69 articles
Our president appeared at the same NAACP convention that honored Don King, and spoke some amazing words. "We just announced an initiative on Africa, on promoting economic development in Africa," he said to applause. "And there was a lot of excitement about it. We had a lot of Republican congressmen…
"Only connect," said E. M. Forster. Alexandra Danilova's motto could have been, "Only distinguish."
Wesley J. Smith
There are no un-air-conditioned social classes anymore. Last Wednesday, on a night of 98-degree heat, I picked up a six-pack of beer -- Old Gumption Limited Edition Woodchuck Valley Pale Ale, or something. The guy at the counter said dimly, "Mmm-mm, that's nice and cold."
Late last month, following House passage of the central and most contentious element in Washington's pending budget deal, Newt Gingrich was euphoric. He'd been having a rough time of it, given all those persistent stories about bitter discontent among backbench Republicans. Now, with progress…
In June 1996, Louis Harris published a poll showing that 57 percent of Americans support federal funding for the arts. Despite the fact that the poll is a year old and does not measure attitudes toward the National Endowment for the Arts, the 57 percent figure has popped up repeatedly in news…
Barbra Streisand, spokesperson for the oppressed, now wants to campaign on behalf of the most maligned, most mistreated, most outrageously defamed sub- population in these United States. We're talking, of course, about Jewish women. "As a Jewish woman," says Streisand, "I have always been bothered…
He's destroyed the sport of boxing. His coif looks as if his scalp is projectile-vomiting. He has murdered business associates and the English language with equal aplomb. But only in the America of 1997 could Don King have received a humanitarian award from the NAACP Last week, the civil-rights…
Ian Smith
Francois Furet, who died on July 12 at the age of 70, was the greatest living historian of the French Revolution, and far more. In an era when most of his peers were either dedicated subspecialists or social historians, Furet sought to revive the grand historiographical tradition of the 19th…
Here's how bad things are among House Republicans: After the collapse of the coup attempt against Newt Gingrich, the speaker is being described as " utterly contemptuous" of his fellow GOP leaders Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, and John Boehner. Having forced Bill Paxon's resignation, Gingrich is eager for…
FOR MANY YEARS, CONSERVATIVES have hesitated to denounce the assaults on the First Amendment that go under the name of "campaignfinance reform." At the same time, they have not offered the public an adequate alternative to the Left's repeated attempts to limit political speech. Now they have their…
THE SERVICE FOR GAY EPISCOPALIANS and their supporters held at the Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany in downtown Philadelphia last week could have been a reenactment of a civil-rights rally from 35 years ago, and in some sense it was. Sweating parishioners fanned themselves with programs as the…
Tuesday, July 15
In The Godfather, Part II, Michael Corleone says his father taught him one thing: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. It's sage advice that House Speaker Newt Gingrich has ignored in firing Rep. Bill Paxon of New York as chairman of House leadership meetings.
Tom Andrews, national program director for the "watchdog" group Citizen Action, stood on a platform at a Washington hotel last March brandishing a broom. Under a banner that read "Campaign for Clean Elections," the former Democratic congressman from Maine unveiled for reporters Citizen Action's…
REPUBLICANS DO BEST IN THE DEBATE over racial preferences when they spotlight the least defensible aspects of the civil-rights industry -- not its lofty intentions but the grubby reality of race politics. Thus, the defenders of affirmative action fell silent at a House hearing last month when a…
CLAIRE ROYAL, MARIAN ANDERSON, and Bill Nakagawa of Arboga, California -- a retired elementary-school teacher, a grandmother married to the local levee manager, and a veteran of World War II -- lived very different lives and probably would never have been mentioned together had the three of them…
Five years ago, the government of Oregon looked far into the future and made a list of goals and commitments it called "Benchmarks." By the year 2010, the state legislature declared, all two-year-olds will be immunized against contagious illness. All displaced workers will be guaranteed jobs at 90…
I have a taste, a craving, a positive jones for generalization. Through words, generalizations give patterns to experience. Such patterns are not only necessary if you want to make any sense out of the world at all; they are inherently pleasing things, or at least to me they are. Making…
REP. MARK NEUMANN is a conservative Christian. He's pro-life and anti- homosexuality. He recites the Pledge of Allegiance before press conferences. Righteous, impatient, and indefatigable, he has the headlong stride and self- certain zeal of a man on a mission. But that mission, it turns out, has…
In his opening statement at the hearings of the Thompson committee on Tuesday, Oklahoma senator Don Nickles raised the point that it is illegal -- according to Section 441c(a)2 of the Federal Election Code -- to solicit contributions from federal contractors.
Lawrence Joseph
Congressional Republicans are negotiating with Democrats and the White House this week over changes in the welfare bill. These talks may determine whether last year's welfare reform succeeds in moving people from the dole to the work force. At the moment, it looks likelier that new regulations and…
SOMETHING IMPORTANT DID HAPPEN in the Senate hearings last week on the Clinton campaignfinance scandals. It just takes some explaining. A few months ago, I wrote a short piece for THE WEEKLY STANDARD on a suspicious $ 50,000 donation made to the Democratic party by Ernest Green, a longtime friend…
"OHHHHHHH," said Rep. Bill Archer, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "Family economic income!" Archer spoke with mock surprise when on June 11 assistant treasury secretary Donald Lubick cited that concept as the committee was drafting the tax bill later passed by the House in slightly…
Tuesday, July 8
Edward Shirley
We quote from his letter to clients: "My wife Patricia and I spent the four- day July 4th weekend in Chicago at the International Islamic Conference, hosted by the Nation of Islam, in conjunction with the World Islamic Peoples Leadership. It may have been the single most important political event I…
"We want to be embedded in the Western camp," said a prominent Polish legislator last week, as NATO acted to admit Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to membership. A 70-year-old woman in Warsaw who had turned out to see the president of the United States told a reporter, "We are finally free."
When House speaker Newt Gingrich confided to the Atlanta Journal- Constitution that he may run for president in 2000, the reaction in the political community was, Yeah, right. Now here's the twist: Newt really is making plans to run for the Republican presidential nomination. Really. He's been…
During the heated months of debate on most-favored-nation trading status for China, many politicians tried to assure the anti-China lobby that while they were against revoking MFN, they really did want to get tough on Chinese misbehavior in other ways. The sincerity of that claim was called into…
This year, the Tony award for best musical went to a show about a calamitous real-life event in which 1,500 people died by drowning in the North Atlantic. It won out over a musical about prostitutes and pornography in 1970s Times Square, another one about the weird Depression-era events called…
The conductor Michael Tilson Thomas vividly remembers the New York premiere of Steve Reich's Four Organs. The year was 1973, the site Carnegie Hall. After a few minutes, "a restlessness began to sweep the crowd." There were " rustlings of programs, overly loud coughs, compulsive seat-shifting," and…
The Supreme Court and Congress are on a collision course. Three times in the final week of its term, the high court struck down laws passed by overwhelming congressional majorities, championed by the president, and defended by the Justice Department. This is historically unprecedented. Even during…
ON JUNE 14, PRESIDENT CLINTON launched his highly touted "conversation" on race at the University of California, San Diego. The initiative was months in the making but, as the president would have it, a lifetime in the preparation. "If there is any issue I ought to have credibility on," he said,…
Don't count Erskine Bowles out as White House chief of staff yet. He's been telling everyone he wants to return to North Carolina and his investmentbanking business. But President Clinton has a way to keep him in Washington: entitlement reform. Bowles, says a senior White House aide, is bound to be…
It's a maxim in Washington that no good deed goes unpunished. It seemed to the Scrapbook, therefore, that we should praise a genuine good deed when we came across it.
When President Clinton created his special commission on race, he turned to Duke University's John Hope Franklin to lead it. The appointment was greeted with near-universal approval, for Franklin is one of the most lionized historians in the country. Two years ago, Clinton awarded him the medal of…
Margot A. Henriksen
It is a truth, though one not universally acknowledged, that when people die, their eulogists praise them for qualities they did not possess and ignore those qualities they did have. Thus, a man known for a cruel and biting wit will be posthumously transformed into a paragon of kindness; a…
In the nether-precincts of the Internet, Joycelyn Elders -- hired by Bill Clinton for her candor, then fired by him for candidly suggesting that schoolchildren be taught the joys of onanism -- is a great heroine. The " JackinWorld" website, for example, is "dedicated to former U.S. Surgeon General…
Karl Lowith
In a throwback to the grandly loony feminism of the 1970s, the New York state branch of the National Organization for Women is denouncing what it brands the "Criminalization of Pregnancy" act.
LESS THAN 12 HOURS BEFORE the formal ceremony at midnight on June 30 during which the Union Jack was lowered in Hong Kong and the Chinese flag was raised, Shanghai Tang had metamorphosed into the old Filene's Basement. The chic Hong Kong boutique -- which sells everything from lime-silk Mao jackets…
In college, my friends and I used to debate the year that one was irretrievably, unqualifiedly, with no more excuses middleaged. The age we finally settled on was 37. And here I am. If my college self could somehow be introduced to my now middle-aged self, what would he think? More than anything, I…
A five-justice majority of the Supreme Court, in a pair of physician- assisted-suicide cases decided June 26, has declined to proclaim a generalized "right to die" in the Constitution. And the other four justices have joined them in a unanimous vote to uphold broad prohibitions against assisted…
Massive forces are fundamentally reshaping American society, turbocharging the transition from an industrial to an informationage economy, radically altering the way we do business, and compelling large numbers of American executives to go to work each day in cowboy boots and blue jeans.
It has been a time of doomsaying for supporters of affirmative action. In May, the University of California's Boalt Hall Law School revealed that its black enrollment had fallen 81 percent last year, following a 1995 decision of the state university system's board of regents not to take race into…
"America's economy is the strongest in the world," our president gloated as he addressed his guests at the G-7 summit in Denver. He is right, of course. We have had only one minor recession in the past 15 years. The unemployment rate is at its lowest level since 1973: Everyone who wants a job has…
Marriage is the final event of innumerable movies and novels. The couple is pronounced man and wife, they kiss, and the closing credits roll, or the book runs out of words. Marriage is thus treated as a conclusion, an ending, an act of completion. And to be sure, it is. But it is also the beginning…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has a full-time position available for an entry-level staff assistant. This is an administrative position working with the advertising and publicity staff. Please send your resume to: Business Manager, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, 1150 17th Street, NW, Suite 505, Washington, DC 20036.…
On or about June 11, according to Liu Qing of the organization Human Rights in China, Beijing was engineering a savage prison beating of Wei Jingsheng, the country's most notable political detainee. On our side of the Pacific, House speaker Newt Gingrich was striking out at Gary Bauer of the Family…
After the tax cut passed the House last week, the Washington Post said speaker Newt Gingrich had improved his "beleaguered" position. Maybe, but the battle to succeed him as Republican leader continues.
If you're the president of the United States and want to give your fellow world leaders a dose of American culture, who do you turn to? Why, Harry Thomason, of course, Hollywood producer, Travelgate impresario, and husband of Arkansan Linda Bloodworth-. And what a show he gave them in Denver, on a…
When the Supreme Court ruled unanimously last week that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, it marked the eleventh time this term the high court has reversed Ninth Circuit judge Stephen Reinhardt (subject of a May 5 profile in THE WEEKLY STANDARD by Matthew Rees, "Judge…
At the 1995 National Junior College Athletic Association track-and-field championships in Odessa, Texas, James Beckford pulled off the third longest triple jump in history. He missed a 10year-old world record by two inches. Beckford's team, Blinn College, went on to demolish its competition and…
Bob Woodward reports in the Washington Post that independent counsel Ken Starr's office has been interviewing people about Bill Clinton's "private life." The White House responds with outrage that looks orchestrated. Starr, for his part, says his investigators have done no such thing.
DURING THE LATTER YEARS of a teaching career extending over more than four decades, I became accustomed to university students who could not spell or punctuate and did not know the rudiments of English grammar and syntax. " Supersede," I would write in the margin of many a term paper (and, before I…
Paul Theroux
Robert Tombs
Hong Kong and its Fragrant Harbor are, everyone agrees, among the loveliest sights on earth. The British Royal Navy undoubtedly thought so when it seized the 35 miles of rock from China in 1841 and, almost secretly, added it to the great pink map of Empire. Early governors developed the territory…
It is a curious way for an American hero to end a long career. But there it is: John Glenn -- decorated veteran of World War II and Korea, first American astronaut to orbit the earth, and for 22 years a popular senator from Ohio -- seems determined to spend his final days of public service…
It happened so fast: The record stores no longer had LPs, they had CDs. You couldn't put a needle on them. You had to go out and buy expensive equipment to play them with, and they were expensive, too -- sometimes twice the price of LPs (but with more minutes of music, usually).
Okay, let's be fair. Punctilious honesty has not been the Clinton administration's strong suit. But every bell curve has its extremes -- its outliers, as it were. The word "outlier" brings to mind Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner and her new air-pollution standards.
DEPUTY TREASURY SECRETARY Lawrence Summers recently asserted that greed was the primary motivating force among tax-cut advocates in the United States. But to really see people trying to keep more of their own money, Summers should take a few detours on his next trip to Europe. While greedy…
YOU PROBABLY DON'T HEAR A LOT about global warming these days. But then, you probably don't live in the Republic of Maldives. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom does -- he's the president of the Maldives, in fact -- and last week at the second United Nations Earth Summit in New York, he explained what global…