VLVL2 (15): Trouble Already on the Tracks

[Dave Monroe]

"She'd brought to this rendezvous some wispy 2 or 3
percent hope that Hector might not be crazy.  Though
he and Brock both nominally worked for the Meese
Police, just handicapping personalities, playing
percentages, she'd have been willing to bet on some
support from the DEA man--but now, outside again after
all these years, back with the rest of the American
Vulnerability, she could see, desolate, how anytime
soon, in the cold presence of trouble already on the
tracks, better she keep her change in her mitten than
molest herself calling Hector for any help."  (VL, Ch.
15, p. 346)


"The Meese Police"

p. 346 "the Meese Police" = Reagan's DOJ (Department
of Justice).

http://www.mindspring.com/~shadow88/chapter15.htm

Edwin Meese III
Seventy-Fifth Attorney General 1985-1988 

Edwin Meese was born in 1931 in Oakland, California.
He graduated from Yale University in 1953, and
received a law degree from the University of
California at Berkeley in 1958. From 1959 to 1967,
Meese served as Deputy District Attorney of Alameda
County, California. He joined Governor Reagan's staff
in California as Legal Affairs Secretary in 1967 and
then served as Executive Assistant and Chief of Staff
from 1969 through 1974. From 1977 to 1981, Mr. Meese
was a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego,
where he also was Director of the Center for Criminal
Justice Policy and Management.

>From 1981 until 1985, Mr. Meese held the position of
Counselor to President Reagan. He was appointed
Attorney General by President Reagan in 1985. Mr.
Meese is currently a senior fellow at the Heritage
Foundation in Washington, DC and is the author of With
Reagan: The Inside Story, published in 1992. 

http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/ls/agbiographies.htm#meese

Edwin Meese, best known as Former President Reagan's
Attorney General, has lived a multifacted life that
has included politics, policy, law, education,
military, and business. 

Meese received his bachelor's degree from Yale in
1953, and his J.D. from University of California -
Berkeley. Having served in private law practice and
also as Deputy District Attorney of Alameda County,
CA, Meese joined then-Governor Reagan's staff in 1967,
serving eventually as his chief of staff. 

In January 1975, Meese became Vice President of Rohr
Industries, which specializes in aerospace and
transportation technology....
 
>From 1981-1985, Meese served in various roles on
President Reagan's staff and in his Cabinet. These
roles included Chairman of the Domestic Policy
Council, Chairman of the National Drug Policy Board,
and member of the National Security Council. As one of
Reagan's leading domestic policy advisors, Meese's
agenda included AIDS policy, drug abuse policy, family
care, crime control, and welfare reform. 

In 1985, Meese became the nation's 75th Attorney
General. Presiding over the Justice Department, Meese
had several crowning achievements, including the
celebrated arrests of spies John Walker and Jonathan
Pollard, and the crackdown on both child pornography
and drug trafficking....

http://www.townhall.com/notables/meese.html

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/meese.html

http://www.heritage.org/About/Staff/EdwinMeese.cfm

http://www.reaganranch.org/leadership/bios/edwin_meese.htm

Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, Final
Report (1986)

http://www.porn-report.com/

http://eserver.org/cultronix/califia/meese/

http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/banned86.htm

Edwin Meese III
"You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a
crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent
of a crime, then he is not a suspect."

-- U.S. News and World Report, 10/14/85

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/usa/edwin-meese/


"the American Vulnerability"

The capitalization here ("Vulnerability") is, of
course, characteristic of the way in which Pynchon
calls attention to certain words (see, e.g., Adrian
Wisnicki, "A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? The
Bomarc Service News Rediscovered," in the most recent
issue of Pynchon Notes), but i get the distinct
impression that there's a pat phrase being either
deployed or played off of here.  Let me know ...


"keep her change in her mitten"

I.e., not waste it on a call to Hector ...


	
		
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