Reagan Stoked the AIDS Plague
"This epic is, among other things, a searing indictment of how the Reagan administration's long silence stoked the plague of AIDS in the 1980's....Whatever his script's fictions, it accurately conveys the rancid hypocrisy among powerful closeted gay Republicans in Washington as AIDS spiraled."
- Editor Frank Rich praising HBO's adaptation of the anti-Reagan, pro-gay play "Angels in America," November 16.
Clinton's "Failure to Strengthen Government's Hand"
Over the Economy
"[Economist Joseph] Stiglitz offers a different and more illuminating sequence of events, one that helps to free us from blind faith in deficit reduction and the endless pressure from investors and executives for deregulation and unfettered markets....Along the way, the overenthusiasm for deficit reduction and budget balancing damaged the economy, mainly through underinvestment in the public sector....The allegiance to deregulation turned out to be even more damaging, but the financial markets insisted and the Clinton administration complied. Stiglitz is particularly good at describing the failure to strengthen government's hand in a market economy."
- Economics reporter Louis Uchitelle reviewing Joseph Stiglitz's book "The Roaring Nineties" in the November 2003
American Prospect magazine.
Hubristic, Cynical, Floundering Bush
"But the combination of an intensifying insurgency and rapidly eroding Iraqi support for the American occupation left President Bush few options but to loosen his grip over the nation that he had conquered and is now trying to rebuild. So in the past week, an administration that is loath to admit any doubts about the wisdom of its judgments basically rewrote its strategy. Administration officials have dismissed critics who suggest that the process might be driven by Mr. Bush's electoral needs, taking pains to portray the new approach as Iraqi-born, initiated by Iraqi leaders out of what Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, called a 'clamor' for a faster turnover of power."
- David Sanger, November 16.
The Times' Open Mind Toward Gay Advocacy
"All five children attend the Metropolitan Learning Center, a K-12 magnet school known for its open-minded attitude. 'It's the kind of school that has a float in the gay pride parade,' Mr. Lofton said.'"
- Fred Bernstein in a November 21 article on a gay couple that's adopted five children.
Tupac Shakur, One %$*& # of a Poet
"Shakur, an open-hearted young man who attended a prestigious performing-arts high school in Baltimore (the actress Jada Pinkett Smith was a classmate), seems in some ways an unlikely target for the hysteria of anti-hip-hop scolds like C. Delores Tucker and William Bennett. His love of Shakespeare is at least as convincing as Mr. Bennett's, and his musical influences included Frank Sinatra and the soft-rock troubadour Don McLean."
- From a review by A.O. Scott of "Tupac: Resurrected," a documentary of the deceased rap artist Tupac Shakur, November 14.
"Mister F-- a Cop is back/And I still don't give a f--."/ "Can't find peace on the streets/So the niggers get a piece/F-- the police/F-- 'em/Motherf--in' punk police/I hate
'em."
- lyrics by Tupac Shakur, from the songs "Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z..." and "Souljah's Revenge," respectively.
