CAST A COLD EYE: American Opinion Writing...

CAST A COLD EYE: American Opinion Writing 1990-1991, edited by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella (Four Walls Eight Windows: $12.95). “Cast a Cold Eye” marks the first installment in a biannual series of anthologies that will explore diversity of expression in editorial writing. In the foreword, John B. Oakes states, “With the steadily lowering intellectual level of public debate and correspondingly rising decibel level, too frequently promoted by the press itself, new thoughts, new information, new perspectives, even new insights are often lost or totally ignored.” Burton Yale Pines inadvertently demonstrates the need for these volumes to appear at frequent intervals in his paean to the ‘80s as “Ten Years of Triumph.” His assertion that “As a nation . . . we have become economically healthier, socially more mobile and militarily stronger” sounds lugubriously out of date, only two years after it was written. Arch-conservative presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan angrily asserts that “the arts crowd . . . is engaged in a cultural struggle to root out the old America of family, faith and flag, and re-create society in a pagan image,” while columnist Carl Rowan offers a withering evaluation of President Bush’s position on civil rights: “He isn’t going to stand up for much more than the greedy rich and the conscienceless corporate bigots he professes to deplore. Spineless creatures have a little trouble standing up.” The alarming theme underlying many of these essays is a divisive, us-versus-them mentality: Commentators at both ends of the political spectrum no longer regard their counterparts as partners in society who agree to disagree, or even as the loyal opposition, but as adversaries. Important, if disturbing reading as the 1992 political campaigns gear up for a sustained media assault.