The Week

“Nicaragua Is Not an Enemy,” contends a New York Times Op-Ed piece by William Sloane Coffin. Well, maybe not. Maybe we’re a little bit simplistic. But we’ve always felt, just as a rule of thumb, that when a country names us as “the enemy of mankind” in its national anthem, friendly relations are getting off on the wrong foot.

How to Play Hardball in One Easy Lesson, by Albert Shanker, president, American Federation of Teachers. Shanker set out to make it clear to Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum and other liberal Democrats in the Senate that his union and much of the Jewish liberal community favor Ronald Reagan’s appointment of Morris Abram and two other civil libertarians—who do not, however, believe in hiring quotas—to the Civil Rights Commission. “As someone whose union gave massive support to your reelection last year,” Shanker wrote Metzenbaum, “I was profoundly disappointed at your behavior at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Wednesday. How am I to explain to my members in Ohio [and get them to support you again] that the person we helped re-elect prefers Mary Berry [a commissioner Reagan is replacing] to Morris Abram … a man who stood side by side with Martin Luther King. . . . My members remember Mary Berry and her famous China speech in which she praised ‘the reforms’ of the Cultural Revolution in which more than 100,000 teachers and other intellectuals were beaten and slaughtered. [Neither teachers nor other intellectuals like that kind of thing.] … [You are playing an] obstructionist role [which could have far-reaching consequences for the Democratic Party]. … If we lose the presidential election next year, if we fail to regain the Senate, your actions will have contributed a large share of the blame.”

“Nicaragua Is Not an Enemy,” contends a New York Times Op-Ed piece by William Sloane Coffin. Well, maybe not. Maybe we’re a little bit simplistic. But we’ve always felt, just as a rule of thumb, that when a country names us as “the enemy of mankind” in its national anthem, friendly relations are getting off on the wrong foot.

How to Play Hardball in One Easy Lesson, by Albert Shanker, president, American Federation of Teachers. Shanker set out to make it clear to Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum and other liberal Democrats in the Senate that his union and much of the Jewish liberal community favor Ronald Reagan’s appointment of Morris Abram and two other civil libertarians—who do not, however, believe in hiring quotas—to the Civil Rights Commission. “As someone whose union gave massive support to your reelection last year,” Shanker wrote Metzenbaum, “I was profoundly disappointed at your behavior at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Wednesday. How am I to explain to my members in Ohio [and get them to support you again] that the person we helped re-elect prefers Mary Berry [a commissioner Reagan is replacing] to Morris Abram … a man who stood side by side with Martin Luther King. . . . My members remember Mary Berry and her famous China speech in which she praised ‘the reforms’ of the Cultural Revolution in which more than 100,000 teachers and other intellectuals were beaten and slaughtered. [Neither teachers nor other intellectuals like that kind of thing.] … [You are playing an] obstructionist role [which could have far-reaching consequences for the Democratic Party]. … If we lose the presidential election next year, if we fail to regain the Senate, your actions will have contributed a large share of the blame.”