THE WEEK

Poet Allen Ginsberg declares that the Reagan Administration has loosed an era of “troglodytes and fundamentalists,” with the “moral minority trying to control what the majority hears.” Quite so, but those are unduly polite terms for the liberal moralists trying to undo two Reagan landslide majorities.

Years ago, he tried to help out a friend on a matter involving oil properties in the Middle East; one of his associates was recently indicted, another is a convicted felon; he steered federal money toward a project in which yet another friend hoped to invest, and he has intervened to keep federal regulators off the back of a service industry in which yet more associates were involved. Ed Meese? No no no—we know all about him. This guy is Jim Wright, about whom we in fact know quite a bit (all the above tidbits come from accounts of his doings in Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post—the biggies). And yet, somehow, no one beyond a narrow band of partisan enemies—rambunctious junior Republicans in the House—gets energized to do anything about it. No calls for resignation, or indictment. No prating about “appearances of impropriety.” Oh yeah, Wright’s latest appearance was to dispatch Bob Strauss to talk a banking magazine out of reprinting Part Two of an unflattering article about him until his office was able to prepare a rebuttal. All in a day’s work.

Poet Allen Ginsberg declares that the Reagan Administration has loosed an era of “troglodytes and fundamentalists,” with the “moral minority trying to control what the majority hears.” Quite so, but those are unduly polite terms for the liberal moralists trying to undo two Reagan landslide majorities.

Years ago, he tried to help out a friend on a matter involving oil properties in the Middle East; one of his associates was recently indicted, another is a convicted felon; he steered federal money toward a project in which yet another friend hoped to invest, and he has intervened to keep federal regulators off the back of a service industry in which yet more associates were involved. Ed Meese? No no no—we know all about him. This guy is Jim Wright, about whom we in fact know quite a bit (all the above tidbits come from accounts of his doings in Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post—the biggies). And yet, somehow, no one beyond a narrow band of partisan enemies—rambunctious junior Republicans in the House—gets energized to do anything about it. No calls for resignation, or indictment. No prating about “appearances of impropriety.” Oh yeah, Wright’s latest appearance was to dispatch Bob Strauss to talk a banking magazine out of reprinting Part Two of an unflattering article about him until his office was able to prepare a rebuttal. All in a day’s work.