The Nation back issues from January 1990:
The great pretender. (George Bush) (editorial)
Jan 01, 1990 ... THE GREAT PRETENDER Year One of the Bush era has been distinguished by nothing so much as as complete absence of distinction. The single successful initiative the Administration has pursued is the umpteen-billion-dollar, open-ended bailout of the savings and loan industry, perhaps the most ...
The other intifada: the crucial economic war heats up. (Palestinian uprising)
Jan 01, 1990; ... THE CRUCIAL ECONOMIC WAR HEATS UP As the Palestinian uprising enters its third year, Israel's response to the continuing mass protests has grown more violent. Soldiers have been authorized to open fire on Palestinians practically at will--for actions such as wearing a mask, not heeding a ...
A will to lose. (International Association of Machinists strike against Eastern Airlines) (editorial)
Jan 01, 1990 ... A Will to Lose The joke has it that if Eastern Airlines had somehow been renamed Eastern Europe by the bankruptcy court, George Bush would have supported the bill calling for mediation of the ten-month strike. After Bush vetoed the bill on November 21, however, the pilots and ...
Fidel holds fast. (Fidel Castro)
Jan 01, 1990; ... Fidel Holds Fast Of all the hundreds of speeches that Fidel Castro has delivered over the past thirty-one years, few have been of such singular interest as his funeral oration on December 7 for the 2,289 Cubans (the number is now official) killed in Angola and other wars. ...
Sacred land. (Navajo tribe ordered to relocate)
Jan 01, 1990; ... Sacred Land Not far from Tuba City, on the Navajo Indian Reservation in northern Arizona, a sign along the highway advertises a fossilized dinosaur track. Faintly embedded in the Mesozoic rock are the 200-million-year-old tracks of a large biped dinosaur with a seven-foot ...
Uncivil liberties. (satire on anti-communist fanatics) (column)
Jan 01, 1990; ... UNCIVIL LIBERTIES I ran into a friend of mine who told me that everything that has been happening in Eastern Europe is part of a setup. He said that the Communists are faking it in order to lull us into a false sense of security. And what happens when we're safely lulled? Then, he said, ...
Minority report. (East-West relations) (column)
Jan 01, 1990 ... MINORITY REPORT A large but stupid-looking man presents himself for employment at a lumber camp in Alaska. Has he, asks the foreman, any previous experience at lumberjacking? Yes, responds the man assertively, he has been a lumberjack in the Sahara. But there are no trees in ...
Scenario for a quagmire: fighting drugs with the military.
Jan 01, 1990; ... SCENARIO FOR A QUAGMIRE Fighting Drugs With the Military Slowly but surely the U.S. armed forces are edging to the brink of full-scale military involvement in the Latin American drug wars. With the mounting pressure on President Bush to "do something" ...
The Olin money tree: dollars for neocon scholars. (John M. Olin Foundation donations to universities)
Jan 01, 1990; ... THE OLIN MONEY TREE The John M. Olin Foundation is pouring millions of dollars into universities in an effort to reshape the curriculums, take the intellectual initiative away from the academic left and give scholarly legitimacy to Reaganite social and economic policies. The 1988 ...
White House diary: Prez v. uptight re: boldness gap. (political satire)
Jan 01, 1990; ... WHITE HOUSE DIARY Oct. 6: Prez still taking a beating on Noriega non-coup. At p.-conf. today, Helen Thos. asked, "Didn't we miss our chance? Are you do too slow to deal with unfolding events? Shouldn't we strike while the iron's hot?" Prez said, "Keep your pants on, ...
Danny's little deduction. (cartoon; political satire on Dan Quayle)
Jan 01, 1990; ... DANNY'S LITTLE DEDUCTION I WAS WONDERING HOW WE COULD KEEP THE COLD WAR GOING IF THE RUSSIANS TURN CAPITALIST. ...
The merger that wasn't. (The Nation and The New Republic)
Jan 01, 1990; ... The Merger That Wasn't A few weeks ago, The New Republic marked its 75th anniversary. In 1990, The Nation celebrates its 125th. Once the two journals were thought to be so close that they might as well have been joined at the hip. Nowadays only the 249 million Americans who ...
Fever.
Jan 01, 1990; ... FEVER "Do not look for straight-forward, linear steps from book to book," wrote John Edgar Wideman in the 1985 preface to his Homewood Trilogy. "Think rather of circles within circles within circles, a stone dropped into a still pool, ripples and wavemotions." In Fever, Wideman ...
Architecture (development of signature architecture in the 1980s)
Jan 01, 1990; ... ARCHITECTURE If the 1980s--with their promotion of the superscale and their destruction of the human scale, with their pride of Trump (Donald) and their surfeit of Johnson (Philip), with their endorsement of privacy and their dissolution of community--were to have an architectural ...
Born on the Fourth of July.
Jan 01, 1990; ... Born on the Fourth of July Focus on Raul Ruiz Holiday Celluloid Wrap-up Roger and Me, Round II Most movies never reach an emotional simmer; a rare few boil over. And then there's Born on the Fourth of July, which shoots off the screen like pressurized steam. Directed with ...
Focus on Raul Ruiz. (Chilean director)
Jan 01, 1990; ... Focus on Raul Ruiz Focus on Raul Ruiz will be on view in New York through ...
The Suspended Vocation.
Jan 01, 1990; ... Suspended Vocation As for The Suspendend Vocation--No, really, I couldn't possibly explain. Perhaps some other critic--let's call him Josef K--might tell you it's about the Catholic Church, the Chilean left, various schools of film theory, the battle between matriarchy and ...
The Penal Colony.
Jan 01, 1990; ... Penal Colony "Don't worry," a colleague said, as I sat down for my first Raul Ruiz experience. "His movies are all different. So if you don't like this one, you can always wait and see if the next one suits you better." I had just confessed to a complete ignorance of ...
Music Box.
Jan 01, 1990; ... Music Box Here is a brief guide for politically correct and aesthetically satisfying holiday viewing. I offer it in the spirit of a young man a few rows in front of me at Back to the Future II, who rose at the conclusion with the best one-line commentary I've heard on that ...
Camille Claudel.
Jan 01, 1990; ... Camille Claudel Camille Claudel is the official French entry for the Academy Awards and as such puts the recently revived "tradition of quality" back into its grave. Director Bruno Nuytten has taken the utterly riveting story of this doomed sculptress and turned it into something ...
We're No Angels.
Jan 01, 1990; ... We're No Angels, We're No Angels, directed by Neil Jordan from a screenplay by David Mamet, is a dark comedy (or perhaps a light drama) about two escaped convicts impersonating priests. That stars--Robert De Niro and Sean Penn--do more mugging than talking; after an effective ...
The War of the Roses.
Jan 01, 1990; ... The War of the Roses The high point of The War of the Roses is the title sequence, direct by Elaine and Saul Bass. The camera peers and pokes through the folds of a snow-white fabric, at last revealing it to be a handkerchief. Then comes the first scene, in which the director of ...
Roger and Me.
Jan 01, 1990; ... Roger and Me Michael Moore's Roger and Me, the movie America has been waiting for, opens at the end of December, bringing its tale of corporate rapacity and working-class pain to screens across the country, though not, as Moore notes, to Flint, Michigan, where it was shot. All ...
New Music America. (music showcase)
Jan 01, 1990; ... New Music America After a decade of traveling around the United States, New Music America returned to New York November 8-18 under the aegis of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. More than a hundred acts from all over the musical map were booked at twenty-odd venues (including BAM) ...
Gun-barrel democracy. (United States and Panama) (editorial)
Jan 08, 1990 ... GUN-BARREL DEMOCRACY When a superpower allows its satellites to arrange their own affairs, the results can be astounding: Four Eastern European regimes have been swept away, almost without bloodshed. But Moscow's renunciation of empire inspires no similar feelings in Washington. On the ...
Philippines coup attempt: how Cory squandered people power. (Corazon Aquino)
Jan 08, 1990; ... PHILIPPINES COUP ATTEMPT HOW CORY SQUANDERED PEOPLE POWER The streets of the Philippines came alive in 1989. On May Day nearly 150,000 workers marched through the country's major cities, demanding an increase in the abysmally low ...
Body invaders. (Department of Transportation regulations mandate drug testing) (editorial)
Jan 08, 1990 ... Body Invaders The extension of routine drug testing to some 4 million private-industry employees by a Department of Transportation fiat that took effect in December is a horrendous assault on personal autonomy, individual liberty and constitutional rights. In its sweep and scope, ...
Dance of life. (deaths of James Baldwin and Alvin Ailey) (editorial)
Jan 08, 1990; ... Dance of Life By a strange twist of fate, the funerals of two major African-American artists were held within the stone walls of New York City's cavernous Cathedral of St. John the Divine two years apart to the very day, very near to the hour: "A Celebration of the Life of James ...
Salvadoran abyss. (political unrest in El Salvador) (editorial)
Jan 08, 1990; ... Salvadoran Abyss "They should either kill them all or negotiate," the well-to-do Salvadoran businessman said in nearly flawless English. Leftist guerrillas had taken over this usually quiet suburban neighborhood, and some had even passed the night in his home. "This thing has to ...
Let's play bounty. (United States offers bounty for Manuel Noriega) (Beat the Devil) (column)
Jan 08, 1990; ... Let's Play Bounty The exciting thing about the million-dollar bounty offered by the U.S. government for Noriega's head is the way it amplifies the conceptual underpinnings of the Reagan revolution. The bounty, and indeed the invasion, expands the idea of deregulation, decisively ...
Bloody Monday. (Brazilian elections, Polish economy, Bolivia) (Beat the Devil) (column)
Jan 08, 1990; ... Bloody Monday Once in a while history deals all the cards from the bottom of the deck. Comes December 18 and Monday morning's newpaper tells methat Lula has narrowly lost the presidential election in Brazil. I try to drape myself in silver lining. Had Lula won and headed toward ...
White herring. (international relations in the press: China, Tibet, Palestine, Eastern Europe)
Jan 08, 1990; ... White Herring The complacency with which the upsurge in Eastern Europe is associated with the triumph of "Western values" is becoming unendurable. It's true that there was some commotion here over the speed with which the Bush Administration rushed to mend fences with te Chinese ...
D'Amato and his little rascals. (Alfonse D'Amato; congressional investigation of Housing and Urban Development) (Beltway Bandits) (column)
Jan 08, 1990; ... D'Amato and His Little Rascals Pity Henry Schuelke 3d, the special counsel retained by the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate Alfonse D'Amato. The committee's complaint contains a litany of Charges, the most prominent of which concerns the Republican's alleged use of ...
The Senator from Puerto Rico. (Thomas Broussard) (Beltway Bandits) (column)
Jan 08, 1990; ... The Senator From Puerto Rico Then there is Thomas Broussard, A Wilson pal and California lawyer who may have benefited from D'Amato's intervention at HUD. In 1986 Broussard, who had been hired by a Rhode Island developer to try to obtain HUD funds, came to the attention ...
The house of D'Amato. (Alfonse D'Amato) (Beltway Bandits) (column)
Jan 08, 1990; ... The House of D'Amato D'Amato's tight relationship with th e heads of the New York HUD office, particularly Monticciolo, is well known. But there are plenty of other personal links that indicate HUD was D'Amato's duchy. A Lisa Monticciolo, who lived at the same address as Joseph, ...
Ceausescu's Rumania: Stalinism with an iron fist. (Nicolae Ceausescu)
Jan 08, 1990; ... CEAUSESCU'S RUMANIA Stalinism With An Iron Fist In the 1970s Rumania had a uniquely cordial relationship with the West. Its leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, attended five summit meetings with several U.S. Presidents and obtained most favored nation status ...
Teamster reform: Carey challenges the porkchoppers. (Ron Carey; International Brotherhood of Teamsters)
Jan 08, 1990; ... TEAMSTER REFORM Carey Challenges The Porkchoppers It is possible, just possible, that democracy may be about to come to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Dissidents, if they work hard and imaginatively, may very well elect as the union's ...
Letter from Ward Holler: at the bottom of the well.
Jan 08, 1990; ... LETTER FROM WARD HOLLER At the Bottom Of the Well They came over at 10 o'clock that morning--a tall, thin poet with a hank of rope over his shoulder and a stocky rock mason with the arms of a blacksmith. We heard their voices out by the well, then the ...
Socialism: Past and Future.
Jan 08, 1990; ... SOCIALISM: Past and Future The death of Michael Harrington is the end of an era in the history of American socialism. He was the socialist evangelist of our time--the bearer of the mantles of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas. Unlike Debs and Thomas, however, Harrington was a ...
Toward a Feminist Theory of the State.
Jan 08, 1990; ... TOWARD A FEMINIST THEORY OF THE STATE Catharine MacKinnon is widely known as the Meese Commission's favorite feminist and the lawyer who, in league with Andrea Dworkin, wrote and campaigned for municipal ordinances against pornography through most of the 1980s. A.C.L.U. devotees ...
Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life.
Jan 08, 1990; ... FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA: A Life "Only mystery enables us to live, only mystery," wrote Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), the poet of Granada whose brief and prodigious career seemed the very incarnation of the anguished, mysterious force that Spaniards call duende. "The duende," ...
The middle years. (poem)
Jan 08, 1990; ... THE MIDDLE YEARS Never mind the moon, the sun turned summer-silver, the squealing bluejays fighting for a tree. Living on hardscrabble, what we desirelies buried under years of crops. Memories alone can't hold good children back, for they've heard rumors: something is out there ...
The Tempest. (Roundabout, New York)
Jan 08, 1990; ... THEATER Stripped of its gossamer fancy and 24-karat poetry, The Tempest is a rather nasty story, and its protagonist has to be Shakespeare's most unflattering self-portrait as a duplicitoust tyrant. The current production at the Roundabout, directed by the Royal Shakespeare ...
A Few Good Men.
Jan 08, 1990; ... Few Good Men A Few Good Men suffers similarly from a subtext the playwright, Aaron Sorkin, has tried to sweep under the rug. It is, even so, a pretty good play, and it has been given a production that maximizes all its virtues, with Tom Hulce (who played Mozart in the movie of ...
Three Poets. (Theatre for the New City, New York)
Jan 08, 1990; ... Three Poets Romulus Linney's Three Poets, at the Theatre for the New City, is a suite of three short plays on the subject of oppressed women avenging themselves through the act of poetry. The most substantial of the three pieces takes place on the day of Stalin's death and ...
Grand Hotel: the Musical. (New York)
Jan 08, 1990; ... Grand Hotel: The Musical Grand Hotel is the second musical of the season to have taken root on Broadway and settled in for a long run, and like the first, Meet Me in St. Louis, it is based on a classic movie. In this case, I'd never seen the original, with Greta Garbo, two ...
Gypsy. (New York)
Jan 08, 1990; ... Gypsy To convey Gypsy's merits, however, requires no more than a thumb, since it is so muc a known quantity and surefire hit, provided only that the role of Rose, the King Kong of show-biz moms, is undertaken by a star or sufficient magnitude. Tyne Daly (known to followers of ...
A recipe for anarchy. (United States invasion of Panama) (editorial)
Jan 22, 1990 ... A RECIPE FOR ANARCHY On December 29, the United Nations General Assembly roundly condemned the U.S. invasion of Panama. More than seventy-five nations voted for the resolution and forty more, many concerned they might be future targets for intervention, reluctantly abstained. Nonaligned ...
Saving hypocrisy in Panama: Bush's splendid little war.
Jan 22, 1990; ... BUSH'S SPLENDID LITTLE WAR It was a made-to-order occasion for muscle flexing: a central-casting villain, with a weakness for drugs, voodoo, pornography and pictures of Hitler, who made clumsy threats and shed American blood; a relatively low-cost military operations to convince taxpayers ...
Home brew. (white supremacists; terrorism) (editorial)
Jan 22, 1990 ... Home Brew When terrorism came to America, it was supposed to wear a towel around its head, carry a hammer and sickle in its clenched fist, or do drugs--perhaps all at the same time. The ubiquitous terrorologists who haunt the political talk shows warned of Libyan hit squads, ...
Dumping on us. (Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rules on radioactive waste) (editorial)
Jan 22, 1990; ... Dumping on Us No Federal agency has more eagerly protected a corrupt, bankrupt industry that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. From its beginning in the mid-1970s, when it inherited the dubious mantle of the old Atomic Energy Commission, the N.R.C. has done all in its power to ...
Minority report. (Rumania) (column)
Jan 22, 1990; ... MINORITY REPORT. Timisoara, Transylvania, Rumania Nothing prepares you for a place like Timisoara; nothing, that is, except the collective memory of our beautiful century. The people of this city were strafed from the air like the inhabitants of Guernica. They were ...
China after Tiananmen: it's a whole new class struggle.
Jan 22, 1990; ... CHINA AFTER TIANANMEN It's a Whole New Class Struggle National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft's most recent clandestine trip to Beijing on behalf of President Bush delicately ignored the terrible underside of post-June Chinese politics--the waves of ...
Old South vs. the new: more than a football game.
Jan 22, 1990; ... OLD SOUTH VS. THE NEW Herald of a new decade, 1990 nevertheless began as every year begins in America, with football. Amid the pageantry of the college bowl games and the mammoth hype leading up to the Super Bowl, a new sheaf of stories is being added to the enduring mythology of ...
Puerto Rico's future status: prisoners of many myths.
Jan 22, 1990; ... PUERTO RICO'S FUTURE STATUS Prisoners of Many Myths Except for winter vacation reservations, about the only time Puerto Rico emerges in ordinary conversation is at a time of disaster. If Hurricane Hugo is not enough, then the news media wait for ...
ESOP fables: not just a capitalist tool. (employee stock ownership plans)
Jan 22, 1990; ... Not Just a Capitalist Tool Did 1989 mark the dawn of corporate socialism in the United States? Last year a remarkable number of corporate giants ceded significant ownership to employees through employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). In January workers at Procter & Gamble acquired ...
Pete Rose: My Story.
Jan 22, 1990; ... PETE ROSE: My Story. Wade Boggs, Steve Garvey and Pete Rose are drinking together in a bar when an attractive woman walks in. "Man," Boggs drools, "would I like to spend the night with her." Garvey is offended: "Wade, you're talking about the future mother ...
Playing for Keeps: a History of Early Baseball.
Jan 22, 1990; ... PLAYING FOR KEEPS: A History of Early Baseball. Nineteen eighty-nine was not the best year for baseball fans, especially those in the East. Our heroes were hurt, our teams kept losing, Pete Rose was banished, the promised pennant races never materialized, the World Series was ...
Never Too Young to Die: the Death of Len Bias.
Jan 22, 1990; ... NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE: The Death of Len Bias It's not easy reading the sports pages these days. Those seeking fantasy and wish fulfillment with their morning coffee find instead tales of rapes, robberies, suicides, drug arrests, extramarital affairs, lies and corruption. Why do ...
Winning is the Only Thing: Sports in America Since 1945.
Jan 22, 1990; ... WINNING IS THE ONLY THING: Sports in America Since 1945 Winning Is the Only Thing, by Randy Roberts and James Olson, reminds us that while the sports world may be seamier than ever, scandals are nothing new. In 1929 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching released ...
A Payroll to Meet: a Story of Greed, Corruption, and Football at SMU.
Jan 22, 1990; ... A PAYROLL TO MEET: A Story of Greed, Corruption, and Football at SMU David Whitford does a fine job of detailing a decade of sordid events leading to S.M.U.'s banishment from football in A Payroll to Meet. They occurred at an institution that built its football stadium eleven ...
The Hundred Yard Lie: The Corruption of College Football and What We Can Do to Stop It.
Jan 22, 1990; ... THE HUNDRED YARD LIE: The Corruption of College Football and What We Can Do to Stop It The scandal at S.M.U. came about because the school violated a certain set of rules. But the time has come to acknowledge that the rules themselves are the problem. Successfully competing in ...
The Seven Deadly Sins.
Jan 22, 1990; ... THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS Is sin a feminist issue? Do women sin differently from men? Since the days of the archdemons, Alison Fell points out in her introduction to these seven stories from the near side of hell, the Deadly Sins have been personified as male--Lucifer is Pride, ...
Tim Rollins + K.O.S. (Kids of Survival; artists)
Jan 22, 1990; ... Tim Rollins + K.O.S. My first experience with the work of Tim Rollins + K.O.S.--a name initially as mystifying as that of many rock groups--came from the strikign cover of Artforum for May 1988, which showed a fragment, as I learned, from one of their Amerika tableaux, which was ...
Time to pay the dividend. (Congressional agenda) (editorial)
Jan 29, 1990 ... TIME TO PAY THE DIVIDEND Dear 101st Congress: Welcome back. Thanks to the recent pay raise most of you should be feeling more solvent and many of you will be able to pay more attention to the public good than you have in past sessions. Since your median age is 55, ...