The American Spectator

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To the Point

8.1.02 @ 12:01AM

CLINTON CHATTER:
Re: The Prowler's Sucker Puncher:

It's past time to cease publicizing his every utterance -- if you don't
water it, it may wither and die.
-- Storrs Warinner

GRIN BERET
Re: Jed Babbin's Stalled at the Euphrates:

If they fire Shinseki, who will select the color of next year's beret?
-- An old soldier

Jed Babbin replies: Dear Old Soldier: If Clinton were still around, we'd have to have twenty colors, and let each soldier choose his own. Can't be judgmental, 'ya know. But we do have grownups running things again. How about scrapping the Everybody Beret, and letting only those who earn it -- Rangers and Green Beenies -- wear it?

POINT SPREAD
Re: Lawrence Henry's History vs. Hollywood: The Beautiful Mind:

Mr. Henry's disclosure of his 650 score on the math boards is something I would expect from someone of the other side of the aisle.
-- Ronald Frantz

Lawrence Henry replies:
Now that comment puzzles me. I don't think of 650 as being a particularly high score for the time. Most of my fellows at Columbia scored much better. I struggled with a course known pejoratively as "Poet's Math." I just wanted to indicate my general competence, as measured way back when, and to illustrate how far above me were John Nash's thoughts, and those of his fellows.

But get real, Mr. Franz. Everybody knows his SATs, right down to the decimal -- at least everybody from my college era, the 1960s. We'll all rattle them off at a moment's notice -- liberals, conservatives, Naderites, libertarians, all of us. (And that 650, casually noted, was actually a 653, thank you.)

ROAD SCHOLAR
Re: Bill Croke's Getting Out There:

I agree with your article. While some obvious tourist spots are a necessity, like the Hoover Dam, most of the sightseeing my wife and I do are in the "off the path" places. We will use the computer and choose some of the popular places to see but then usually drop a couple when we read local pamphlets and brochures and go elsewhere.

Our October 2000 trip driving through New England was a perfect example. We decided to drop the "tourist" spots in Boston early so we could spend more time driving around Maine's coastline near Popham Beach. Then we voided a day in Concord, NH early to stay in Conway and enjoyed three full days in the White Mountains (I'll never drive up the Mt. Washington auto road again!) instead of one.

We spent more time changing our plans. Cut a day off Hartford, CT from Albany, NY to drive back into Vermont to visit Kennington and then Robert Todd Lincoln's Hildene, both of which we found in pamphlets at local stops and not while doing Internet research.

I also tell my friends that if you want to really tour great spots in the South, forget Nashville and come down 20 miles south to Franklin, TN. I know, I live in Franklin!
-- Greg Barnard

BAY BUCCANEER
Re: The Prowler's Convention Wisdom:

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Sports, Hollywood, Law, Israel