74 articles
Carolyn Graglia is right to take on feminism: It bred its share of extremists, and it must shoulder part of the blame for the demise of the family. She is also right to defend domesticity: American society has relegated it to second-class status, forgetting its true meaning and value. But there are…
Among the group of conservatives who recently met with Bill Clinton in the White House to discuss the president's "race initiative" was Ward Connerly, who headed the successful 1996 ballot drive known as the California Civil Rights Initiative. Much was made in the press of the friendliness of the…
Every day brings a fresh bad report from Asia. That region's go-go mid- 1990s, fueled by giant Western investment and loans, have run aground. It turns out that great chunks of the money were converted to local business deals driven not by market imperatives but by controlling elites operating in…
THE SCRAPBOOK will personally award a one-year, complimentary WEEKLY STANDARD subscription to the first reader who sends in a photograph taken in Wisconsin of a certain executive editor wearing embarrassing headgear (see page 6 of this issue for details). Mail to Cheesehead, THE WEEKLY STANDARD,…
Somewhere in Green Bay Packerland, also known as Wisconsin, there's a photo I want suppressed. It captures me in an embarrassing position, not only eating crow, but also looking ridiculous. Packer fans -- I was standing before hundreds of them at a Milwaukee hotel -- laughed, cheered, and generally…
The Minnesota state board of education has voted 5-3 to kill proposed statewide "diversity rules" that would have cut off funding to school districts that failed to implement an Orwellian scheme dreamed up by educrats in Minneapolis. As reported a couple of months ago on this page, schools would…
Stephen Goldsmith
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has a full-time position available for an entry-level staff assistant. This is an administrative position working with the business and circulation staff. Please send your resume to: Business Manager, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, 1150 17th Street, NW, Suite 505, Washington, DC 20036. Or…
One Friday morning in June 1992, six-week-old Nakya Scott woke up in an apartment in southeast Washington, D.C., and began to cry. Nakya's mother, 19- year-old Latrena Pixley, gave the girl a drink of water, but the crying continued. Frustrated, Pixley put the baby back into her crib. As Pixley…
The papal trip to Cuba hasn't even begun, Martha Stewart hasn't yet arrived in Havana, and already the Washington Post has published a story on John Paul II's trip that for sheer, tone-deaf political fatuousness will be hard to surpass. "Castro and the Pope: Opponents With Shared Values," read the…
The Forbes 400 list published last October gave a rude surprise to anyone who thought the Northeast Corridor was still the nation's economic center of gravity. Of the 20 richest people in America, two live in Bellevue and one in Mercer Island, Wash., two live in California, four live in Arkansas…
One of the hallmarks of the Clinton administration's foreign policy has been the eagerness with which it allows American companies to export high- technology products that were once restricted for national security reasons. The Commerce Department's top export official, William Reinsch, aptly…
OUR GREAT DIFFICULTY IN UNDERSTANDING the Asian financial bubble and its implications for the United States is not that we have too few explanations, but far too many. The crisis has been blamed, variously, on greedy speculators (by an Asian head of state), on the failure of Asian governments to…
Some people collect baseball cards, and others collect race horses, but I collect books that rethink liberalism. I've got books with titles like The Next Left and The New Liberalism, Who Needs the Democrats? and They Only Look Dead, stretching all the way from the mid-sixties right up to the…
Olivier Todd
WHAT A CAST OF CHARACTERS! Lumbering tobacco companies cowed into submission by 40 Medicaid recovery suits rigged to deny them any chance to defend themselves. Politically ambitious attorneys general out to replenish their states' depleted Medicaid coffers without raising taxes. Private…
Sunday, January 11. The Film Forum is a Greenwich Village theater so solemn its lobby is painted black and its fare consists largely of documentaries. Going there seems less like an outing to the movies than a homework assignment, or maybe even a visit to the dentist. There's a hectoring tone even…
Shortly before last fall's elections, a Haitian immigrant was brutally beaten by some bad cops in New York City. The Abner Louima case quickly became notorious because four days after the beating it was reported that the cops had taunted Louima as they tortured him with the words, "It's Giuliani…
QUESTION: When is a balanced budget "reckless" and "irresponsible," and when does it become "fiscally responsible"?
The first time Frank Luntz met Rep. Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana congressman was drinking beer with his friends in a box at an Orioles game. It was the fall of 1995, and Tauzin had just joined the Republican party after eight terms in the House as a Democrat. Luntz, who makes his living giving…
DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON, Iraq all but slipped from public view -- doubtless to quiet prayers of thanks from the Clinton administration. Since Saddam Hussein effectively barred United Nations weapons inspectors from carrying out their responsibilities in late October, the administration's strategy…
Proof that the quota-obsessed never let their guard down: Hillary Rodham Clinton was upset at the Renaissance Weekend in Hilton Head, S.C., because one of the panel discussions there suffered a gender imbalance.
UNLESS THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS rouses itself and finds its nerve, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue absurd and indefensible new regulations next month. These regulations, devised under the Clean Air Act, will impose stringent new requirements on potential sources of ozone and " fine…
Persian mutability was both the bane and the pleasure of my work as an Iranian-targets officer in the CIA's clandestine service. An Iranian could appear one day as a hirsute, pro-Khomeini revolutionary, the next as a clean- shaven, pro-Western democrat who never really believed those chestthumping,…
IT IS TEMPTING TO THINK OF John Paul II's impending visit to Cuba as a reprise of his epic journey to Poland in 1979. But we should resist the temptation. The Catholic church in Cuba is not thinking that way, and neither is the pope.
IT IS TEMPTING TO THINK OF John Paul II's impending visit to Cuba as a reprise of his epic journey to Poland in 1979. But we should resist the temptation. The Catholic church in Cuba is not thinking that way, and neither is the pope.
A colleague and I were in my offme a few days ago when we decided to say hi to an old mutual friend who last year moved to London. I put the call on speakerphone. We were disappointed when we got his answering machine.
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY'S HIERARCHY is apoplectic, but Tim Lambert has actually done the GOP a favor by proposing to block party funding for candidates who oppose a ban on partial-birth abortions. True, the resolution by the Republican committeeman from Texas will prompt a noisy debate -- and then…
WITH THE APPROACH of the millennium, everyone who's anyone wants to indulge in vague and vaporous thoughts about the challenges ahead. But in the midst of all this big talk, one issue, concrete and real, refuses to go away: abortion. The hard fact is that we have now in America a morally…
IN EARLY 1935, GOD MUST HAVE BEEN in a very good and joyous mood, creating the mold for Sonny Bono. My only complaint is that He used that mold just once, in a very limited edition.
Corinne "Lindy" Boggs presented her credentials to Pope John Paul II shortly before Christmas as the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Mrs. Boggs, who served nine terms as congresswoman from Louisiana, is in many ways the last of a breed of politician we used to have a lot of before radical…
Okay, okay. So CNN's Christiane Amanpour got a big scoop with her world- exclusive interview of Iranian president Mohammad Khatami (see Edward G. Shirley's article on page 20 of this issue). But has it really become de rigueur in such situanons in the name of buttering up the interviewee to commit…
American debate about abortion remains unhealthy. Abortion's place in political advertising is a case in point.
P. G. Maxwell-Stuart
Thomas Frank
THE CO-PERPETRATOR OF THE WORST terrorist attack in American history; a woman convicted of pick-axing two sleeping people to death; a cold-blooded mail-bomber on trial for two murders and two maimings: These are some of the people who have convinced sympathetic listeners that they ought to escape…
Several months ago, THE SCRAPBOOK reported on a charity in the nation's capital called the Washington Scholarship Fund, which currently grants 450 private-school scholarships (chosen by lottery) to D.C. children who would otherwise remain victims of what may be the country's worst public-school…
Charles Frazier
In further news from the religious-ignorance front, Washingtonian magazine documented a "spiritual awakening" it detects in the land. Its holiday roundup included testimony from orthodox believers as well as angel channelers, hypnotherapists, shamans, and swamis. It was a fine idea -- marred in the…
The "English for the Children" initiative campaign led by maverick California Republican Ron K. Unz has received enough signatures on its petitions to gain a place on the ballot this June. Unz confidently predicts passage of the measure by California voters. "Reduced to a single sentence," says…
THE HEADLONG RUSH TO BEND the American military to the dictates of gender politics has slowed for the moment. This welcome break is owed to the year- end report of a federal advisory panel chaired by former senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker. The panel, created in response to egregious sexual-…
Alexander Lebed
The year 1997 was a big one for Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at MIT and a celebrated popularizer of science. His most ambitious book so far, How the Mind Works, was published to enthusiastic reviews, which is good news for him. And he was accused of advocating infanticide, which is not.
I have long considered myself a minor connoisseur of the titles of books. Some titles seem so perfectly right, others so wrong as to kill the books before they leave the print shop. What if Flaubert, for example, had given his novel Madame Bovary the title Emma, and Jane Austen had decided to give…
Brendan G. Carroll
Still in a festive mood, THE SCRAPBOOK notes that the Starbucks Coffee Co., which trademarked the name "Christmas Blend" for one of its javas in 1992, has sicced its lawyers on the Russian Orthodox monks of All-Merciful Saviour Monastery in Puget Sound, Wash., who also peddle a "Christmas Blend"…
As Washington confronts the financial crisis in Asia and a deteriorating global economic situation, two policy camps have stepped forward with solutions. Unfortunately, neither the Economic Nationalists of left and right nor the administration and its good-guy internationalists are proposing a…
THE SCRAPBOOK IS full of ecumenical spirit in this season of the Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name. This spirit infuses the days surrounding December 25, when politicians try to inject a bit of religion into their speeches, but not so much as to alarm the church/state ideologues at People for…
FEMINISTS HAVE LATELY SUFFERED two tactical setbacks, but they are still winning their war on the military. A federal commission headed by former senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker, despite the requisite presence of feminists and quota-meisters, has surprised everybody by unanimously recommending that…
Robert Vincent Remini
For years, those who perceive a media bias against Israel have had a resounding complaint: The country is held to a double standard, expected to behave like a Boy Scout while its neighbors indulge in every sort of mayhem. Now this theory has extraordinary proof, straight from the mouth of the New…
Tom Sharpe
There's something sinful about the fact that you can now buy advance tickets for movies over the phone. It's not just the sin of profligacy (here in New York, it costs an extra $ 1.50 per ticket). It's the aristocratic mien you unconsciously assume when you waltz right by the mobs of people who are…
As the era of Clintonized expectations crawls into its sixth year, huge numbers of Americans have long since forgotten to be upset that their elected government conducts itself like a used-car dealership. So bored is the mass opinionocracy with the Clinton administration's compulsive…
In 1992, candidate Bill Clinton acted as if foreign policy were basically a non-issue. President Bush, astoundingly, seemed to agree. Since then, Americans and their elected officials in both parties have been listlessly basking in the afterglow of Ronald Reagan's victory in the Cold War. Attention…
THE REELECTION OF NORM COLEMAN as mayor of St. Paul passed almost unnoticed in the national coverage of November's races. First elected as a Democrat in 1993, Coleman switched parties a year ago. Yet he never caught the eye of Beltway pundits. The national media paid attention to just two East…
In March 1997, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidelines to help employers comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act as it relates to psychiatric disabilities. Intricate and often baffling, the guidelines do make one thing clear: There is no logical limit to the…
your phone bill is about to go up stealthily, thanks to Al Gore's conviction that we need federally subsidized Internet access for every classroom and public library in America. This sounded uplifting to Congress, which was willing to play along as long as paying for it would be politically…
Stephen E. Ambrose
Every year it's a different carol that catches me and hauls me in. The first Christmas song always steals into town right after Thanksgiving, like the first gentle plink that signals a cloudburst, and within days the deluge is inescapable: the office elevators and the street corners and the stores…
EVERY YEAR it's a different carol that catches me and hauls me in. The first Christmas song always steals into town right after Thanksgiving, like the first gentle plink that signals a cloudburst, and within days the deluge is inescapable: the office elevators and the street corners and the stores…
The ballot initiative that would end California's failed bilingual- education program looks headed for success next June. The most recent portent: Besides commanding huge support in polls of registered voters, "English for the Children" almost won the endorsement of the United Teachers of Los…
SHORTLY AFTER HIS ELECTION, British prime minister Tony Blair proclaimed welfare reform his "big idea." He intended to recreate incentives to work, reestablish family values, and thereby free resources for the struggling health-care and educational systems. All this seemed unexceptionable in the…
It's not news that conspiracy theories about the Clinton administration are getting a friendly hearing in certain precincts of the Right these days. What's interesting, though, is that the devotion to political conspiracies has started to create new ideological alliances. Don't be shocked if Oliver…
DEAR KATE,
ATOMS, reads the sign on a smokestack rising out of the 'fifties glass-and- brick main building of Annandale High School in Fairfax County, Virginia. It commemorates the mighty football squad that has taken six state titles since the mid-sixties. But aside from its gridiron glories, Annandale High…
Sen. Fred Thompson's committee will soon be releasing its report on fund- raising abuses in the 1996 presidential campaign. So what will all those high- paid committee staffers be doing once the report's released?
You've got to hand it to those North Korean Communists: They are on the losing side of history; they are facing defections at the highest levels; and they are burdened with a starving population; but they can still churn out propaganda with the best of them.
The opera world is helpless against a love story, and it is now under the spell of a real one. On a spring day in 1996, Angela Gheorghiu, the dreamy Romanian soprano, and Roberto Alagna, the equally dreamy French-Italian tenor, skipped out of a rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. They…
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14. I got in to see Deconstructing Harry this afternoon, which may not sound like much to you, but given the fact it's opening weekend and I live in New York, that was an unexpected triumph. On Saturday night, I had walked over to the Village East theater at 7:15, only to find the…
"IT HAPPENED AROUND 1991: Everything changed." The speaker is a young Argentinian investment banker, talking over coffee at La Biela, a restaurant across the park from the Recoleta Cemetery where Eva Peron is buried, incongruously, amid the leading families of Buenos Aires. The words are almost…
On November 19, an editorial in the New York Times demanded the ouster of Anatoly Chubais, the leading free-market stalwart in the Russian government, for accepting a book advance of $ 90,000. Though politically foolish, the book deal was probably legal; indeed, the relatively modest sum involved…