Black Sheep Books
Five and Ten Press
3814 Livingston Street N.W.
Washington, D.C.
20015-2803
(202) 244-9163
5."Letters Mostly Unpublished." 72 pages.
Published in March 1997. $5.
Twenty-two letters-to-the-editor and other unresponsive recipients about economics, presidential politics, parking tickets, recycling, Macedonia, the stock market, the State Department, Cambodia, ethnic cleansing, same sex unions, Michael Eisner, Jack Valenti, Hiroshima, the internet, the IRS, Newt Gingrich, and a lot of other targets.
Table of Contents
1.First Impressions of Cambodia.
2.Corporate Welfare for Stock Market Bulls.
3.That Was My "Day in Court"?
4.What Do Kay Graham and Dog Owners Have in Common?
5.It's Time to Reform the "Depletion" Tax.
6.Whose Macedonia?
7.Let the Electoral College Decide.
8.Foreign Service Fantasy Land.
9.Diversity in Hiring at the State Department.
10.How About Michael Eisner as CEO of an African Country?
11.Just Sitting Around Making Money.
12.Look Out for the Consumption Tax.
13.Economists Don't Know Nothing.
14.The Consumer Price Index is a Lying Statistic.
15.Religion and Ethnic Cleansing.
16.Princeton and The Bomb.
17.Jack Valenti and the V-Chip.
18.Same-Sex Unions.
19.Copyright Pirates.
20.Why the Republicans Want to Abolish the IRS.
21.Lessons in Tragedy.
22."Stonewall" Gingrich; "Stonewall" Nixon.
This volume is dedicated to the twin memories of W.
E. "Ned" Chilton III, my wife's first cousin, a wonderful
friend throughout his adult life and a crusading journalist of
the "liberal" (he would say "rational") persuasion as publisher
of the Charleston Gazette newspaper of Charleston, West
Virginia; and of I. F. "lzzy" Stone, the great iconoclastic and
fearless journalist, the original "investigative" reporter, who
single-handedly produced for many years the brilliant
Washington newsletter I. F. Stone's Weekly, to which I was
introduced by Ned Chilton. I never met Stone, though he
lived only a couple of blocks away from our house in Chevy
Chase, D.C. Both Chilton and Stone are sorely missed these
days. They have not been replaced--they have had no
successors in their respective fields--and American public
discourse is much the poorer for that loss.
And to Dave Sickles (1921-1997), proprietor of Mimeoform Service, Inc., the printer who helped make this press operation a viable enterprise.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF CAMBODIA
June 23, 1974
Phnom Penh
Dear Family:
I have been in Phnom Penh exactly one week today.
This is Louise's and my wedding anniversary, spent as often
in the past separated by the assignment process of the
Foreign Service. I thought you might be interested in some
first impressions, though they are very tentative, as this is a
part of the world that is brand-new to me. I mention various
aspects of the security situation not to emphasize the dangers
but because they figure so prominently in press accounts. I
must say that the press doesn't do a very good job of
reporting on Cambodia. Yesterday UPI reported the
"capture" of an American "drifter" in Kampong Som by the
Khmer Communists. I spent the morning checking the story
and fortunately discovered that the man was happily fishing
all day down there, broke, unemployed, but not seeking
employment and not captured. UPI put out a "clarification,"
but it was too late to kill the story.
In the afternoon we received the text of an article
published in the Washington Post by Elizabeth Becker that
started off with an alleged "eyewitness" account of the
ambassador, John Dean, making an inspection visit to the
P.P. airport, finding soldiers in tatters, discovering that the
new uniforms we are supplying were being sold via military
corruption, and personally setting fire to the boxes of unused
new uniforms he had discovered. Only trouble with this story
is that it is a complete fabrication. He has never made an
inspection of the airport, has never heard of any problem...
