March 12, 2001 Issue
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Features
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Nader and the Politics of Fear
He and the Greens are both a problem and a possible asset for the Democrats.
William Greider
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Defining Adequacy Up
Failing public schools violate state constitutions, new court decisions say.
Peter Schrag
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Editorials
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Columns
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A Democratic Lullaby to Bill Clinton
As Bush finds backs to pat and hands to shake,
The Democrats can't seem to buy a break.
The opposition doesn't coalesce,
Because the spotlight's on the Clinton mess,
A mess that's just like catnip to the press.
Afraid that he will never go away,
The Democrats by now just want to say,Avoid the headlines, can't you, Bill?
Speak softly, please, not louder.
Eschew the networks, can't you, Bill?
Enough, man! Take a powder!Ignored as long as he is on the stage,
The Democrats, befuddled, try to gauge
How he, amidst the sleaze, seems so unfazed
While they are crazed, and find themselve amazed
At all the oxygen the man inhales,
As he on his sword himself impales.Avoid the headlines, can't you, Bill?
They say. At any cost!
Eschew the networks, can't you, Bill?
Could you please just get lost?Calvin Trillin
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Books and the Arts
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Little Elegy in G Minor
A box of Chopin nocturnes handed down
from the other side of my mother's death--
evening gowns in trash bags making a little
Golgotha of their own right in the corner
of that studio we had spent all morning
emptying out--uncandled cold chaperoned
through the sill. Lullabies all of us had
already heard while drinks kept going round
the parlor after her wake assembled now
into makeshift history--bits of tenderness
discarded down the cosmos slide, each night
a phantom limb, the hours trapezing over
that sea of anonymous faces where sidereal
glances scale up the piano's mirrored lid.Timothy Liu
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