THE WEEK

As we go to press, the astronaut and the gynecos-monaut have just landed, though they appear to have missed the great celestial osculation which was planned for them by The Planners—who, by the way (you don’t mind, do you, if we do a little orbiting of our own?), seem to have managed this one a little better than those super-neat, automated, click-click-click performances of the past, in which astronauts lazed through the whole business, like Rubinstein playing Chopsticks. Maybe someone told them that a good audience must smell drama. They haven’t come out and confessed that something went wrong, but it is obvious to a worldly audience that the boy and the girl didn’t go up there at the same time to walk down separate sides of the street, not gorgeous Soviet manhood and gorgeous Soviet womanhood. One of these days they’ll put real drama into the show by allowing one Westerner with a Brownie to witness the launching.

The Area Redevelopment Act was sired by John Kennedy out of the West Virginia Primary. Billed as a panacea for depressed areas, it turned out to be just another boondoggle. The ARA built motels in areas where existing motels were only 54 per cent full; last year it spent more than half its entire budget for public facilities on a gigantic luxury resort in Oklahoma; it is building a plywood mill in an area where many local mills are closing for lack of business; and, of course, almost all its loans have been made to districts represented by Democrats. When it asked the House last week for a fat new authorization, wherewith to do more of the same for America, it found that this area had redeveloped its thinking all by itself: the bill was rejected 209-204.

Featured Tags

As we go to press, the astronaut and the gynecos-monaut have just landed, though they appear to have missed the great celestial osculation which was planned for them by The Planners—who, by the way (you don’t mind, do you, if we do a little orbiting of our own?), seem to have managed this one a little better than those super-neat, automated, click-click-click performances of the past, in which astronauts lazed through the whole business, like Rubinstein playing Chopsticks. Maybe someone told them that a good audience must smell drama. They haven’t come out and confessed that something went wrong, but it is obvious to a worldly audience that the boy and the girl didn’t go up there at the same time to walk down separate sides of the street, not gorgeous Soviet manhood and gorgeous Soviet womanhood. One of these days they’ll put real drama into the show by allowing one Westerner with a Brownie to witness the launching.

The Area Redevelopment Act was sired by John Kennedy out of the West Virginia Primary. Billed as a panacea for depressed areas, it turned out to be just another boondoggle. The ARA built motels in areas where existing motels were only 54 per cent full; last year it spent more than half its entire budget for public facilities on a gigantic luxury resort in Oklahoma; it is building a plywood mill in an area where many local mills are closing for lack of business; and, of course, almost all its loans have been made to districts represented by Democrats. When it asked the House last week for a fat new authorization, wherewith to do more of the same for America, it found that this area had redeveloped its thinking all by itself: the bill was rejected 209-204.