Testing the Mettle of the Iron Lady

A shocked British press continues to dish dirt about the nation’s “perpetual prime minister,” who, according to the June Vanity Fair, keeps herself spry with “electrical underwater stimulation and Italian mud therapy.”

One tabloid has changed the Iron Lady’s nickname to “Ion Lady,” and a member of Parliament has warned countrymen not to experiment with electricity in their own baths.

The beauty revelations are actually among the least interesting aspects of the epic, absorbing profile of Margaret Thatcher by Gail Sheehy.

Who would have guessed, for instance, that “Attila the Hen” is “sexy and very interested in sex,” or that “in private, she has a raunchy sense of humor,” as a business adviser tells Sheehy?

Loves a Fuss

But the woman who has “outlasted two American Presidents, three Soviet leaders, four French prime ministers, seven Italian leaders and a whole generation of the British squirearchy” admits that “she does love to ‘be made a fuss of by lots of chaps.’ ”

As Sheehy portrays her--slipping less often than usual into her patented brand of pseudo-psychology--Thatcher is complex and forceful, a mediocre student with a lackluster personality who through sheer strength of will and the encouragement of her father transformed herself into the “senior statesperson of the West.”

Thatcher now reigns with steely resolve. She parries with her enemies in Parliament like an Arthurian hero battling to win or die. Rather than battle with newspaper editors, she knights them, effectively making them vassals.

“Mrs. Thatcher measures every man against her father,” Sheehy writes. But, as one source told Sheehy, she has little patience for many members of the gender. “She thinks they’re a rather idle, sleepy lot. They tend to want to go to bed and eat dinner instead of getting on with the job.”

Former President Ronald Reagan apparently fit that mold in Thatcher’s eyes. But she loves to argue with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. As for President Bush, Sheehy quotes a British columnist close to Thatcher: “She won’t be the least bit interested in any ideas that he’s got. I could strongly advise Mr. Bush just to keep quiet and listen to her suggestions.”

Among other articles of interest in Vanity Fair’s June issue is an investigation of the airplane crash that killed Pakistan’s Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. Writer Edward J. Epstein concludes the crash was, in fact, an assassination that could only have been pulled off by forces within Pakistan.

“But the eeriest aspect of this whole affair,” he writes, “is the speed and effectiveness with which it was consigned to oblivion. Even though it involved the incineration of the principal ally of the U.S. in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the deaths of the American ambassador and the head of the U.S. military mission.”

What’s Behind ‘Wilding’?

Just when Frank Zappa thought it was safe to sing again, Susan Baker and Tipper Gore are back. The women who mugged the record industry for using foul language are now on the rampage against violence in records and film, as well.

Writing in the current Newsweek, Baker and Gore, the co-founders of Parents Music Resource Center, argue that the “wilding” incident in New York’s Central Park can be traced to the images that kids absorb from the media.

Citing the standard gruesome statistics concerning children in America--406 people killed by Los Angeles gangs last year, a million teen-age runaways nationwide, a million teen-age pregnancies, etc.--the authors concede that “there are many complex reasons for this sad litany.”

They don’t include poverty among those reasons. They do include the hot band Guns N’ Roses.

Social naivete aside, their position seems reasonable enough. The authors have never advocated restricting First Amendment rights, they say. But they would like to see some self-restraint in the entertainment industry.

“As a society, we must take full responsibility. Our music, movies and television are filled with images of sexual violence and killing. The message to our kids is: It’s OK to enjoy brutality and suffering. It’s fun.”

They conclude, simply, “It’s time to stop the spilling of blood both as ‘entertainment and in real life.’ ”

When the Clock Strikes 12

Southern California night owls now have a magazine just for them--24 Hours: The Magazine of Life Past Midnight.

The bimonthly’s first issue, with a total of 35,000 copies, went on sale this week at a cover price of $1.95.

Publisher Timothy Schneider says plans are to make the magazine a monthly by the year’s end and to expand the circulation area shortly thereafter.

The first issue contains a feature on the variety of jobs held by late night workers, such as an emergency room physician and a bank consumer representative. It’s also spattered with ads for all-night grocery stores, talk radio programs and restaurants.

The most useful feature, however, is likely to be the section listing businesses and services available past midnight, including all-night newsstands, pest control services and a pet cemetery in Calabasas.

To the Barricades!

Attention Irvine residents! Has it occurred to you that your chosen housing arrangement may be undermining democracy?

It occurred to Evan McKenzie, and like others with unusual, radical, or (some would say) crackpot ideas, he found an outlet in Dissent magazine, the 35th anniversary issue of which is on the stands.

Created by Irving Howe, the socialist publication has taken heat from the Left and the Right in the course of its evolution.

How has it managed to survive?

“True grit,” Howe writes in an introductory interview with himself.

Reprints of old Dissent covers show the range of issues it has addressed. In 1956, it devoted an issue to Africa, one article asking the not-so-timely question: “Is South Africa Near Revolt?” Other issues addressed everything from the Bay of Pigs invasion to a piece on “The Hippies as Contrameritocracy.”

The current issue contains an article on the state of the art of socialism by regular contributor Michael Herrington and a piece on “The Death Throes of Western Communism” by Lewis A. Coser.

Some of what appears in Dissent is guaranteed to numb the mind of all but the most self-disciplined Trotskyites. Other articles are of much broader interest.

For example, anyone who has been confused by what’s happening in the feminist revolution, perplexed by the way it seems to have fragmented into more factions than the conflict in Lebanon, will learn something from Ann Snitow’s scholarly “Pages From a Gender Diary.”

What they’ll learn in the 20-page study, complete with 31 long footnotes, is that the situation is more unfathomable than anyone could possibly have realized.

Who knew, for instance, that feminism is now divided into “minimizers” and “maximizers,” “radical feminists” and “cultural feminists,” “essentialists,” and “social constructionists,” “poststructuralists,” “motherists,” and convoluted combinations of all or some of the above?

Snitow’s article is sufficiently interesting that some readers may find they actually care.

Then there’s McKenzie’s argument against “common interest developments” such as the planned community of Irvine, condominium projects, co-ops, and similar neighborhoods controlled by covenants, conditions and restrictions.

Titled “Morning in Privatopia,” the article argues that these “heavily planned, privately governed and eerily self-contained communities,” some of which reach “cult-like isolation,” become private governments within the government, “capable of regulating and restricting political, religious and social activity.”

Residents who run for office in these “private associations” outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Constitution “are often controlling, autocratic types who see their role as enforcing their way of life on everybody else. (But) their power is very real and substantial and often dwarfs their ability to exercise it.”

Wife Too Young

Hence cases such as the one in New Jersey, where an association took a couple to court because the wife was three years under the 48-year-old age limit. A judge ordered the husband to sell or rent the unit or live without his wife.

The “condo commandos” who live in these communities have “enormous economic and political resources that they are only beginning to tap.”

And, because they are content with their own private services, the commandos will likely shirk any responsibility to the problems of the surrounding community, he contends.

Aside from their economic undermining of America’s cities, McKenzie worries that these communities--there are 125,000 of them now--also will undermine expectations.

They could, he speculates, “accustom many Americans to a form of local government free from constitutional limitations. In the words of Richard Louv, author of ‘America II,’ ‘We have a generation of kids growing up in this country who don’t know you should be able to paint your house any color you want.’ ”