The Enemies List Read online

  Tom Lauria of Arlington, Virginia, notes that our first chapter “overlooked some major, A-list comsymp redheads. But, hey,” he continues, “now that the Right has its own ‘Names Project’...”:

  Those scarlet-beaked birdbrains at National Public Radio, especially the staff of All Things Considered

  Cat Stevens

  Darryl Hannah

  Bob Barker

  Flora Lewis

  Joan Baez

  And that true red tool, City Paper editor Jack Shafer

  Just a minute here, Tom, Jack Shafer isn’t a “red tool,” he’s a Libertarian—similar to a conservative except he believes we should all have private Polaris missiles in our backyard pools. As for Darryl Hannah, you may be right about her politics, but I’m sure somebody can talk some sense into her. I volunteer.

  James J. Griffitts of Dunnellon, Florida, protests my plan for media overexposure. He thinks some people should be banned from television entirely:

  Old Nixon, Johnson, and Carter experts who hover in covens along the Potomac

  Robert McNamara

  CIA’s Colby: an obvious security risk

  Griffitts also suggests that subcommittees made up of blacks, Episcopalians, Jews, journalists, and Republicans should be set up to select numbers of their own to be banished from the media, e.g.:

  Andrew Young

  Barbara Jordan

  Desmond Tutu

  Headman Browning

  Alan Dershowitz

  Charlayne Hunter-Gault

  Paul Sarbanes

  And maybe Richard Nixon

  Richard Nixon? You’ve gone too far, James. We’ll have to make one more addition to the Enemies List here and now:

  James J. Griffitts

  Marion E. Mahony of Roanoke, Virginia, forwards a list “compiled with much phlegm, bile, and—and barf!!!”:

  Ex-Gov. Douglas Wilder of Virginia

  Ex-Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York

  Sen. Chuck Robb of Virginia

  Ex-Sen. Paul Trible (R-VA), quitter and turncoat!

  Numerous Roman Catholic bishops, clergy, and dissident nuns: I am a Roman Catholic—but am no leftist or libertarian

  Columnist William Raspberry, an ordinarily sensible man who supports Jesse Jackson for PRESIDENT!!!

  Louis Farrakhan

  Paxton Davis, a radical leftist columnist in our local paper

  PLOWSHARES

  Armand Hammer

  Gloria Steinem

  Larry Flynt

  Hugh and Christie Hefner

  Paul Newman: He’s beautiful and talented and I love him—but I HATE HIS POLITICS!!!

  Well put, Marion, but Gloria Steinem is from my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, and, believe me, she’s got a reason to be crazy.

  Jeff Kock and Ken Pitts of Nashville, Tennessee, say:

  Mary McGrory

  and add, “We propose legislation mandating that all newspapers carrying both ‘Doonesbury’ and Miss McGrory’s column drop ‘Doonesbury’ and put Mary’s dribble on the comics page.”

  Marjorie G. James of Austin, Texas, tells us, “I get a lot of mail from celebrities, and they want to hear from me, too. In fact they even send me addressed envelopes and sometimes postage. So—please”:

  Joanne Woodward, who wants to keep back-alley abortionists at bay

  Jimmy Carter, who wants to keep on hammering

  Lily Tomlin, who helped to make Ann Richards governor of Texas

  Ann Richards

  Ann Lewis

  Plus:

  Massachusetts

  New York City

  Dan Rather

  Walter Cronkite

  Cathy Cronkite: Walter’s daughter who has a radio talk show here and gets downright testy with callers who show just a speck of good sense

  Dr. Alfred M. Beyer of Garden City, New York, would like to add:

  National Geographic

  “This may raise some eyebrows,” says Dr. Al, “but I have long considered it a left-leaning mag. Every two or three months they show us a ‘People’s Republic’ country with smiling peasants and citizens.”

  Steve J. Adamek of San Diego, California, calls us timid. “The nation requires a complete perestroika,” he claims. “We must say bon voyage to”:

  Ex-gang members and ex-drug addicts who have become drug counselors and youth activists

  “This will open the job market for current addicts and gang members. Thus we will be left with only one problem, the sagging domestic assault rifle industry. This can be solved by the time-honored trade practice of government-subsidized dumping. The outskirts of Nicaragua and the interior of China seem good places to test this policy.”

  Mark Sheffield, Jr., of Escondido, California, decries:

  Paul Duke

  Frederick Allen

  Cokie Roberts

  Judy Woodruff

  Cher

  Sally Quinn

  William Hurt

  Maxine Waters

  MacNeil-Lehrer and Company

  Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)

  Dave Wilson of Denver, Colorado, recommends for animadversion:

  Helen Caldicott

  Sam Donaldson

  John Chancellor: He actually suggested in a commentary that the U.S. government subsidize an American book tour by Salman Rushdie.

  The Massachusetts congressional delegation: Send in the clowns.

  Rep. James Traficant, Jr. (D-OH)

  Actor John Cusack: He claims that because of his anti-Reagan statements, a government agent is probably monitoring his phone calls—talk about a lousy civil service job.

  Elayne Boosler: the comedy club answer to Mme. Defarge, although Defarge was better at keeping people in stitches

  Dayton, Ohio: Hometown of the acting Lowe brothers, Rob and Chad. What a comedown from being the hometown of the flying Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur.

  Larry King: He hangs up on callers who disagree with him within eight seconds.

  Callers who agree with Larry King: He hangs up on them within twelve seconds.

  Personally, Dave, I think Larry King redeems himself for the former by the latter. Besides, he once gave me an even better book plug than Garrick Utley.

  James R. Stevenson, address unknown, reproves:

  George Steinbrenner: Anyone who can destroy baseball so thoroughly has got to be a pinko.

  C. Everett Koop

  E.T.: Is anybody on this list truly human?

  The American Roman Catholic Bishops: Heretics all!

  David Rockefeller: Hey, this is an enemies list! It has to have a Rockefeller. Otherwise, we’ll give paranoia a bad name.

  And James signs his letter with a rather strict “OFF THE PINKS!”

  III

  The Readers Keep Responding

  The American Spectator, November 1989

  Those of you who took President Bush’s “kinder, gentler” suggestion too literally and, therefore, haven’t been reading the American Spectator may wonder what’s going on here. Well, in the July 1989 issue I first proposed a “New McCarthyism” (of the Strike-a-Blow-for-Joe, not the Clean-for-Gene type). This would be fair recompense to the left, I thought, for their incessant use of the Mc-word to describe every conservative criticism of anybody.

  At the end of my “Proscription for a Better America” I asked readers to send in the names of additional goats to scape. Send they did—postcards, letters, telegrams, and computer printouts thick as a Democrat’s skull. This despite the fact that American Spectator readers have jobs, marriages, intellects, and other things which keep them busier than, say, members of the Community for Creative Nonviolence. So many parlor pinks, bull slingers, dweebs, wonks, bluestockings, nincompoops, hopheads, muck spouts, hog callers, dopes, simps, chumps, wets, sob sisters, egg suckers, and pencil-necked geeks were named that the Readers’ List had to be divided into two parts.

  We now have a lovely file on the ideologically sinister, a fine, big matricula of scum. The only problem is, no one has come up with a fit
suggestion for what to do with the people on it. We conservatives don’t have gulags because they aren’t tax deductible. You can’t leverage gulag assets, and gulag merchandising rights are worth zilch. I mean, who wants a Leonid Brezhnev lunch box? Drug therapy isn’t going to work on these folks. Most of the lefties already tried it on themselves in the sixties. And prefrontal lobotomies are out. How can doctors sever the nerves connecting the frontal lobes with the thalamus when the entire brain is absent? Maybe we can crate up the nitwits and sell them in Eastern Europe. I hear they’re running out of Commies over there.

  THE LIST CONTINUES

  Anyway, as I have noted, the Readers’ Enemies List has been edited only to remove duplications, and the comments appearing after the italicized names are the readers’ own, although there is an occasional bracketed note from me when I thought somebody was calling in an air strike on his own position.

  Paul J. Beck of Morocco, Indiana, begins the back nine play, teeing off on:

  Studs Terkel

  Joseph Campbell

  Forrest Church

  Sondra Gehr, local Chicago public radio host, a feminine Terkel

  Presidents of Dartmouth and Stanford

  Maureen Reagan, who gives freeloading off a famous father a bad name

  Mortimer Adler

  Little Stevie

  David Lange

  The ACLU attorneys who tried to send Walter Polovchak to the gulag

  That rheumy-eyed guy from Harvard who writes those weepy books about children. Whatsisname.

  Richard Lamm: This man is scary.

  Judith Evans Hanhisalo of Duxbury, Massachusetts, wants to add to the list:

  Lawrence Walsh and his entire secret police organization

  Judge Gerhard Gesell

  Adm. Gene La Rocque

  But she wants to subtract from our previous list:

  Paul Weyrich

  Not until he buys John Tower a drink.

  William Rockwood of Canoga Park, California, reproaches:

  Michael J. Fox and the entire cast of Family Ties

  Rosanna Arquette

  Marlon Brando

  The makers of nonalcoholic wine

  “I’ve tried,” says Doug Rivers of Warner Robbins, Georgia, “to group my candidates for the New Enemies List by certain common characteristics to facilitate future classification at re-education camps”:

  Alice Walker: All on the final list should be forced to read one of her novels cover to cover.

  Mick and Bianca Jagger

  Gregory Peck

  The ol’ Cos, Tawana Brawley patron

  Gene Upshaw

  Right Reverend Sharpton

  Attorneys Mason and Maddox

  Presbyterians

  Vegetarians

  Presbyterians?

  Kenneth M. Potter of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, indicts the following:

  Paul Warnke

  Sen. Patrick “Leaker” Leahy

  “Preacher” Scotty Reston

  Sammy Thompson III of Washington, D.C., writes on behalf of himself and his associates to say, “As junior staff peons at two neoconservative organizations, we join together to form the Mortals & Divine Society, whose mission is to take every occasion to publicly and privately denounce and harangue those listed below”:

  Elizabeth Drew

  Jane Pauley

  Sojourners magazine

  Jim Wallis

  John Lofton

  The Other Side magazine

  John Keker

  Bishop John Shelby Spong

  I. F. Stone, also on God’s list

  Gus Hall

  Timothy Leary

  Jim Hightower

  Pat Sajak

  Morton Downey, Jr.

  John Nields

  Arthur Liman

  Gloria Allred

  David Duke

  Buz Lukens

  The Kennedy Kids

  Larry “Bud” Melman

  Mayor Marion Barry

  Leonard Nimoy

  The Fairfax County “Family Life Education” program

  People who use “dove” motifs

  Dykes on Bikes

  Eugene McCarthy

  TransAfrica

  The Hollywood Women’s Political Committee

  The inventor of the “Visualize World Peace” bumper sticker

  Joseph J. Eule, also of D.C., admonishes:

  Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

  A. Bartlett Giamatti: A liberal as commissioner of baseball? Something pretty fishy there if you ask me. [Obviously the Big Umpire upstairs agreed.]

  Rep. Sam Gejdenson

  Anybody using the term “significant other”

  All Yugo owners

  Smith College School for Social Work

  Peter Cuikas of Leominster, Massachusetts, proscribes:

  Mike Dukakis

  Boston Globe editorial page contributor David Nyhan

  Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)

  The Clamshell Alliance

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Sally Struthers

  Bill Moyers

  And my brother-in-law, who is living testimony to the meaninglessness of a college degree these days

  Paul Kirchner of Hamden, Connecticut, reviles:

  Oliver Stone

  Linda “Is anyone going to eat that last éclair?” Ellerbee

  Charles Kuralt

  Paul Simon: both of them

  Lillian Hellman: deceased but in need of further persecution

  Paul Robeson: ditto

  Norman Mailer

  Kurt Vonnegut

  William Styron, and anyone else who would describe Mr. and Mrs. Ortega as “poets”

  Anyone who uses the terms “The Third World” and “The Homeless” respectfully

  Jon Voight

  Everyone who sang on “We Are the World,” especially that turncoat redneck Willie Nelson

  Ad agency people who write jingles for giant corporations that sound like additional stanzas to “We Are the World”

  Rep. Robert Torricelli

  Rep. Joe Kennedy, Jr., and every other Kennedy except maybe Caroline

  Bob Geldof

  David Byrne

  Rock groups that take up left-wing politics under the mistaken idea that they have something to contribute to society besides a driving backbeat and three-chord progressions

  Jack Lemmon

  Morgan Fairchild

  Actresses who take up left-wing politics under the mistaken idea that they have something to contribute to society besides a good look at their breasts

  Dick Gregory

  Philip Agee

  Randall Robinson

  Susan Stamberg

  Nina Totenberg

  Linda Wertheimer

  Anyone who held a candle for Ted Bundy

  Ben Bradlee

  Bob “He sat up in his bed! He talked to me! I swear it!” Woodward

  Garry Wills

  Peter Ustinov

  Pete Seeger

  Arlo Guthrie

  Folksingers

  Poets

  Mimes

  Sydney Schanberg, wherever he is

  Frank Zappa, former iconoclast, now boring knee-jerk liberal

  Hunter Thompson, ditto

  William Greider

  Paul, I don’t mind your putting my friend and co-worker William Greider on the list, because he’d be darned upset if he were left off. But you’d better watch what you say about my pal Hunter or the next time you visit your stamp collection you may find the back of your Eisenhower memorial block has been dosed with Ibogaine.

  To return to our sheep, Mary and Timothy Wheeler of Shelbyville, Indiana, fulminate at length, and somewhat peevishly, thus:

  Ernest Sternglass

  Amory Lovins

  Barry Commoner

  Andrew Greeley

  E. F. Schumacher

  Sidney Blumenthal

  Richard J. Barnet

  Madalyn Murray O’Hair

  Irving Howe

&n
bsp; Robert Drinan

  Norman Birnbaum

  Madonna

  Maria Shriver

  Michael Gartner, editor of the Ames, Iowa, Daily Tribune

  Eddie Murphy

  Janet Cooke

  One Mary Farley, who described “My Love Affair with a Sandinista” in Cosmo. Lust on a park bench, actually.

  Cybill Shepherd

  Msgr. Bryan Hehir

  Sid and Nancy

  Jack Valenti

  Dr. Ruth

  Kathleen Sullivan

  Jean Harris

  Guns N’ Roses

  Betty Dodson

  James Freedman

  William Cole

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Tony Mandarich

  Mike Tyson [Okay, Mary and Tim, howsabout you go tell Mike he’s on the Enemies List.]

  Robin Givens

  Irving R. Levine

  Ted Sorensen

  Bob Rafelson

  Alex Cox

  Arthur Penn

  John Denver

  Richard Pryor

  Judy Collins

  Charles Curran

  Barry Manilow

  Jack Henry Abbott

  Glenn Close

  Safe sex

  Chuck Stone

  Kim Basinger

  Dustin Hoffman

  Sushi

  Willie Horton

  Candy Crowley

  Carroll O’Connor

  Jack Klugman

  Alice Rivlin

  Muzak

  Harold Stassen

  Mary Worth

  Martin Scorsese

  Candice Bergen

  #12 grade river gravel [huh?]

  Gallaudet College

  Union of Concerned Alchemists

  Scientific American

  Oregon

  West 57th Street

  The U.S. House of Representatives

  Everyone in the Senate whose weight exceeds his IQ by a factor of two or more: Attn: Ted

  Anybody on Saturday Night Live

  Any given Supreme Court majority or minority

  Feminists in slacks

  Ugly feminists

  Old feminists

  Ecofeminists

  Feminist dykes

  Masculine feminists

  Anyone who uses “Ms.” without wincing

  Social workers

  Pollsters

  Therapists

  Bureaucrats

  Activists

  Slugs

  Anyone who believes in homophobia

  Anyone who disapproves of it

  Everyone at every prestige university except first-semester freshmen, maybe

  Anyone who consciously forms “relationships”

  Anyone belonging to any group that has “Coalition,” “Alliance,” “Community,” “Solidarity,” “Citizen,” “People,” or “Popular” in its name