ArticleIP_3870.txt

   
   
      
         
            

            
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               What's
Not to Reich?
            

            With regard to "Robert Reich,
Quote Doctor," Jonathan Rauch is either mean, foolish, or both. Most of us
in literate America know better than to buy, read, or in any other way attend
to Washington memoirs. Such books are produced at a network-movie-of-the-week
pace (I doubt Reich had time to unpack before his book appeared), and are meant
to polish up whatever glossy finish the author thinks he or she had left upon
crossing the Beltway. It doesn't hurt when journalists talk up otherwise
unremarkable volumes (positively or negatively). Workaday facts, routines, the
same old office coffee, or the unvarnished truth are precisely not the
matter of these books.

            Rauch naively (or cruelly)
and sanctimoniously skewers Reich for doing exactly what is expected of him.
Reich, in his response, is only too happy to put on a display of witty
woundedness. Rauch strikes back, gleeful in his further discovery of docudramatic
distortion in Reich's backhanded self-aggrandizement.

            On net
(no pun intended), Reich sells a few more novels ... I mean, "books," and Rauch
rests easy, knowing he has done his part.

            
               --Robert C.
Cook Evanston, Ill.

            
               Kesey
Does It
            

            I side
with Robert Reich ("Robert Reich, Quote Doctor"). Jonathan Rauch attacks the
difference in details with a small-mindedness that misses the larger picture
Reich was painting. That picture still seems pretty accurate to me. As I read
the transcript of the disputed congressional hearing, and then read Reich's
account of it, I could see how Reich's account could be essentially accurate.
Reich may have actually done a better job of painting a picture of the emotions
present in the room--emotions the transcripts failed to capture. (Although,
even in the transcripts, you could see some definite hostility and sarcasm,
which Rauch seemed to pointedly miss.) As a working professional journalist, I
like accurate quotes. But space should be allowed for a memoir that may not be
as accurate, in the smallest sense, as a daily newspaper. As Chief said in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , "It's the truth, even if it didn't
happen."

            -- Alex
Marshall Norfolk, Va.

            
               We Got
the Beats
            

            While reading "Allen Ginsberg's
Secret," by Paul Berman, regarding the poet's confession of altering a poem
Norman Podhoretz had submitted to the Columbia Review , I was struck by a
dark thought: What if Allen Ginsberg and Norman Podhoretz were the same person?
Weren't both of them noted for taking long sabbaticals? They were writers, and
therefore in a position to arrange their own schedules, correct? And Ginsberg
was noted for unleashing many of his more notable works in marathon sessions
under the influence of controlled substances, while Podhoretz's work diverged
so far from the liberal mainstream that one could argue it could only have
emerged using similar means.

            I think
it behooves Slate, in its effort to take over the public-opinion industry, to
make a thorough effort to uncover the truth behind this unnatural connection.
Slate's choice for this groundbreaking piece? That should be obvious: Robert
Reich.

            -- Donald
Stadler Beltsville, Md.

            
               Apply
Liberally
            

            I was
enjoying reading Karen Lehrman in the "Dialogue" on revisionist
feminism until I came across the statement that "feminism--like
liberalism--requires equality of opportunity, not equality of result." Perhaps
that is an accurate description of Ms. Lehrman's view of feminism, but it is
ludicrous to apply that description to liberalism. Modern liberalism, sad to
say, has strayed far from the libertarian philosophy of classical liberalism.
It is the left, after all, that continues to defend income-redistribution
programs regardless of the evidence on their failure. It is the left that
continues to resist an end to government-imposed racial and sexual
discrimination. It is the left that props up our loophole-ridden tax system by
opposing reforms, such as the flat tax, that are based on treating all
Americans equally. Those of us battling for freedom long for the days when
liberalism was based on equality of opportunity instead of equality of result.
That day, unfortunately, ended a long time ago.

            
               --Daniel J.
Mitchell The Heritage FoundationWashington

            
               In His
Element
            

            After reading David
Edelstein's review of The Fifth Element, I had decided not to waste my time
seeing such an illogical mess. But then I read a rave review in a major paper,
which seemed to agree on every point about the movie's plot save one--the other
reviewer thought it was intentionally funny, instead of unintentionally dumb.
So I went to see it, wondering which of these two reviewers had so totally
missed the point. Twenty minutes into the film I--and everyone else in the
theater--was laughing uproariously . The Fifth Element is one of the
funniest, most visually stunning satires in years!

            The problem with Edelstein's
review is summed up in this observation: "A good half hour is spent getting the
couple past the flight attendants. It's as if Luke Skywalker had to wait around
for his billet to be stamped before he could fly off to destroy the
Death Star." This is actually an accurate description. Imagine various rabid
mass murderers--and a priest--trying desperately to fool an irritated
bureaucrat into believing they're legitimate passengers on the last flight out
to the resort hotel where the Ultimate Weapon of the Universe has been left in
a room. Now have them all try to be the same legitimate passenger, who
has already boarded. Add in some slapstick, with one killer getting catapulted
into a massive mountain of garbage. How could anyone see this and take it
seriously?

            Now that his column is a
regular feature, perhaps Edelstein can amuse us with reviews of some older
movies:

            "The director expects us to
believe not only that Gene Kelly would dance in the rain while using an
umbrella as if it were a cane, but also that a symphony orchestra, conveniently
hidden from view and under some shelter, just happens to be playing a tune
while he does so."

            Or perhaps:

            "In an astonishingly
illogical script, Mr. Allen expects us to believe, among other stupidities,
that a nose flattened by a steamroller would be flexible and bloodless, and
that a Volkswagen Beetle would start up after being neglected for 1,000 years.
Even minimal research should have informed him that no lead-acid battery could
sustain a charge for more than a fraction of that time."

            I look
forward to reading his future nitpickings; I just hope that somewhere along the
way he develops a sense of humor.

            
               --Dan
Schwarcz Sharpsburg, Pa.

            

               Economists Are People, Too
            

            I just
finished Herbert Stein's "Watching the Couples Go By." How can Stein be so literate,
so open-minded, and so commonsensical, and be a Republican economist? Surely
the two sets of phrases have zero overlap?

            -- Alan
Kornheiser
            

            
               Tutti
Faludi
            

            Thank you, both for proving
the necessity of the feminist enterprise and for providing a powerful
commentary on the sad position of contemporary feminism by publishing Herbert
Stein's awful fancies ("Watching the Couples Go By") in the same cyberspace as that
spat between Susan Faludi and Karen Lehrman ("Revisionist
Feminism").

            In a magazine which was
written by Jacob, David, Nathan, Herbert, Bill, Paul, Ross, David, Stephen,
Michael, John, William, David, Michael, Franklin, Robert, and Mark, I was less
surprised by Stein's musings than by your publishing any women at all. I do
feel, however, that his article might more appropriately have been placed under
the "Diary" heading, allowing those of us who don't want to read erotic
confessionals to have neatly avoided it.

            My real quarrel, however, is
with Stein's contention that "I have written these views entirely from the
point of view of the man. That is only natural for me." Well sure, but only if
it is biologically predetermined that men are incapable of understanding
perspectives different from their own. My sense, based on reading Stendhal's
On Love and a number of extraordinarily psychologically astute literary
works by men, is that such a narrow perspective is most assuredly less natural
than acquired. And it is acquired by the perpetuation of precisely the sort of
one-sided public conversation as is found at your site.

            Karen Lehrman, indeed, seems
of a feather with Herbert Stein. She, too, believes that women's understandings
are naturally (biologically) bounded by their own limited experiences and
bodies, and that feminism must therefore focus only on that narrow swath
dictated by such bodies. The most frightening thing to me about all this talk
of nature and biology is that what is really being naturalized is the
marginality of female voices. If men must naturally write only of men, and
women only of women, then feminism and femininity become the only natural
subjects for women writers and reporters. Hence, Anne Hollander on fashion,
Susan Faludi and Karen Lehrman on feminism, and a "Diary" entry by Nancy
Lemann.

            And the
rest of politics, art, and culture? Ceded to the boys, naturally.

            
               --Garance
Franke-Ruta New York City

            
               Hey, Hey,
Paula
            

            I disagree strongly with
columnist Jacob Weisberg's assertion in "Spin
Out" that, by employing renowned attorney Robert Bennett to defend him
against sexual harassment charges, President Clinton has lent credence to those
charges.

            "By hiring an obscure
attorney in Arkansas," Weisberg contends, "or by letting his regular lawyer
handle the case, Clinton would have sent a compelling signal that [the] story
was a fantasy." Perhaps. But that strategy might best have served the president
in the court of public opinion, rather than in a court of law. And it would
certainly not have served him adequately in the present political climate. Keep
in mind that this isn't the simple case of a wronged woman quietly making
allegations against a powerful man. The president's accuser, Paula Jones, has
allowed herself to become a weapon in a much larger and well-known political
battle--that of right-wingers bent on destroying Clinton's reputation and
career. The conservative journalists and other reactionaries who have shoved
her story onto the nation's front pages hope not only to cripple the
president's ability to control the Republican-led Congress, but weaken his
support among women voters, who backed him overwhelmingly for re-election and
will be equally instrumental in promoting Al Gore to the Oval Office in
2000.

            Clinton
has a plateful of historic tasks ahead of him in the next four years. He can
ill afford the politically motivated distractions posed by Jones and others.
He'd have been foolhardy not to trust his defense in this case to an
experienced big gun such as Bennett.

            
               --J. Kingston
Pierce Seattle

            
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