The Week

■ Mikhail Gorbachev’s proposed platform for the Communist Party renounces Marxism-Leninism, condemns the “crimes of Stalinism,” and accepts the legitimacy of religion and private property. For our part, we’re thinking of voting for Gus Hall next year.

■ How come Clarence Thomas doesn’t take the black establishment’s party line on civil rights? To get an answer to this baffling question, the New York Times consulted Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Pous-saint, who opined that black conservatives feel a “high level” of anger, which “gets displaced on other blacks.” So that’s the reason. This was too much for New York magazine’s political columnist, Joe Klein, who observed that “the Times felt no need to consult a psychiatrist when it profiled Representative Ted Weiss a few days later, even though the congressman’s extreme liberal views are much farther removed from the American mainstream than those of Judge Thomas. … It seems that while servility may no longer be required of blacks in America, predictability still is.”

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■ Mikhail Gorbachev’s proposed platform for the Communist Party renounces Marxism-Leninism, condemns the “crimes of Stalinism,” and accepts the legitimacy of religion and private property. For our part, we’re thinking of voting for Gus Hall next year.

■ How come Clarence Thomas doesn’t take the black establishment’s party line on civil rights? To get an answer to this baffling question, the New York Times consulted Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Pous-saint, who opined that black conservatives feel a “high level” of anger, which “gets displaced on other blacks.” So that’s the reason. This was too much for New York magazine’s political columnist, Joe Klein, who observed that “the Times felt no need to consult a psychiatrist when it profiled Representative Ted Weiss a few days later, even though the congressman’s extreme liberal views are much farther removed from the American mainstream than those of Judge Thomas. … It seems that while servility may no longer be required of blacks in America, predictability still is.”