AIDS
Sometime in the late ’50s, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann sat down to write an essay about a subject that had been mostly overlooked by other psychoanalysts up to that point. Even Freud had only touched on it in passing. She was not sure, she wrote, “what inner forces” made her struggle with the problem of loneliness, though she had a notion. READ MORE >>
The Unlikely Celebrity of C. Everett Koop
As surgeon general, he infuriated the right and became famous
Chuck Hagel is, of course, not the first presidential nominee to face stiff opposition in the Senate. In 1981, Democrats spent eight months battling the nomination of C. Everett Koop to be surgeon general. Ronald Reagan's choice of Koop, who was known as an outspoken foe of abortion, was seen as a sop to rightwing evangelicals and to the new right, which had successfully used opposition to abortion as a wedge issue to defeat Democrats in the 1980 election. But Koop, who died on Monday at age 96, turned out to be one of the great surprises of the Reagan years. READ MORE >>
Tom Coburn Wants a Gay-GOP Alliance. Seriously?
The Rehabilitation Of Bill Clinton
As far as the atmospherics of Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea go, I think it's worth noting that this may be the best day the man has had since Hillary won the New Hampshire primary some 20 months ago. Before the 2008 campaign, thanks to his foundation work on AIDS and malaria and the like, Bill Clinton had a sterling reputation as a global statesman and do-gooder who floated above the fray of common politics. But during the campaign he wrecked that image in a flurry of red-faced outbursts and ill-advised (if sometimes distorted) critiques of Barack Obama. READ MORE >>
South African Heads In The Sand
About 12% or 5.4 million people of South Africa's total population is infected with HIV. It is a human disaster, nothing less. The president of the country, Thabo Mbeki, is largely responsible for the rapid transition from HIV to AIDS to its victims and also for the sparsity of serious medical treatment. This is because he is a crackpot on the subject and seems not to believe that HIV causes AIDS at all. His minister of health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, is also a primitive about medical science. So while AIDS activists in the country try to circumvent the obstacles real prevention and READ MORE >>
Growth Spurt
Sweet And Low
I. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperFlamingo, 546 pp., $26) Barbara Kingsolver is the most successful practitioner of a style in contemporary fiction that might be called Nice Writing. Nice Writing is a violent affability, a deadly sweetness, a fatal gentle touch. But before I start in on Kingsolver's work, I feel I must explain why I feel that I must start in on it. READ MORE >>
