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I wanted to say something about the recent Bush pardons. Granted, I like Bush, and I’m one of those annoying Republicans who are always comparing the current president to his predecessor. No fair! people say (which is baloney). And tiresome! (which is a better point).
Anyway, I just couldn’t help noticing: At the end of the year, Bush pardoned seven people. According to the AP, they were: a Mississippi man who tampered with a car odometer; a postal employee who stole $10.90 worth of mail; a Tennessee man sentenced in 1962 for making untaxed whiskey; an Oregon man convicted in 1966 in a grain-theft conspiracy; an Iowa man sentenced in 1989 for lying to the Social Security Administration; a Washington State man sentenced in 1972 for stealing $38,000 worth of copper wire; and a Wisconsin minister who refused to be inducted into the military, sentenced in 1957. Now, those are GWB pardons — unlike you-know-whose. The contrast is just so overwhelming. This is a man free of corruption, possessed of rectitude, cognizant of what is appropriate and what is not. And the Republican party should be proud — I’m sorry, it’s just true.
Etc. In a piece a couple of months ago, I said something unflattering about Paul Robeson’s singing — and someone accused me of dragging the bass’s politics (which were Stalinist) into it! A silly charge. Anyway, I must confess to a pang or two about going to see Steven Spielberg’s current movie. I’ve never been a boycotter (or much of one — hell, you can’t buy anything that doesn’t come from China, and perhaps even from Laogai, the Chinese gulag). But I happen to know a lot about Cuba’s human-rights abuses. I hear from dissidents and their supporters virtually every day. I have talked to a trembling man on the run, from Castro’s police. Problem is, I sort of “know too much.” And Spielberg is a wretched apologist for Castro. In fact, he declared his huddle with the dictator “the most important eight hours of my life.” If it weren’t for the cover of people like Spielberg — arguably the most important moviemaker of our times — Castro would be easier to discredit in the world. Spielberg makes things harder for Oscar Biscet, Rafael Ibarra Roque, and hundreds of other political prisoners, not to mention Cubans generally. I tell you, it’s sort of awkward, for me, to go and see that Leo-and-Hanks flick. I suppose I will. But I’m disgusted — not least at myself.
Not, fortunately.
The one thing? That speaks volumes about the man’s priorities — about his blind spots (to go with that vision on race relations). I could add to his list of embarrassing facts — and, in fact, sort of have.
Carter said that Ball had “spoken up when nobody else in government did about what was wrong with the Vietnam War.” Also, Ball “had the courage to question aspects of America’s attachment to Israel.” That’s an interesting word: attachment. Sounds like a psychological disorder, an unreasonable affection. How ’bout the fact that it is a sliver of a democracy in a vast desert of autocracy — a sliver founded, in part, by escapees of genocidal Europe — and a country under constant siege from those who wish to destroy it? No, no: Who can understand this perverse “attachment”? Carter did not name Ball, however, because — as Carter put it — Ball’s “outspokenness on the Middle East would have made it difficult for him to pass confirmation hearings.” Outspokenness? That’s a fine euphemism. I’m outspoken. David Frum is outspoken. Ed Koch is outspoken. What Carter meant, of course, is that Ball was anti-Israel — and you got that damn Jewish lobby, and all the other attachees. It’s amazing we survived four years of that man.
His piece on Milton Berle — in the same Sunday Magazine that contains the Brinkley article on Vance — is superb. (I should mention that, before ascending — if that’s what it was — to the Times’s op-ed page, Rich was the paper’s theater critic — and thus, of course, the most important theater critic in the world.) You recall that, a few weeks ago, we were doing Great First Lines — of books. Well, Rich wrote one of the finest opening lines of a magazine article I’ve ever seen: “Uncle Miltie was many things, but avuncular was not one of them.” (I would have written, “. . . but avuncular he was not,” but never mind.) That is so true. And the rest of the piece is fantastic, too.
Excuse me? What in the world was stealthy about Ann Landers’s “progressivism”? She was many things, but subtle (or stealthy) she was not. She was in-your-face frank. I dare say she’d be offended at what Cohen has said. The writer toasts her as “a defender of reproductive rights.” Hmm: reproductive rights. What could those be again? Oh, yeah: I remember. It seems to me that people who think that abortion is no big deal — or not a big enough deal to outlaw — should have less trouble speaking plainly.
Sheesh.
This bears some pondering.
The worst Democratic actor, however, was Sen. Howell Heflin, who was one of those southerners who always act all liberal in Washington and all downhome back in the sticks. Explaining his “no” vote against Bork, he told a ’bama radio audience that Bork had been a komminist in college, and who can tell what he is now? Ah, despicable. Rubbed the scab off the wound, didn’t I (as Nixon would say — it was one of his favorite phrases)?
Oh, yes, I know: Of course they were putting him down!
A propos, check out a cartoon from the incomparable and indispensable Henry Payne: here.
Wha, wha: call no joy? What’s that? Had never heard it. My friend look at me incredulous. Didn’t everyone say “call no joy” (meaning, to give up, to call it quits, to admit defeat)? I asked him where he got it: Was it indigenous to his home state, Illinois? Was it recent or old? Why was I so out of it? Turns out he picked it up from Top Gun. Apparently, it’s a pilot’s term. So, listen, kids: Don’t call no joy! As Churchill said in that famous commencement speech, “Never call no joy! Never call no joy! Never . . .” |
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ey, kids: I’m writing this puppy on Tuesday — of necessity —
so please forgive me if I’m not super-up-to-date.
You’ll have to trust me that I’ve never liked to mix art and
politics. I mean, I’ve observed a kind of “strict separation.”
I know what Wagner was, and what he wrote (in prose). But his music is
another matter. I’m not an admirer of Herbert von Karajan’s
conducting, but his membership in the Nazi party has nothing to do with
it. (Elisabeth Schwarzkopf — now there was a Nazi to celebrate!)
Dmitri Kabalevsky served a horrible function in the Soviet state, but
I’ve always liked and defended his music. I find Daniel Barenboim’s
politics obnoxious — but they’ve never affected my critical
writing about him.
