Broadcasting from the White House lawn the day the Israeli-PLO accord was signed, Connie Chung sighed, “A hundred years of hostility, of hatred, evaporating miraculously.” Oh? As the Holocaust Museum opened in Washington, a poll showed that one third of Americans think it “Possible” that the Holocaust never happened. Jan Gies died in Amsterdam 49 years after he smuggled food to the young girl and her family in hiding: the Franks. The GATT free(er) trade agreement was signed but Europe’s governments, unhappy about the entertainment preferences of Europe’s peoples’ limited imports of American films and TV programming in order to protect “European culture.” In 1993 that culture consisted primarily of sclerotic welfare statism, soaring unemployment and ethnic cleansing. Japan’s rising sun suddenly seemed like a bubble.
On Jan. 20, with Chelsea Clinton safely enrolled in a private school, the party primarily responsible for the condition of contemporary government took control of the executive branch. Democrats declared that their previous handiwork needs “reinventing.” Said the OMB Director: “We have 22 pages of regulations just telling someone who wants to make brownie cookies how many raisins and nuts they’re supposed to put in the damn things. What we don’t define is how many nuts it takes to explain how many nuts you need to put into a brownie cookie.” The 40,000 pieces of mail “misplaced” en route to Arkansas and Tennessee before Christmas 1992 (including Inaugural invitations) were being delivered in December 1993. The Clintons proposed turning health care over to this government. The fourth branch of government, Rush Limbaugh, was not amused.
The party of taxes and compassion had servant problems: some people were disqualified for high office because they had not properly paid taxes for their domestics. The party of diversity produced a cabinet that the president said “looks like America.” Eighteen lawyers. “Lawyers,” said one of them, Attorney General Reno, “are what make people free.” (The Founders had a different idea: “…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”) Reno had jurisdiction over a bloody debacle in Waco and promptly became Washington’s pinup.
The nation’s 19th most populous city, Washington, D.C., which thinks it should be a state, had a crime wave even in its police department. Among the applicants recently accepted to its police academy were a man who listed his address as 2700 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, S.E. (Saint Elizabeths psychiatric hospital, where he was an outpatient) and another man whose prior arrest for drug distribution was not known until, at police headquarters, he bumped into the officer who had arrested him.
Immigration became a boiling issue, particularly in California, where a Dodger game was broadcast in English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and Korean. Somalia, Haiti and Florida remained unpacified by American power. East Palo Alto, Calif, with a high homicide rate, considered providing students with life insurance, including burial benefits. During the 10 days of fires, 60 people died in Los Angeles County–of gunshot wounds. A Los Angeles jury decided that smashing Reginald Denny’s skull with a brick did not constitute assault with a deadly weapon. Defense attorneys for his attackers successfully argued that what used to be considered especially culpable behavior–becoming intoxicated by mob violence–now excuses criminal behavior.
In premodern, superstitious ages, people who behaved badly said, “The Devil made me do it.” In this age of reason, a fired Northwestern professor says his disability made him do it: for six years after his mother died he deposited almost $40,000 of her Social Security checks. He blamed “extreme procrastination behavior” caused by depression. A Penn State student complained to police about a breach of contract: a student she had hired to take an exam for her flunked it. Sensitivity was busting out all over: an AP headline said WASHINGTON GOVERNOR DROPS “CHIEF OF STAFF” TITLE AFTER INDIAN COMPLAINT.
In Dallas a 44-year-old woman filed an age discrimination suit against a bar that wouldn’t hire her as a topless dancer. The male Berkeley student who attended classes stark naked was suspended for–you guessed it–sexual harassment. Gender bending among the dolls: Ken, Barbie’s boyfriend, got streaked hair and an earring. A ’90s gift of caring is a $395 sterling silver condom case. An 8-year-old boy who found condoms in his parents’ bedroom exclaimed to his mother, “Wow! I didn’t even know you guys were gay!”
Death came to two particularly elegant people–Arthur Ashe and Holly Golightly (as Audrey Hepburn shall be remembered). Anyone wanting to understand middle class America in the postwar period can start with the novels of Peter De Vries, dead at 83. Matthew Ridgway, like the Korean War in which he rallied U.S. forces, was more heroic than most Americans understand.
Charlie Gehringer never said much. His manager said, “Charlie says ‘hello’ on opening day, ‘goodbye’ on closing day, and in between bats .350. " He died this year, as did two great catchers, Roy Campanella and the man who was the answer to a trivia question: Who was the sixth hitter, who singled, after Carl Hubbell struck out five other future Hall of Famers in a row in the 1934 All Star Game? Bill Dickey. During the 1929 Rose Bowl California’s Roy Riegels scooped up a Georgia Tech fumble on Tech’s 20-yard line and ran toward the end zone. Wrong end zone. For the rest of his 84 years he was known as Wrong Way Riegels.
