July 16, 2000
Bill Maxwell
NAACP leader ushers in bright future for group
BALTIMORE -- Today's NAACP, the nation's oldest, largest and most-respected civil rights organization, has again become a political force to be reckoned with.
Editorials
Making a hash of history
Americans never have been comfortable with history: The past is messy and ambiguous, and it gets in the way of the flattering stories we like to tell ourselves.
Bushwhacked budgets
Sifting the state's budget for efficiency isn't a bad idea. But doing it the way Gov. Jeb Bush has proposed cannot possibly reorder government priorities in any sensible way.
Letters
Clinton gave us nothing to long for
Re: Clinton nostalgia reflects a favorable shift in attitude, by Jonathan Weisman, July 9.
Martin Dyckman
Lack of growth plan concerns very few
TALLAHASSEE -- As a Marine general, Bob Milligan could expect straight answers. As Florida's comptroller, he can't.
Philip Gailey
Ostracized when differing from party's abortion dogma
Just once, I wish our two major party presidential candidates would pick running mates who sent this message to the extremists on both sides of the abortion issue: Go to hell.
Robyn E. Blumner
Obstructing political protests silences speech
The Wobblies have a new incarnation and city fathers are responding about as they did in the early 1900s.
What a pick: PETA wants Green Bay Pickers
But first, the news:
Books
Thrillers
HOT SPRINGS, by Stephen Hunter, Simon & Schuster, $25.
Sooner or later, a woman as U.S. president
"There are no Cinderellas in politics," say veteran reporters Eleanor Clift and Tom Brazaitis on the prospect of a woman being elected president of the United States -- one in which politics rather than gender now seems to weigh more heavily. The mixed legacy of Geraldine Ferraro's failed 1984 vice presidential campaign and the presidential campaigns of Patricia Schroeder and Elizabeth Dole hang over this story -- as cautionary tales, and arrows pointing toward a successful campaign by a woman for America's highest office. Will it come soon? Or later?
Madame Mao makes a good character for inaccurate tale
Becoming Madame Mao is the tale of Yunhe, a rural girl born in 1919, who, through her own determination, rose out of obscurity to become Lan Ping, a leftist Shanghai actor, and later, Jiang Qing, Mao's once doted-upon wife.
Russia takes underworld to new level
Not long ago there was only one Mafia to worry about. But lately guys with names like "Guido" and "Joey" have been muscled off the most-wanted list by other guys with names like "Vitaly" and "Slava." Russian mobsters, as Robert I. Friedman shows in his timely new book, Red Mafiya, aren't just copying their Italian counterparts. In many ways, they're taking professional crime to a whole new level.
Foreign correspondence
Dreams of Dreams by Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Nancy J. Peters (City Lights, $10.95)
Chinese workers may not see America's efforts as help
The young Chinese worker might see the effort as depriving him of his due opportunities. Working at a manufacturing job and perhaps saving up enough to start his own business is one of the only means to escape the drudgery of China's subsistence farming.
