Party Schools
I s there really no longer a difference in the education policies of the major parties? Consider this year’s election campaign: While the Al Gore ticket boasted a vice presidential candidate on record in support of school vouchers, George W. Bush busied himself visiting poor inner-city schools to decry the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”…
American Gothic
I t has long been clear to feminists that crusades against witchcraft reflect a primal fear of feminine power and aim to punish women, most brutally, for transgressing gender roles. But if accusations of witchcraft are useful as instruments of social control, they’re not necessarily cynical; often, they’re entirely sincere. As a casual perusal of…
Ralph Burns Down the House
While the nation focuses on the still-contested presidential election Ralph Nader threw into question, the effect his campaign had on Democrats running for Congress has gone largely unnoticed. From the outset of his effort, Nader argued that even if his candidacy stole votes from Al Gore, it would mobilize progressive voters to support Democratic congressional…
The Other Republican
H ad November 7 put an end to this year’s campaign frenzy as election days normally do, political analysts would now be focusing much more attention on the Republicans’ unexpectedly strong showing in the House–and on the man who has as solid a claim as any to credit for that outcome: John McCain. Throughout the…
Comment: Who Governs?
W hoever wins, this will be the election that was stolen. Republicans have played the nastier hardball, throwing around phrases like coup d’etat, questioning the very legitimacy of courts to decide questions of law, intimidating vote counters, and shamelessly using election officials as partisan hacks. Thus energized, they are certain that George W. Bush truly…
Learning to Love the Gun
Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, Michael A. Bellesiles. Alfred A. Knopf, 603 pages, $30.00. It is as if Michael A. Bellesiles has overturned a table on which rested everything we thought we knew about guns in early America. The image of the rifle hanging over every American mantel, of settlers depending…
Folktales
“I t’s amazing how you always manage to work anal intercourse into the conversation,” Debbie, the colorful waitress-with-a-heart-of-gold and suffocatingly supportive mother of one of the central characters on Showtime’s Queer as Folk (premiering December 3), says to her son and his friends. Indeed, the first few of the 22 episodes of the show–an American…
Land Mass Follies
Despite media and pollster predictions to the contrary, George W. Bush lost the nation’s popular vote to Al Gore on November 7. But according to Republican howitzers Rush Limbaugh, David Horowitz, and others, he won something more important: the most land. During the early stages of the Florida recount, both www.rushlimbaugh.com and Horowitz’s Front Page…
Ripe Hypocrisy in Florida
As the Democrats’ legal hurricane rages across the citrus orchards of the Sunshine State, a stench is emanating from the orange groves–and it isn’t the smell of the Everglades. The Gore campaign has sunk to new lows by turning to the federal judiciary in a blatantly partisan effort to defy the recount process unanimously approved…
Echo Chamber of Horrors
Let’s get one thing straight right from the get-go. We would rather be last in reporting returns than be wrong… . If we say somebody has carried a state, you can pretty much take it to the bank, book it that that’s true. –Dan Rather, CBS News, early evening, November 7 We’ve always said, you…
Pandemonium
A s more Americans become disengaged from politics, America’s political class has declared civil war. The 2000 election is a case in point. Prior to election day, it was dull, lifeless, and tightly scripted. The candidates fulminated over their differing versions of prescription drug benefits. Half of America’s eligible voters didn’t even bother voting. After…
Where the Right Lost
A fter the muddled 2000 election and the evenly divided Congress it produced, it didn’t take any special wisdom for the pundits to conclude that nobody got a mandate and that voters were too split to send any clear signal. But on some major issues, the electorate spoke with absolute clarity. One such issue was…
Lessons for Next Time
A fter trailing for almost all of the last six weeks before the election, Al Gore wound up the victor in the popular vote on November 7, nosing out George W. Bush 48.6 percent to 48.3 percent. Where did all these Gore voters come from? First and foremost, they came from the Democratic base. According…
Reforming Reform
E ven as it prepares for yet another attempt to ban unregulated soft money in the form of the modest McCain-Feingold bill, the movement for campaign finance reform is further than ever from its goal of getting money out of politics. That’s because passing McCain-Feingold would have little effect in the real world. Much of…
Patenting Life
T he backlash against gene patenting is heating up, and not a moment too soon. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has already granted more than 1,000 patents on human genes or their fragments, with over 20,000 pending. The patent office plans to issue new guidelines by the end of the year: Researchers will now…
Deeper in Debt
Ben Franklin might seem, at first glance, to have little in common with Karl Marx. But when the German philosopher wrote in the Grundrisse that “the individual carries … his bond with society in his pocket,” the author of Poor Richard’s Almanack might well have agreed. One of our most enduring American faiths is that…
Divine Commerce
One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy, Thomas Frank. Doubeday, 414 pages, $26.00 Some years ago, a newly minted corporate lawyer attempted to explain to me the mysterious workings of the free market. His handiest analogy for the market’s just and equitable distribution of goods was the way…
Why Negro Humor is so Black
L et us now, at long last, praise all those Negro humorists from years gone by. Some still with us, but so many gone. Moms Mabley and Pigmeat Markham and Redd Foxx and Flip Wilson and Bert Williams and Amos ‘n’ Andy, gone. Stepin Fetchit, gone. Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor and Chris Rock and…
A Guide for the Perplexed
S everal years ago, I was the lone African American in a small group of people spending an academic year together. It had all the makings of a great experience, except for one persistent problem: A few in the group were determined to spend at least a portion of their time exploring race relations. Unfortunately,…
Places of Peace
G eorge Washington opens on a close-up of a boy’s sneakered feet carefully maneuvering along a rusted beam. Dusted in sunlight, it’s a quintessential image of American boyhood, evoking freedom as well as risk. He may be a kid killing time, testing his balance on a fence. Or a wanderer on a train track, both…
