The Leveling Wind: 2politics, the Culture, and Other News, 1990-1994

Introducing his fifth collection of columns (these from the last four years), syndicated columnist Will (Men at Work) observes that ``[t]he culture is news.'' When writing about books like Katie Roiphe's The Morning After and Shelby Steele's The Content of Our Character, Will tends to extract what buttresses his conservative views without challenging the books' shortcomings. Yet Will is always lucid, more erudite than many of his pundit peers and not always a Republican cheerleader. He nearly gagged at the 1992 Republican National Convention. And while Will scores popular culture and dysfunctional families for the nation's crime scourge, he acknowledges the importance of gun control and drug treatment. Many of his political views, on such subjects as redistricting to achieve minority representation, are predictable; his more interesting work is grounded in his recognition that a careerist Congress and a media-obsessed presidency are not what the Founders intended. Will's best columns surprise, as when he leaves his armchair to visit a Chicago housing project, or when he suggests we place cultural heroes, not politicians, on our currency, a la Europe. (Nov.)