tailhook witch-hunt - Discover the Networks

TAILHOOK
WITCH-HUNT
A
ccording to Navy Lieutenant Paula
Coughlin, a helicopter pilot and
aide to Rear Admiral John W. Snyder,
she had no idea that she would be walking into
sexual hell around midnight on September 6,
1991, when she went up to the third floor of the
Las Vegas Hilton to visit the hospitality suites at
the Tailhook Association's annual convention.
But as she entered the hallway of the hotel, she
immediately found herself in a sea of leery male
faces swollen with sexual energy. A taunting
chant arose, "Admiral's aide! Admiral's aide!"
A man bumped her from behind, grabbing both
of her buttocks and lifting her up off the ground.
Then, as she spun to confront this attacker, someone else grabbed her from behind. She felt hands
going down the front of her blouse.
Paula Coughlin was not the only
victim of this bacchanal. Ensign Elizabeth
Warnick said that she entered a hotel room
after an invitation and was immediately
jumped by three naval aviators who grabbed
and blindfolded her, threw her on the bed and
began ripping her clothes off. With heroic effort
she managed to kick at the men, get herself
free and escape from the room. The scandal
known as "Tailhook" which erupted two years
ago, after Paula Coughlin told her story about
what happened that night in Las Vegas, would
eventually shake the American military and the
culture that supports it more than any event since
the trial of Lieutenant Calley for the My Lai
massacre two decades ago. Just as Calley's
trial became a symbolic event for a military
haunted by losing the war in Vietnam, so the
Tailhook scandal was a symbolic moment for a
profession still trying to accommodate to the
requirements of a gender-integrated force. These
requirements had already created a revolution
INSIDE
inside the military, yet critics claimed that women
still were "second class" participants, restricted from
combat and thus from the careers that conferred the
highest rank and esteem. When Tailhook, the annual
bash of the Navy's and Marine Corps' elite "top
guns," seemed to have turned into an orgy of wholesale sexual harassment and assault it also appeared to
have proven everything the critics said, presenting a
picture of the male military culture which was not
only resistant to change, but morally degenerate and
out of control. When Navy brass instituted a
"cover-up" in the wake of the revelations of
Coughlin and other victims of Tailhook, it was
taken as proof by politicians and the public at
large of the existence of an Old Boy Network
that would stop at nothing to protect its own.
Critics of the military like Representative
Patricia Schroeder said that heads would roll,
and roll they did.
Two years and many military careers
later, these images of sexual barbarism and
cover-up are still firmly fixed in the American
mind. Perhaps they always will be. But as the
Tailhook investigations have been completed
and the trials and court-martials of alleged
criminals have begun, a very different picture
of what took place that fall weekend is beginning to emerge. That the late evening hours of
Friday and Saturday nights on the third floor of
the Las Vegas Hilton constituted a mob scene
which to some extent was out of control is
beyond dispute. That some $23,000 worth of
damage was done (albeit most of it the result of
stains on carpets) cannot be doubted. That
there was in fact public lewdness and sexuality, some drunken brawling, and a general
groping of females by intoxicated military
personnel has been proven. Some civilian
women who strayed into the third floor party
unsuspectingly were indeed verbally and physically abused and there were perhaps one or two
cases of real sexual assault.
All this notwithstanding, however, the
Pentagon investigation, conducted by civilian
federal agents and involving several thousand
interviews with witnesses and detailed reports
on the night's activities in every single one of
the 26 hospitality suites, shows something else
Turn to page 10
THE NEWS FROM GILLIGAN'S ISLAND
BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY
by BARBARA RHOADES-ELLIS
BILL & HILLARY
GO TO THE MOVIES
TRANSSEXUALS vs.
LESBIANS:
The Last Battle In The
Erogenous Zone
PC NOVEL
AND THE BAND
PLAYED ON AND
ON AND ON...
T
ment, and the work of Carol Gilligan is
now a fast-selling book, Meeting at the
Crossroads: Women's Psychology and
Girls' Development, coauthored by Lyn
Mikel Brown.
Even Kathleen Parker, a funny and
usually sensible life-style columnist, was
impressed by Gilligan's apercu when
she read about it in People magazine.
"Girls have it tougher," Parker wrote.
"So say researchers who already knew
this, inasmuch as they are women, but
apparently felt they had to prove it statistically so that others—and we know who
they are—would believe it." Actually,
had Parker even skimmed the book itself,
she would have been hard put to find any
statistics, let alone statistical proof of anything. That's one of the problems: in the
current inflamed atmosphere of feminism,
on the cutting edge of grievance, Quindlen opinion—especially about grievances—
wrote this three years ago. Today the is accorded the status of sober fact.
dolorous subject of what happens to girls
The splash that Meeting at the
when they become women in Western Crossroads is making—well beyond the
Culture is getting the full feminist treat-
o celebrate her daughter's second birthday, columnist Anna
Quindlen threw a temper tantrum on the pages of The
New York Times: "My daughter is
ready to leap into the world, as
though life were chicken soup and
she a delighted noodle. The work
of Prof. Carol Gilligan of Harvard
[Graduate School of Education]
suggests that sometime after the age of
11 this will change, that this lively
little girl will pull back, shrink, that
her constant refrain will become 'I
don't know.' Professor Gilligan says
the culture sends the message:
'Keep silent and notice the absence
of women and say nothing.'" Always
inbred circles of academic feminism—can
be partly credited to the success of Gilligan's
earlier (1982) book In a Different Voice,
which certified her as a feminist icon. There
Gilligan challenged a current theory that
men make moral decisions at a higher, more
abstract plane than women. Leaving intact
the dubious notion that the sexes differ morally, she claimed instead that the difference
had been wrongly assessed by male standards which devalued feminine morality,
and that we should instead say that men
adhere to an "ethic of rights," women to an
"ethic of caring."
Fire came from all directions.
Traditional feminists were alarmed at the
boost her theory gave to the stereotypes
about women that they had been battling
for decades. Some thought her interview
sample
of
25
Harvard-Radcliffe
undergraduates to be too narrow to support
such sweeping conclusions. Others said
she massaged the data and doubted that
what her subjects said about hypothetical
situations had much to do Turn to page 8
PAGE 2
OCTOBER 1993
Why you idiotic, white supremacist, "conservative"
bigots continue to send me copies of your appalling,
and frankly nauseating publication, is beyond me.
You make me sick!!! I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I
HATE YOU!!! I'm politically correct and proud. I
don't need you insulting and questioning my beliefs all
the time. My goal is to destroy your publication and
everything you stand for! Ima Dyke
A sample copy of the September issue of Heterodoxy arrived in my mailbox yesterday, and I spend
an interesting part of an evening reading it. I have to
confess that the style and quality of the writing did
not indicate to me a high degree of credibility;
however, I am highly sympathetic to the viewpoint of
your organization so I hope many read it. In any case,
it served to increase the level of ire in my life against
certain forces in society. Most specifically, the
article on the back page angered me in regards to the
crisis in the court rooms —the story of violinist Carla
Vindicaro and her family is a landmark travesty of
justice, and she is just as guilty. I want to know —
did that really happen in all its details, or is the story
embellished, or is it pure fiction?
Please answer this for me, as I am assuming it is true
and am showing it to anyone who will listen as an
example of the extremes of stupidity in the legal
system.
David Clark
Eden Prairie, MN
Remove my name from your mailing list immediately. I am a conservative, not a radical.
Violet Borne
Scottsbluff, NE
Your flippant and ill-considered rag is a huge handicap to those of us who stand for diversity, against rape
and against the repressive idiocies of PC. We stand for
diversity with academic and civil freedom, with
tolerance and mutual compassion, a diversity which
realizes that not every pain can become a prosecution, a
diversity not afraid of academic quality. For our
pains, we are run over by repressive alliances of
administration and the PC, and are labeled rightwingers in the process.
Your rag lends credibility to such fears and undermines our every effort to restore forgiveness, compassion, laughter and academic quality to social
progress, undermines our efforts even to be included in
the relevant committees.
Cool, balanced, articulate reporting is what is needed,
and the rejection of vile, racist letters of the sort
printed in several of your issues. Grow up.
Kenneth H. Lockridge
Department of History
The University of Montana
Missoula, MT
Heterodoxy is indubitably a sanctuary of candor and fortitude among the noxious swamps of political correctness.
As a new subscriber, I must admit that your journal delivers
what American society is in dire need of: unyielding
exposure and excoriation of the radical left's follies (and
the malicious hatreds which underlay them). As an example of Heterodoxy's on-target critiques and scathing
wit, Douglas Fowler's review of "American Feminist
Thought At Century's End" should be cited (September).
His cogent and courageous analysis, while a no-nonsense,
wholly tenable piece of writing to anyone with an
uncorrupted intellect, nevertheless stands out as fresh and
invigorating in a world cankered with hypocrisy. Unfortunately, the odious specter of racial and gender ideology
looms heavy over American liberty. Heterodoxy is surely
the bane of those firmly ensconsed in the arms of PC
illogic. Keep up the righteous onslaughts!
John Azzolini
New York, NY
Once again, I find myself in the "counterculture"—only this
time I am a conservative. Some may call me "fanatical,"
"right-wing," and "Republican," among other insulting epithets. But that's okay — as long as I can get my Heterodoxy
fix once a month. Great magazine. Love the "Letters" section
and liberals howling in outrage. Always gives me a good
laugh. Boy, you really get under their skin, don't you? Keep
up the good work. Mary Moss
I am a graduate of State University of New York at
Farmingdale. Because of this, I can relate to what Michael
Hethmon endured at the Afrocentric Exposition {Heterodoxy, September 1993, "Afro-Facism On The Rise"). During
the last leg of my 4 1/2 years at this liberal college, my school
newspaper has been inundated by PC BS artists and
Eurobashers that oozed their way in because Farmingdale
University (FU, as I call it) had accidentally lured this new
fifth column in with its low tuition to match their low selfesteem.
I'd like to thank both Heterodoxy, Ward Parks, and Michael
Hethmon for their courage in the face of being labeled racist.
Let the multicultural elite perish from their own PC. Death to
the left.
Chuck Watson
West Babylon, New York
Thank you for publishing the articles about Peter Duesberg
and the controversy currently surrounding AIDS, HIV and
AZT. We are on the side of exposing the truth, as our young Judith Schumann Weizner's article in the September 1993
Heterodoxy ("Landmark Legal Ruling Reverses Bad Luck
daughter is HIV+.
After two years we took our daughter off AZT because she For Violinist) was brilliant. A tour de force. This is to
was suffering severe side effects, which are common in advise you of my impending lawsuit: by writing in such a
many AZT users. As the debate continues, we are finding witty, erudite and generally scintillating fashion, you have
out how few media sources are minding the business of caused me to feel like an utter failure. As a writer,
thinker, even—yes, I have to say it—as a human being.
reporting the truth.
During the period of time it took us to make up our minds Needless to say, this is having a highly negative effect on my
to remove our daughter from AZT, we simply studied the marriage. My husband tries to understand, but being genderfacts at hand. And if anyone chooses, he may find these impaired, poor thing, is doomed to abject failure. The children, dog, even the cars are showing the strain. Things are
facts at any medical library.
For us, the debate is over, and we are going about our simply not what they were.
business — the business of being the parents of our fine And you, Ms. Weizner, yes, you, are responsible. And for
this, you must pay.
young daughter.
I look forward to a telling mediocratisation of your output in
Steve & Cheryl Nagel
the future.
Brooklyn Park, MN
Alison Bernhoft
Editors
Peter Collier
David Horowitz
Managing
Editor
Bill Cerveny
Literary
Editor
John Ellis
Staff
Writer
K.L. Billingsley
Art Director
Laura
Hubbard
After reading Judith Schumann Weizner's story on
the violinist Vindicaro, I think that you have been
had. Perhaps they are trying to wreck your paper.
The story states that the court has found three parties to
be responsible for the violinist's tendonitis: the
violin dealer, the Julliard School of Music, and the
heirs of the violin maker who died a hundred years
ago.
Have the courts gone beserk? For anyone to believe
this story, you need to cite or reference the cases,
dates, courts, and judges. Otherwise, the story is yellow
journalism.
Allan E. Hokanson
I am writing in regard to your article on the back of the
September issue of Heterodoxy which was sent to my
home.
Being violin makers and owning a violin shop, it really
had us worried and we were about to send copies to other
violin makers in the American Federation of Violin and
Bow Makers and the International Association of Violin
and Bow makers, of which my husband is a member.
There was no disclaimer stating that this article was not
true and I would not have known, had I not called your
office. Others have seen this article and have brought it
to our attention also. This scenario seems far-fetched, but
considering the crazy things that are going on today it is
not completely unbelievable and could actually give
some "sue-crazy" individual ideas. I think you owe
your readers an apology for publishing misleading
articles and I hope that you will let readers know from
now on if an article is fiction or non-fiction.
Nancy Benning
Studio City Music
Studio City, CA
As a lawyer who makes a hobby of following outrageous
lawsuits and judgements, I read with interest Judith
Schumann Weizner's article in the September 1.993 issue
of Heterodoxy concerning the Vindicaro case. My attempt to relate this story to others is met with some
incredulity, and I have to agree that the facts of this case
stand out as highly unusual. I would appreciate it if you
would cite to me the relevant court orders and findings in
Vindicaro v. Gagliano, as well as any other related cases
or, if feasible, send me a copy. I greatly admire your
courage in publishing your paper. Joshua Davidson
Editor's Note: We live in a time when fact
is stranger than fiction which is why Judith
Weizner's imaginative pieces always confuse readers.
Operations
Director
Judd Magilnick
Copy Editor
John
Penninger
Circulation
Manager
Lisa Maguire
HETERODOXY (ISSN: 1069-7268) is published by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. The Center is a California 501(c) 3. Editorial: (916)265-9306. Fax: (916)265-3119.
Subscription: 12 issues $25. Send checks to Center for the Study of Popular Culture, 12400 Ventura Blvd., Suite 304, Studio City, California 91604. Visa and MasterCard accepted.
Inquiries: 800-752-6562
Heterodoxy is distributed to newsstands and bookstores by Bernhard B. DeBoer, 113 East Centre Street, Nutley, NJ 07110
HETERODOXY
PAGE 3
E D I T O R I A L
S T A T E M E N T S
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM
PORNOGRAPHICALLY CORRECT: From Mother
Jones, September '93: "It's eight o'clock on a balmy
Wednesday at the University of California at Berkeley,
and Women's Studies 39, 'Literature and the Question
of Pornography,' is about to begin...Today's discussion
involved a previous guest speaker, feminist-socialist
porn star Nina Hartley. The professor asks what insights
the students gained from Hartley's talk. They respond:
"She's free with her sexuality...I liked
when she said, 'I like to fuck my
friends'...No body-image problem...
She's dependent in that relationship..."
Where is Andrea Dworkin when we
need her?
TOUGH LOVE: In the recent trial of
the four youths accused of beating truck
driver Reginald Denny, defense attorney Earl Broady said that his client
was, in reality, trying to protect Denny. According
to Broady, when the videotape is closely
examined, one can see that his client "put (his)
foot gingerly on the neck...and he was doing
something to protect Mr. Denny from further
assault." Broady continues by saying that his
client was not at the intersection that day to "harm
or rob people," rather he was merely upset with
the injustice linked with the King case.
topless women took to the campus mall to protest the
laws forbidding women to show their nipples in public.
Before being arrested, the women became extremely
upset as playful onlookers shot them in the breasts with
squirt-guns. One protester commented that the men
wielding the water-guns just "can't see past [their]
fucking pea-brain testosterone."
ONE REASON WHY THERE SHOULD BE A
VOUCHER PLAN: In an item in our last issue we told
about the teacher at Walter Johnson High School in
Bethesda, Maryland, who took his World History students on an all day hike on the Appalachian Trail to
simulate Mao Tse Tung's Long March. Well, it was
worse than we thought. Not only the March itself, in
which these high school students were required to read
Mao's Red Book, and practice self-criticism "to get to
TATTOO YOU: John Baldetta, a 28 year old
nursing assistant in Seattle, was recently fired
from his job for refusing to conceal a tattoo on his
left forearm that read: HIV POSITIVE. It was not
long before the EEOC became involved, ruling that
the hospital was breaking the Americans with
Disabilities Act, which covers people infected with
the AIDS virus. Baldetta was quoted as saying "I
want this to be a good teaching experience for
Harborview and other employers that ignorance
and hate...won't be tolerated any longer."
NASTY WORK BUT SOMEONE HAS TO DO
IT: William W. Kerrigan, an English professor at
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,
defended sexual relations between professors and
students in a recent interview with Harper's
magazine. Kerrigan says that "there is a kind of
student I've come across in my career who was
working through something that only a professor
could help her with. I'm talking about a female
student, who for one reason or another had
unnaturally prolonged her virginity. There have been
times when this virginity has been presented to me as
something that I, not quite another man, half an authority
figure can handle—a thing whose preciousness I realize."
the other side of what Mao did [it is called genocide],"
but the rest of the class. The teacher at Walter Johnson
High who assigned the March to his students, 25 year old
Chris Garran, is (needless to say) a self-described "devout believer in multi-culturalism." In the classroom,
Garran is as cutting-edge as he is on the hiking trail. He
told the Bethesda Gazette, "I want students to take an
increasing amount of ownership in class. They can
BLACK ROLE MODELS: Representative Kweisi decide test dates, some of the topics we study, how a
Mfume, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, certain discussion can go and even lead discussions."
has recently drawn fire from his hometown newspaper. And the crowning irony is that Garran has just been
The Baltimore Messenger writes that Mfume "comes named one of the 100 best first year teachers in the U.S.
from Baltimore's west side, where he dropped out of by the Student Loan Marketing Association, receiving a
school, took on a series of meaningless jobs and fathered check for $1,000.
five children by three women before deciding which
direction he wanted his life to take."
POURING TESTOSTERONE ON TROUBLED
NIPPLES: Queer Nation recently staged a "tit-in" at the
University of Arizona. As the name suggests, a bevy of
ANOTHER REASON WHY THERE SHOULD BE A
VOUCHER PLAN: In Washington, D.C., area schools
a new Afrocentric curriculum has been implemented.
On one bulletin board in a fifth grade classroom, the
students' silhouettes line the wall next to the words: "We
are the sons and daughters of The Most High. We are the
princes and princesses of African kings and queens. We
are the descendants of our Black ancestors. We are Black
and we are proud." In the same classroom, "Brother
Ah," one of the school's "music consultants," tells
the children, "When they brought us here there were
kings and queens. We were the first royalty before other
cultures, before England...They told me in school
that Africa was small. You can put the entire United
States of America, including Hawaii and Alaska, in the
middle of the Sahara Desert."
SOMETHING QUEER IS GOING
ON AT CORNELL: A report in the
Cornell University English Department
Newsletter notes with concern that there is
currently no introductory course at the
University in Queer Theory (a term preferred
"because it is less cumbersome than Gay,
Lesbian and Bisexual Studies and more accurate
than Gay Theory, which usually implies men
only"). The report goes on to note that in a
recent survey of English department graduate
students, 87% of the respondents "identified
the need for an English Department hiring in
the field of Lesbian/Gay/ Bisexual Studies."
The English Department has made a start by
adding this field to the list of possible minors in
the graduate program. This means that students
will be able to work with the "near-canonical
texts" of theorists such as Eve Sedgwick and
Adrienne Rich. Makes you wish for the good
old days when black radicals with rifles took
over buildings, doesn't it?
FOR ELIZABETH WITH LOVE AND
SQUALOR: Someone named Elizabeth A.
Meese has apparently published a very
embarrassing book entitled (Sem)erotics:
Theorizing Lesbian: Writing (New York
University Press, 1992). Somebody named
Susan J. Leonardi of the University of
Maryland (College Park) has just written a very
embarrassing review of this embarrassing book
in the South Atlantic Review, The review,
couched as a love letter, begins "Dear Elizabeth." It
contains sentences like the following: "You, a lesbian
writer, write about lesbian writing (and, of course,
about lesbians writing) and so produce lesbian writing,
some of it 'life writing,' some the life writing erotic
writing. I, a lesbian writing (reviewing), write about
your lesbian writing and so about you, a lesbian
writing, and your life, including your erotic life, and
so, in some sense at least, about my life, including my
erotic life." Hold on, it gets worse: "You've taken me to
your bed. You've made love to me. (Is this the same as
fucking the reader?) I have to admit that I wasn't
altogether comfortable about that. I don't usually finish
reading critical material with sweaty palms and crotch."
And so on. The love that dare not speak its name now
clatters on with brain-dead smuttiness in the critical
journals of the land.
PAGE 4
OCTOBER 1993
DAVE AND BILL:
The President As Film Fan
by RICHARD GRENIER
Hillary Rodham Clinton, co-believer
with Michael Lerner in a "politics of
meaning," recently elevated Dave,
Hollywood's political film of the season,
to the summit of her summer
enjoyment as a "really fun movie." The
story of a presidential look-alike who
brings kindness and compassion to the White
House by taking the place of a very nasty fellow
who somehow managed to get himself elected
President of the United States, Dave, in Mrs.
Clinton's view, is perhaps a "movie of
meaning" mirroring contemporary history.
Hillary has said that one of the thrilling things about
being in the White House is that the building has its own
little movie theatre, and that she and Bill are delighted at
being able to see whatever and as many movies as they like
(furnished free by the Motion Picture Association of
America and the various film companies). After the Tomahawk missile strike on Baghdad in retaliation for the plot
to assassinate George Bush, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton saw a
movie, after which the President, it was reported, had a
good night's sleep, whether because of the missile attack or
the movie we don't know.
The Clintons are seeing movies with only the very
highest grosses at U.S. box offices, which puts them, on
this point at least, in full accord with the American people,
which, unlike American elites, have long displayed a
conspicuous lack of interest in foreign cinema. Popcorn is
served in the White House screening room, which holds 45
people, and the Clinton's taste in movies places them very
much in the popcorn set. With Mr. Clinton's special attitude toward the Vietnam War, one might think he'd have
wanted to see France's hugely successful Indochine, which
deals with the French war in Indo-China and won this
year's Academy Award for best foreign film as well as a
coveted nomination for best actress for its star, Catherine
Deneuve. But he didn't. Nor, with Mexico and the North
American Free Trade Agreement a major national issue,
did the Clintons seek insight into the Hispanic world by
seeing the most successful Spanish-language film in U.S.
history, Mexico's Like Water for Chocolate. Highly
praised "art" films were of no interest to the White House
either, and the Clintons saw neither Kenneth Branagh's
new film adaptation of Shakespeare'S MUCH Ado About
Nothing, nor Britain's much lauded adaptation of
Virginia Woolf's Orlando, nor the most interesting film
out of People's China in some years, The Story of Qiu
Ju—a major success running for four months on the U.S.
art movie circuit and of key political significance in
Peking.
One of the leading "black" movies of the season was
Janet Jackson's Poetic Justice with poetry by Mr. Clinton's
inaugural poet, Maya Angelou ("Alone, all alone/ Nobody,
but nobody /Can make it out here alone."). For a time in
early summer Poetic Justice was the number one film in the
entire country, but as of late August the Clintons hadn't
after a short period getting used to the job, is insubordinate.
His kindheartedness comes to the fore and the film becomes an experiment in the politics of meaning.
No more lust for power in the world's most powerful
political leader. No more greed. No more corruption,
neither of the flesh nor of the spirit. Dave's first
encounter with government hard-heartedness is
the planned closing of some shelters for the homeless. He tenderly visits one, the Helping Hand
Shelter for children. Why must such humane
institutions as shelters for homeless children be
closed? For lack of a "lousy 650 million
dollars," we're told. So Dave telephones his accountant
friend, Charles Grodin, and Grodin discreetly visits the
White House one night, pores over the federal budget for
a few hours, and finds the millions necessary to keep the
shelters open. So shines a good deed in this naughty
world.
Dave's crucial second encounter with government
coldheartedness is over joblessness, and here his presidential innovation comes almost out of the blue. He calls a
sudden press conference to declare emotionally that the
most dispiriting thing about our situation in America today
is that we feel we can't do anything to change things. But
we can change things. A person's human dignity, explains
Dave, requires that he or she have a job. And Dave thereupon announces a truly epoch-making program. "The
responsibility of this government," Dave proclaims resoundingly, "is to find a job for every American who wants
one!" The country goes wild over what the media suddenly
cry up as the President's "Comprehensive Full Employment Program." The government will guarantee a job to
every American.
Now why didn't someone think of that before? Karl
Marx, of course, not only thought of it but envisioned a
system—no longer in fashion—which would accomplish
this very end. He's not credited in the movie. In fact, the
Dave of Dave is not at all forthcoming on the minutiae of
his Comprehensive Full Employment Program, actually
giving no details of it at all. The only point he posits
unequivocally is that "the government" should bring about
full employment.
The program's inception is the film's key sequence.
For, having bequeathed unto the nation his Comprehensive
Full Employment Program, and assured himself that the
"boy-scout" vice-president who succeeds him will carry on
his good work, Dave "dies." That is, he simulates a stroke,
there is a body switch, and for Dave is substituted the body
of the real President he's been impersonating and who's
been in a coma in the basement of the White House. Happy
at this great good he has done his country, and without a
whisper of regret at leaving behind the grandeur and
accoutrements of high office, Dave then returns serenely to
his obscure earlier life. On thinking it over, however,
having learned the wonderful things that can be achieved
by a government run by agents of change, Dave decides to
run for Congress. On which magic upbeat the film ends.
One wonders what is to be learned from this fairy
tale—other than that its authors have an absolutely extraordinary faith in the power of government to cure society's
ills. I suspect that in his dreams, through the laughter and
through the tears with which he must have seen this film,
President Clinton is just such a lovely person as Dave.
Possibly he feels, as the authors of the movie Dave most
movingly feel, that in a chief executive what counts more
than anything else is old-fashioned kindheartedness. It's
an open secret in Hollywood that bauxite miners will be
unusually critical of a film on bauxite mining, and hog
farmers will be unusually critical of a film on hog farming.
But the people who live in the White House think that Dave,
a film about the U.S. presidency, is a marvelous, joyful, and
even salubrious movie. It's been said of future statesmen
that the great political thinkers they're required to read at
university tell one far less about them than the books,
movies, and television series they consume for personal
enjoyment in their relaxed moments. This perception, if
accurate, leaves us with a White House in the spiritual
embrace of a childish fantasy. And, interestingly enough,
a statist fantasy at that.
seen it either.
Instead, the Clintons
watched such popcorn movies
as Dave and every other
"summer" movie deliberately
designed by Hollywood for
out-of-school teenagers: Jurassic Park, Rookie of the
Year, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Last Action Hero,
Sylvester Stallone's Cliffhanger, Harrison Ford's The
Fugitive, and the latest Clint Eastwood film, In The Line
of Fire, The Clintons even saw Lost in Yonkers, which in
point of fact actually brought in far less money at U.S. box
offices than either Shakespeare's Much Ado About
Nothing, Mexico's Like Water for Chocolate, or the
Janet Jackson-Maya Angelou Poetic Justice.
The fact mat both Clintons are graduates of the Yale
School and Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford has
spread the notion that the Clintons are sophisticated, cosmopolitan people. But their taste in movies suggests that
the worldliness of Oxford and Yale just washed right over
them and left them the provincials that they began as. And
the fact that Dave really won their hearts tells us a lot.
Dave (played by Kevin Kline) is not only a really fun
guy, he has a whole larger dimension in that he feels the
pain of the world's unfortunates. We first find Dave exercising his profession, running a temporary employment
agency. In an early scene we see Dave—kind, compassionate, all heart—literally begging an accountant friend (Charles
Grodin) to take on a temporary employee the accountant
friend plainly doesn't want. But the woman has three
children, her husband is diabetic, and since Grodin too is all
heart he finally takes on the unwanted "temp." Meanwhile,
compassionate Dave has an unusual sideline, which is
imitating the president of the United States at Chevrolet car
lots. His resemblance to the President is so striking that he
is spotted by the Secret Service and brought to the White
House for employment as a presidential decoy. We have
already met the President himself, who, since he's played
by the same actor, is unsurprisingly the spitting image of
Dave. But whereas Dave is gentle and kind, the President
is bracingly cold and hard-hearted. He is not, in fact, a nice
person, and even the film's First Lady (Sigourney Weaver)
dislikes him at least partly for humanitarian reasons. This
President, we swiftly learn, cares not one wit for the
homeless and the unemployed. Moreover, his chief of staff
(Frank Langella) is as cold and hard-hearted as he is.
But divine Providence intervenes and the President is
felled by a stroke in the act of engaging in sexual relations
with a White House secretary. And Dave becomes President. Or, if not exactly President, close enough to President
so that his true identity is known to only a few trusted
people. The whole point of the subterfuge, we are told, is
that the Vice-President (Ben Kingsley) is a "boy scout,"
he earlier Hollywood movie with which Dave has
which is to say still another disgustingly kind and compasbeen glowingly compared by critics is Frank Capra's
sionate person. The White House "power" people, particuMr. Smith Goes to Washington. But this is a mislarly Chief of Staff Langella, can't stand to have such a dogooder succeed to the Presidency and prefer to retain their match. As film historian Elliott Stein points out, "What
presidential impersonator—under tight control. But Dave, continues to amaze is the durable folly of the received
opinion of Capra as some sort of New Deal liberal."
Statement after statement from Capra expressed his abso-
T
HETERODOXY
lute abhorrence of Roosevelt and, if less consistently, of the
New Deal itself. [FOOTNOTE: See Frank Capra, The
Catastrophe of Success by Joseph McBride. Touchstone
Books, Simon and Schuster. Capra voted without fail for the
Republican opposition. The point of departure of Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington (1939) has much in common with Dave.
There is no subterfuge or impersonation, but Mr. Smith
(Jimmy Stewart) is a kindhearted, idealistic state leader of
the "Boy Rangers" (Boy Scouts). After the surprise death of
one of his state's U.S. senators, Mr. Smith, with no political
experience—and with the expectation that he will be obedient to the orders of the state's political machine much as
Dave is expected to be obedient to the orders of the White
House chief of staff—is appointed to represent an unnamed
political party and an unnamed state (originally Montana) in
the U.S. Senate.
But here Mr. Smith Goes to Washington begins to
diverge sharply from Dave. On arrival in Washington,
Jefferson Smith discovers that it is a very corrupt place, but
what he finds most corrupt is that log rolling ("pork" as it is
called today) has won for his state, under conditions of
"deficiency" financing, a quite unneeded dam—which will
perhaps bring a fortune in federal money into his state but is
tainted with "graft." Mr. Smith's own pet legislative project
is the creation in his state of a boy's summer camp which will
teach American ideals to the boys of America, but which—
and this is emphasized repeatedly—will not consume on
penny of taxpayers' money but rather be paid for by the
"nickels and dimes" of America's youth. In attempting to
bring Smith around, his state's senior senator (Claude Rains)
tells him that by shrewd politicking their state has obtained
the country's highest level of federal grants, as well as—and
this is in the middle of the Great Depression—its lowest level
of unemployment. But this impresses Jefferson Smith not
one bit. The unneeded dam, associated with back home
profiteering of a conflict-of-interest sort ("graft"), is to him
morally corrupt, and he declares indignantly that Washington needs more common sense and fewer laws.
But the dam legislation looks as if it will go through
and Smith's boys' camp project seems dead. In deep disillusionment, sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,
Jefferson Smith decides to take action. In the Senate he
conducts a one-man filibuster both for his boys' camp and
against the dam that will bring a bonanza of federal funding
into his state. Other senators attack him for preventing
"public works" from going forward, for denying "food and
shelter" to the poor, and for denying to the unemployed
"relief (the period's word for welfare). But Smith stands
firm, shooting back, "What this country needs is permanent
relief from crooked men riding their backs!"
He reads the Declaration of Independence during his
filibuster. He reads the Constitution. Claude Rains, responsible for this deficit-financing "pork," suddenly (and somewhat implausibly) repents, attempts suicide, says, "I'm not
fit to live!" and confesses to the world his corrupt ways.
Jimmy Stewart and his secretary (Jean Arthur) are enveloped
in a warm cloud of love, and the country is perhaps cured
forever of pork-barrel politics.
Like Dave, it should be clear, Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington is not a very realistic movie. But the two films'
respective ideologies could hardly be more contradictory.
According to strict Keynesian theory, if government
were literally to hire men to dig holes in the ground (an
example Keynes specifically offers in his General Theory of
Employment, Interest, and Money) it would flush money
into the economy and have a beneficial effect. So, according
to Keynes, with an economy in grave recession, a public
works project like the building of an unneeded dam would be
an excellent idea. And there is little reason to believe, with
a portion of the funding violating conflict-of-interest rules,
that such a dam would necessarily have lost Lord Keynes's
support, as even "graft" flushes money into the economy: So
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is plainly not a pro-New Deal
movie but rather—although its "message" is clouded by
sentimentality—an anti-New Deal movie. The distance between Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which government
intervention in the economy is at the very best dubious, and
Dave, in which government can seemingly solve the country's
most intractable economic problems, is large indeed. Capra
may have intended to subvert FDR's New Deal, but the
producers of Dave plainly intend to support Clinton's Raw
Deal.
What President Clinton thinks of Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington we don't know. But, on another sort of movie,
we learned from enthusiastic statements the President made
on television's Larry King Live that he absolutely adores
PAGE 5
Unforgiven, in which Clint Eastwood performs acts of
almost ritual contrition for all the feats of manly bravery he
performed in his "spaghetti Western" and Dirty Harry
days. In Unforgiven the Eastwood character explains remorsefully that he was drunk during all the fearless,
violent acts of his gunslinger days and pathetically seeks
forgiveness. He and every other "good" person in the
movie espouse a new creed of honor, which looks a lot like
plain cowardice.
President Clinton was so admiring of Unforgiven
that the night before Deputy White House Counsel Vincent
Foster committed suicide he called him on the telephone to
invite him, along with Little Rock law-firm colleague
Warren Hubbell (now a senior official of the Justice
Department) to come to the White House to see the "new
Eastwood's" latest film, In The Line of Fire. After a 20
minute conversation, the late Mr. Foster declined.
Mr. Clinton saw and greatly enjoyed In The Line of
Fire, in which Eastwood recovers his manliness as a Secret
Service agent willing to give his life to defend the President of the United States—a manly purpose disapproval of
which by the President would be to say the least ungracious. During what was supposed to be an hour and a half
appearance on Larry King Live the following night, after
expressing his enthusiasm for In The Line of Fire, Mr.
Clinton learned that his friend Vincent Foster was dead.
N
Thomasons. Ms. Bloodworth-Thomason reciprocated by
introducing the President to a new hairdresser, Cristophe
(he of the $200 haircut), and Mr. Thomason by detonating
the White House travel-office scandal.
Bill Clinton's appointment as new chairman of the
National Endowment for the Arts of Jane Alexander, a star
of Broadway and Hollywood—the first time an actor or
actress has ever held such a position—was perhaps to be
expected, acting being clearly the President's favorite art.
Miss Alexander's vigorous advocacy of a "nuclear freeze"
in the early 1980s and known opposition to "content restrictions" for NEA grants cannot be unknown to the President,
and are hardly an indication that the Endowment will
abandon its support for "cutting edge" politics.
But the most dizzying Washington ascent of all these
show business people has been that of Barbra Streisand,
whose name is at the top of every celebrity list of Bill
Clinton's Hollywood. The ascent is piquant, in a way, as
Miss Streisand's personal reputation in Hollywood is that of
a most odious person. Miss Streisand, be it said, has long
nourished the belief that she has a gift for the conduct of
world affairs, but before seducing the Clintons her greatest
political conquest had been former Congresswoman Bella
Abzug, for whom she campaigned most recently—if with
no success—in Yonkers, New York. One wonders if the
Clintons even remember Bella Abzug. They certainly remember Franklin D. Roosevelt (and, during the HitlerStalin "Non-Aggression" Pact, Bella Abzug signed a telegram to Roosevelt raging at his support of Britain and
warning him in the name of "American workers" to stay out
of the capitalist war then underway between those two
capitalists Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill.) Miss Abzug
seems deservedly headed for the dustbin of history and is
only worth recalling at the present because Bella Abzug's
politics are Barbra Streisand's politics.
For some time now Hollywood has been seized by
delusions of political understanding—the Clintons and the
major figures of today's Hollywood, in fact, experiencing
their ecstatic political awakening at much the same period in
the late 1960s. But that a U.S. President should be awed to
this extent by the glitter of show business is quite new. And
what brings Bill Clinton into Hollywood's orbit is not
simply that Barbra Streisand raised a million dollars for his
campaign. Something about Hollywood reaches out to him.
In the land of the Wizard of Oz he seems to sense a
glimmering goodness much like the glimmering goodness
in Dave and presumably in himself. Entertainers have a
childlike quality. Bill Clinton has a childlike quality.
Entertainers are narcissistic. Bill Clinton is narcissistic. It's
certainly a childish trait to be so star-struck in the presence
of movie stars. For those who have never witnessed the
spectacle, famous figures from the magic land of the cinema
are themselves regularly star-struck in the presence of
people from the magic land of politics.
Since Plato, writers and thinkers have been pointing
out similarities between the actor and the politician; both
self-centered, both showmen, both required by their profession to appeal to large audiences. In this regard it is quite
misleading that Ronald Reagan as president had a distinctly
untheatrical inner personality. In the film industry he was
at best a mediocre actor. (One still hears in the mind the old
Hollywood mogul's distressed cry: "No, no! Jimmy Stewart
for Governor of California! Ronald Reagan for best friend!")
Far from being at the mercy of his audience—the entertainer's
usual psychological condition—Ronald Reagan had a limited number of political beliefs he held deeply, and to which
he stuck come hell or high water.
Bill Clinton, by contrast, goes from position to position, and from glib improvised rationale to glib improvised
rationale, with no more guilt or bad conscience than an actor
in the theatre laying aside one role to take up another. And
what with his adolescent "fan" quality, he manages to fuse
a contemporary modishness with the quality of a total
hayseed. He also has a traditional American gregariousness
and amiability, but seemingly without much moral content.
When Hollywood speaks something in Bill Clinton stirs.
We could say that deep inside Bill Clinton something stirs,
but one sometimes wonders if deep inside Bill Clinton there
is a deep inside.
ow it's not exactly a secret (although David Gergen
has tried to shroud this somewhat) that this is the
most star-struck White House in American history. The expression "star-struck" has been applied countless times by the U.S. media (see/me, August 16) and Bill
Clinton has been openly denigrated on network television
as "our first groupie president." Heretofore, American
chiefs of state have been wary of forming too close an
association with glitzy professional entertainers. On rare
occasions FDR would invite a large body of Hollywood
stars to pose with him at the White House for a charity
cause. Mary Martin sang "I'm in Love With A Wonderful
Guy" for Dwight Eisenhower. Marilyn Monroe sang
"Happy Birthday, Mister President" for Jack Kennedy,
who skated closer to the line than most presidents (but was
at some pains to keep it quiet). Ronald Reagan, though
coming from Hollywood himself, made rather sparse use
of his old friends Jimmy Stewart and Charlton Heston, as
later of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The country has never seen anything like the Hollywood invasion that hit Washington with the inauguration
of Bill Clinton, official guests at the Clinton White House
so far including: Barbra Streisand, Judy Collins (these two
sleeping over in the Lincoln bedroom), Jack Nicholson,
Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Warren Beatty, Annette
Bening, Goldie Hawn, Billy Crystal, Sally Field, Liza
Minnelli, Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone (twice), Richard
Dreyfuss, Ron Silver, Richard Gere, Christopher Reeve,
John Ritter, Sam Waterson, Christine Lahti, Markie Post
(of TV's Heart Afire).
The list includes Hollywood "power" people as
well: MCA President Sidney Sheinberg, TriStar Chairman
Mike Medavoy, HBO Chairman Michael Fuchs, Robert
Redford Sundance Institute Executive Vice-President Gary
Beer, and of course the President's most prominent and
vociferous Hollywood supporters, Linda BloodworthThomason and Harry Thomason, authors of
TV's Designing Women, Hearts Afire, and Evening Shade.
Press columns keeping count of the Clintons' Hollywood
connections reported that the Thomasons were such frequent visitors to the White House that they had "the run of
the place" and that Harry Thomason had a White House
identity card giving him access to the Clintons' private
quarters. (It was withdrawn after the post office scandal.)
The list of White House show business favorites
goes on and on, with Bill and Hillary Clinton—supposedly
such sophisticated people—fawning on these Hollywood
celebrities like a couple of yokels. President Clinton dined
with Sharon Stone at Lincoln Center. President Clinton
arranged for his friend Barbra Streisand to dine with
Attorney General Janet Reno. Thanks to President Clinton,
his friend Barbra Streisand chatted with Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs Colin Powell.
At the inauguration-day White House tea ceremony, Richard Grenier is a columnist with the Washington Times.
when the outgoing U.S. President traditionally offers tea to His most recent book is Capturing the Culture: Film, Art,
the incoming U.S. President for the only intimate moment and Politics.
that they will ever have together, Bill Clinton discourteously trampled on precedent by crashing George Bush's
gracious tea party with his Hollywood chums the
PAGE 6
OCTOBER 1993
The Academic Asherfeld
by DAVID BERLIN SKI
The story so far...
Richard Montague, professor of philosophy at a prestigious Bay Area university, has been found dead under
suspicious circumstances. Detective Aaron Asherfeld has
been summoned by university authorities. His investigation
has taken him through the university demi monde of strange
sexual and political styles. Among his collection of incompatible clues is Asherfeld's discovery that a federal investigation into Montague's affairs has been blocked on affirmative action grounds and that Montague has obtained a NSF
grant by representing himself as African-American. In the
last installment, Asherfeld's investigation took him to the
hills outside Palo Alto where millionaire Odo Onto runs a
workshop of NOMAS, the National Organization of Men
Against Sexism.
The Dean was on the telephone to me at seven fifteen
the next morning.
"Asherfeld," he said, "glad I got you."
I sat up and rubbed my eyes and looked at my bedside
clock.
"Not much chance you'd miss me at seven in the
morning."
"That's why I called early," he said. "Can you make
a ten o'clock?"
I said sure thing and hung up the telephone and rolled
over and tried to get back into the dream I had just left. It
didn't do any good; it never does.
After a while I took my coffee over to the living room
window and looked out over the Bay. When I first came to
California I met a tax assessor named Alanbogen at a party
on Potrero Hill. He pointed out toward the Bay with his
drink and said: "Sometimes I can feel the water calling my
name."
His wife left him for another man later that year.
Alanbogen called me from a pay phone in Golden Gate Park.
"I'm going to jump," he said defiantly.
One man out of a hundred survives the drop. Alanbogen
not only survived the drop in robust good health, but he was
able to swim to the shore by himself. The newspapers ran
pictures of him clambering sheepishly up the little beach by
the base of the bridge. From time to time I see him around.
He never talks about jumping anymore. I don't know if the
water is still calling his name.
I got to the Dean's office on the quadrangle at a little
after ten. The Dean himself bounded out of his office when
I knocked. He had his jacket on; he was clutching a leather
briefcase. He looked ample and rumpled and sweaty.
"Come on, Asherfeld," he said. "Meeting's in the
President's office."
He began walking very briskly, breathing with (he
peculiar jerkiness of men who never take exercise.
"Thing with Montague's totally out of control," he
said. "President is livid."
He didn't say anything else until we reached the other
side of the quadrangle.
The Dean opened the heavy walnut door to the
President's suite slowly and let me walk ahead of him; he
elbow-guided me down a darkened carpeted hallway and
across another hallway. The conference room was at the end
of the second hallway.
The Dean punched an access code into the computer
lock by the door and the door swung open silently, turning
on the recessed overhead lights inside.
It was one of those rooms that are designed to wow
whoever is sitting in it; the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have
been impressed. The great elliptical conference table, a
gigantic vase with elaborate artificial flowers at its center,
had been polished with enough elbow grease to light up a
small city. The chairs around the table were all reclining
jobs with chrome arms and deep red plush pads. A little kit
on the table in front of each chair had a pad of expensive
looking paper, a nifty German fountain pen, and an exotic
Hewlitt-Packard calculator.
The Dean bustled around the table and sat himself
down at the far end of the table in front of a control panel that
looked as if it might have come from a Boeing 747; he spread
his papers on the polished wood in front of him; I sat at the
other end of the table and played with the German fountain
pen.
After a little while, the door swung open again and a
small man rolled into the room in a wheelchair. He had a thin
pained face and a wasted torso with a little pot belly.
The Dean stood up and walked over to the door and
shook hands with him gratefully. "Mole," he said. "Hell of
a thing."
The man in the wheelchair said in a calm, authoritative
voice: "Now, now, let's not cross our bridges before we
come to them."
The Dean nodded, standing awkwardly by the wheelchair.
"Aaron Asherfeld," he said, "Mole Anbisol, Special
Counsel to the President."
Mole Anbisol nodded precisely toward me; there was
something spiderish about his movements and his manner.
He rolled himself to the far side of the elliptical table and
cocked his head; the Dean returned to his seat.
One of the three lights above the door glowed red.
"The President is on his way," said Anbisol.
The conference door opened noiselessly again and the
President of the University poked his head into the room; I
recognized him from television news shows that had shown
him sweating before various congressional committees. He
had a trim, absolutely uninflected face. He was wearing gold
aviator glasses.
"Mr. President," said Anbisol reverently.
"Mole," said the President.
He nodded quickly toward the Dean and then toward
me.
"Nice to see you again," he said to me with a sudden
toothy smile.
Then he said: "I want to be deniable on this, Mole."
"Of course, sir," said Anbisol.
"Don't leave me standing out there my dick in the
wind."
"No, sir," said Anbisol. "I won't let that happen."
The President said: "Good, good," and nodded again
to the three of us; then he withdrew his head from the room,
the door closing silently behind him.
The Dean let out a great wheeze; I realized that he had
been holding his breath.
"Asherfeld," he said, "you coming up with anything on
your end?"
"Can you get the board down?" I asked the Dean.
"Sure thing," he said, fumbling with the panels at his
desk. A gleaming green blackboard descended quietly from
the ceiling.
I got up from my chair and stood before the board,
feeling unaccountably professorial.
"Montague discovered a wonderful scheme," I said.
"He used Federal research money to set up a dummy
corporation.
I wrote CSR on the board, using the fat yellow chalk
from the blackboard's metal tray.
"And he used affirmative action to make the thing
disappear."
I wiped the letters CSR off the board with the back of
my hand.
"How did he accomplish this?" asked Mole Anbisol.
"It wasn't hard. I'm guessing he had his graduate
student, kid named UB Goode, go over to contract compliance and swear he was Montague."
"Go on," said the Dean grimly.
"There's not much more," I said.
I told Mole Anbisol and the Dean about Violet and the
coachhouse and Dottenberry and my visit to Odo Omo's
ranch; I didn't mention his gay friends. I figured that was his
business.
"This Odo Omo is a man who likes his privacy," I said.
"Not a crime, Asherfeld," said the Dean.
"You're probably right," I said. Then I added: "I'm
pretty sure that Montague wasn't in on CSR alone."
"Why is that, Asherfeld?" asked Mole Anbisol.
"I don't think he had the nerve," I said carefully. "I
don't think he had the nerve to do something like that alone."
"Any idea who else be involved in this?" asked the
Dean.
"Not yet,"I said. "Montague, Dottenberry, and Bulton
Limbish used to ride together, kind of a club, playing at
being tough."
The Dean nodded indifferently. "What about the other
stuff, Asherfeld?" he asked, his face reddening.
I spread my hands apart at the board.
"Lot of rumors on campus," I said delicately.
Mole Anbisol said: "I'm concerned to keep the President
deniable, gentlemen. So far, I've heard nothing that
worries me excessively."
"Mole, you haven't heard the latest," said the Dean.
"Now, now," said Anbisol. "It couldn't be as bad as all
that."
"We're being blackmailed," said the Dean explosively. "These guys out there want more than half a million
dollars from us."
"Probably a parent," I said. "Just got his tuition bill."
Mole Anbisol snickered gently.
The Dean bent over to withdraw a miniature tape deck
from the tattered leather briefcase he had placed between his
feet; he fussed with the thing for a moment so that it was
evenly aligned with the edges of the desk.
"Listen to this," he said. "Came yesterday morning."
The cheap tape-deck hissed momentarily and then an
odd metallic voice began speaking: "Pay attention," the
bizarre voice said, "this is not a joke."
The voice continued: "If we do not receive five
hundred thousand dollars, videotapes of Richard Montague's
final moments will be made available to selected news
media. Do not do anything foolish. Otherwise..."
The voice became unintelligible. The Dean switched
off the tape deck.
"That could mean anything," Anbisol observed.
"What I thought, too, Mole," said the Dean. "Today I
get a telephone call, I'm telling you these guys are serious."
I said, "Whoever's talking to you used a security
scrambler. Makes the voice untraceable. It doesn't matter.
What they say?"
"They said they have a video of Montague's death.
They said it's not the sort of thing the university would be
proud of."
"They're probably suggesting," I said, "that Montague
died in some sort of S&M ritual that went a little too far."
"Looks that way to me, Mole," said the Dean. "Sort of
thing gets out we are going to see 93-94 Fund Drive dry up
so fast your head will spin."
"Look on the bright side," I said. "You can make the
video the centerpiece of this new Gay and Lesbian Studies
program."
The Dean frowned deeply and was about to say something censorious when Mole Anbisol snickered. "What do
you think, Mr. Asherfeld?"
I thought things over for a moment; then I said: "I don't
think someone's putting the arm on the University, Anbisol."
The Dean sputtered: "What're you talking about
Asherfeld? I'm telling you, these guys are threatening to
blow us out of the water with this thing."
"You probably right about that part of it," I said. "On
the other hand, CSR could have run up some real debts that
Montague didn't cover. I think someone's out there trying
to collect They're using whatever leverage they've got. I
don't think they've got much."
"Why is that, Mr. Asherfeld?" said Mole Anbisol in his
seductive soft way.
"They're asking you to take too much on faith. If they
had an embarrassing video, why didn't they send a copy? I
think if you ignore them, they'll go away."
"I'm inclined to agree with you," said Mole Anbisol.
The Dean looked tense and fretful, but he didn't say
anything more.
I
had lunch at the student cafeteria that afternoon. The
thing was housed inside the Union. I remembered
student cafeterias as the sort of place where a woman
who looked like Godzilla would heap a pile of fries on your
plate along with a grey slab of something called Salisbury
steak. If you were still hungry after that you got to order a
slice of rubbery angel food cake with yellow frosting and
sprinkles. This place was divided into ethnic counters. You
could get tacos or rice and beans at one counter, and Chinese
food at another. There was a stand selling soul food and a
stand marked Vegen Only! The last stand had hamburgers.
I got one, along with some fries and a Coke. The radiant
young woman at the cash register said: "I knew you'd be
ordering European." "Why's that?"
"You look European, you know, white and sort of
middle-aged and all."
I took my European chow out to the terrace and ate
HETERODOXY
PAGE 7
about half of it; whoever had been busy in the kitchen hadn't
The next day someone named Dee Dee Frobenmyer
A small sly smile played across his face. He bent over
quite gotten the hang of European cooking.
called me there. He had a smooth, round, plummy voice.
to line up another shot. I reached over and put my hand on
I wanted to catch up with Bulton Limbish; Violet had
"There are some things I might be able to tell you about his cue.
said that he could generally be found outside the bookstore.
RM, sir," he said, carefully, using Montague's initials.
"You can play pool later, Sonny.' He snapped up
Limbish was there all right, manning a table covered
"I'm all ears."
immediately. "You're right, sir," he said. "I'm sorry, sir,
with a white tablecloth. There was a large framed picture
"Actually, it would be easier if we could talk here, sir." but actually you are sort of involved in this whole thing."
of a stout-looking Stalin on the table and copies of newspa"Here?"
“How so?”
pers called The Official International Journal of the Maoist
"At the House. The Alpha Tau Alpha House. We'd be
"The business with the WCC isn't all fun and games,
International Movement. The graphic legend on the upper more comfortable and all. You'll have to walk through a sir. They've filed a sexual harassment complaint and
right corner of the paper showed a worker in black profile, demonstration, though."
claimed we're in violation of the Speech Code." "Hard to
a cloth cap on his head, his fist in the air. Next to the
I left Mike Dottenberry's office at a little after noon, believe."
newspapers there was a pile of books. The fattest book was just as the quadrangle flooded with students. I walked to the
"Three violations and Alpha Tau Alpha goes on
called Theories of Ideology, It looked like must reading. Alpha Tau Alpha House, which was about the size of the automatic suspension. My dad was Alpha Tau. He's going
The little book next to it was called Always Historicise! I White House. It took up the northwest section of the block to kill me if he finds out we're on suspension." "Tough
figured it was kind of an after dinner chaser. You knock at the corner of Middlebury and University. Frobenmyer was break."
back the fat book, you take the thin book to even out the right about the demonstration. A parade of young women
"We've already done Sensitivity twice."
flow.
was marching in front of the well kept lawn. They were
"Sensitivity?"
Limbish had a copy of the newspaper in his hand; chanting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Heteropatriarchy has got to go."
"You get together and learn to be sensitive to other
every so often he would shout "Official Journal of the
I watched them a while. Two Women were manning a people's needs."
Maoist International Movement!" to the empty space be- table set up at the far end of the sidewalk, just before the
"I can see all that training really took." I said. "But I'm
yond his table. The walkway beyond his stand was thronged street. The sign mounted on their table said, Pissed Off not exactly on campus to mediate fraternity disputes."
with students, but no one paid him the slightest attention. Women. Someone had illustrated the sign with a large "I appreciate that, sir," Dee Dee said. "But you are here
I took one of the newspapers and glanced at the front cartoon. It showed a muscular, grim-faced woman deliver- to sort out things about Richard Montague." I nodded.
page while I looked sideways at Limbish. He was a ing a blow to the solar plexus of a pudgy
oafDee
wearing
Dee
stoodan
his pool cue upright. "There was this graduate assistant he
compact, tense-looking man, dressed in a work shirt, jeans,
Alpha Tau Alpha sweatshirt. POW! was printed alongside had, UB Good, tall spade. Strictly Arf Arf."
and heavy work boots. He had thick black hair and an the woman's fist
"Arf Arf?"
enormous walrus moustache; his face had the kind of
"Affirmative Action."
skin that suggests that a layer of
"So?"
epidermal muscle ran just beneath its
"He was dealing, man. I want to tell
surface.
you that." "Dealing what?" "Pot,
The lead article in the newspaper
harsh, mainly LSD." "A lot of guys
was a complicated defense of Stalin and
deal." "He wasn't dealing with his
Mao; the only criticism that it had to offer
money, sir.
of Stalin's policies was that he hadn't
"How do you know this?" "UB told
killed enough people.
us."
I nodded at the large framed picture
I leaned over the table and patted
of Stalin.
one of the shiny balls to the opposite
"Still a big man on campus?" I
cushion with my fingertips. The ball
said.
made a pleasant thudding sound as it
Limbish glared at me in a fierce
hit.
short-sighted way. Finally he said:
"What do you think I'm going to
"What would you have done, fascists
do with this information, Dee Dee?"
and Hitlerites on every side, class
"Nothing, sir. I'm volunteering it.
enemies at home?"
I think its important that the university
"Me? I'd have killed sixty million
not be embarrassed any more than it
people, too. No question about it. Hell,
has to be. I mean this place has been
I'm generally in favor of killing sixty
caught with its pants down so many
million people even without fascists
times it isn't even funny anymore. The
and Hitlerites on every side. Especially
Speech Code. Killing Western Civ.
here in California. Think what 101 be
That really ticked off the alumni. Now
like without sixty million class
news that some professor's been
"What
would
you
have
done,
fascists
and
Hitlerites
on
every
side,
class
enemies
at
home?"
enemies. No lines Sunday morning for
bankrolling a campus laboratory, that
Dim Sum. Be great."
would be terrible, sir. Probably be the straw that breaks the
Limbish regarded me scornfully for a moment. Then
camel's back."
I walked up the walkway to the large white doors of the
he turned his head toward the campus and resumed his
The small sly smile had returned to Dee Dee's face.
fraternity house.
monotonous chant.
"The sort of thing the Dean ought to know, don't you think,
A
small
black
man
in
a
butler's
uniform
let
me
in.
The
After a while I said, "Violet tells me that you and
sir?"
Richard Montague were pretty close, shared a lot of class house itself seemed to be vibrating to the thudding bass of a
"You want to blackmail the Dean into going easy on
very
powerful
stereo
system;
I
couldn't
hear
the
music
at
all.
interests and all."
your fraternity?"
"Mr.
Frobenmyer
be
down
in
the
billiard
room,"
said
That got his attention. Limbish lowered his arm and
"I didn't say that, sir."
put his newspaper on the table and looked at me full in the the butler, pointing vaguely toward the back of the house.
"You didn't have to. Why should I say anything to the
face. I could see that he was weighing his options. It was "I'd take you down only I'm suppose stay by the door in case Dean?"
any them women they try and bust in."
clear that deliberating was not what Limbish did best.
"Well, it's something you know now, sir. You can't
"You stay right there," I said. "That's where you're unknow it. Sooner or later, you'll have to mention it."
"Who are you?" he finally asked.
needed."
"Aaron Asherfeld."
I reached over the table and flicked one of the billiard
Dee Dee Frobenmyer was standing by an expensive balls toward the side pocket.
"The guy Donald Dindle said we didn't have to talk
pool
table
in
the
basement.
He
gave
me
a
blazing
smile
and
to."
"You're a little weasel, Dee Dee," I said. "Oh, I
shook my hand suavely.
"That must be me."
know it, sir. Absolutely." "By the way, what are you
"I'm really glad you could come, sir," he said. "Can I studying here?" I asked. "Pre law, sir," Dee Dee gave me
"Then I don't have to talk to you," said Limbish
get you a wine cooler?"
triumphantly.
his large smile. "I'm pre law."
I shook my head. "Lot of angry women out there," I
"You're right. You don't have to say a word."
I don't know why I even asked.
said.
We stood there like that, two grown men flaring at
To be continued...
Frobenmyer
rubbed
a
chalk
square
across
the
tip
of
his
each other in the brilliant spring sun. I took a card from my
cue.
"Angry
isn't
the
word."
wallet. "You get to feeling otherwise, give me a call."
DAVID BERLINSKI is a Bay Area writer. Less Than Meets
"What's got them in an uproar?"
"Why should I?" Limbish said truculently.
The Eye (as The Academic Asherfeld will be titled in book
Frobenmyer leaned over the table to line up a shot. He form) will be available from St. Martin's Press later in
"Confession is good for the soul." I tapped the pile of
newspapers with pictures of Stalin and Mao. "It says so ran the pool stick through his braced fingers a few times and 1993. His last Asherfeld novel, A Clean Sweep, was pubthen delicately sank one of the balls into the side pocket.
right here."
lished this year by St. Martin's Press. His non-fiction work,
"Some of the brothers put out a little booklet," he said. A Tour Of The Calculus, is to be published by Random
"What's
it
called,
this
book?"
n Wednesday, I called the student newspaper from
House later in the year.
"A Guide to the Women's Coalition for Change," he
my apartment and had them run a small ad in their
smirked.
personal section. It was the soul of discretion; it said
"What you do, rank the women by butt size?"
only that I would be willing to speak with anyone who knew
"Sort of."
Richard Montague. I gave Dottenberry's office number.
"That's very interesting, Dee Dee," I said. But that's
not why you called me,"
O
PAGE 8
OCTOBER 1993
GILLIGAN CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
with how they would behave in real life.
But the hint that women were not just equal but
morally superior to men proved irresistible to most feminists, and so, despite its flaws and controversy, In a Different Voice launched Gilligan's career like a rocket Just as
college deans have to scramble to meet affirmative action
hiring goals, the keepers of the sparse feminist canon were
only too happy to embrace this new work, which is now in
its 32nd printing. In 1984 Gloria Steinem's MS. magazine
anointed Gilligan as "Woman of the Year," complete with a
cover photo and five page spread. Today Gilligan is immensely influential and regularly quoted with respect, even
reverence, in the mainstream press. Thus the hushed respect
with which Meeting at the Crossroads has been greeted.
Because of Gilligan's stature, her theory about
how girls develop has the potential to become conventional wisdom in education departments and in the
practical world of school teachers and counselors. It is
simple and pernicious, and goes something like this:
mothers, female teachers, and other "good women"
of Western Culture (if they are white and middle
class) are victims of the patriarchy which forces them
to cover up their own feelings, and then victimize the
next generation of girls by imposing the "injunction to
be 'nice' as a way to control their expression of
feelings and thoughts" and to "keep them from saying
too much or speaking too loudly." This often causes
girls, at adolescence, to lose their resilience, vitality,
their immunity to depression, and their sense of self.
(Biology is virtually absent from the Gilligan/Brown
world view. Down with nature, up with nurture!)
Meeting at the Crossroads, which the authors
call "a journey of discovery," is based on a five-year
study at the Laurel School in Cleveland, a private dayschool for girls. "At the heart of our narrative are the
voices of nearly one hundred girls between the ages of
seven and eighteen." Most are middle or uppermiddle class, but about 20 percent are from working
class families and on scholarships. Fourteen percent
are "of color."
Gilligan and Brown descended upon the school
with an interviewing team to find out why and how
little girls (honest, open, rambunctious, "authentic")
turn into big girls (conforming, reticent, insecure,
believing they have to be "nice" and therefore ripe for
abuse by males). They wanted "to understand more
about girls' response to a dominant culture that is out
of tune with girls' voices and for the most part
uninterested in girls' experiences, which objectifies
and idealizes young women and at the same time
trivializes and denigrates them...." The fact that the
authors don't understand that this is a deeply held prejudice
on their part, rather than a theory capable of sustaining
scientific observation, fatally infects all the work that followed.
Despite all the busy talk about empiricism and putting
together a team approach to the problem, after their first year
on the job, Gilligan/Brown have managed to put together
almost no real research—that is, objective data-gathering.
Almost at once the project was bedeviled by its own methodology. The kids (bless their hearts) resisted, compared
notes, and clammed up, causing the research team to have
doubts about the study design, which initially, at least, had
some semblance of established research practice. The
authors claim that they worried about the effects they
themselves were having on the girls: "We became another
reason for girls to feel bad or feel judged [for being unresponsive to the interviewers]." At first they repressed their
unease: "We overrode our own feelings. As women we
found this easy to do." In other words, they saw themselves
in their research. (You can almost hear a catch in their
throats.)
Soon they decided that their initial hard-nosed standards for psychological interviewing had to go if they were
to get the results they wanted. "Unwittingly we [had] set
into motion a method of psychological inquiry appropriated
from this very [male centered] system....As Audrey Lorde
[martyred saint of radical feminism] warns us, 'The master's
tools will never dismantle the master's house.'" To
deconstruct the house of maleness, they needed "to create a
practice of psychology that was something more like a
practice of relationship."
Science, it would seem, is a Guy Thing—which must
come as a shock to the countless women who do real
research. This insult to women is made worse by special
pleading: "We know that women, in particular, often speak
in indirect discourse, in voices deeply encoded, deliberately
or unwittingly opaque. As white, heterosexual women living
in the context of twentieth-century North America—as women
whose families in childhood were working class and Jewish,
respectively—we know from our own experience
about...capitulation—about complicity and accommodation."
If traditional research techniques had to be jettisoned, the
shackling language of traditional psychology, in which
"androcentricity" is "deeply rooted," was next to go. "We
draw on language used by women poets and novelists who
write about girls' and women's lives, at times we draw from
music a language of voices, counterpoint, and theme." They
tout their "Listener's Guide" to the girls' voices which is
CAROL GILLIGAN
"responsive to the harmonics of psychic life, the nonlinear,
recursive, nontransparent play, interplay, and orchestration
of feelings and thoughts, the polyphonic nature of any
utterance, and the symbolic nature not only of what is said
but also of what is not said." Had the authors spent less time
honing this neo-psychobabble and more time in the design of
the study, the final result might have been better.
The girls' narratives, selected and annotated to serve
the authors' purposes, portray a rogues' gallery of masculine
awfulness: bullying neighborhood boys, spoiled, sadistic
brothers (one is a voyeur), self-absorbed, drunken and violent fathers, a smothering, possessive boyfriend. It stretches
credulity that the authors did not stumble upon even one
girl's narrative that portrayed an affectionate, uncomplicated
relationship with a dad, uncle, or brother.
Clearly, Meeting at the Crossroads cannot be taken
seriously as a research study because its "data" are hopelessly biased. But what about Gilligan and Brown's thesis:
are they onto something in spite of themselves? To decide,
one needs to learn how the authors make their case.
The social climate of the Laurel School should dispel
anyone's fantasies about the moral superiority of female
society. Snobbery, cliques, telling secrets, conformism, obsession with popularity, the tyranny of the Popular Girl—
they all flourish there, impervious to those "silencing voices"
of mothers, female teachers, and other "good women" whom
Gilligan and Brown accuse of acting as gender fifth columnists admonishing girls to be "nice."
This realistic group picture of the girls of Laurel
clashes with the authors' romanticized portraits of them as
individuals: the youngest (not yet ground down by Western
Culture) are for Gilligan and Brown little Noble Savages
who "speak out to those with whom they are in relationship
about bad or hurt feelings, anger...as well as feelings of love,
fondness, and loyalty." Appreciative of differences, they are
willing to "grow to like someone," and (unlike boys) in play
will change the rules of the game rather than argue over
differences. "And yet," the authors assure us, "this is not to
say these girls will back away from open disagreement."
But already (the authors tell us) these seven and eight yearolds are anticipating the reactions of adults, and they begin
to monitor each other and report on "nice behavior." Here
the careening train of the argument tumbles over a
precipice: "The demand for nice and kind can be oppressive, a means of controlling and being controlled. 'Whispering,' 'telling secrets,' 'making fun of,' and 'laughing at'
others are ways to prevent girls from risking too much or
acting in ways that are too threatening, too different." The
authors seem to be telling us that the rotten things girls
often do to one another are really the fault of
mothers and female teachers urging them not to do
rotten things to one another.
To Gilligan and Brown, "nice" means little
more than middle-class decorum, hypocrisy, and
superficial relationships. They never consider the
fact that only adults can teach children civility and
humanity—they certainly would not learn it from
one another—and that this "niceness" allows human
society to function. Someone should lend them a
copy of Lord of the Flies.
It is hardly news that girls, like boys, can be
cruel, tyrannical, and intolerant of differences. But
the notion that they would be less so—or emotionally better off—-if encouraged by adults to squabble
and say whatever pops into their heads, even when
angry, carries an eerie echo of one of the more
destructive injunctions of the Sixties: "Let it all hang
out" Part of growing up is learning not only how but
also when to speak one's mind—and discovering
how to judge situations and to examine the validity
of one's own thoughts and emotions. It is learning to
just say no—to one's own worse instincts and psychological barbarities.
Gilligan and Brown's dime store Rousseauism
doesn't allow them to consider this possibility. That
their thesis is not only simplistic and derivative, but
also unsupported and irresponsible, is revealed in
their commentary and analyses of the girls' narratives. An example: "Lauren," age 9, tells the following story: "I had this project and I didn't turn it in on
time. And I was in trouble because it was on a
Sunday and it was due the next day and it was time
for my bedtime and...I told my sister and she told my
mom and that got me in trouble that my mom wanted
to yell and scream at me. So I started to work on it
but..I couldn't really, I just didn't want to do it right
at that moment, because I was really tired and it was really
hard for me to tell her why I didn't do it over the
weekend."
Lauren would like to tell her teacher that she thinks it
is a "really dumb assignment" and that she is so busy that
she might turn in something late. But she knows that
meeting the deadline means she "won't get a bad grade,"her
parents will be proud of her, and she'll get to go somewhere
of her own choice, "like to Burger King or Wendy's."
Lauren's admirable grasp on reality does not impress the
authors: "No one seems to notice that Lauren doesn't say
what she wants....Burying her feelings about the 'dumb'
assignment and also her growing 'rage' at her sister for
telling her mother, Lauren describes a reality in which...
selflessness pays." Selflessness! Opting for a good grade,
pleased parents, and a hamburger with fries sounds more
like enlightened self-interest One has to shudder at the kind
of school the authors might design, where legitimate authority—feminine authority at that—can be flouted and
assignments can be late—or ignored entirely—because the
child doesn't feel like doing them and pronounces them
dumb.
The authors repeatedly offer similarly outlandish
interpretations but give the nonplussed reader no real argument for them—nor against more obvious and sensible
interpretations of the "facts" they present. As if working
through divine revelation, Gilligan and Brown simply assert; the reader must take it or leave it They seem not to
know that a genuine study must look at other possible
interpretations of its data in order to make the case that its
own interpretation is the most compelling. Doubtless
Gilligan and Brown would see all this as another "male"
requirement, but the fact is that neither men nor women can
expect anyone to take seriously their claims to offer new
knowledge without this rigorous use of argument
Note too in these examples the authors' gullibility
about the girls' stories. They are skeptical only when they
HETERODOXY
PAGE 9
decide that a girl is suppressing her "true feelings." It never
occurs to them that the girls might be saying what they
believe the interviewers want to hear, or that their accounts
are trimmed to present themselves in their best light, or
simply that most kids are masters of hyperbole: "dumb"
homework, for example, often means "homework I can't be
bothered to do."
"Judy," age 13, talks about a friend who "goes out
with guys" and "goes further than most people would." This
is behavior she finds disturbing: "... I mean, we are like
thirteen, but still you want to be romantic....That just made
me, if I had done something like that, I would feel like total
dirt and totally worthless and she's so proud of it. I just can't
know how she did that. No one else would ever do that,
because they don't—that's not romantic, that's just plain
disgusting."
Judy's prose may not be stylish, but her attitudes are
what most parents would like to see in their thirteen year
olds. She would like to have a boyfriend but believes she is
too young to be sexually active. Reasonable enough. But
it's thumbs down from Gilligan and Brown: Judy is "losing
her mind" to the voices [of others]" and covering over
"bodily desires and sexual feelings with romantic ideals....
Wanting romance without sexuality.. Judy feels the pressure of norms and conventions inside her brain, particularly
those of feminine goodness, which, taken in, are creating
ideas of reality that are at odds with her experience of living
as a feeling mind/body."
The authors never speak of the real-life consequences
of their Flower Child views, but wading through this
psychobabble one has to conclude that sexual activity among
thirteen year-olds doesn't bother them. They even frown on
Judy for saying that promiscuity at this age bothers her. And
they criticize meddling mothers who have the gall to try to
pass on some of their adult wisdom and experience—not to
speak of values—to their daughters. (Another Sixties slogan can be heard murmuring in the background of this work:
"Never trust anyone over thirty") Not to put too fine a point
on it: here is a Harvard professor, lionized by feminists,
using the prestige of her position to imply to teachers and
mothers (and ultimately children) that it is OK for girls to
sleep around—at age 13!
"Edie," age 11, tells how her mother sometimes won't
let her "go to a party, a sleep-over, maybe...because she
doesn't trust the people or something." Initially Edie was
angry, she says, but later realizes that her mother does this
because she cares about her, doesn't want her "to get hurt."
More crepe-hanging from Gilligan and Brown when they
come to their version of a Dear Abby gloss on this position:
"Edie's struggle to name unfairness and to stay with her
feelings and thoughts about being overruled by her mother
is overshadowed by her mother's seemingly selfless love
and concern." No explanation is offered as to why this
mother's love and concern should be doubted, or why, with
no knowledge of the details, the authors think they can
second-guess her judgment of the actual situation. As usual,
the "good woman" is the culprit.
Does any Laurel girl win the Gilligan/Brown seal of
approval? "Sonia," who is black, does. (The authors smile
upon anyone who is minority or working class.) Had they
not told us, we would never guess Sonia's race—her thoughts
and complaints sound much like those of the other girls. It
is amusing to watch Gilligan and Brown grubbing through
Sonia's narrative to find any clue that she is suffering
because she is black. The best they can come up with is a
story Sonia tells about a teacher who wouldn't let her read
a book of her own choice, insisting instead that she read a
book that had won an award.
Assuming (as always) that this "good woman's" decision had no validity, the authors' imaginations soar into PC
hyperspace. "Though Sonia does not tell her interviewer
what book she did not want to read or why, her resistance
seems healthy, even admirable given that awards and prizes
in this culture are more often handed out by those to those
who would reflect and sustain the privileged status quo."
Imagine: here are educators recommending that children be
encouraged to ignore their teachers' opinions about what
they should read because the kids' choices are likely to be
better! The authors cannot resist a footnote enlightening the
reader about how very few children's books are written by
black authors.
Even when a black interviewer is assigned to her,
Sonia doesn't speak of race or exclusion. The authors gush
anyway about "palpable communication" and "shared knowledge," about how "Sonia and her interviewer are moved by
each other, by familiar language and experience." By the
way, Sonia is thriving socially and academically, and it
never occurs to Gilligan and Brown that perhaps this elite,
middle-class school deserves some of the credit.
"Noura," age 11, who is Syrian, sets the authors'
hearts aflutter when she hatches a plan to deal with the strife
between her treacherous and gossiping gang of friends. She
makes the family leave the house so that her friends can
make a lot of noise, say "what really bothers" them and what
they "don't like about each other." Catch that musky whiff
of the Sixties again? Remember encounter groups? The
authors lap it up, unperturbed by the emotional damage such
a free-for-all might cause girls less outspoken and secure
than Noura.
But the coveted In-your-face Award goes to the
teenaged "Anna", the author's favorite at Laurel School.
Working class (her father and brothers are prone to "violent
outbursts") and on scholarship, she is a top student who says
whatever she thinks and feels, knowing she is "disruptive
and disturbing." She fantasizes about giving a senior speech
that will shock people, and asks pointed questions of her
classmates "about God and about violence and about privilege."
Anna wants (in the authors' words) "to get underneath
this patina of niceness and piety," and is not sure she wants
to join the "normal, elite" world to which her education will
give her entry. She speaks instead of getting a Ph.D. and
then living at the bottom of a mountain in Montana, being
"just one of those weird people," having a chicken farm: "I'll
just write books or something." Most good parents of
egghead daughters learn to view such whimsies with affectionate skepticism. But Gilligan and Brown, in a swoon of
PAGE 10
OCTOBER 1993
GILLIGAN CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9
ecstasy, see great significance in Anna's musings, comparing them to Virginia Woolf's suggestion in Three
Guineas that women gain a university education, enter the
professions, and then form a "Society of Outsiders."
Anna questions the "inconsistencies in her school's
position on economic differences—where money is available, for what reasons and for whom, and where it isn't—
and the limits of the meritocracy which is espoused." The
authors' ill-concealed delight with Anna's tales of sticking it to everyone at Laurel leaves a bad taste, given the
five years of hospitality and help this school gave to the
team of Harvard "experts."
The author's conclusions are predictably grim:
"Women's psychological development within patriarchal
societies and male-voiced cultures is inherently traumatic," and "Girls, we thought, were undergoing a kind of
psychological foot- binding." (Carolyn Heilbrun, writing
effusively about the book in The New York Times Book
Review, upped the ante by going beyond foot-binding to
genital mutilation for a comparison.)
In the final chapter, Gilligan and Brown allow us a
peek at the mischief they can make in real people's lives.
A number of Laurel teachers, joined by Gilligan and
Brown, attended three retreats. One participant rhapsodizes about the sanctuary of the retreat which "allowed us
to understand our knowledge and feelings with a clarity
not possible in hierarchical work settings." (A Harvard
professor buzzes into town to enlighten these benighted
"good women": this is not hierarchy?) The same woman
describes the group's "sense of shock and deep, knowing
sadness" for having failed so miserably as teachers: "...We
listened to the voices of the girls tell us that it was the adult
women in their lives that provided the models for silencing
themselves and behaving like 'good little girls.' We wept."
Embarrassing, isn't it?
One reformed teacher proudly reports that she permitted a loud, personal argument between two girls in her
classroom. (No one seems to worry about the precedent this
scene will set for future class discussions.) But girlish
glasnost can be treacherous. A student announces that she
prefers men teachers because "they treat us like people" and
"bring themselves into their teaching." Gasps all around.
Other girls agree and dismiss one teacher's game explanation of this embarrassing news: girls, she says, are often in
conflict with their mothers and project that conflict onto
their female teachers. A vintage Gilligan/Brown pronouncement breaks this awkward impasse: "For women to bring
themselves into their teaching and be in genuine relationship
with girls...is far more disruptive and radical than for men.
It means changing their practice as teachers and thus changing education." Why? No justification is offered for this far
from obvious claim.
Gilligan and Brown mean to "initiate societal and
cultural change." How? Through the sale of their book, of
course, in Women's Studies and education courses. And
through retreats where teachers can "think and feel with
other women"—in other words, academic feminism's favorite cash cow, workshops!
But much as the authors wish it were so, they cannot
build Utopia by tearing down the connection between generations, letting kids raise themselves and make their own
rules. America's inner cities have become an unintended
laboratory demonstrating what happens when children are
denied the guidance of parents and adult mentors. Absent
fathers, teenage mothers, non-functioning parents, and
schools that barely work have produced the despair and
virtual social collapse of the underclass. But the minds of
Gilligan and Brown are so numbed by radical feminist
ideology and Sixties primitivism that they apparently don't
see this, or, if they see it, just don't get it So like vandals
they blithely hack away at the trust and respect between
"good women" and their daughters and students.
Thanks, ladies.
BARBARA RHOADES-ELLIS is a Santa Cruz
writer and housewife.
TAILHOOK CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
as well: that many victims who were identified as victims in
the press and even who are identified as victims in the
Pentagon report, do not consider themselves victims; that
many who do consider themselves victims, including the
chief accuser, Paula Coughlin, were willing collaborators
in the sexual frivolities that spilled over into the abuse of
innocents; that when the party was over, and Coughlin and
her cohorts appeared to advance a cause, it was not the
cause of duty, honor, country, but a gender cause that sees
the military as an enemy to be defeated by a war of social
attrition.
F
rom the beginning the Tailhook scandal had the air
of a public burning rather than a dispassionate inquiry into the facts of the case. Before a single
participant in Tailhook was given his day in court, the
Secretary of the Navy and six admirals, including the
commander in charge of the Navy's own investigation,
had been sacked and had their careers terminated, 4,000
Navy and Marine Corps promotions were held up, and the
entire male enlisted corps was required to attend a million
hours of sensitivity training.
The tangled chronology of investigation began with
Paula Coughlin. She did not report her assault to the
Hilton security staff or to the police the night it allegedly
occurred, but the next morning she did file a complaint
with Admiral Snyder. After reading it, Snyder did not
regard the complaint as warranting any action (a judgment that would cost him his career).
After several weeks without a response to her complaint, Coughlin wrote to Vice Admiral Richard M.
Dunleavy and Dunleavy notified his superior, Admiral
Jerome Johnson, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations. On
October 11, 1991, the head of the Tailhook Association
sent a letter to squadron officers who had attended the
bacchanal rebuking them for the excesses at the Hilton.
"Let me relate just a few specifics to show how far across
the line of responsible behavior we went," his letter said
".... We narrowly avoided a disaster when a 'pressed ham'
[naked buttocks] pushed out an eighth floor
window...Finally, and definitely the most serious, was
'the Gauntlet' on the third floor. I have five separate
reports of young ladies, several of whom had nothing to
do with Tailhook, who were verbally abused, had drinks
thrown on them, were physically abused and were sexually molested."
This letter was leaked to the San Diego Union on
October 29, triggering a full-scale inquiry by the Naval
Investigative Service (NIS) and producing the national
scandal that has determined the dynamics and shaped the
meaning of the case ever since.
Two thousand one hundred witnesses were summoned for questioning about Tailhook by agents of the
NIS — 100 more in fact than the number of those actually
registered for the convention. Many were subjected to
mandatory lie detector tests and other star chamber meth-
ods of interrogation that would not have been allowed
under a civil investigation. And when this exhaustive
dragnet identified only 26 assault victims, the small
number was taken as a sign of the Navy's willingness to
"whitewash" the problem.
A clamor went up from gender radicals demanding
a larger body count. If 4,000 men attended Tailhook, the
reasoning went, there had to be more culprits. Summoning the Joint Chiefs before the House Armed Services
Committee, longtime foe of the military Patricia Schroeder
interrogated them in a voice dripping with sarcasm: "Is
the bottom line [that] most of you think you could do
without women?"
As a result of the pressure, the head of the Naval
Investigative Service, Rear Admiral Duval Williams, was
removed from his command. According to the subsequent
Pentagon report, one of the admiral's sins was to comment, according to his female special assistant Marybel
Batjer, "That, in his opinion, men simply do not want
women in the military." His other two sins, according to
the report, were his reluctance to interview admirals who
had attended Tailhook and "his repeatedly expressed
desire to terminate the investigation." A key testimony to
this allegation was a female agent's claim that "Admiral
Williams said that NIS did not have 'a fart's chance in a
whirlwind' of solving this investigation."
Two days after the submission of the initial Navy
Investigative Services Report, the Secretary of the Navy,
whom the Navy report had failed to place at Tailhook
even though he had been present on the third floor, was
summarily cashiered.
Embarrassed by the Tailhook publicity and feeling
itself vulnerable to increased budget cuts and the
downsizing policy of the Bush Administration, the Pentagon brass simply capitulated to the pressure of powerful
legislators, like Schroeder, who controlled its purse strings.
On June 24, 1992, a second investigation was ordered,
this time by the Pentagon.
Federal agents normally accustomed to tracking
white collar crimes were dispatched by the Inspector
General's office of the Defense Department to investigate
not only the Tailhook convention but the naval investigation itself. Their bottomline assignment was clear: to
produce a more satisfactory result.
In this second effort, 22,000 man-hours were allotted to the investigation of the first investigation alone.
Instead of being criticized, the star chamber methods of
the failed Navy investigation were intensified. Eight
hundred more witnesses were interrogated. Immunity
was given freely in exchange for incriminating testimony.
At least one senior Marine officer was put on notice by .
investigators that if he did not cooperate he would be
audited by the IRS (and subsequently was). Other officers
were told if they did not comply, their names would be
given to the media.
These techniques of intimidation paid off. This time
90 assault cases were identified, including 83 women and
7 men. (The male assaults were the result of brawls.)
Penalties assessed for these and other charges ranged
from fines to dismissal from the service to possible prison
terms.
These ongoing inquiries have adversely affected
more careers than any similar investigations since the
1950s. Like the McCarthy hearings of that era, they have
created their own drama with their own heroes and villains. And as was the case then, the morality play also has
a political text.
T
he heroine the media came to fix on was Lieutenant
Paula Coughlin, aide to Rear Admiral John W.
Snyder. Coughlin's complaint that she was sexually assaulted during the Saturday night revelries at the
Las Vegas Hilton, was the smoking gun that led to the
investigations and the incident that dramatized the public
scandal surrounding them.
On the same day that the Pentagon began its investigation, Coughlin herself surfaced on a television show,
revealing herself ready and eager to step into the role of a
military Anita Hill, and to play her part in the unfolding
"rights" drama. In fact, the Hill-Thomas hearings had
begun the very month of the Tailhook party and Anita Hill
was — by Coughlin's own account -— her role model and
inspiration as she cast herself as scourge of the Navy. For
its part, the press was more than willing to facilitate her
new career as an icon of feminist courage and progress.
Coughlin's name was soon enshrined in Women of the
Year stories in the national media and canonized in
feminist political circles. Commander Rosemary Mariner, a prominent feminist naval officer (and herself a
lifetime member of the Tailhook Association) compared
Coughlin to Rosa Parks, the pioneer of the black civil
rights movement: "When one individual has the courage
not to accept something that's wrong, it inspires other
people to have the courage to stand up."
But like Anita Hill's story, Coughlin's has proven
problematic, to say the least; a story whose hasty stitching
begins to unravel under close scrutiny. In the same way
that Hill's presentation of herself at the time of the
hearings as a Bork conservative with no hidden political
agendas has been effectively refuted by David Brock in
The Real Anita Hill, Coughlin's presentation of herself as
a morally outraged whistle blower with no ulterior motives in making her charge has been undermined by the
testimony (including her own) given to government interviewers.
Far from being an unsuspecting bystander who
stumbled into the raunchy, raucous, intoxicated, and
sometimes sexually explicit atmosphere on the Hilton's
the third floor on the night of September 6, Coughlin was
returning to a scene with which she was already familiar.
She knew that the wild party was part of a tradition that
went back more than a decade and she had been to
HETERODOXY
PAGE 11
Tailhook, herself, six years earlier, in 1985. The sexual the most notorious Tailhook ritual. The earliest reported
aggression she encountered this time was neither new nor
existence of the "Gauntlet" was contained in a Navy hallway was transformed from "a quiet place with 20
unexpected. According to the Pentagon report: "Throughcommander's testimony that he heard the term in the early people" to "an absolute mob scene." On the other hand, the
out the investigation, officers told us that Tailhook 91 was
Pentagon report on this mob scene states:
not significantly different from earlier conventions with 1980s when it referred to the hallway outside the hospital"Our investigation revealed that many women freely
respect to outrageous behavior." The report lists the ity suites as it filled with drunken officers who had and knowingly participated in Gauntlet activities. A sigTailhook traditions that "deviated from the standards of overflowed the rooms. Another officer thought "the pracnificant number of witnesses reported that women went
behavior the nation expects of its military officers" in- tice started in 1983 but was not termed a Gauntlet until
through the Gauntlet and seemed to enjoy the attention and
cluding the Gauntlet, ball walking (exposing the testicles), 1986." At this time Tailhook conventions were mainly
"sharking" (biting the buttocks), leg-shaving, mooning, stag affairs and as women walked through the hallway, interaction with the aviators. Those witnesses, both men and
officers would call out ratings of the women who passed women, generally stated they could tell the women were
streaking and lewd sexual conduct.
enjoying themselves because, despite being grabbed and
Lieutenant Paula Coughlin
pushed along through the crowd, they
was an active participant in at
were smiling and giggling. Some of the
least two of these traditions —
women
were
observed
going
the Gauntlet and leg-shaving.
repeatedly through the Gauntlet. Many
Leg-shaving is described in the
women who went through the Gauntlet
Pentagon report in these terms:
told us they did so willingly and were
"Most of the leg shaving activity at
not offended by the men touching
Tailhook 91 occurred in the
them."
VAW-110 suite. A banner meaPaula Coughlin was one woman
suring approximately 10 feet long
who claimed to be offended,
and 2 feet wide reading, FREE
enough to go to her superiors and
LEG SHAVES! was posted on
eventually the public, and whip up a
the sliding doors of the VAWnational outrage against her male
110 suite in plain sight of large
comrades in arms. Yet, as an attendee
portions of the pool patio. Acat Tailhook previously, she knew
cording to the witnesses and the
beforehand what the ritual entailed.
officers involved, the leg shaving
Moreover, the evidence shows that she
was a rather elaborate ritual that
purposefully showed up on the third
included the use of hot towels
floor of the Hilton when the
and baby oil, as well as the masdangerous hours had begun.
saging of the women's legs and
That Saturday morning,
feet. The entire process took beCoughlin attended a Tailhook symtween 30 and 45 minutes per
posium at the Hilton, as Admiral
shave. Other activities often acSnyder's aide. That evening, she went to
companied leg shaving. For exthe group's banquet wearing what she
ample, officers in the VR-57 suite
described to investigators as "a snazzy
reportedly licked the females' legs
red silk dress" she had bought from
with their tongues to ensure 'quality control.' Several
Nieman Marcus: After dinner,
LIEUTENANT PAULA COUGHLIN
witnesses observed nudity in conjunction with leg shaving.
according to her own testimony, she left the Hilton, went
Three instances were reported where women exposed their
back to her own hotel (the Paddle Wheel), changed into a
breasts while being shaved in the VAW-110 suite.
through. A large proportion of the women who attended tube top, short denim skirt and "little black cowboy boots,"
Witnesses related that some women wore only underwear the earlier Tailhook conventions were groupies and pros- and went back to the Hilton and up to the third floor where the
or bikinis during leg shaving, or pulled up their shorts or titutes. Wives generally did not attend and the Las Vegas hospitality suites were located and where sometime around
underwear to expose the areas they wanted shaved."
setting was treated as a port of call away from home. The 11:30 PM, when she claims to have been assaulted, the
Some of the women volunteers were strippers who Pentagon report notes that this was the first Tailhook after Gauntlet was reaching its frenzied pitch.
bared their breasts and then demanded money to remove the Gulf War and was treated as a kind of victory celebraIt is hard to believe that Paula Coughlin strayed into
their underpants. "One uncorroborated witness reported tion by the aviators.
the hallway carnival unsuspectingly, or that she did not
seeing a female naval officer having her legs shaved while
have a hidden agenda in putting herself into a situation
wearing her whites." That woman, according to one of the
One rationale for the Tailhook behavior, states the where she knew she was going to be "harassed."
Tailhook defendants, was Lieutenant Paula Coughlin.
report, "that of returning heroes, emphasizes that naval
According to Coughlin, as she entered the hallway, the
This accusation was made to the Pentagon team aviation is among the most dangerous and stressful
men started chanting "Admiral's aide! Admiral's aide!"
(which suppressed it) and to the press by Lieutenant occupations in the world. During Desert Storm, for
and Marine Corps Captain Gregory J. Bonam bumped
Rolando Diaz, a Puerto Rican E-2C Hawkeye pilot. A example, the US Navy suffered six fatalities, all of
into her from behind. "He grabbed both my buttocks and
sixteen year veteran, Diaz had been recently selected for whom were aviation officers...Over 30 officers died in the lifted me off the ground almost," she testified. She spun
promotion to Lieutenant Commander. Diaz had previ- one-year period following Tailhook 91 as a result of around and their faces were within six inches of each other.
ously attended Tailhook 90 where he performed leg shav- military aviation related accidents. Others were found to "What the fuck are you doing?" she asked him. She
ing without incident. For his 1991 leg shaving (he gave a have died in nonmilitary plane accidents, in vehicle crashes immediately noticed his eyes and his burnt orange shirt with the
"bikini cut"), Diaz has been charged by a courts-martial
and, in at least one incident by suicide."
monogram "Boner" across the chest she testified. Then
with disobeying the order of a superior commissioned
As women were recruited to the armed services and somebody else grabbed her from behind, and Bonam forced
officer who allegedly ordered him not to shave above the
became more of a presence at Tailhook, the behavior his hands down the front of her blouse and squeezed her
mid-thigh. He has also been charged with conduct unbebegan to change and become even more sexual. Accord- breasts. When Bonam let go, she turned and faced him. "He had
coming an officer.
ing to the official report, touching was for the most part his hands across his chest," she testified, "with his chest out
Diaz told the Pentagon investigators and the press consensual and the women involved were "aware of and proud and he smiled." At the trial, Bonam denied assaulting
that he shaved Coughlin's legs twice during Tailhook 91 tolerant of the consequences of walking through a hall- Coughlin and testified that he had spent most of the evening
in the VAW-110 suite. On Friday, September 6, Diaz way lined with drunken male aviators." The aviators
out of the hallway in a suite nicknamed the "Rhino Room" in
claims he shaved Coughlin while in uniform, and the next
would loudly call out either "clear deck," "wave off," honor of his squadron's mascot. His attorney produced a photoday — i.e., the day of her harassment— while she was in
civilian clothes. Diaz did not ask any money for his "foul deck" or "bolter," indicating the approach respec- graph taken that night showing Bonam dressed in a green
service but requested that customers sign his banner. Diaz tively of attractive females, unattractive ones, senior "Raging Rhino" shirt—not the orange shirt that Coughlin
remembered.
says that Coughlin signed the banner thus: "You make me naval officers or security personnel.
Any approaching females not turned away by these
Paula Coughlin was not the only "victim" with
see God. The Paulster."
The banner is now official evidence held by the loud and raucous ratings would be warned of what lay problems in sustaining her testimony in the legal proceedInspector General's Office. Diaz's attorney, Colonel Robert ahead by another of the rituals associated with the antics ings. Ensign Elizabeth Warnick had accused Navy LieuRae has said that if needed, he will call in handwriting of the Gauntlet — men pounding on the walls and chant- tenant Cole Cowden of holding her "down on a bed,
ing on their approach. Moreover, the dangers of a walk on pulling off her underwear, kissing her thighs and touching
experts to identify Coughlin's script.
Diaz had reported this incident during his official this wild side were well known. According to the Penta- her pubic area," and attempting with two other officers to
interview with Pentagon investigator Special Agent gon report, "indecent assaults" dated back to at least the gang rape her.
Giving more detail, Warnick told the Pentagon
Patricia Call. This part of his testimony was not included in 1988 Tailhook convention. These assaults included breast,
Call's report. Similar omissions from the investigators' crotch and buttocks feels and efforts to put squadron investigators that she had a dinner date with Lieutenant
stickers
on
the
"tail"
areas
of
the
women.
reports, damning to the male participants and protective of
Cowden and arrived at his room at 7:00 PM. The door was
By 1991, these activities had clearly gotten out of ajar, so she knocked and entered. As she stepped into the
female participants were widespread, according to
hand. One female Navy lieutenant told the investigators dimly lit room, three men grabbed and blindfolded her,
officers who were interviewed.
Paula Coughlin also participated in the Gauntlet, that her squadron mates had warned her, "...Don't be on threw her on the bed and began to take her clothes off. But
the third floor after 11:00 PM." Apparently she disregarded their advice, because she told the investigators that
between 10 PM and 10:30 PM on Saturday night the
PAGE 12
OCTOBER 1993
she was able to kick one of them off and fight her way free
from the other two and flee the room. She did not report the
incident or talk about it to anyone.
The reason that she kept silent was that the story was
made up, or embellished so as to transform its
meaning. Under repeated interrogations, Warnick
changed her story considerably. In the new version,
she sat down on the bed with Cowden who began to
kiss her. She responded and they moved to more
heated necking and she helped him take off her
stockings. While they were on the bed she felt the
presence of a second man and they began a 2 v. 1
(fighter lingo for a threesome). For a while, according to Warnick, it "felt good." Then she became
uncomfortable and kicked Cowden off the bed and
fled the room.
As it worked out, even this version of the story
was false. Warnick's motive in lying, as she admitted
under oath, was to deceive her fiancée and prevent
him from knowing that she had cheated on him at
Tailhook. Warnick had told investigators that she was
disgusted with Tailhook after her experience at the
previous convention. But under oath she admitted
she had engaged in leg-shaving and allowed
Cowden and others to drink "belly shots" of liquor
out of her navel and had had sex three times with a
Lieutenant Commander (whom she also falsely accused
of sexually harassing her). Excerpts from the
transcript are revealing:
woman on the pool patio when she was "grabbed on the
buttocks." The report then states: "The woman verbally
confronted her attacker but the security officer, at the
woman's request, took no action."
Defense Atty: That first statement by Ms. M.,
who wrote that?
Agent Black: I did, sir.
Defense Atty: Did she tell you that she didn't
consider that an assault?
Agent Black: Yes, sir.
Defense Atty: Did she tell you that she didn't
appreciate the government telling her whether
or not she's been assaulted?
Agent Black: That I don't remember, sir.
Defense Atty: You explained it to her that it
was an assault whether or not she considered
it to be an assault Correct?
Agent Black: That's correct sir.
Defense Atty: Now, you indicated already that
you lied on your initial account of having been
assaulted?
Warnick: Yes, sir.
Defense Atty: You also indicated you lied about
having sex with Lieutenant Commander X?
Warnick: Yes, sir.
Defense Atty: Initially you denied having consensual sex with Lt. Cowden at Tailhook '90?
Warnick: Yes, sir.
Def. Atty: Is that a fair summary of your testimony?
Warnick: Yes, sir.
As a result of the exposure of Warnick's
perjury, all charges against Cowden were dropped.
F
ar from being unique, the complicity of "victims" like Warnick and Coughlin were the rule at
the Tailhook bacchanal, marking the ideological
fault lines of the ensuing scandal as a witch-hunt driven by
political agendas. The initial hysteria whipped by the
politically correct winds of the time allowed vague accusations of "sexual harassment" to become imprinted as
facts of "sexual assault" on the nation's pliant consciousness. But as the investigations have moved into various
military courts, the flimsy evidentiary base has crumbled,
producing a dissonance not unlike that which arose when
Senator Joseph McCarthy would emerge from a Senate
cloakroom claiming that there were 247 or 81 or 23
Communist agents in the State Department, depending on
who was asking and with how much specific knowledge.
Thus press accounts of Tailhook will mention 175 or 140
or 83 officers as having been involved in "assault" or
"sexual misconduct" or "conduct unbecoming" during
the Las Vegas party, while the bottom line is — after
nearly two years and $4 million of investigations — the
Pentagon has felt on solid enough ground to bring only 3
charges of assault.
There are really no surprises in this result, as the
Pentagon's official report makes clear. There were, for
example, 100 Hilton security guards on duty during
Tailhook and 12 present and patrolling on the third floor
during the Gauntlet revelries where the scandal-making
incidents occurred. The exhaustive summary of the Pentagon investigation lists and describes each intervention
by the Hilton staff. The security officers "stopped three
aviators from carrying off a wall lamp they had torn from
a wall;" they "broke up a large crowd of aviators who were
chanting at a woman in an attempt to encourage the
woman to expose her breasts;" they stopped an intoxicated naked male who had walked out of room onto the
pool patio and returned him to his room; they responded
to "incidents involving public urination, physical altercations and aviators expectorating ignited alcohol." In another incident, a security officer was walking with a
acking a real criminal dimension, the only
way Tailhook could be made to appear an epochmaking scandal was to use the strictly military
charge of "conduct unbecoming an officer" to inflate
the number of total offenses into "140 acts of assault
and indecent conduct." But eventually, when it
came time to prosecute, this method of raising the
body count did not hold up in court.
Thus Lieutenant Cowden, alleged attacker of
Ensign Warnick, was charged with "conduct unbecoming" on the basis of a picture the Inspector
General's office found of him with his face pressed
against a woman's breast. His tongue was sticking
out and her hand was behind his neck, apparently
pushing his head down. IG agent Peter Black tracked the
woman down and interviewed her in Las Vegas.
During the interview, the woman told agent Black
that she did not consider herself to be a victim or to
have been assaulted. She told Black that she did not
want Cowden to get in trouble for the picture.
Ignoring the woman's expressed views, Agent Black had
her sign a statement that he wrote to include all the
elements that would make a sexual assault case.
The cross examination at Cowden's courtmartial proceedings revealed the lengths to which
the government agents were prepared to go in order to
produce culprits:
COMMANDER ROBERT STUMPF
The Pentagon summary then describes "the most
significant incident reported by a security guard." Hearing a commotion the security guards approached a crowd
of men in the hallway and "witnessed a pair of pants being
thrown up in the air." On closer examination they saw an
intoxicated woman naked from the waist down lying on
the floor of the hallway. The security officers assisted her
and reported the incident to the Executive Director of the
Tailhook Association, "warning him that improper conduct by attendees had to cease or the hotel would be forced
to close down all activities in the hallway."
There was, in addition, an assault reported by two
women who also reported the matter to the Las Vegas
police. The police had referred them back to hotel security
because the women refused to return to the third floor and
attempt to identify their attackers. This was the only report
of an assault made that night by any alleged victim either
to hotel security or to the Las Vegas police: "The security
officers told us that, excluding the aforementioned incidents, no women reported being assaulted nor did any of
the security officers witness any assaults."
Later, under pressure from Navy and Pentagon investigators many participants at Tailhook claimed to have
witnessed "indecent assaults," which were not reported at
the time. In a section of the report entitled "Victims," the
claim is made that in the four days of Tailhook "at least 90
people were victims of some form of indecent assault,"
including 83 women and 7 men. According to the report,
68 of the assaults took place on Saturday evening, and,
except for one, all of those took place on the Third Floor.
The report adds the astonishing fact that 10 of the women
were assaulted at previous Tailhook conventions, 8 were
assaulted more than once, 4 on more than one occasion
that evening, and that 9 "did not consider themselves to be
a 'victim,' even though they had been subjected to indecent assault." In an intriguing footnote the report explains,
"We have used the term 'victim' to describe any individual who was subjected to a nonconsensual indecent
assault," even when the victim does not consider themselves victimized.
The Defense Attorney, Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Good, then turned to the woman's
own statement, producing an even more chilling
look at the mentality of the government's agents:
Defense Atty: Have you read her subsequent
statement that she- provided?
Agent Black: Yes, sir.
Defense Atty: It's a lot different than her first
statement.
Agent Black: Yes, sir.
Defense Atty: So, the statement that you wrote
out [made it seem that Cowden's behavior]
constituted an assault even though the woman
clearly told you that she had not been assaulted?
Agent Black: Yes, sir.
Defense Atty: Now, looking at the second statement, it's pretty clear that she hasn't been
assaulted. Correct?
Agent Black: In her view, yes, sir.
Defense Atty: Whose view is important here,
the view of the victim or the view of you?
Agent Black: Well, I would answer that question, sir, by saying that...
Defense Atty: No, the question was whose
view is important. If you're talking about an
assault, a woman has been assaulted, whose
view is important?
Agent Black: In this instance, the
government['s].
Thus, in the Tailhook investigation, it appears, the
United States government has taken the position immortalized by Lavrenti Beria, the head of Stalin's secret police,
who said "You bring me the man, I'll find the crime." This
of course is merely a particularly brutal way of expressing
what has become the cardinal principle of the new feminist
jurisprudence, which maintains that where gender is concerned, the crime is in the eye of the accuser, and, when the
accuser won't accuse because of false consciousness or
some other defect, it is in the eye of the government.
Almost as illuminating as the government's prosecution of Lieutenant Cowden was its failure to charge Lieutenant Diaz with "conduct unbecoming" for shaving the
legs of Lieutenant Coughlin, an infraction he freely admits.
HETERODOXY
PAGE 13
Diaz is indeed facing a court-martial for leg-shaving but on
a different legal ground. As the San Diego Union reported
the story, "Rather than charge Diaz with conduct unbecoming an officer — a charge that might also have been
made against Coughlin and the two other female officers
identified by the Pentagon inspector general as having had
their legs shaved — the Navy took a different tack. Diaz
was charged with disobeying an order from a Navy commander instructing him not to shave a woman's legs above
the knees."
What the Union failed to add was
that if such an order had indeed been
given (Diaz denies that it was) it would
itself have been an illegal order, since it
had no bearing on military duties, and
military orders must relate to military
purposes. (You can't be ordered to
mow a superior's lawn, let alone
shave a leg below the thigh.)
Thus the charges based on
"conduct unbecoming" reveal the political nature of the entire
Tailhook prosecution. No charges of
"conduct unbecoming" have been
leveled at any females, even though
culpable activities like leg-shaving,
bellyshots and public sex could not
have taken place without the willing
participation of female officers.
Lieutenant Elizabeth Warnick has
not been charged with perjury nor
faced with any disciplinary measures
for lying under oath, let alone with
any "conduct unbecoming" charges
for her participation in belly shots and
the "lewd behavior" which made her
male partners culpable. Nor has
Lieutenant Coughlin. Nor has any other female been faced
with disciplinary action for levelling false charges or (as in
the case of one female Navy lawyer) parading around the
entire evening topless.
"The agenda of the Pentagon Inspector General did
not include looking at the misconduct of women," a senior
naval officer told San Diego Union reporter Greg Vistica,
the journalist who broke the Tailhook story. "It was a
conscious decision," the officer added, "to punish male
aviators for misconduct. That was the direction, and investigators were not going to get sidetracked by the misconduct of women."
The Navy brass was going to try to appease the
feminist attack by showing the nation that it would prosecute sexist men. As Acting Navy Secretary Sean O'Keefe
said in unveiling the Pentagon report at a press conference
on September 24: "I need to emphasize a very, very
important message. We get it. We know that the larger
issue is a cultural problem which has allowed demeaning
behavior and attitudes toward women to exist within the
Navy Department. Over the past two and a half months, the
Navy Department has pursued an aggressive campaign to
address this issue."
To prosecute the women involved in the Tailhook
party would have been to puncture a fatal hole in the
feminist myth driving the investigations in the first place
— that all women on the third floor were victims. Before
the appearance of the final report, Elaine Donnelly, a
former Pentagon official and head of the Center for Military Readiness, complained to the then Navy Secretary
Dalton about the selective prosecution of male officers but
received no redress. She later commented, "The apparent
double standard at work here is both demoralizing to Navy
men and demeaning to military women __ I am
disappointed...that you apparently have no intention of
issuing a general statement of principle that prosecutions
must be conducted fairly, without regard to rank or sex of
the person who allegedly engaged in improper conduct at
the Tailhook convention."
The reason for the Pentagon's disregard for the
doctrine of fairness lies in the origins of the second investigation by the Pentagon's Inspector General, which was
specifically tasked with finding out why the first Navy
investigation didn't come up with the requisite number of
criminals. Barbara Pope, an Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, threatened to resign in the middle of the 1992
presidential election campaign unless all of the command-
ing and executive officers of squadrons who attended
Tailhook were fired. Rather than stand up to this latter-day
McCarthyism in which the officers would be assumed
guilty before trial, Secretary of Defense Cheney acquiesced to the Inspector General's witch-hunt, which would
increase the body count of the Navy probe.
"I have been a Navy prosecutor, and I worked in the
state's attorney office. I've been on both sides, but I have
never seen the likes of this ever, anywhere," commented
LIEUTENANT COLE COWDEN
Defense counsel Robert Rae of the suppression of evidence
and extralegal methods used by the government investigators in their attempts to come up with a "body count" that
would appease feminists like Pope and Pat Schroeder.
"People are charged with felony offense-level charges with
no evidence or evidence patently insufficient and totally
without any credible testimony."
Commander Jeffrey Good, the lawyer for Lt.
Cowden, concurred. "The reports of interview are shoddy
and can't be relied on," he told The Washington Times. "I
think Tailhook is a mountain out of a molehill from what I
have seen. There certainly was some misconduct there,
but I think it's been blown out of proportion and I think the
Navy is overreacting with these prosecutions."
W
This debate was in the air in Las Vegas in September, 1991.
According to the testimony of one Navy commander,
Lieutenant Paula Coughlin became embroiled in an argument with him on Friday night of Tailhook over just this
subject. Coughlin, it was well known, was chafing under
the restrictions that prevented her from piloting a combat
helicopter. During the argument about women in combat,
Coughlin angrily told the commander that "a woman getting pregnant was no different than a man breaking a leg."
Five weeks before Tailhook, Paula Coughlin herself was
lobbying on Capitol Hill for a repeal of
the restriction on women in combat.
If Coughlin felt she didn't get the
best of the argument on that Friday
evening in Las Vegas, the subsequent
scandal which her actions triggered
changed the dynamics dramatically. In
her new persona as a national heroine
she told the Los Angeles Times: "I look
at many of these guys — who still don't
get it — and I think to myself: 'It was
their Navy. It's soon going to be my
generation's Navy.'"
Nor was the issue of women in
combat only on Coughlin's mind at
Tailhook, although she may have been
the only one there who acted on her
convictions. The conflict over the policy
recently proposed by Congresswoman
Schroeder and others to breach the wall
barring women from combat by
allowing them to fly combat aircraft
was, according to the Pentagon
investigation, "the single, most talked
about topic" at the convention. At the
"Red Flag Panel" of the convention where the issue of
women flying combat aircraft was discussed, the issue
"elicited strong reactions from attendees." These
included cheers and applause when one male officer forcibly stated his personal objections to women in combat and
complaints from the women when a male Vice Admiral
failed to provide "sufficient support" for their position.
One female aviator complained to Pentagon investigators
that immediately following the Flag Panel, she was "verbally harassed by male aviators who expressed to her their
belief that women should not be employed in naval aviation. They also accused her of having sexual relations with
senior officers while deployed on carrier assignment."
Instead of allowing this dispute to work itself out
within the military community, with the possibility of
restoring single standards for both genders and thereby
eliminating much of the male resentment, the Tailhook
scandal tipped the scales in favor of the feminists. In the
wake of Tailhook, and the Clinton electoral victory, women
were allowed to fly combat planes by an executive order of
the new Secretary of Defense, a victory achieved by scandal rather than by demonstrated competence.
Meanwhile the trials continue. Symbolic of the tragedy of Tailhook is the case of Commander Robert Stumpf.
An 18-year veteran in the military's most dangerous and
demanding profession, he has been Commander of the
Blue Angels, the Navy's elite flight demonstration team.
An F-18 pilot and Gulf war hero, Stumpf received the
Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroism in Desert Storm.
He came to Tailhook to receive the Estocin Award for the
best fleet FA-18 squadron in the Navy. But he found
himself removed from his command without a single
charge being filed against him. His crime was to have been
in a private room (not on the third floor) in which, after he
left, a stripper performed fellatio on an aviator.
Commander Stumpf is like the thousands of victims
of the witch-hunt that scarred our country several decades
past. But there is one difference. The vast majority of those
who lost their jobs because of McCarthyism were supporters of a police state which was their country's enemy. The
crime of Commander Stumpf was to serve his country and
risk his life, as a male, to defend it.
hat Tailhook really represents is another skirmish — along with the clash over gays in the
military — on the most important battlefield of
the new diversity. Until now, the military has
been the only institution to remain immune from the
malevolent influences of radical social reevaluations. But
all that is changing.
The Pentagon report is fully aware of the culture war
that enveloped its investigation. The report notes that the
1991 Tailhook convention was affected by the victory in
the Gulf War, the downsizing of the military which would
most affect the junior officers involved in the Tailhook
excesses, and the growing debate initiated by ranking
Armed Services Committee member Pat Schroeder about
women in combat. A GAO report, not mentioned in the
Tailhook summary, estimated that 90% of the "sexual
harassment" charges in the military as a whole stemmed
from resentment over double standards and the role of
women in previously male preserves.
The double standards present in the Tailhook investigations are, in fact, merely extensions of the double
standards that have come to pervade the military in the last
decade, as a result of pressure from feminists like Schroeder.
These range from double standards in performance tests at
all the military academies except the Marines' to double by David Horowitz & Michael Kitchen.
standards in facing death. Women failed to be ready for Michael Kitchen is a former Navy officer and is currently
battle at a rate three to four times that of men during Desert the editor of The Gauntlet.
Storm (mainly as a result of pregnancy) and, in one notorious instance, 10% of the female sailors aboard the Navy
ship Arcadia became pregnant after leaving port in California for the Gulf, thus avoiding the risks of actual combat.
Not one of these women was court-martialed.
PAGE 14
OCTOBER 1993
How Ronald
Reagan Spread
AIDS
has a character played by singer Phil Collins utter the same
line. But in a raucous debate over those dens, one person in
the movie shouts, "This is another Reagan trick to shove us
back in the closet!" Thus, the movie audience is made to feel
that had a kinder, gentler, less homophobic president been
sitting in the White House, the bathhouses would have shut
their doors. We are also urged to sympathize with the
homosexual community leader who declares, "Banning homosexuals from giving blood won't protect the blood supply. What it will do is stigmatize them."
And there you have it. Movie of the Week revisionism.
Reagan not only caused the AIDS epidemic by not providing
research funding, he was also responsible for the continued
usage of the bathhouses by gays and for the contamination of
the blood supply by gay blood donors.
In the early part of the century, Clarence Darrow
propagated the idea that society was at fault for criminals'
behavior, not the criminals themselves. Massacres by communist forces during and after the Vietnam War were blamed
on U.S. bombing, which allegedly turned nice people into
brutes eager to slaughter their brethren. Likewise the rhetoric of the AIDS establishment over most of the last decade,
reflected nicely in And the Band Played On, is that even
though AIDS is spread almost entirely through voluntary
At the same time that it demonizes the Reagan administration, And the Band Played On sanitizes homosexuals’
sexual practices. By the time the director finished with the
film, Jerry Falwell's congregation could have seen it. Shilts
was not so prudish. For example, he described legislative
representative Bill Kraus's lover's first experience in a
bathhouse. Kico believes he's seeing a man with an
amputated arm pressing his stump against another man's
rear, only to discover to his dismay that the man actually
And The Band Played On.
has his fist up the other man's rectum all the way to the
An HBO production. Co-Produced by
elbow. In the first cut of the movie, Kico is shown kissing
Kraus full on the lips. By the final cut, this is reduced to a hug.
Midge Sanford and Sarah Pillsbury.
Shilts did not hold back while describing the activities in
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode.
bathhouses. He wrote of men having sex through mere
holes in the walls of the bathhouse; how sticking one's tongue
Reviewed by Michael Fumento.
in another's anus was alternatively considered a political
statement and a gourmet treat; how men would lie on their
flash fromHBO! There is now definitive
stomachs with their naked buttocks in the air and a can of
proof that the consensus in the medical
Crisco at their side.
community that AIDS is caused by the
There are no cans of Crisco in this movie, no
whips or chains. The bathhouse scene is represented by a
Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, is
glimpse of one man in a towel putting his arm around another
wrong. As the recent television docudrama And
as they go through a door into another room. Even at that,
the Band Played On revealed, the real cause of
the scene is preceded by Bill Kraus admonishing the CDC
the AIDS epidemic was.... the Reagan
researchers (and us), "I don't want you to come away from
a tour of the bathhouses thinking that's the way all gay men
Administration!
live." This line apparently drew a big laugh
And the Band Played On is currently
when the movie was previewed for a
airing on HBO, the network that picked up the
homosexual audience in San Francisco. (Later
option on Randy Shilts's best-selling book of
Kraus informs us, "The vast majority of gay men
the same name when NBC dropped it after its
are in stable, monogamous relationships.")
Rock Hudson movie, which bombed in the
This bathhouse scene is then immediately
ratings. The movie is a slick piece of work,
followed by San Francisco Health Department
well-acted and at times emotional. It was also
official Selma Dritz, played by Lily Tomlin,
clearly a love of labor for many of the actors and
admonishing a puzzled CDC researcher that if a
the actresses, some of whom are admitted hoPenthouse pet were under that towel, he too
mosexuals, while others are widely considered to
would probably gladly walk into that bathhouse
be. It is a movie, but it is something more: the
room. This line never appeared in the book.
industry being "courageous." The HBO version
Rather, the Selma Dritz of the book spoke proof And the Band Played On sometimes feels
phetically of the bathhouses shortly before the
like one of those black tie nights where
first AIDS cases came to light: "Too much is
everybody comes with a red ribbon. It is in to be
being transmitted. We've got all these diseases
homophiliac.
going unchecked. There are so many opportuniWhat probably propelled Shilts's work
ties for transmission that, when something new
onto the best-seller list was the story of Canagets loose here, we're going to have hell to pay."
dian airline steward Gatan Dugas, who went
In the movie, AIDS "poster boy" Bobbi
from bathhouse to bathhouse infecting man
Campbell makes an impassioned plea at a public
after man, telling them, "I've got gay cancer.
meeting: "If the gay community doesn't starting
I'm going to die and so are you." His reasoning
raising hell, do you think the Reagan administrawas that since somebody gave it to him, it was
tion is going to do a damned thing?" But Randy
okay to give it to others. A clever publicist at St.
Shilts tells us in his book that after Campbell
Martin's Press then revealed Dugas to the media
discovered that what he had was infectious he
as "The Man Who Brought AIDS to
continued to go to the bathhouses, albeit with the
America." Actually, nowhere in Shilts's book
dubious insistence that he didn't engage in sex.
does he make any such claim for Dugas. Dugas
Also toned down to a point of sheer fiction was the
was remarkable merely in that he apparently
depiction the San Francisco homosexual parade.
directly infected a large number of men and
Gone were the intentionally sacrilegious
showed at the inception of the disease what has
depictions of Christ and Mary, gone were the
been shown exponentially since: just how
leather men, gone were the Dykes on Bikes.
quickly anal intercourse could spread AIDS.
Nothing but Wally and the Beav types. Indeed,
The movie follows the line of an earlier
the only mention of specific homosexual sex
book, The Truth About AIDS, which also reDr. Donald Francis (Matthew Modine) and Selma Dritz (Lily Tomlin) acts in the movie was that of Dr. Mary Guinan,
ferred to Dugas, although not by name. In that
played by Glenn Headly, touting the AIDScomfort Bill Kraus (Ian McKellen) in And The Band Played On.
work, the steward did not know that he had a disease
doesn't-discriminate line: "If [the virus] is in
nor that he was spreading it. The movie also leaves
semen,
it shouldn't matter whether it's in the anus or the
open the question of whether Dugas continued to have sex commission of a "specific activity, it is the fault of the
vagina."
As we now know, it turned out to matter a great deal.
even after being informed that what he had was probably
government. Anal sex doesn't spread AIDS, Reaganism
infectious.
does. Why should you stop going to a bathhouse or sex bar One rationale given for the film's bowdlerizing of the book
But whatever sensationalism the movie forgoes is or start using condoms when the real answer to your prob- is that this is Hollywood homophobia at work: the prudes
in charge don't want an appreciative portrayal of gay love. In
more than made up in its damning of the Reagan Adminis- lems is in Washington?
fact, there is no more homophiliac piece of real estate in the
tration. The link between Reagan and the epidemic is quickly
It is now 13 years since the homosexual population
established at the onset of the film. His victory announce- became aware of AIDS and about that long since it began to world than Hollywood. Nobody has worked harder to portray
ment in January 1981 is shown on a television which, when realize it was probably sexually transmitted, although many AIDS as everybody's disease worthy of vast amounts of
the camera pulls back, is revealed to be in the room of a gay activists struggled against this notion until doing so put medical funding than the activists of the motion picture and
patient suffering from AIDS. Later, the federal Center for them in the same intellectual bag as the flat-earthers. The TV industry. Nobody has worked harder at presenting homoDisease Control (CDC) Task Force Director James Curran average time from infection to full-blown AIDS, prior to the sexuals as people just like the 96% (or so) from whom they are
tells another doctor to scratch the word "homosexual" from new case definition which went into effect this year, was different. It is true that some Hollywood producers would
a report on AIDS, telling him that such a subterfuge is about 10 years. The new case definition shortens that some- dearly love to show homosexuals kissing and some actors and
necessary if they are to hope to get any funding from the new what. Thus, the great majority of AIDS cases being diag- actresses would love to come out of the closet, but all are
inhibited not by homophobia but by the knowledge that their
administration. A news report describing Reagan cuts in the
nosed in 1993 are in people who knew what they were risking overwhelmingly heterosexual audience would be horrified.
health care budget is juxtaposed with a clip in which the
by
risky
behavior
and
took
the
risk
anyway.
Does
that
mean
By cutting the kissing scene, for instance, HBO kept from
president pledges to increase the defense budget.
Shilts did not take such cheap shots in his book. He that they don't deserve compassion, or that AIDS doesn't losing a chunk out of its audience. The other side of the coin
deserve
research
or
other
funding?
No,
no
more
that
we
was that it upheld the myth of homosexuals as the boys and
pinned some blame on the gay community, quoting one
venal owner of a gay bathhouse (where the virus was incu- should cut off compassion or research funding for lung girls next door.
Certainly Shilts' book had plenty of vitriol for the
bated) talking to CDC epidemiologist Dr. Donald Francis, cancer even though probably 90 percent of its victims knew
"We're both in it for the same thing. Money. We make they were risking the disease when they insisted on smoking. Reagan administration, but then it was full of vitriol for
money at one end when they come to the baths. You make But those lung cancer victims who have tried to blame everybody. Shilts was an angry young man with a machine
cigarette companies and the government for their illnesses gun that swept 360 degrees. The movie confines itself to
money on the other end when they come here." The movie
about half that range. After token shots fired over the heads
have been rightly rebuffed by the courts.
A
HETERODOXY
PAGE 15
REVI EWS
of homosexual activists, bathhouses, and the San Francisco
health department, the film's full fury is aimed squarely at the
President, the blood bank owners, and especially Robert
Gallo of the National Institute of Health, whose portrayal is
almost as gratuitously vicious as that of Ronald Reagan.
Played by Alan Alda, Gallo is irredeemably evil. Asked
to investigate the cause of HIV, he immediately turns down
the opportunity, saying he's just not interested. Only when his
vanity is appealed to does he take up the search for the
pathogen and when he fails in his scientific quest, he steals all
the credit from the French research team that truly made the
discovery.
Gallo has been described by many as arrogant and
egotistical; He may have wrongly taken the credit for the
French discovery, which would be an immoral and illegal act,
but Gallo is also a dedicated researcher whose efforts have
been spurred on by the memory of his sister who died of
cancer at a young age. His work in discovering the first human
retrovirus set the stage for the French discovery of HIV.
Moreover, the French were unable to keep the HIV cell line
alive. That was the success of Gallo's lab. There would have
been no HIV antibody test introduced in 1985 but for Bob
Gallo and many thousands of Americans and others around
the world have been infected through blood transfusions but
for his work. Such a man does not deserve to be portrayed as
Adolf Hitler in a lab coat.
B
ut for its penny ante revisionism, clearly the most
distinguishing aspect of And the Band Played On are
HBO's teasers which assure us that the production
presents "the true story that didn't have to happen." Randy
Shilts's book made no such nonsensical claim. Yes, in retrospect it can be said that the epidemic got far less attention and
funding early on than it should have gotten. And yes, a
fractional part of this inertia may have been caused by the fact
that this disease was predominantly affecting those who, at
that time, had little political clout and in general received
little sympathy. But there is a far better explanation for what
happened, although it does not flatter the vulgar demonology
of the AIDS establishment.
With most diseases, the number of cases approximates
the number of victims. In the early years of the AIDS
epidemic nobody had any idea that for every case identified
there were thousands waiting to happen. Had someone told
President Reagan not that there were a few hundred people
suffering a mysterious and sometimes terminal illness but
that there were hundreds of thousands incubating (and spreading by risky behavior) an always fatal disease, his
administration's response may have been quite different
And let's bear in mind that even in the enlightened,
post-Reagan year of 1993 there is nothing even approaching
a cure for the disease despite massive AIDS research funding
for the past half decade. A moonshot approach to AIDS early
on could not have made much of a difference. All the money
in the Treasury could not bring back this unfortunate loss of
hundreds of thousands of young men.
What is clear—although not part of the problem that
movies such as this one wish to take under their purview—is
that hundreds of thousands of persons have been infected in
the time since the modes of AIDS transmission were well
established. Since the disease is spread through very specific
behaviors, its spread should be reducible through reduction of
those behaviors. Yet, since 1987 (when Reagan was still in
office) the federal government has joined with the organized
homosexual groups and an assortment of other strange bedfellows to target AIDS messages at that part of the population
least at risk of getting the disease—middle class heterosexuals, children, women, and persons in rural areas. A message
box at the end of this movie continues to propagate this myth.
Meanwhile those who truly are at high risk continue to
become infected. The bathhouses that Shilts inveighed against
have reopened their doors and infection rates among young
homosexuals are going up. Why? As Shilts himself has often
said: politics. Truly the band does play on.
It is particularly sad for me to see Randy Shilts's name
attached to such foolishness as this film. Back in 1987, when
I first began researching the risk of AIDS to heterosexuals,
the second person I talked, to was Shilts. (The first, who
referred me to him, was the editor of this magazine.) Shilts,
at that time putting the final touches on And The Band Played
On, told me that he had already written material for his
newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, to the effect that the
alleged heterosexual breakout was nonsense. That gave me
the confidence that my thesis was correct and launched my
strange odyssey that would eventually bring me into contact
with many of the characters who play a role in both the book
and movie version of And the Band Played On. On numerous
occasions, when homosexual activists were accusing me of
every form of vileness for having proved that the breakout of
AIDS into the heterosexual community was a fantasy, Randy
Shilts surprised the hosts of television shows we appeared on
by bravely declaring that I was right. Shilts's courage was
especially brought home when it was revealed that he had
AIDS last year, and that he had long known he had been
infected. How easy it would have been for him to lie along
with all the rest about the heterosexual epidemic to come in
the hopes of pumping up research funds for AIDS . But his
integrity was too much for that. To realize that this specious
and mendacious movie will be an important part of his
testament is painful indeed.
Michael Fumento is author of The Myth of Heterosexual
AIDS, to be published in a second edition by RegneryGateway in November.
I
THE REAL NUMBERS
n an information block at the end or the movie And
The Band Flayed On, we are informed that;
"Women, children and adolescents are now the
fastest growing segment of the population to have
HIV." Not that we really needed to hear that, since
it's a matter of common knowledge. But like so much of
the common knowledge propagated by the media, it
just isn't so. For the last two years in a row, cases
among those between 13 and 24 have actually
declined, compared both to the number of cases in that
category and as a percentage of all cases. These cases
represent one out of 27,063 people in those age
categories.
By comparison, there were 12,000 auto fatalities
among those age 15-24 in the United States last year, or
one in 3,051. Perhaps half that number might be living
today if they had thought a little more about wearing
seat belts and a little less about wearing condoms.
These are cases, not HIV infections. But a dozen
years into the epidemic, these figures make if clear
that the much vaunted "breakout of AIDS into our
youth" just isn't occurring. Studies of actual HIV
infection, such as those among applicants to the
military, show similar results. The report which the
federal CDC released last year found that, "For
both men and women, infection is most prevalent in
persons in their late twenties and early thirties."
Likewise; the plague of AIDS babies once predicted with millenarian hysteria has amounted to all of
771 pediatric cases last year, eleven less than in 1990,
Female cases are increasing as a percentage of
the epidemic, though they remain only about 12 percent of the total. But this is merely because the yearly
rise in male cases has practically ground to a halt—or
had before the new expanded case definition kicked in
this year and brought a rash of new diagnoses. Female
cases merely lag a couple of years behind male ones and
will thus plateau later. Last year, female cases increased only 14 percent compared to 17 percent the
year before and compared to jumps of more than 100
percent per year early in the epidemic.
A similar trend is evident among heterosexual
cases as a whole. These dropped from a 21 percent
increase in 1991 to a 17 percent increase last year,
down from increases of over 100 percent early in the
epidemic.
Despite these figures, the AIDS fear game, just
like the Energizer Bunny, just keeps on going and
going.
PAGE 16
OCTOBER 1993
FI NAL ANALYSIS
Doctor Vindicated in Second Malpractice Trial
by JUDITH SCHUMANN WEIZNER
It was reported early this morning that Dr.
Steven Artzt, a gastroenterologist at the New
President of the Gotham Medical Administration School of found himself and exonerated Dr. Artzt.
Medicine, of which Dr, Artzt is a graduate, as the sole Behind this decision was a history that flowed directly
witness for Dr. Artzt.
from the passage of the Omnibus Medical Reform Act of
York Westside Medical Administration HosDr. Mediziner's testimony, summarized below, left no1993 which created the Medical Administration and brought
pital, has been cleared of malpractice in the retrial
doubt that Dr. Artzt's treatment of Mr. Stau conformed to sweeping changes to the medical profession, making health
of a Case that sets a new Standard of responsibility Medical Administration standards.
care universal, redefining the relationship between doctor
Dr. Mediziner explained that the post-Spock genera- and patient, codifying treatments, regulating fees and rein the doctor-patient relationship.
tion has difficulty accepting the doctor as an authority and structuring the medical school curriculum. The
The verdict in Stau vs. Artzt was announced today as
that when such patients are given orders they tend not to obey radically redesigned outcome-based Medical Administration
picketers in hospital gowns paraded in front of the Civil them. Affording patients a greater measure of control over curriculum eliminates such traditional drudgeries as
Court building with placards reading "Whatever Happened
their treatment has resulted in a much higher level of compli- anatomy and basic surgical techniques, supplanting them
to Marcus Welby?" and "We Want Outcome-Based Sur- ance.
gery!" Nearly every phase of this closelywith instructional materials like Hooked on Anatomy
watched trial has broken new ground, providing
and Suture Self, which enable each student to learn at
a fascinating look at recent changes in the
his own pace.
nation's medical schools.
Medical Administration mandates have also
When the case was first tried last spring a
improved the emotional climate in medicine,
eliminating the paralyzing fear of humiliation that
finding of negligence on the part of Dr. Artzt
formerly oppressed young doctors making their
seemed a foregone conclusion.
Testimony revealed that the patient Mr.
clinical rounds. Students now make their rounds in a
Stau had consulted Dr. Artzt complaining of
respectful atmosphere conducive to the development
chronic intestinal bloating. Mr. Stau's responses
of self-esteem. Once each student has stated his
on his Medical Administration Uniform Paobservations and drawn his conclusions about patients,
tient History Questionnaire indicated that his
the group votes on the best treatment, prescribing a
diet consisted mainly of bagels and cream
treatment only after it has received unanimous support.
cheese, varied occasionally by white bread and
Thus no student is ever humiliated by a resident for
having given a "wrong" answer. Each medical school
peanut butter. Following Medical Administramust also provide a broad range of support services,
tion Diagnostic Guidelines, Dr. Artzt ordered
including psychological counselors and translators for
several tests, all of which showed that Mr. Stau
students who speak English below sixth grade level.
appeared to be constipated.
The Omnibus Medical Reform Act virtually
In accordance with the M.A. Procedural
Alternative Regulations, Dr. Artzt presented
guarantees that doctors will be sensitive to any
Mr. Stau with three treatment options, one of
community that receives their services. It mandates
which was surgery. Mr. Stau chose to have the
one year's study of African, Asian, Caribbean,
surgery and it was performed at the Westside
Hispanic, Native American and Islamic cultures, and
SURGEON STEVEN ARTZT AWAITING HIS NEXT PATIENT
M.A. Hospital. Following the operation, Mr.
proficiency in one Native American language as well
Stau lapsed into a coma in the recovery room and
as the student's own language and Spanish. Because
remained comatose for three days. Specialists called in to
studies
have shown that people are not likely to pursue
Today's young doctors are taught to involve their
consult were stymied until a retired anesthesiologist patients in the exploration process and to approach them in follow-up treatment if they have been offended, particular
observed that the anesthesia drip had not been removed a sensitive, oblique way, eschewing traditional, sometimes attention is given to the nuances of everyday speech. For
from Mr. Stau's IV. Shortly after the tube was disconnected offensively direct questions. Formerly, diagnostic technique example, if a doctor suspects that a patient's injury occurred
Mr. Stau awoke from the coma and immediately called his followed the old "masculine," linear approach, in which a during a religious rite, he must be careful to say nothing that
lawyer who filed charges against Dr. Artzt, doctor might pursue a direct line of observations such as might indicate contempt for or even skepticism of the pracanesthesiologist Dr. Rip V.W. Lethe, and the Westside "The patient complains of a sore throat. Are his glands tice in question.
Medical Administration Hospital.
Admission standards for Medical Administration
swollen? Has he a fever? Has he a cough?" But the postThe jury quickly found in Mr. Stau's favor, awarding modern approach is multidirectional, a "surrounding" and schools have been revised to assure complete fairness in the
him and his descendents Lifetime Priority Medical Admin- gradual working-out of a problem somewhat akin to eating selection process. Formerly filled by an aggressive winnowistration Benefits.
a bowl of oatmeal from the edges in—an intellectual nib- ing of applicants based on highly competitive criteria, places
In the celebratory crush immediately following the bling that permits doctor and patient to savor various pos- in medical schools are now filled by lottery, with selections
trial Mr. Stau was heard to remark to a friend that in his initial sible solutions while seeking the best one.
adjusted to reflect the racial, ethnic and gender makeup of
consultation with Dr. Artzt he had failed to mention his
By engaging in a sustained dialogue, patient and the country according to the most recent census, thereby
propensity for putting American cheese on his peanut-butter doctor arrive at a diagnosis together, affording the patient a assuring people of being able to find a doctor, who looks like
and white bread sandwiches. Dr. Artzt's attorney immedi- feeling of empowerment. The doctor then presents the pa- them.
This afternoon, immediately following the announceately petitioned the court to reopen the case on grounds of tient with a menu of possible treatment modalities, thereby
newly discovered evidence, arguing that by withholding demonstrating respect for the patient's judgment and intel- ment of the verdict, Dr. Artzt, speaking through his attorney,
information about the cheese, Mr. Stau had forced his client ligence.
expressed his intention to file a three million dollar malpracto proceed with incomplete data.
Dr. Mediziner's testimony showed conclusively that tice suit against Mr. Stau, since Mr. Stau has now been
Mr. Stau's attorney argued that Dr. Artzt ought to have Mr. Stau failed at this point in the process: by choosing shown to have withheld crucial information resulting in his
been able to infer from what he already knew that Mr. Stau surgery over less radical therapy, he placed himself in own near death, thereby endangering Dr. Artzt's profescould have benefited from the introduction of prunes into his danger and was himself responsible for having fallen into a sional reputation and standing in the community. Dr. Lethe
diet and that surgery should never even have been suggested. coma.
and the Westside Medical Administration Hospital are exThe judge ruled, however, that Mr. Stau, by not informing
After a mere fifteen minutes of deliberation the jury, pected to follow suit.
the doctor about the American cheese, had concealed facts which had listened raptly during Dr. Mediziner's entire two
critical to proper diagnosis and ordered a new trial.
and a half days of testimony, found Mr. Stau completely Judith Schumann Weizner's last piece apIn his opening statement at the recently completed responsible for the predicament in which he subsequently peared in our September issue.
second trial Dr. Artzt's attorney explained that an understanding of the new relationship between doctor and patient
was crucial to his client's case. He called Dr. Ira Mediziner,