Word: iconoclasm
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Daniel Callahan, 43. As a writer, philosopher and executive editor of the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal until 1968, Callahan aimed his iconoclasm at such churchly concerns as priestly celibacy (against it), divorce reform (for it) and abortion (for it). Increasingly concerned that mankind's social and scientific skills were developing in a moral and ethical vacuum, he founded in 1969 the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences in the New York suburb of Tarrytown. Through conferences, newsletters and testimony before legislative bodies, the 84-member institution seeks to influence policy in areas like genetic engineering, behavior...
Aside from its iconoclasm, one of the most striking features of Stone's journalism was his means of locating information for his exposes. Because he had no opportunity in the fifties to make inside government contacts, Stone turned to published sources and speeches to find the rope which government liars obligingly provided for their own hangings...
What completes Stone's contribution, what makes his indignation and determination so refreshing, is that they are combined with an iconoclasm directed even at himself. Stone makes no claim to be the suffering crusader; his greatest joy has been the freedom to live true to his faith--a fairly pessimistic view of humanity's worst impulses mixed with a continuing optimism that the social order may hold them in check: To give a little comfort to the oppressed, to write the truth exactly as I saw it, to make no compromises other than those of quality imposed by own inadequacies...
...just assume that the shots of a faceless, naked couple groping tepidly on attractively striped sheets are meant as a reminder-- that sexual intercourse, too, was part of the Harvard-Radcliffe experience. Or maybe the nudie pix are meant to represent rotten taste and a flair for false iconoclasm among the diverse qualities of the Class...
With Bobby Kennedy passing and Eugene McCarthy licking his wounds, the United States, in 1968, was forced into a new age of political iconoclasm. No "image-maker" can make much of what serious presidential timber we have left. McGovern, who is the nicest of the bunch, and Lindsay, who is the handsomest, have little fire to offer compared to the heat generated by either the Kennedy or the McCarthy campaign. Shirley Chisholm, whose personality is far more electrifying than any other candidate's, is unlikely to get the kind of money or delegate support needed to be elected president...