Václav Havel, the Czech playwright, politician, and human-rights hero, stands shoulder to shoulder with the oppressed wherever they are. This makes him a pretty unusual guy. For instance, he has done very well by Cubans — and so, it must be said, have his fellow Czechs at large. I wrote about this extraordinary relationship in a piece for National Review five years ago. It was called “Solidarity, Exemplified: The amazing story of the Czechs and the Cubans.” Find it here.
Now, unsurprisingly, Havel has spoken out about Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Chinese dissident. Liu spearheaded Charter 08, the pro-freedom manifesto and campaign. It drew its inspiration from Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77 — in which Havel was key. The Czech leader recently gave an interview to Sharon Hom, the executive director of Human Rights in China (HRIC). For a write-up, go here.
Havel said, “It’s incumbent upon us, who have lived through those times and those experiences . . . to be among the first ones to show solidarity with those who are persecuted for the same reasons.” He also said that bold, public solidarity can send a message to the Chinese regime that “it can’t just do whatever it wishes.”
Not many people can be relied on, to do the right thing in instance after instance, no matter the region, no matter the politics: but Havel, in my observation, can. And here is a bit of news from that HRIC write-up: “. . . Havel, along with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates . . . jointly endorsed Liu for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Not a bad idea. It may be a pipedream, but some Chinese dissident should get it — it pretty much doesn’t matter who. Could be Liu. Could be Gao Zhisheng. Could be one of many. But somebody . . .
‐I’m liking Sen. Lamar Alexander’s rhetoric lately. Give you the two samples that have come to my attention. On the “Christmas Day bomber,” and how our system should treat him: “We have to make a distinction between a kid who breaks into a sandwich shop in Detroit and a Nigerian terrorist who wants to blow up an airplane flying into Detroit.” And nuclear power: “Up until now, the administration has been pursuing a national windmill policy instead of a national energy policy, which is the military equivalent of going to war in sailboats.” He meant “energy equivalent,” but whatever: Nice.
‐I read a news item the other day, and thought of George Shultz. Let me tell you what I read: “The White House ordered the Justice Department on Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.” I found myself wondering, “‘The White House’? What does that mean? President Obama? ‘The White House’ is so vague.”
And here was my memory of Shultz: When he was a cabinet member — Labor, Treasury, State — sometimes an aide would say to him, “The White House is calling.” And Shultz would say, “The White House is a building. It can’t call anyone. Who in the White House?” A good question: Could be the president (the secretary’s boss); could be the chief of staff; could be a speechwriter. Could be many people.
So . . .
‐Contemporary liberals, so many of them, have race on the brain. And, because they have race on the brain, they assume you do, too. Howard Fineman of Newsweek suggested there was a “racial aspect” to Scott Brown’s pickup truck in Massachusetts. (For details, go here.) Fineman’s fellow MSNBC-er, Chris Matthews, said, “I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.” He was referring to President Obama and the State of the Union address.
Hey, I can forget for eons, if the world will let me!
Finally, a third MSNBC-er, Keith Olbermann, named a group of us “The Worst People in the World.” Why? Because we said that, in his address, Obama had come off as arrogant, among other things. And “arrogant,” charged Olbermann, was a racist codeword.
I addressed this issue in our Corner, last Friday: here.
And as I said in my Corner note, being a conservative means that you’ll be called a racist — I mean, it’s par for the course, written in stone. It’s what you sign up for. Oppose race preferences — advocating colorblindness instead — and you’ll be called a racist. Charlie Rangel said that tax cuts were racist. Scott Brown’s truck is racist. Everything is racist.
So, conservatives are used to it. But I don’t think you should ever get too used to it. Are false charges of racism so common in America that the charge of racism has lost its sting? Do we just shrug? If so, we have come to a pretty pass. I don’t think the charge of racism has lost its power to sting. I think it’s probably still the worst thing you can be accused of in America.
After the Olbermann show, many people wrote me to say, “Congratulations! Olbermann has called you a bad person. How lucky you are! Wear it as a badge of honor!” I can see that, surely. Nonetheless, to be called a racist — on national television, no less — is kind of sucky. To say the least. In prior times, it might have meant a duel.
One more thing: We all knew that, if Obama became president, the Left would treat criticisms of him as racist. (For instance, see this column of mine from October ’08.) But it is still disheartening to live it.
‐Before the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, comes the World Social Forum, usually held in Brazil. They just met in Porto Alegre. And I will give you a bit from an Associated Press report:
Brazil’s first working-class president got a hero’s welcome at the World Social Forum, wowing 10,000 leftists with a vow to reproach the rich and famous for causing the global meltdown when he meets with them this week.
Former radical union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — known almost everywhere as Lula — was greeted Tuesday night like a rock star by activists in a sports stadium chanting “Lula, Lula, the warrior of the Brazilian people!”
And he got more cheers after promising to scold world leaders and bankers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — and tell them the free market policies they have espoused for decades were to blame for the global financial crunch. . . .
Silva said the Davos gathering doesn’t have as much glamour as it did when he first attended it just after his inauguration in 2003. Now, he said, developing nations like Brazil only recently viewed as second-class countries will have a strong hand in setting a new world economic order.
Okay. And what do the Davos people then do? They give their first-ever Global Statesmanship Award to Silva. And I’m thinking, “Lula Honored by Blue-Eyed Devils.”
Why am I thinking that? Do you remember? Last April, Silva said of worldwide financial troubles, “This was a crisis that was fostered and boosted by the irrational behavior of people who were white and blue-eyed.” As I wrote here,
Um, for the record, some of those people had brown or hazel eyes, or even green ones. (Green-eyed monsters?) Some of them even had dark skin. And if a leader not a darling of the Left had made so racist a statement as Lula’s, he would never be able to show his face in public again.
Don’t you think?
Well, I do. Let me quote one more passage from that AP report: “Silva was booed at the social forum in 2005 by activists who felt he had betrayed his leftist roots and were more impressed with the presence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a strident socialist.”
Yup, the dirty little secret is, Silva has been fairly reasonable in office. And George W. Bush developed a good relationship with him. You may recall that a group of us NR types did an interview with Bush shortly before he left office. I wrote it up here, and would like to give you Bush’s words concerning Lula and Brazil:
The relationship between the United States and Brazil has been one of suspicion at times. Today, it is one of dealing with common interests. I’ll never forget my first meeting with Lula in here [the Oval Office]. I’m a pretty frank guy with these people [!]. And I said, “You know, it’s hard for you to believe, isn’t it, that you’re sitting here talking with a” — I don’t think I called myself a right-wing fanatic, but . . . I said, “I know that you probably think that you and I can’t get along. After all, you are, you know, coming out of the leftist labor movement, bashing America when you could.” And I said, “But you know something? You and I do care about a couple of things: We care about the plight of the downtrodden; we want to defeat ignorance. What I found interesting about you, Mr. President [Lula, that is], is you believe in faith-based programs to help lift people’s lives in your country.”
And it was like, “Oh, maybe I can deal with this guy” [Lula’s reaction]. And we have got a very strong relationship.
‐I haven’t been on the Che Guevara beat for a while — let’s do a Che item (one of dozens I have at hand). A reader wrote to say he wouldn’t be buying wine from a particular company anymore. The company is offering “Chevere,” or, more precisely: “Chévere!” This is a vinous tribute (if I have used the right adjective) to the late Argentinian sadist and monster. The ad copy says Chévere! is “a modest contribution to wine lovers with a social conscience.” (For the full, sick-making deal, go here.)
With a social conscience, huh? A conscience in favor of murder, dictatorship, concentration camps, and the other accouterments of unfreedom? Great, just great.
(Incidentally, people often ask me what to read about Guevara. I put this in a Frequently Asked Questions column, here.)
‐Relatedly, a reader alerted me to a controversy in Westchester County, N.Y. For an article, go here. The junior class at a high school chose a Communist theme for a T-shirt: a hammer and sickle. This did not rub everyone the right way. As we learn from the article I have linked to, a student complained — and so did his mother. Problem is, some of their relatives died in the Ukrainian terror-famine. And they’re a little — you know, touchy about it.
The Communist theme was blocked. But the student, one gathers, was not feeling so victorious. He was asked whether he felt he had done some good. He answered, “In the end, I really don’t think I made my point. I just aggravated a bunch of people.” Bummer.
Last summer, I did a piece on the subject — the not uncomplicated subject — of Communist symbols in free countries. To read it, go here. And I’d also like to tell you something about the reader who sent me the article on the high school. He wrote to me, “My particular interest in this issue? My grandfather was a leader in the fight against the Communist takeover of Albania. He and his brothers were all killed in that effort.”
Too often, it takes a personal connection to give a fig. To repeat myself: Bummer.
‐The other day, I was on Wei Jingsheng’s website, here. Wei, as you may remember, is the great Chinese dissident who was exiled to the United States in 1997. On the website, there is a picture of him with some Vietnamese human-rights leaders and others. Above them is a mural celebrating the First Amendment. Neat (I thought).
‐In a column last week, I wrote some about “health and safety” — the Nanny State regime that is enfeebling and infantilizing Britain (plus making it look ridiculous). A reader sent me an article that is not about health and safety, but that relates to general, modern ridiculousness. An employer has been told that she cannot advertise for “reliable and hard-working” people — because it would discriminate against unreliable and not-hard-working people. Really.
Go here.
This was in Britain — but Americans can’t get too cocky, because consider the rules of our real-estate advertising: In some places, at least, you can’t say there’s a “walk-in closet” or a “sunset view” — because one can’t discriminate against the crippled or the blind. Etc.
I have received a ton of mail about “health and safety” in America. In the Corner, I published a letter from a teacher, in Britain, who was not allowed to use a ladder without proper “training.” A different reader wrote,
Jay, greetings from the frozen plains:
I hate to burst your bubble, but ladder training has already come to America. I work as a civilian at a local Air Force base and one day I was on a ladder looking for a network cable in the ceiling when a supervisor asked me if I had taken ladder training. I don’t remember my exact response, but it was something like, “Yeah, my dad told me to not fall off.” Later in the day I got an e-mail from her with the “official” PowerPoint briefing on ladder safety. Fortunately, it was only about half-a-dozen slides.
Oklahoma is having an ice storm today, and yesterday, before we all left work, we got a PowerPoint briefing (from several different offices) about safely walking on ice.
Oh, yes. And this is on an Air Force base. What are they doing at Brown University, or at the Ann Arbor Public Library? I further ask, Can a wussed-out country possibly be a world power, or even a healthy republic?
‐Okay, let’s wrap this puppy up — been a too-long Impromptus. Care for a splash of music? Try this piece from City Arts. It’s called “The Art of the Song,” and touches on two master classes — one given by James Levine, the other by Marilyn Horne — and one recital, given by Christine Schäfer, the German soprano.
‐Close with a reader letter? Another one? Okay, I’ll make it quick — but I have to set it up. In my “Scribbles” on President Obama’s State of the Union address — written as he spoke, basically — I said,
Head (mine) about to explode. Here’s why: “And let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only ten percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after twenty years — and forgiven after ten years if they choose a career in public service.”
Because “public service” is better than the private sector? Nobler, more laudable? Can I tell you what a public service is? Opening a good store. Inventing something useful. Employing people. . . .
A reader wrote me,
Bravo! I am a political consultant, and have taken to doing something in the speeches I give. I say, “I want to thank all the public servants: the entrepreneurs, the inventors, the builders — the people who create opportunity and wealth in this nation.”
I like it. Head not exploding!
See you.
#JAYBOOK#