83 articles
I was sitting in the Senate press gallery last Monday afternoon, waiting for the final day of the impeachment trial to begin, when suddenly the future became real to me -- the pall of the post-Lewinsky world. Before me lay a copy of Congress Daily, an indispensable, exhaustively reported,…
Last week may have been bad for conservatives, but it sure was good for the canon. Lawyers, lackeys, and cronies on all sides mined their liberal arts educations for a touch of eloquence in the closing speeches of the Clinton trial. Allan Bloom must be smiling somewhere.
On Feb. 4, the deputy assistant to the president for ooze, Gregory Craig, begged the Senate not to include videotaped deposition testimony in the formal record of the Clinton impeachment trial. Why? Well, he was concerned about the nation's children, of course. Should "hour after hour" of Monica…
Arnold Schoenberg had a superstitious horror of the number thirteen. He was born on September 13, 1874, the day after Rosh Hashanah. A Viennese Jew reared as a Catholic, he converted to Lutheranism in his twenties, before returning to Judaism in 1933.
"Dishonorable," "contemptible," "shameful," "boorish," "inexcusable," "sordid," "deplorable," "immoral," "reckless," "disgraceful," "debased," "reprehensible," and "outrageous."
"Do you know Mr. Harry Evans?" Rep. Lindsey Graham suddenly asked Sidney Blumenthal at his Feb. 3 deposition. This was rather like asking whether teenage girls know Leonardo DiCaprio; Blumenthal is a major-league fixture of fashion-magazine intellectualism and used to work for Mrs. Evans at the New…
Left-wing historians used to say that their anti-Communist opponents greatly exaggerated the American Communist party's Cold War ties to Moscow -- and thereby impugned a political organization that did so much for progressive causes.
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now"?
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
WELL, ONE THING WE'VE LEARNED is that, in her attitudes towards men, the average American woman is as coarsened and world-weary as a 1920s Bronx showgirl. This was the real surprise of the Bill Clinton scandal. The people you thought wouldn't be shocked by the president's behavior -- the Washington…
J.D. Salinger's cultural significance seems beyond dispute. The Catcher in the Rye is a book read even by those who don't read much. When Mark David Chapman assassinated John Lennon in 1980, he said the reason could be found in the novel's pages. When John "Goumba" Sialiano spoke in 1999 of his…
Now all the truth is out,
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
Once again, the Clinton administration is issuing an apology. With encouragement from his controversial civil rights chief Bill Lann Lee, President Clinton is formally apologizing to a group of Japanese civilians arrested in Latin America and interned in the United States in 1942. Like the apology…
We are perhaps too well informed about the appalling state of America's universities. Over the years, innumerable books have taught us about tenured radicals, illiberal education, multiculturalism run amok, and affirmative action's murder of merit. In their recent Who Killed Homer?, Victor Davis…
DOCUMENTS RECENTLY OBTAINED from the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reveal the agency's systematic abuse of its authority during the Clinton administration. Under the direction of Norma Cantu, OCR has bullied school districts all over the country into implementing bilingual…
John Wilson on the KGB Bar and hoisting a few to the ghost of Stalin.
Orange County, Calif.
This week, the American people, acting through their senators in Washington, will formally choose to retain Bill Clinton as president for the remainder of his elected term. What this decision might imply for our nation's culture and politics is no doubt an almost endless question. The White House…
"Never again," vowed Leonard Woodcock, Jimmy Carter's ambassador to Beijing, in 1977, "shall we embarrass ourselves before a foreign nation the way Henry Kissinger did with the Chinese."
The mural in the lobby of the New York hotel where the Algonquin Round Table held forth shows how "self-assured" its members were, the New Yorker recently reported. "Sullenly self-regarding" may be more apt. Edmund Wilson, who knew them all, found the so-called Vicious Circle "rather tiresome,"…
President Clinton talked about world peace at the 47th annual National Prayer Breakfast last week -- as well he ought, having brought along for the occasion Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian leader's unrepented involvement with the murder of Leon Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro in 1985 and…
The transformation of the Russian economy was supposed to have been one of the great success stories of the 1990s. Instead, there is pervasive doubt about Russia's future.
IF SUPPLY-SIDERS EVER HAD REASON to be optimistic, they do now. Tax cuts are easier to pass with a budget surplus in Washington, and congressional Republicans have embraced a supply-side article of faith: across-the-board reductions in income tax rates. Besides, the GOP has dropped two decidedly…
AS PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON has told us time and again, there are three legs to the New Democratic platform: opportunity, responsibility, and community. It is a troika that might, in good conscience, have been trimmed to just opportunity and community (this is, after all, a man whose lack of personal…
"VOTERS PLEDGING PAYBACK IN 2000" -- so says the Washington Post about public anger at Republicans for impeaching President Clinton. Richard Berke of the New York Times says there's "danger" for Republicans in punishing Clinton for moral misbehavior. Which Republicans exactly? "High-profile…
Alarmed about something it labels "religiopolitics," the feminist Center for Gender Equality commissioned a survey of 1,000 women to uncover the presumably sinister "impact of conservative religious political activism on women's attitudes about their equality and their role in society."
Polls tell the truth -- if you look closely enough. And Bill Clinton's poll numbers over the past year have been impressive indeed. At the time he was impeached his job approval rating had reached a staggering 72 percent. But there is a striking gap between polls and feelings at the heart of the…
In Freedom to Die, suicide guru Derek Humphry, co-founder of the Hemlock Society, and Mary Clement, a pro-euthanasia attorney, describe the assisted-suicide movement as "a pure flame of revolution," rising from the cultural upheavals of the 1960s. It is an era they proclaim to be of greater…
Cobb County, Ga.
There was a period of my childhood when the Super Bowl meant the world to me. Immersed in my football-card collection, I knew all the players' vital statistics -- height, weight, college, hobbies, interceptions, receptions, rushing yards, and everything else. It was just then that the Miami…
Is Bill Clinton picking up PR tips from the tobacco industry he professes to despise? That might explain the addition last September of Guy Smith to the White House impeachment war room. Smith is a one-time journalist and public relations expert, kind of a Sid Blumenthal and James Carville rolled…
Billionaire philanthropist Ted Forstmann, who made his name on Wall Street through friendly corporate takeovers, went on Oprah last week to boost his privately funded school-choice charity, which may be blossoming into something of a friendly takeover of the nation's troubled urban schools.
THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSED $ 12.6 billion increase in defense spending is an illusion. To start, the increase amounts to little over $ 4 billion in new budget authority. The remaining $ 8 billion is a product of Defense Department accounting adjustments, delayed spending on other military programs,…
CERTAIN THINGS WE CAN NOW FORECAST with as much certainty as politics ever allows. The president will be acquitted and will continue in office. For reasons this magazine has exhaustively detailed -- all of which arguments, as the lawyers say, are incorporated here by reference -- Clinton's…
At last week's "National religious Leaders' Summit on Civility," an ecumenical panel of clergy addressed impeachment-era incivility at a forum sponsored by the Interfaith Alliance in one of the Senate office buildings. Groggy religion reporters were nerfed senseless with the sponge bats of "civil…
Reading all the accounts of Joe DiMaggio's brave battle with illness has led me to recall the time when he and I corresponded, hitter to hitter. It was through my Uncle Irvin that we hooked up.
When Vice President Gore uttered the word "reformasi" on a visit to Malaysia last year, American investors promptly charged him with rudeness. Their reaction was perhaps to be expected, as "reformasi," or reform, is shorthand for dumping Malaysia's investment-friendly prime minister. Less…
IT SEEMS THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT is now prepared to concede that racial preferences in college admissions are really all about discrimination for its own sake. When preferences ended in California and Texas in 1997, educators predicted (mistakenly) that minority enrollment would drop…
HOW DO REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL candidates whip the crowds into a frenzy? They tear apart Clinton and Gore, demand tax cuts for hard-working Americans, and reminisce about the Gipper. Now add to this ballistic missile defense. As unlikely as it sounds, the issue -- boosting America's defense against…
THE SCRAPBOOK is now going to reveal for the first time esoteric knowledge that is shared by all American conservatives, imparted to us during adolescence by our elders.
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER TRENT LOTT wanted witnesses. Given his druthers, he'd haul President Clinton up to the Senate to testify in the impeachment trial. That may be a stretch, but having any witnesses at all seemed unlikely only a few days before three -- Monica, Vernon, and Sid -- were actually…
After overseeing the 1,600 volunteers in Anthony Williams's victorious mayoral campaign, David Howard was appointed to be the District of Columbia's public advocate. On January 15, about two weeks into his new job, Howard, who happens to be white, told two members of his staff that, given the lack…
Was it worth it? Was it worth losing five Republican congressmen in 1998 and risking more in 2000, consuming a year of the nation's time, dragging dozens of unwilling figures into the glare of publicity, and depressing the party's poll numbers, all in an attempt to punish the president for telling…
New Picture (3).jpg
On March 21, a long-standing and bitter injustice will be rectified: That evening, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science is scheduled to award a special Oscar to the 89-year-old director Elia Kazan. How the glittering audience at Oscar Night will greet this controversial presentation is…
ON MARCH 21, a long-standing and bitter injustice will be rectified: That evening, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science is scheduled to award a special Oscar to the 89-year-old director Elia Kazan. How the glittering audience at Oscar Night will greet this controversial presentation is…
Last week, as THE SCRAPBOOK reported, Governor Jeb Bush accused California civil rights leader Ward Connerly of wanting a "war." Connerly had come to Florida to promote a ballot initiative ending racial preferences in the state, modeled on his successful effort in California. Bush, amazingly,…
New York, the open city, the city created by its harbor, has always been both invigorated and imperiled by disorder.
Isaiah Berlin -- with two long i's in the first name for the proper pronunciation, please -- was a name that rang the gong in the best academic and intellectual circles for nearly half a century. "Isaiah" -- I have heard that name roll off anglophiliac lips with no less pleasure than a wine…
Of all the instances of Clintonian State of the Union excess over the past six years, THE SCRAPBOOK was prepared to award first prize to the moment last Tuesday night when the president ostentatiously mouthed the words "I love you" to Hillary. But then Michael Medved, on his national radio talk…
THE SHAM DEAL ON KOSOVO that Richard Holbrooke struck with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic last October has now definitively, and predictably, collapsed. Like so many other feats of Clintonian diplomacy over the past few years -- especially in Iraq -- the bargain with Milosevic was a…
ON JANUARY 8, 1999, the United States Senate, in all its dignity, solemnly swore . . . And talk about great TV! Especially when Trent Lott got tongue-bungled and said that the chief justice "will now administer the oaf." Anyway, the United States Senate, in all its dignity . . . If we don't count…
With the publication of Ex-Friends, Norman Podhoretz has performed a near to thrilling intellectual feat. Each of the figures he takes up in memory and judgment -- Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer -- is a prototype of sorts. Together they…
WITH THE PUBLICATION of "Ex-Friends," Norman Podhoretz has performed a near to thrilling intellectual feat. Each of the figures he takes up in memory and judgment--Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer--is a prototype of sorts. Together they…
NO ISSUES, NO LEADERS, NO GUTS -- other than these shortcomings, the Republican party is in great shape. Gallows humor is now rife in the GOP. "Every day at the RNC feels like an eternity," joked Jim Nicholson after he was reelected Republican national chairman last week. "Some days it's tough just…
Plainfield, Connecticut, is a nice, decent American community. It's a town of about 14,000 people, up near the northeast border with Rhode Island. It was incorporated in 1699 and quickly became a small industrial center, powered by the two rivers, the Quinebaug and the Moosup, that flow by. George…
Wendell Gauthier loves to smile. Sure, the most renowned class-action lawyer in New Orleans possesses many other trademarks. He has full-bodied Atticus Finch hair, and he's tailored like a mogul from Milan. With a soft Cajun accent, he's a fount of country-lawyer malapropisms (he says his old…
IT's SOMEHOW FITTING that senators and pundits should be swooning over the White House lawyer who made the weakest defense of President Clinton. Cheryl Mills, a deputy counsel to the president, argued on January 20 that Bill Clinton did not obstruct justice in conversations with Betty Currie last…
Recently I had the dubious pleasure of seeing my high school on the stage. I saw the musical Fame, which is based on the 1980 movie about New York City's High School of Performing Arts, my alma mater. Like the movie and its so-so television off-shoot, the musical fails to do justice to the…
Regular readers of THE SCRAPBOOK will be familiar with the saga of Renaissance Weekend honcho Phil Lader, longtime friend of the Clintons and current U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James. Several weeks ago THE SCRAPBOOK reported that Ambassador Lader, at a speech before a group of Americans in…
While much of America is sleepily rubbing its belly and burping with satisfaction, may we take just a moment to point out that the state of the Union is actually quite bad?
The love that dare not speak its name, according to the Merriam-Webster thesaurus, has many names, including: (adj.) inverted, queer, uranian; (related terms) bisexual, epicene, transvestite, lesbian; (noun) faggot, fruit, homo; (related terms) fairy, nancy, pansy, swish, sapphist, sodomite,…
Ward Connerly, the California businessman who was responsible for the successful California Civil Rights Initiative two years ago, went to Florida last week to call on the new Republican governor Jeb Bush and other state politicians. It was a courtesy call -- Connerly may launch a ballot initiative…
Everything will be different eighteen months from now. It's one of the oldest rules of politics, and also one of the hardest to remember. The present is so real, so glaring; the future so murky, so contingent. Who could believe in 1991 that the triumph in the Gulf would immediately fade? Or that…
Kevin Kelly is executive editor of Wired magazine, the monthly bible of the techno-utopians, and his book New Rules for the New Economy is techno-utopianism in all its fullness: adolescent rantings against authority; promiscuous generalizations that would be maddening if they weren't so silly;…