The Enemies List Read online

  Such was my call to action, and the reader response was heartening. Almost a thousand individuals, institutions, and categories of morons were proposed for execration.

  THE ENEMIES LIST—THE OVERVIEW

  The “New McCarthyism” article was accompanied by a brief muster roll of nitwits—some hundred-odd names with which to chum the waters of indignation. This pilot catalog wasn’t meant to be definitive; nonetheless, readers greeted the omission of Teddy Kennedy and Jesse Jackson with howls of indignation. Well, all I can say is, Stalin and Molotov weren’t on Senator Joe’s original list.

  However, neither the Hymietown Rhymer nor In-the-Drink Eddie received the most Enemies List nominations. That distinction belongs, oddly enough, to Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH). Howie is a terrific fool, of course, and a typical liberal of stinking wealth who’s got his pile and would change the rules so nobody else can get theirs. But there are thousands like Howie. Why did almost a quarter of the American Spectator’s Enemies List respondents mention Metzenbaum by name? Maybe it’s because the NRA has been targeting the Buckeye Bolshie for his disarm-the-populace legislative proposals. (The events in Tiananmen Square have given liberals new impetus on this issue—just think how many People’s Army soldiers might have been killed if China didn’t have the benefit of gun control.) Let that American Spectator-NRA overlap be fair warning to the pink-squeeks. Not only do we conservatives support the Second Amendment, we also exercise our Second Amendment rights. We’ve got a bunch of guns, and all you liberals have is Carl Rowan, who had a trophy-size stoned teenager trapped in his own backyard and couldn’t manage a kill shot.

  Also surprisingly popular as objects of derision were Linda Ellerbee, Leonard Bernstein, and Ramsey Clark—not exactly America’s major trio of power-brokering opinion-molders, if you ask me. But annoyance factor seemed to outweigh public danger in readers’ minds. Carl Sagan, Whoopi Goldberg, Mitch Snyder, and C. Everett Koop (that buttinski) each collected a larger number of blackballs than did the ACLU. And Barney Frank was damned with greater frequency than Christopher Dodd or Louis Farrakhan.

  More predictably, there was plenty of media-baiting—of Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson in particular and of National Public Radio in general. Ted Turner was repeatedly condemned as a traitor, though not (let free enterprise reign) as a colorist.

  Other multiple citations: Al Sharpton, despised as a demagogue. Mike Dukakis, despised as a loser. Molly Yard, despised period (pun semi-intended).

  One problem mooted in the original article was inventing a modern punishment to go with a modern McCarthyism. Our jails are too full already. And why should we impose the likes of Howard Metzenbaum on ordinary, decent crack dealers? I had proposed media overexposure as a form of revenge—putting our victims in supermarket tabloids and on television talk shows until the public gagged and condemned them to remote dinner theater productions. But now I’m not so sure. That is, media overexposure worked like a charm on Morton Downey, Jr., but has failed to make the slightest dent in Rob Lowe. (And how much more overexposed can you get?) In this matter the readers were no help at all. In fact, the faint sound of tumbrels rolling can be heard in the background of more than a few Enemies List missives. Hey, dudes, lighten up.

  While I’m on the tactless tack of criticizing the paying customers, let me say you folks are a bit rough with black leaders. Sure, they spout nonsense but it’s in the great nonsense-spouting tradition of Irish, Italians, and Jews before them. This is the way poor people acquire job skills. How can blacks climb the American socioeconomic ladder and get big jobs in industry and government if they don’t know how to be as completely full of crap as the rest of us? A bit of invert-bashing was also detectable in some letters. Now, whatever we (and God) may think about this method of birth control, let us not forget that at the core of conservatism is the sanctity of the individual and the privacy of the conscience. Also, if you think there’s no such thing as an influential gay conservative, you sure haven’t been reading the Washington Times lately.

  That said, the following register of enemies, including reader comments, is presented in the order received and edited only to eliminate repetition. (I’ve made my own addenda when I thought the correspondent was seriously receiving radio messages from Neptune on his dentures.) Every nomination has been included no matter how wacky, obscure, imaginary, or dead the choice. There are only three exceptions.

  1. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Someone actually proposed Arnold Schwarzenegger for the New Enemies List, and I’m going to save that person’s life. Besides, Arnold is a big-time Republican and watching him marry into the Kennedy clan was one of the most satisfying spectacles of the late twentieth century. Here’s this family of bigmouths who pride themselves on being rough and tough and suddenly they have a mossback in-law who can snap all their spines with the muscles in his smaller toes.

  2. Mike Royko. Somebody suggested him, too, but I’m not having it. In the first place, Mike is one of the last newspapermen on earth who still hang out in bars instead of computer stores or leg-waxing salons. In the second place, he wrote a column a couple of months ago in which he wondered where all the bums, soaks, and rummies had gone and then realized they’d all become members of advocacy groups and were demonstrating outside the White House. In the third place, Mike’s got a tongue like a lash and I don’t want to be in its way.

  3. Pat Schroeder. Pat was nominated for the List almost as many times as Molly Yard, but what use is perpetrating arbitrary injustice if I can’t be arbitrary about it? I don’t agree with the Honorable Ms. Schroeder about much, but I like her. She says what she thinks and adds a much-needed lightness of tone to the dreadful House of Representatives. And, as for Pat weeping during her presidential campaign, hell, all I had to do was watch the ’88 election on TV and I howled like a tyke in a month-old Pamper.

  One more omission: Representative Mickey Leland (D-TX) died in a plane crash in Ethiopia. Congressman Leland was named by a number of readers, but common decency demands that we forgo his inclusion. Instead, we’ll include his staff. Leland’s aides bitched loudly about the “inadequate” efforts to find their boss. The Pentagon deployed one C-5 cargo plane, three C-141 cargo planes, four C-130 search-and-rescue planes, four UH-60 helicopters, a weather satellite, and a U-2 spy plane in the hunt for Leland. Usually when this kind of taxpayer money is spent on a Texas congressman, it’s for purposes of prosecution.

  THE LIST ITSELF

  But before we begin the actual list, let’s hear from a couple of people who eschewed naming names and took broad philosophical views instead.

  One Keith Roberts suggests that:

  Before we exorcise the left, let’s straighten out our own ranks.... With Reagan came fellow travelers from the left—Reagan Democrats and religious Nazis and kinder, gentler Welfare State Conservatives.

  Sure, crush the lefties, but save some ideological muscle for the brown shirts and hairshirts of the right: wannabe bureaucrat businessmen and Bible-toting bomb-heaving Christians.

  Thank you for sharing, Keith, and keep your head down.

  John Poulin of Flin Flon, Manitoba, worries about the effect our housecleaning may have on his large, wishy-washy nation:

  Usually I leave American issues to Americans, but the repercussions of Tail-Gunnerism redux are bound to spill over into this benighted land.... Large numbers of sensitive citizens here were traumatized by the fear-crazed thousands who tumbled northward during the last purge and began drinking heavily, thus making the roads hazardous.

  Mr. Poulin gives some sage advice to fugitives from political ridicule: “All expatriots and expelled rabble who drift northward should dress warmly, as winters here are coldish. . . . Most of our politicians are either lunatics or scoundrels. . . . Chances are good that your riffraff can get good jobs working for the government.”

  Finally, there was a solitary letter of dissent. Phil Maggitti of Elverson, Pennsylvania, wrote: “In the midst of an otherwise admirable and occasionally funny piece in
your July issue, P. J. ‘He’s No Tom Wolfe’ O’Rourke takes the obligatory cheap shot at animal rights activists ...” Phil had a lot more to say but a bear ate him.

  Now, the list.

  Thomas J. Bieter of Duluth, Minnesota, kicks off with:

  Minnesota State Rep. Phyllis Kahn, who introduced a bill which would have granted the vote to twelve-year-olds. She was serious. Arguments against her bill, she charged, display an “adult supremacist attitude.”

  Robert W. Somers of Carrboro, North Carolina, names:

  The Raleigh News and Observer: This birdcage liner has kept the ravings of Cockburn, McGrory, and Lewis while purging the writings of R. E. Tyrrell and Joe Bob Briggs.

  They pulled Joe Bob Briggs? We are aghast.

  Nicholas A. Damask II of Cincinnati, Ohio, who signs himself “an obviously racist-sexist-fascist-homophobic college student,” suggests:

  Sen. Christopher “Nicaraguan Foreign Minister” Dodd (D-CT)

  Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-TX)

  Whoopi Goldberg

  Robin “Wish I Were Whoopi Goldberg” Williams

  Don Johnson

  Barbra Streisand

  David Corn

  Robert Scheer

  Mark Green

  Lesley Stahl

  Katharine Graham

  All college presidents except John Silber and George Roche

  “Shocked to find the following names missing from the New Enemies List,” says Lawrence D. Skutch of Westport, Connecticut:

  John Dingell (D-MI), whose recent pronouncements on scientific method make this country appear “a buffoon among great nations”

  Bill Bradley (D-NJ), who pulled strings to join a reserve unit during Vietnam so he could continue his important work—playing basketball

  Sam Nunn (D-GA), whose only useful action is to prove a chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is unfit to be secretary of defense

  Johnny Carson, whose only funny line in almost thirty years was that Jim Wright would resign as Speaker as soon as he could find a buyer for the office

  Jay Leno, who thinks the mere mention of J. Danforth Quayle should regale the assorted hinds with laughter

  Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who, while enjoying the fruits of a $400 million trust fund, can’t spend the rest of the country’s money fast enough

  James A. Morgan of Martinsburg, West Virginia, proposes:

  Jane Fonda

  Molly Yard

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Kate Michelman

  And my peacenik friends George and Linda from Pittsburgh, whom I suspect would secretly love to be on a right-wing enemies list

  Terry Przybylski of Des Plaines, Illinois, says of his dishonor roll, “This is all I have time for right now. I must return to witch-hunting, Commie-bashing, and improving my techniques for gambling at bowling”:

  Jesse Jackson, his wife, his kids, his neighbors, anyone who ever voted for him and anyone who ever trained a camera on him

  Lyndon LaRouche, so the lefties in the media will quit calling him an “arch-conservative”

  Bella Abzug

  USA Today

  Vernon Jarrett, race-baiting columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times

  The “Tempo Woman” section of the Chicago Tribune, presented every Sunday by the Women’s International Conspiracy from Hell

  Betty Friedan

  Kate Millet

  Susan Brownmiller

  Margaret Atwood

  Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago

  Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee

  Any priest, minister, or rabbi who was in the seminary or divinity school during the Vietnam War, to be defrocked by one of his peers who was there

  NAACP

  ADA

  ACLU

  UAW: Sony, American Spectator, sometimes you have to offend your advertisers.

  Ann Arbor, Michigan

  Madison, Wisconsin

  Iowa City, Iowa

  Marvin Miller, the former head of the baseball players union, for calling American academia a “right-wing” institution

  Bryan R. Johnson of Blacksburg, Virginia, says, “If it is later discovered that an innocent person has been placed on the list, we can do what the Soviets do—rehabilitate their names about fifty years after they’re dead.” And he nominates:

  The American Library Association

  Jack Anderson

  Handgun Control, Inc.

  Carl Rowan, Jr.

  The entire cast, producers, writers, and, what the hell, even the cameramen of the Today Show: Let’s bring back the concept of “guilt by association.”

  Bill Wiltman of Dade City, Florida, submits:

  Anybody who thinks Mahler was a great composer

  The progeny of Henry Ford and R. J. Reynolds

  Howard Cosell

  “Also,” says Bill, “I suggest developing a schedule of traits common to all members of the List. For example, going ‘Humph!’ and rolling the eyes when someone mentions Nixon. Or saying ‘Oh, God!’ at the mention of Reagan. Or clapping at movies, considering the dead ducks in Alaska ‘a crime against humanity,’ and saying ‘Oh, God! You read that?’ about the American Spectator. Such a list is needed because we are all susceptible to frauds now and then, even the best fraud detectives. Mencken voted for Roosevelt in ’32.”

  “The following,” writes Robert Y. Stair of Ocala, Florida, “are creatures who display no redeeming characteristics”:

  Daniel Schorr

  Ramsey Clark

  Stansfield Turner

  Ernest Hollings

  Tom Brokaw

  Redneck TV evangelists

  The Department of Education

  All the Pentagon desk jockeys who collected medals for the Grenada invasion but never left town

  Comes now Mary Frances Vollmer of Colorado Springs, Colorado, whose enemies include a number of my friends and acquaintances, starting with Pat Schroeder, who, as I mentioned, will not be mentioned. Here, however, is the rest of the Vollmer Index:

  Sen. Alan Cranston (D-CA)

  Eleanor Holmes Norton

  Garrick Utley

  Jack Germond

  Haynes Johnson

  Michael Kinsley

  Chris Matthews

  Eleanor Clift

  Michael Jackson, the radio talk show host, not the singer

  Steve Roberts (New York Times)

  Chris Wallace

  Mark Shields

  Tom Braden

  Jack Nelson (Los Angeles Times)

  Let me beg to differ on Garrick Utley, Mary Frances. He’s always been good about plugging my books, and there are some things more important than politics—car payments, just for instance. Michael Kinsley—a close friend of mine and a dear enemy of R. Emmett’s—is liberalish, true, but the thing he likes best about liberalism is being accused of it. Then there’s Chris Matthews. What can I say, Chris? I’ll try to make sure you’re well treated in detention.

  William Milton Macfadyen of Santa Barbara, California, sends us a neatly typed, inclusive, and alphabetized syllabus. He’s obviously been keeping a file on these people. Stick around, Mac, we’re going to need you during the Quayle administration:

  ABA

  The Hon. James A. Baker III

  The Rev. Jim Bakker

  Bob Beckel

  The Hon. Joe Biden

  The Miserable Jack Brooks

  The Hon. Willie Brown

  California’s Democratic congressional delegation

  The Dishonorable Tony Coelho

  EarthFirst! PeopleLast?

  Michael G. Gartner

  Jessica Hahn

  The Hon. Lee H. Hamilton

  Gary Hartpence or Gephardt or whatever his name is

  Stephen Hess

  Joan Kroc

  Spuds MacKenzie

  MADD

  Ralph Neas

  The New York Times

  Timesmen and Timeswomen Linda Greenhouse, Lindsey Gruson, Stephen Kinzer, and Robin Toner

&nb
sp; Planned Parenthood

  Harvey Rosenfield

  Eleanor Smeal

  Mitch Snyder

  The Hon. Arlen Specter

  David Stockman

  Robert Strauss

  Laurence Tribe

  The Unitarian Society

  West Germany: Don’t they ever learn?

  Brian “Shorty” Willson

  John F. Curran of River Edge, New Jersey, gives us the following excellent suggestions:

  Little kids who become pen pals of totalitarian and the media who suck this stuff up

  Jim Wright, who did not so much resign from Congress as permit Congress to withdraw from him

  Sweden

  Pete Hamill, for finding a parallel between the Chicago ’68 punks and the students in Tiananmen Square

  Anyone who refers to the handicapped as “differently abled”: I suppose the dead are “differently vital.”

  Richard Serra and his annoyingly intrusive Tilted Arc sculpture

  The ideologically correct pronunciation masters: “Nicaragua,” in English, is “knicker-rog-wa.” And what’s this “Chee-lay” stuff? I wonder how these people pronounce “France”?

  Geraldine Ferraro and family

  All bemoaners of “insensitivity”

  All “nuclear-free zones”

  The perpetrators of the hyphenated last name syndrome

  Feminists who insist upon ragging patriarchy by retaining, upon marriage, their daddies’ names

  J. F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Lawyers: The Antichrist will have a law degree, of this I am certain.