The Week

Breaking an old tradition, the New York Times has solicited divine intervention in American politics: “. Mr. Reagan’s early choice of his running-mate has [given] the delegates and the public a clearer idea of what they’d be getting if, God forbid, the Californian proved to be the nominee” There are no atheists in the foxholes.

You’ve heard of Carter’s thousand-dollar kids; now the latest in child lobbying comes from—where else?— California, where a San Diego schoolteacher encouraged his fifth-grade charges to write to their congressman in support of a controversial coastline preservation bill which he was opposing. The junior politicians were further instructed to use “whatever language you wish to express yourselves,” and the resulting communications were filled with murder threats, ethnic slurs, and references to homosexuality, incest, and necrophilia. Defenders of the teacher claim that the whole project was just a “little slip”—to which one state senator replied, “Well, I believe the teacher deserves another little slip’ —a pink one.”

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Breaking an old tradition, the New York Times has solicited divine intervention in American politics: “. Mr. Reagan’s early choice of his running-mate has [given] the delegates and the public a clearer idea of what they’d be getting if, God forbid, the Californian proved to be the nominee” There are no atheists in the foxholes.

You’ve heard of Carter’s thousand-dollar kids; now the latest in child lobbying comes from—where else?— California, where a San Diego schoolteacher encouraged his fifth-grade charges to write to their congressman in support of a controversial coastline preservation bill which he was opposing. The junior politicians were further instructed to use “whatever language you wish to express yourselves,” and the resulting communications were filled with murder threats, ethnic slurs, and references to homosexuality, incest, and necrophilia. Defenders of the teacher claim that the whole project was just a “little slip”—to which one state senator replied, “Well, I believe the teacher deserves another little slip’ —a pink one.”