MER
October 1990
The Content of Our Character
Closed mid-September 1990 · On stands late September 1990
The Front
First Funds
The Ryan White CARE Act is signed, August, the first major federal AIDS-care funding bill
The Decade Named in Advance
President Bush proclaims the 1990s the Decade of the Brain, July 17
A Ball, Noted
A brief item on an AIDS-service outreach calendar entry for the season
The Essay
Writing Against the Tribe
Shelby Steele's The Content of Our Character and the argument that racial identity, held too tightly, becomes its own cage
The Foreign File
Dispatch, Held
A stringer's piece bumped a cycle by the well's crowding
The Feature Well
The Dog Pound's Ratings
A profile of Arsenio Hall's late-night crossover and what a syndicated show beating the networks' own numbers means for the schedule
The City
Autumn Notices
A service piece on the season's street-fair calendar
The Back
Character, Contested
Shelby Steele's The Content of Our Character reviewed against a rebuttal