Volume 268 | No. 9

Mon, Jan 15

2001—Wikipedia goes live. 1992—Veepster George H.[H.]W. Bush, trolling for votes in N.H., says “[W]e are blessed. So don’t feel sorry for… don’t cry for me, Argentina.” 1989—TV guest Donald Trump asks host Larry King, “Do you mind if I sit back a little…your breath is very bad.” 1989—The Gipper, on MLK Day, says some civil rights leaders are “doing very well… keeping alive the feeling that they’re victims of prejudice.” 1977—Bill Murray makes his debut on SNL; the host is Ralph Nader. 1970—The Washington Monthly tells U.S. citizens 1,000 U.S. Army spies have been watching them since 1965. 1968—SP/5 Dwight H. Johnson earns the Medal …

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Sun, Jan 14

2000—“This is still a dangerous world… of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses,” warns George W.[MD] Bush. 1969—After warnings from enlisted men aboard the nuke-powered USS Enterprise go unheeded, the exhaust of a flight deck tractor cooks off a Zuni rocket. It hits an F-4’s fuel tank, causing a fire which detonates 4.5 tons of bombs. This goat rodeo kills 27, injures 85, and nearly sinks the ship. 1967—The First Human Be-In is held—in San Francisco, of course. 1963—Standing on a gold star marking the spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy, George Wallace, being sworn in as Governor …

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The “Palestinians Were Immigrants” Canard

To the Editor: Lewis Brackett refers to the “inconvenient truths” that Palestinian Arabs were immigrants, and that Palestine was a desert until Zionists fixed it up. Actually, only extremely uninformed people still consider these hoary myths to be “truth.” The “Palestinians were immigrants” canard has been demolished by Norman Finkelstein, Bill Farrell, Albert Hourani, and others. A number of people, such as Howard Sachar and Yehoshua Porath, have put immigrants at a twelfth of Palestine’s population in 1948. What does Brackett make of recent DNA testing, reported by Haaretz, that indicates half of Palestinians have roots going back to the Canaanites? The desert business is …

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Unsung & Oversung Heroes

by W. D. Ehrhart I was reading a book recently by Jerry Mikorenda called America’s First Freedom Rider. It tells the story of Elizabeth Jennings, a young school teacher in New York City who on a Sunday morning in 1854, while on her way to the church where she was the organist, was physically hurled by the conductor and the driver from the streetcar she tried to board because she was African American. Jennings, who later became Elizabeth Jennings Graham by marriage, hired a lawyer, sued the streetcar company, and won. The young lawyer who took her case was Chester A. Arthur, then an idealistic …

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Are You Ready For Some Taxes?

Welcome, dear reader, to a new year in which we will all be subjected to mass quantities of the same old… same old. That is to say, we may expect dire warnings from sober and serious conservatives, expressing deep concern about the nation’s impending bankruptcy, due entirely to profligate spending by liberals eager to fritter away the hard earned money of widows and orphans. Never mind that said widows and orphans are about to be asked, by the aforementioned pillars of fiscal probity, to expect less from a Social Security system which exempts taxation on earnings above $168,600. And for God’s sake, no one breathe …

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Is There a Script Doctor in the House?

We blame screens. Think about it: how many of today’s problems began with, or are made worse by, people gaping at screens? As with so many things—automobiles, for example—the dire eventual consequences were not evident at first. Now they are so ubiquitous that eliminating them all would be impossible. Just imagine the disruption that would entail. But, given the level of chaos we’re already experiencing, and likelihood that more is coming, it certainly won’t hurt to at least assess this problem. In accordance with our conservative tendencies, we shall begin at the beginning, namely, the Dutch Republic in 1659. Two years after inventing the pendulum …

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