The Week

We predicted weeks ago that an unruly populace would rise up and oust a despised socialist despot and his insufferable wife. We missed only one detail: it happened in Rumania instead of Massachusetts.

We rub our eyes at the laments rising from the pages of the New York Times and The New Republic over what they call the vacuousness, the materialism, the philistinism of the decade that has just passed away. It was a time unusually—unprecedentedly—rich in public life and shared amusements. Any effort to tabulate the topics of common interest would be futile. But for some people, alas, the whole period was poisoned by the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, the scourge of both liberalism and Communism. Their despair was most perfectly expressed in the final act of Abbie Hoffman, who checked out ahead of schedule last April. Sorry, guys. We wish we could sympathize. But you’ve already had your fun. Now it’s the Poles’ and the Czechs’ turn. They’ve been waiting quite a while.

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We predicted weeks ago that an unruly populace would rise up and oust a despised socialist despot and his insufferable wife. We missed only one detail: it happened in Rumania instead of Massachusetts.

We rub our eyes at the laments rising from the pages of the New York Times and The New Republic over what they call the vacuousness, the materialism, the philistinism of the decade that has just passed away. It was a time unusually—unprecedentedly—rich in public life and shared amusements. Any effort to tabulate the topics of common interest would be futile. But for some people, alas, the whole period was poisoned by the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, the scourge of both liberalism and Communism. Their despair was most perfectly expressed in the final act of Abbie Hoffman, who checked out ahead of schedule last April. Sorry, guys. We wish we could sympathize. But you’ve already had your fun. Now it’s the Poles’ and the Czechs’ turn. They’ve been waiting quite a while.