Charlotte Smith, from P.J.’s hometown of Toledo (How are the Mud Hens doing?), Ohio, says, “There’s something wonderful about sweeping indictments,” and sweepingly indicts:
People who say “awhnt” instead of “aunt” who weren’t born in England
Anybody fool enough to have been, or wish to have been, at Woodstock
Liberals who breathlessly follow the doings of the Royal Family
Jay Hass of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, submits:
Primert
Avantor
Synovus
Crestar
Imtrex
Cenit
Centura
Sovran
“Incredibly,” says Mr. Hass, “these are not chemical compounds, computer passwords, government agencies, or figures of classical mythology, but names with which fitted-shirt and tapered-slack members of boards have rechristened eight American banks. Whatever happened to names which told you something about the business or its clientele, such as Citizens and Southern, the Detroit Bank and Trust Company, and First and Merchants National Bank?”
“Why seine for minnows?” asks George M. Hollenback of Houston, Texas, an unrepentant Pelagian who believes in free will and personal responsibility.
Go for a really big fish like Augustine of Hippo who screwed up Western civilization by laying the foundation for all leftist “isms” that plague it today. Big Brother and the Welfare State are both the inevitable result of his incessant whining about the innate rottenness and helplessness of man. Ditto for ‘liberation theology’ and pinko clerics who currently infest the Body of Christ.
Back with the minnow net is John C. McPherson of Mt. Ida, Arizona, lowering the boom on:
Anyone who compares the United States to “other industrial nations” for any purpose whatsoever
Police Chief Joseph McNamara of San Jose
The Police Foundation
Any cop who uses his title and uniform to front for liberal causes
Anyone attending a “silent vigil” at an execution
Anyone using the term “the new homeless” with a straight face
Anyone suggesting that we just don’t pay enough taxes in this country
V. Maida of New York, New York, sends us the names of “a few more who need to be rooted out”:
Animal rights activists who think hassling women on the street constitutes a tremendous contribution to the planet: Why don’t they pick a fight with a Hell’s Angel in a leather jacket?
Judge Stewart Hancock of the New York Court of Appeals, who reversed the harassment conviction of some woman in upstate New York who called a retarded woman a “bitch” and her son a “dog”
Elie Wiesel’s hairstylist
A lady with the delightful—Howard W. Whetzel’s opinion to the contrary—name Angeli DiLucca-Paterson from Pasadena, California, scolds:
The inventor of the leaf blower
Any pro football player who gyrates, dances, high-steps, grabs another player’s rear end, or otherwise acts like an imbecile after a touchdown or play
Lawrence P. Biacchi of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, provides us with the “Philosopher’s Enemies List”:
Allan Bloom, for claiming Nietzsche runs the world
Francis Fukuyama, for digging up Hegel
Any guy who, at this moment, is planning to dig up Kant
Thank you, Mr. Biacchi, and allow us to refer you to the “International Philosophers for Prevention of Nuclear Omnicide” cited in our introduction.
Daniel Buksa of Munster, Indiana, a Second Amendment fancier, berates:
Sarah Brady: Yeah, I’m sorry her husband got shot and is now a cripple, but she doesn’t have to take it out on the rest of us. And besides, if anybody should have a gripe, it should be the Gipper. But he’s still an NRA supporter.
All of the rest of the confused legislators and supposed do-gooders who have forgotten that the Second Amendment to the Constitution was designed to prevent an oppressive government abusing the rights of the people—so said Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 29. And so say all of us.
Kyle Jorgenson from Kansas City, Missouri, gives the evil eye to:
U.S. District Judge Russell Clark: When the folks of K.C. voted against raising property taxes, His Officiousness ordered us to increase our property taxes by 91 percent to fund school busing.
A. G. Layton and “friends of the same ilk” from Canada aim their scorn both high and low:
Erasmus of Rotterdam: sanctimonious hypocrite, the spiritual father of all cardiac hemophiliacs
Program Traders on the New York Stock Exchange: sworn enemies of the capitalist system, borers from within
Jim Dornan of Orange County, California, takes special exception to:
Ron Kovic: Kovic... is considering a run for Congress against one of the foremost defenders of freedom in the House of Representatives, Bob Dornan...
Uh, Jim, not that we give a damn about conflicts of interest, but you wouldn’t happen to be any relation?
Leslie Woolf Hedley, editor and publisher of the Exile Press in Sonoma, California, contributes “the following list of those ... whose mental spasms infected American culture”:
John Cage, because he is a brimborion
Creative writing teachers
Stanford University, because they hired and retain an idiot professor who loudly professes that the Holocaust was a Zionist-Hollywood lie
Ezra Pound, because his insanity is still contagious
Mr. Hedley, if you think you’re going to get us to admit we don’t know what “brimborion” means, you are sadly mistaken.
Steve Bodio, an old acquaintance from New Hampshire, has moved to Magdalena, New Mexico, and reports that that otherwise lovely state is afflicted with:
Santa Fe and all its residents and its “style”
People who moved to Bernalillo County and immediately banned the cockfighting that their neighbors had indulged in since 1500
Everybody who says “Native American”: every non-bureaucratically employed Indian I know says “Indian.”
Those who drive by grazed-out Indian lands and bitch about private cattlemen and their subsidies
Nouveau fly fishermen who scorn catfish
Fishermen who claim fishing is not hunting
The Albuquerque Journal, a supposedly Republican daily with a New York Times editorial policy
Fake pickup trucks for yuppies
“Please,” writes Billy Long of St. Petersburg, Florida, “delouse”:
The 94 senators who voted in favor of the “Hate Crimes” Bill S419
C. T. Hellmuth, president of C. T. Hellmuth & Associates Insurance Brokers of Chevy Chase, Maryland, takes a moment from his business day to rebuke the policies of:
Adlai Stevenson, who convinced JFK to deny promised air cover at the Bay of Pigs
The National Education Association’s bureaucrats, the pernicious destroyers of American students’ ability to compete in the world economy by their emphasis on “feel-good” subjects, de-emphasis of mathematics, English, and American history, and their denigration of competitive scholarship
Phil Donahue (Molly Yard in drag): He mouths the pacifist and militant feminist drivel that Mario Thomas has spoon-fed him. Although he likes to pose as the high priest of militant feminism, in his heart he must realize that his brand of loony-left nihilism, America-bashing, and True Confessions exploitation of unfortunately disturbed human beings is a real putdown of intelligent feminists. He would not have a prayer of survival in any time slot where thoughtful viewers had other alternatives.
Arthur Schlesinger, who convinced JFK to stand idly by while the Berlin Wall was being built and then had the audacity to appear on the Today Show to discuss the wall’s fall
Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh
And each of the attorneys who is now working, or has ever worked, with Walsh
And his or her law firms
Ralph Neas, the scabrous architect of the senatorial lynching of Judge Bor
k
Huyler E. Romond, Jr., of Mantoloking, New Jersey, says, with great indignation, “I live in Ocean County, one of the most Republican counties in New Jersey. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 63,339 to 47,059. However, due to gerrymandering, all my elected representatives above the county level are Democrats.” Mr. Romond then lists them. We will see to it, sir. Their time grows short.
Ellen Blacksmith of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, fulminates against:
That demonic voice who did the Dukakis TV ads [She notes he’s not properly out of work, as the Duke is: “He’s been doing AT&T and other commercials.”]
That little misfit who played McCorney in Roe v. Wade on TV
William Norman Grigg of Provo, Utah, has found scum on an unlikely pond—two professors at Brigham Young University:
Eugene England, who, apparently in response to the opening of a McDonald’s in Moscow, lamented the fact that the Soviets have “succumbed to American materialism and preference for speed over taste”
Ted Lyon, who urges students to learn about the “positive aspects” of Marxism, especially liberation theology, which he describes as linking Marx and Christ in a “very holy union”
Gary Osen and Tom Propson, co-chairmen of the Robert Bork Legal Defense Fund at the George Washington University Law School, bring their guns to deck level and load with grape to fire on:
Louis Farrakhan, for making us want to tolerate bigots just a bit
Hodding Carter, for thinking he’s smarter than George Will
Al Sharpton, for forcing us to defend Mario Cuomo
The AFL-CIO, for trying to tear off a hunk of Lech Walesa for themselves
Animal rights activists, for irritating an already unstable and well-armed segment of the population
An anonymous contributor sends us a flyer advertising the “Archbishop Romero March to End the U.S. War in Central America.” Among the organizations listed as sponsoring this traipse of twits:
American Indian Movement
DC SCAR (Student Coalition Against Racism)[Winner of the Infelicitous Acronym Award.]
United Church of Christ [Again, Donna Marmorstein warned us about churches whose names begin with “United.”]
Young Koreans United [Wrong continent, you guys.]
Penn Central America Solidarity Alliance [We pledge to ride the train.]
Plus these oddly yclept Marching and Chowder Societies:
Consider the Alternatives
Going Home
And P.J.’s personal favorite:
Interfaith Office of Accompaniment
Chris Phelps of Glendale, California, sends us a letter beginning, “I know what you’re thinking. A little hasty, too broad a stroke, maybe it should be pared down. P.J., this IS the pared-down version.” He encloses the entire campus telephone directory for the University of California at Berkeley.
Actually, Mr. Phelps, you are being quite unfair. In the faculty and staff section, in the midst of the Ps, is one “Perkins, Karen K.”—a postdoctoral fellow in microbiology who is the former girlfriend of P. J. O’Rourke, a brilliant woman (the “former” proves it), and a staunch conservative.
Camilo O’Kuinghttons, Jr., of San Francisco, California, provides us with our first evidence of Enemies List plagiarism. The Kenneth Cole clothing store ran an ad in the San Francisco Examiner headlined, “Some of the people not invited to the opening of our new store,” followed by a list. Bad enough that Kenneth Cole should crib from us, but his list turned out to contain many of our most favorite people in the world—Exxon executives, Dan Quayle, junk bond salesmen, Millie “The First Dog,” Zamfir, master of the pan flute, nuclear power supporters, anyone named Biff, Mr. T, and Jerry Mathers as the “Beaver.” Nerts to you,
Kenneth Cole
Fritz Sands of Woodinville, Washington, is cheesed at:
George Bush
“Imagine,” says Mr. Sands, “a prediction in the summer of 1988 that the president of the United States would, in two years, offer no aid to a Baltic republic attempting to leave the Soviet Union and that he would base that inaction not on risks to the United States but on risks to the political career of Mikhail Gorbachev. Based on this prediction, wouldn’t you guess that Walter Mondale, or perhaps Gus Hall, had won the 1988 presidential election?”
Susan G. Gamble of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, thumbs her nose at:
U2 and all other rock groups who claim to speak for anyone other than themselves: U2 sings “Angel of Harlem.” What the hell do they know? They’re from Ireland.
Paul Castellano of Alexandria, Virginia, is worried about making the punishment fit the crime. He suggests that “all the actors and actresses on the list should be sentenced to five years locked in a screenwriters’ seminar. All the weepy-drippy folks who talk about ‘networking,’ ‘spiritual wellness,’ etc., should be forced to get a degree—no, make that two degrees—in accounting. And all the television talk show hosts should be forced to adopt lesbian, cross-dressing, obsessive-compulsive children with severe eating disorders.”
Geraldine K. Smith of Chichester, New York, writes to remind us of one more hangover from the sixties, the first decade in history to last thirty years:
Men with long, long hair and earrings
The E. J. Beyer family and their friends—who tell us that they are all over sixty—bring wisdom and experience to bear upon the selection of fools:
Mrs. Betty Ford, for pandering to Planned Parenthood
All those who had a hand in the Alar scare
Pierre Salinger: Why do we have to have his insight on news in Europe?
Nelson Mandela, make that St. Mandela, and his not-yet-canonized wife
Edmund Unneland of Jackson Heights, New York, says that he would like “the academic section of our shock troops of the coming Kulturkampf to deal with the following”:
Arthur Lewin, professor of black studies, who tried to pass off articles in the Journal of Revolutionary Socialism as publication deserving of tenure
Joseph Murphy, outgoing leftist chancellor of the City University of New York
Donald Smith, professor of education who attempted to justify a student’s assault on a lecturer in physical education by referring to a “white control system”
Middle States Association of Colleges, which deferred accreditation of Baruch College by reason of lower rates of minority student retention
Mr. Unneland goes on to say that the above-named persons and MSAC were “the main elements of the Putsch which deposed Joel Segall from the presidency of Baruch College (a part of the City University of New York) for his efforts to resist the establishment of a Black and Hispanic Alumni Association separate from the official group, and for his attempts to establish a test of tenure other than the feather test.”
Timothy L. Shell, a graduate student at the University of Florida, lists several Tom Fools:
Daniel Sheehan, head of the Christic Institute: He’s not just spreading wild-eyed Iran-contra theories in Washington anymore; now his group has moved to Florida to stop the launch of shuttles carrying nuclear-powered space probes.
Eclipse Comics, which preaches the Christic gospel through the medium of “graphic novels”
Marc Neufeld and Bob Rehme, producers of the upcoming film Dancin’ Cross the River. This “real-life” drama is based on Daniel Sheehan’s legal defense of a black Southern mayor reportedly framed for a crime he didn’t commit. The two plan more films about Danny and his kooky. Christie cases and causes.
Paramount Pictures, the company that plans to distribute Dancin’ Cross the River
Ted Danson, who’s supposed to play Daniel Sheehan in Dancin’. Cross the River. Ted also says the world is going to end by 2000.
Black Mountain, North Carolina: Once a beautiful hamlet in the Smoky Mountains, it’s now an enclave of peaceniks, crystal-rubbing New Agers, and other primitive life forms.
Martha Plimpton, vegetarian actress who, when asked if she’d kill a cockroach, replied that it’s “a question
of whether that roach has a real, constructive place on this earth”
Anyone who thinks D.C. statehood is a good idea
Phil Sokolof, the guy who bought those full-page newspaper ads accusing McDonald’s of “poisoning” America with its food. [That’s four McD references in the E-List, readers. An icon, or what?]
The University of Florida Democrats, who showed their unswerving devotion to freedom of speech by trying to shout down Oliver North when he spoke here
Neal D. Bernard, president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. This clown says, “If you’re a meat-eater, you are contributing to the destruction of the environment.” Can you imagine if the whole world took his advice? Six billion people subsisting on beans, rice, and corn—the potential methane gas from such a situation is truly frightening.
Whew, Mr. Shell. That’s a thesis and a half. We award you your degree.
Robert J. Cihak of Aberdeen, Washington, has a “beef with some sawbone quacks, the same bunch who irked our anonymous informant at UCLA:
Physicians for Social Responsibility, the docs who advertised all the diseases and injuries that would result if a nuclear bomb somehow exploded over Seattle. And, therefore, everybody should be against nuclear bombs—the ones under the control of free nations, that is.
We suppose it’s all a matter of how one feels about Seattle. Ourselves, we like the Boeing plant.
Lawrence Cranberg of Austin, Texas, has a branding iron warming in the fire for:
Gara La Marche, a member of the National Board of the ACLU, who thumbed his nose at Chief Justice Burger for suggesting that copies of the Constitution be put in cereal boxes
The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, whose agenda is to help the “disadvantaged.” To further that agenda, it helped finance the Prisoners’ Self-Help Litigation Manual—a six-hundred-page tome by jailhouse lawyer:
Daniel E. Manville, distributed free by the:
ACLU National Prison Project, directed by:
Alvin Bronstein
“The McConnell Foundation has, in fact,” says Mr. Cranberg, “helped create three new classes of the disadvantaged: federal judges who must deal with innumerable frivolous habeas corpus petitions from jailhouse lawyers; students in our schools, whose funding has been diminished to help support prisoners at the level deemed suitable by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation; and the hundreds of prisoners who have been killed and wounded in outbreaks of prison violence that accompanied ACLU/Clark-sponsored prison ‘reform.’”