms.
Patrick J Kennedy
state legis/RI spend 94000 (avg:6000) for seat that pays 300/yr. Was 21 Providence Coll junior when elected. 94 election to congress. 'Congressboy'. Passed up senate bid to replace retiring Repub John Chafee in 2000 because he's Gephardt's fair haired boy in attempt to take House, he's head of Demo Congressional Campaign Committee fifth ranking leadership post for candidate recruitment and fundraising. Drug and alc rehab in senior high school year (Phillips Academy). Ted's son. Hard on Cuba, otherwise liberal.
The Balkanization of Yugoslavia!
Books:
Laid Bare
A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip
John Gilmore
Amok, Los Angeles
Gilmore is a Los Angeles cop's son whose good looks drew him to films in Hollywood, and theater in New York. A writer now, his memoir is striking for its languid first person narration as he hopscotches through the peripatetic homo and hetero exploitation mills of the entertainment netherworlds. Along the way we get indelible live action sketches of such malformed overachievers as Janis Joplin, Hank Williams, James Dean, Dennis Hopper, Jane Fonda, Lenny Bruce, Jean Seberg, Jack Nicholson, Steve McQueen, Charles Manson, William Burroughs, et. al. Plus grim portraits of barely remembered actors, directors, casting agents, and producers all scrambling for personalized debasements under the influence of the pornographic god cinema.
Plasticity
walls, gums, bones,
Depravitas
latin rock hip hop triumphalism takes the form of early rock crit compensatory braggadoccio.
New Wave
circa 1983 worked for indie film sex comedies that ended up on Nightflight and Troma and now in revival on Disney radio.
Chicago
#1
NYT 5.22
Jeff Gertz upside down China story
Life
is no longer a full time job
factoids
-Colombine High floors littered with clips full but for single bullet fired
-Number of disabled Americans according to Americans with Disabilities Act: 43 million.
-Bush, Dole, or Nixon has been on the Republican presidential ticket every four years since 1952 except in 1964
-guns are used to stop crimes five times more often than to commit crimes.
-26 million immigrants in U.S.
NEWS&DISINFORMATION
Lakers R.I.P.
dish mixup had porn interrupt telecast, no complaints recieved
Knicks Attempt to Seize Government!
Ernie Grunfeld Knick forward 82-6, color analyst 86-9, asst coach 89-90, director of basketball administration 90, vice pres of player personnel 91-3, to vp and GM 93-6, to pres and GM 96-9. MSG pres Dave Checketts is ex GM. Checketts Utah Mormon, Grunfeld Roumanian jew Forest Hills. Chief scout Dick McGuire: Grunfeld wanted new 2nd team, Spree/Camby/Childs to de-emph Ewing.Houston/Spree were to be Jordan/Pippen. Van Gundy wed to Riley mo w/ Ewing/Oakley/Starks defense and post game.
Bradley for Prez; Jackson to Cabinet
Robert Rubin: My personal view is a strong Knicks is very much in the country's interest.
Game Review
Slave Ship Basketball (F.ArtsInc.)
This has gone too far! If you get motion sickness while reading this, it must be because I'm shaking my head as I write. The cretins who design these wretched, perverse exercises in onanistic bloodlust have outdone themselves with this one! Here you are aboard the slave ship
fanzine review
Beastiary
The fanzine for the Beastiality community
Animal Rights My Ass!
18 or 21 (or 13)
Al in the Balance
'We can have the future we deserve because we already have the president we deserve.' Of course, he was addressing Buffalo, New York.
'I'm a Viet-nam veteran - one of the lucky ones.'
Ads:
-Smash the State Not your fathers' republican party
-Let's Move On - Bush Dole 2000
-cigarette ad with cigs added to photo of ?
-CBS News the official service of El Nino, La Nina, Global Warming and Gore 2000
-WNBA: Kind of boring yes, but once a month Look Out!
Chelsea Hubbell
The Luring Crass
Milquetoast Macho
Post-You
Discrete Tyrannies
Madison Avenue Wizard markets forehead billboards!
Free tattooing is the hook.
Heard
Resident, 4.7.99
Quote Unquote by Baird Jones
On 'Miss America'
David Byrne: It's a song about a sleazy, trashy woman or transvestite, and you can never possess her and she's not faithful. That's my picture of America and I guess that's the same sort of picture I'm sure people in Mexico and Cuba have. I'm lucky because I travel a lot and I'm not there everyday. Furthermore, New York is my real home and that isn't really America - it's an island off the coast of America.
Marilyn Manson: Lucifer to me is a hero. He wanted to be God and he wasn't going to accept someone else's rules, so he got kicked out of Heaven and made his own rules. I grew up feeling like I could never fit in. One day I realized I didn't want to fit in - I could make my own standards and live by them. That's what I try to tell people - don't be afraid to say what's on your mind, and if it pisses someone off that's too bad. If you make everybody happy, you are an idiot.
Seen.
New York Press, Sam Schulman 4.7.99 'Viva Colonel Blimp'
Colonel Blimp was a British left-wing cartoonist's embodiment of the post-WWI sentiment among the victorious allies that though they fought for worthwhile ideals their leaders were incompetent hacks fussing over perks and dining well well behind the front where their men died like rats in the trenches.
Schulman recalls how this WWI charicature was drawn upon again in the Vietnam era anti-war films, 'Oh! What a Lovely War,' 'How I Won the War,' and others. Now he sees Blimpism in the war planning and preparations of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, James Rubin, Sandy Berger, Bill Cohen, Warren Christopher, and Tony Lake in the Balkans. I'd add Les Aspin.
'It is not only that their policy decisions are usually wrong. Even common sense fails them: No one can execute their policies with the means they provide. We can't drop a bomb on a Serbian patrol rounding up a dozen Kosovar villagers; our missiles can't turn back an army infiltrating a large area unopposed.
Whence this stupidity? The answer, I think, is vanity. The vanity of the new generation of Blimps is moral, not material or spiritual, and it's far more dangerous.
Our new Blimps are so entranced by their moral quality, their superiority to the Serbs, that they lose the ability to measure their opponents or predict what they will do. The moralist's only weapon is to publicize his own virtue. The strategist knows that his intentions are best concealed.
And now, locked into a policy of bombing that is hastening the very outcome it was intended to prevent, we are in a fin-de-siecle version of trench warfare. Our men are not dying, yet, but the quagmire is being prepared - a moral, not a military - quagmire. . . . The end will involve a standoff between people who know they are right, and want to be admired for it - our Blimps - and the Serbs, who will have gotten what they wanted. What sort of terrible and cynical bargain will these two sides strike?
Harper's, June 99 'Ethnic Cleansing: A Five Point Plan'
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj from Radical Party weekly Velika Serbija, translated by Hilmi Zogjani for Kosova Crisis Center website.
Point 4: Information and propaganda
The government should broadcast special radio and TV programs in the Albanian language offering the most decadent values of the West, which are readily adopted by primitive people. The Serb enclaves would be spared primarily by the language barrier, as well as by the installation of cable television in their settlements.