I’m sure I’m not the only one to have had this thought: You know that big Lebanese demonstration, the one responding to Hezbollah–the one with actual Lebanese in it, as opposed to bused-in Syrians and Palestinians? That, sports fans, is “the Arab street.” Pity our panjandrums didn’t call it that.
‐Some people like to write “bussed,” but I think that should be reserved for kissing. Stick to one “s” when referring to the vehicles whose wheels go round and round.
‐Readers may recall my opinion that Dan Rather is the anchorman CBS deserves–and that Eason Jordan is the chief news executive CNN deserves. I mean, shouldn’t CBS’s anchorman attend Democratic fundraisers, as Rather did? And shouldn’t CNN’s chief news executive tell anti-American audiences that U.S. soldiers target journalists for murder? Similarly, I wonder whether Harvard deserves Larry Summers as president. When Lee Bollinger was named president of Columbia, I said he was the perfect president: the very model of a modern college president. In love with speech codes, race preferences–the whole nine yards. Is Summers so apt? Well, with his abject apologies and Oprah-esque remaking, he’s becoming apter.
Such a shame.
‐Am I the only one it burns that supporters of speech codes and race preferences have to be called “liberal”? But I’m not going to repeat my rants on political taxonomy–not at the moment.
‐Readers–particularly those from Louisiana–have asked me to comment on Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s major butt-kissing of Castro. I can say nothing that I haven’t said in the course of much writing about Cuba over the last several years. It is disgraceful, it is immoral, it is unhelpful, it is faithless. I’m going to move to the next item.
‐Another governor, Arnold, has acquired a challenger: California treasurer (not treasure) Philip Angelides. He said, “We have a governor who thinks it’s fine to cut assistance to children, to the poor; that somehow, if we just shower more fortune on the fortunate, the crumbs will fall to the rest, like the leftovers of a Hollywood dinner party.” Angelides is a bum, folks, but that is very, very good rhetoric.
‐President Bush had a press conference the other day, and I picked out some bits for you, mainly because I was struck by the language (as usual). Listen for a second, if you’d like:
“Let me review the bidding on this, if I might, just kind of the history, right quick: Iran concealed a nuclear program . . .”
“David, there’s some interesting ideas out there [on Social Security]. One of the interesting ideas was by the fellow–by a Democrat economist name of Posen. He came to visit the White House–he didn’t see me, but came and tossed some interesting ideas out, talking about making sure the system was progressive. We’re open for ideas” (not to ideas).
“One of the things that I think is very important for people to understand is that I believe that we have a duty to work on big problems in Washington, D.C. And so I’m going to continue working on this [Social Security]. I’m not going to go away on the issue, because the issue is not going to go away. The longer we wait, the more difficult it is to solve the problem.”
“No, I haven’t changed my position [on gay marriage]. And as a matter of fact, the court rulings are verifying why I took the position I took, and that is I don’t believe judges ought to be deciding this issue. I believe this is an issue of particular importance to the American people and should be decided by the people. And I think the best way to do so is through the constitutional process. I haven’t changed my mind at all. As a matter of fact, court rulings such as this strengthen my position, it seems like to me. People now understand why I laid out the position I did.”
We will never see the like of George W. Bush again–not in the Oval Office, we won’t.
‐I had a letter from the extraordinary Jeff Hart–a professor emeritus at Dartmouth, a senior editor of National Review — and I’d like to quote you a paragraph from it:
“The present-day attacks on Jefferson are part of the pathology of dysphemizing America’s heroes and its past in behalf of a variety of interests. All the more reprehensibly are such dysphemizers rewarded by the general culture. The claim that Lincoln was a homosexual gets more attention than his Second Inaugural, even though he did write the Second Inaugural and was not a homosexual.”
‐I’d like to direct your attention to a review of C. A. Tripp’s book–the book that wills Lincoln into homosexuality. Michael F. Bishop’s review–here–is exceptionally clear-minded. Bishop is the executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and top-notch. One line from the review cuts to the heart of the matter: “Tripp could make a grocery list sound suspicious.” And you may wish to spend some time at Bishop’s website, or rather, the commission’s: here. I find that time spent with Lincoln is always edifying. He sort of raises you–and makes you feel less sorry for yourself.
‐I am looking at a photograph. It is of a man in Beirut, carrying a crucifix, a Lebanese flag, and a Koran. Got some bases covered, doesn’t he?!
‐I’m looking at another photo, of Chinese soldiers marching up steps into the “Great Hall of the People” (Beijing). They are strikingly, beautifully dressed, in gold braids, white sashes, etc. I mean, they are really, really smart–very fancy for Communists! What gives? Richard Nixon didn’t dress his guards any more lavishly.
‐Do you care to read a stupefyingly good essay by Anthony Daniels? Dumb question, I realize. Here it is, in The New Criterion. You will want to subscribe, anyway. Daniels describes what it is to experience grandees such as Eli Wiesel and Günter Grass at international conferences. I can tell you from my trips to Davos that his portrait of Wiesel is spot-on–I mean, spot.
‐I’m going to say something terrible, as I not infrequently do in this column. Recently, I read the following headline over an obit: “Charles Baxter, 75; Dallas Doctor Who Attended Wounded JFK.” Um, doesn’t it seem to you, as it seems to me, that you’ve been reading obits related to that day in Dallas all your life? I mean, does another one–a hospital orderly, a reporter, a bystander–die every couple of weeks or so?
Terrible, I know. Terrible, terrible.
‐Couple of Sundays ago, the New York Post had a roundup of what people make–especially the richies. The article began, “No wonder Katie Couric’s so perky. The early-morning talk-show host rakes in a staggering $15 million a year. [That is staggering, I concede.] And her cab driver? Barely making enough to get by, with a $24,000 salary, including tips.”
Um, just want to say that I don’t think Katie Couric is taking any cabs.
‐I give you the great Paul Johnson, from the current Spectator (of London):
The plight of Europe is such that, whenever I have the chance to talk to young people now, at any age from 12 to 20, I always urge them to make their future in America, particularly if they are clever and energetic, qualities essential for a vigorous life over there. America has everything Europe lacks. It has the world’s most dynamic economy, making impressive gains in productivity while expanding the number of jobs at the rate of a quarter of a million a month. It is growing in numbers, attracting the world’s best immigrants, and with a healthy birth rate of its own. Population is just topping 300 million and will be 425 million by mid-century. It has a democratic spirit at all levels of society so that people really feel they create and participate in government. In science and philosophy, in painting, sculpture, music and literature, it makes Europe seem provincial. It has nearly 4,000 universities, including all the world’s best. Most of all, it has a belief in its own future, a confidence that the world can be made, and will be made, a better place, not only materially but spiritually. It is the nearest we have in the world to The Good Society, and my only regret is that I did not make my home there 30 or 40 years ago, when I was still young enough to weather the change. Instead I have to make the best of enjoying the bits of England that are left, morsels of culture, dignity and civilisation not yet gnawed or gobbled up by the rodents of New Labour, the yobs and celebs, the hobbledehoys of mass entertainment and the picklocks and con men who dominate that combined brothel and mortuary, the Palace of Westminster and all its sinister and unsavoury purlieus.
‐And just two sentences from Charles Moore, also in The Spectator:
“Despite already knowing about the IRA’s involvement in the £26 million robbery of the Northern Bank, Paul Murphy, the Northern Ireland Secretary, last month approved a renewal of the exemption which allows Sinn Fein (and other political parties in the province) to raise money abroad. This privilege is denied to mainland parties which do not rob banks, such as the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats.”
‐Walked through a neighborhood of Bethesda, Md., yesterday morning. (This is just outside Washington, as you know.) Every driveway had a Washington Post thrown on it. Every car (virtually) had either a Kerry bumper sticker or, more likely, a hate-Bush sticker. Sample: “What Would Jesus Bomb?” It was the perfect image of a little, conformist village. I doubt that those Midwestern Republican towns Sinclair Lewis loved to mock could have been so suffocating.
‐I’ve been on Amtrak a lot lately, and wish to tell you a couple of things. 1) The cars are way too hot. I asked about this. The lady said–and another worker confirmed–”I can turn the heat off, but I can’t turn it down. You can have it off or like this. If I were you, I’d sit by the door.” Does this seem right? And 2) The café car won’t take pennies. I kid you not. I bought a can of pop for $1.50. I had a dollar bill, a quarter, a dime, two nickels, and five pennies. The man said, “We don’t take pennies, we can’t turn ‘em in.” Give me a break: A U.S. government agency (or whatever Amtrak is) won’t take U.S. government currency?
‐Last week, I had the privilege of spending a day with students and teachers at the University of Pennsylvania. Is it my imagination, or have kids gotten nicer since I was in school? And they didn’t check for horns and a tail: They seemed to know that conservatives are human beings, whether we’re right or wrong.
‐Let’s have a little music criticism: For a review of the Oslo Philharmonic, under André Previn, please go here. For a review of Der Rosenkavalier at the Met, and the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, please go here. For a review of the New York Philharmonic Chamber Players, with the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, please go here. And for a review of the pianists Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman in duo recital, please go here.
‐Want to hear something funny about feudalism? Try this reader’s letter:
Dear Jay,
More depressing than liberal views on privatization is the almost complete national ignorance of feudalism. (My wife just looked over my shoulder and said, “Another geek e-mail, dear?”) Invented by Charles Martel in 732/3 in order to provide greater numbers of mounted knights after he successfully repulsed a Muslim army at Tours, it was the first socio-economic system in mankind’s history whose basic economic unit was not a slave. The serf, although tied to the land and with few rights, had access to ecclesiastical courts, was allowed to keep 70 to 80 percent of his produce, and could earn or purchase his way out of serfdom–upward mobility, doncha know. This increase in freedom produced an explosion of creativity that led, within a few hundred years, to banks, guilds, a middle class, the Renaissance, the Reformation . . . in short, Western society. So the [New Yorker] cartoon [that I bristled at] is, maddeningly, correct.
One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons shows two medieval peasants running toward us while being chased by Mongol horsemen as their village burns in the distance. One says to the other, “At least there’s no ambiguity in their foreign policy.”
‐Another in our occasional series on assuming Republicanism:
Jay,
I’m a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania, and I recently attended a party thrown by several grad students in the social sciences. It did not disappoint. Late in the evening, the various flirtations and invitations to further . . . um, “contact” began. In particular, I happened to notice one couple making out rather furiously in the corner of the room.
I also happened to recognize the man with whom the young lady was playing tonsil hockey as the husband of another woman–of a colleague of mine. Without thinking before I spoke, I wondered aloud if his wife was at this party, and what she might think of her spouse’s extracurricular activity.
The reaction of several acquaintances (all female grad students) standing near me was instantaneous. One student immediately turned to me and shrieked loud enough for the entire room to hear: “What are you, a Dick Cheney supporter or something?!?!?!”
Says a lot, doesn’t t?
Oh, yes.
‐From a reader reacting to an article I linked to from the New York Sun:
Dear Jay:
I’d like to confirm Natan Sharansky’s thoughts on U.S. higher education. It is indeed very much like education in the USSR. I came here from the USSR 14 years ago. I was in the U.S. for only two days when I heard my high-school history teacher say that the U.S. was responsible for the death of 6 million Jews. [I once heard the great Stephen Jay Gould say that Americans had no right to criticize Germany for the Holocaust because we had turned away the St. Louis.] I will never forget that. That teacher was very much like my old history teacher in the USSR–they both hated the U.S. and capitalism.
‐And finally, a letter on the type of New Yorker who wants no one else to enter Manhattan, ever: “I’m reminded of a Saturday Night Live skit set in an impossibly trendy clothing store. At one point, one of the clerks bemoans, ‘This place was so much cooler before we had doors installed.’”
Have a good week, dear hearts.