Blown Out of Proportion

I believe in the Resurrection. Allen Ginsberg, his mind trepanned out—a testimonial to thirty years of hash-breathing—has come back to life. Not for poems: to bonk on a woodblock and yawp his scum ballads. Liberace’s brother was more gifted musically. Looking, without his beard, like a glabrous iguana: a nice trick, since iguanas are by nature glabrous anyway. And David Dellinger, reading from his four-shrug autobiography. David wants jail again so much: it was his single distinction, that someone should bother to incarcerate him (also, he ran across a secret homosexual Dellinger in there). Both men are on hand to medicine show for the NYU Anti-Nuclear Student League. While uptown, at Free Space Alternative—a tenement on Lafayette Street that suppurates silverfish, where from 1970 to 1974 I covered six or seven antiwar, anti-Nixon, anti-CIA-SST-RSVP symposia—the New York SHAD Alliance is screening antinuclear film footage. An alumnum (to avoid sexist terms) reunion. I can recognize at least six characters in search of some issue. They haven’t changed underwear since Cambodia.

By now, of course, Ban the Bomb is a dud. After all, since Hiroshima 33 years ago, nothing but Chanel #5 has been atomized. Nonetheless, the peaceful use of nuclear power is a nifty and natural leftist bête rouge. It has three essential issue-requisites. 1) About 47 people in His whole creation can understand the physics involved: general refutation is near-impossible. 2) With nuclear power you trade in astronomic infinitesimalities—hell, even a radical has trouble exaggerating enough. (“The smallest doses of radiation . . . increase the possibility of genetic mutation.” “A major nuclear accident would . . . contaminate an area the size of Pennsylvania.” Why not Texas; why not let yourself go?) 3) The subject can scare the bejazus out of people. Which means, chiefly, saying cancer, cancer, cancer like a Krishna chant. I have in my reluctant hand this four-color brochure of mutilated Japanese. So loud it could deafen the eye. Done up by folk who’d call any Right to Life pamphlet that pictured thrown-out fetuses a gross and, worse, Catholic melodramatization.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.

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I believe in the Resurrection. Allen Ginsberg, his mind trepanned out—a testimonial to thirty years of hash-breathing—has come back to life. Not for poems: to bonk on a woodblock and yawp his scum ballads. Liberace’s brother was more gifted musically. Looking, without his beard, like a glabrous iguana: a nice trick, since iguanas are by nature glabrous anyway. And David Dellinger, reading from his four-shrug autobiography. David wants jail again so much: it was his single distinction, that someone should bother to incarcerate him (also, he ran across a secret homosexual Dellinger in there). Both men are on hand to medicine show for the NYU Anti-Nuclear Student League. While uptown, at Free Space Alternative—a tenement on Lafayette Street that suppurates silverfish, where from 1970 to 1974 I covered six or seven antiwar, anti-Nixon, anti-CIA-SST-RSVP symposia—the New York SHAD Alliance is screening antinuclear film footage. An alumnum (to avoid sexist terms) reunion. I can recognize at least six characters in search of some issue. They haven’t changed underwear since Cambodia.

By now, of course, Ban the Bomb is a dud. After all, since Hiroshima 33 years ago, nothing but Chanel #5 has been atomized. Nonetheless, the peaceful use of nuclear power is a nifty and natural leftist bête rouge. It has three essential issue-requisites. 1) About 47 people in His whole creation can understand the physics involved: general refutation is near-impossible. 2) With nuclear power you trade in astronomic infinitesimalities—hell, even a radical has trouble exaggerating enough. (“The smallest doses of radiation . . . increase the possibility of genetic mutation.” “A major nuclear accident would . . . contaminate an area the size of Pennsylvania.” Why not Texas; why not let yourself go?) 3) The subject can scare the bejazus out of people. Which means, chiefly, saying cancer, cancer, cancer like a Krishna chant. I have in my reluctant hand this four-color brochure of mutilated Japanese. So loud it could deafen the eye. Done up by folk who’d call any Right to Life pamphlet that pictured thrown-out fetuses a gross and, worse, Catholic melodramatization.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.