On Bob Barker; Trump and golf; the neoconservatives; the curse of addiction; and more
Bob Barker had a long career and a long life. The iconic game-show host passed away two days ago at age 99. Let me point you to something fun: here. In 1994, Barker read one of David Letterman’s Top Ten lists: “Top Ten Things That Make Bob Barker Angry.” In 2007, there was another list: “Top Ten Things Bob Barker Can Say Now That He’s Retiring.” The link I have provided will give you both of those segments. Delightful stuff, in my opinion.
Barker was an animal-rights activist, and there was always some snickering about this. But I am impressed by his activism. First, I think the cause is good. But second, activism cost Barker something. Lots of activism is cost-free. Barker’s was not.
A sentence from a New York Times article: “. . . he became a strict vegetarian, stopped dyeing his hair because the products were tested on animals and quit his job as host of the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because their organizers refused to remove fur coats from the prize packages.”
How many would have given up those hosting jobs? Barker’s conscience must have been sturdy.
As regular readers know, I have an animal-rights streak — a big one. And have we ever talked about vegetarianism? At different points in my life, I have murmured to myself, “You should really be a vegetarian.” Then I come up with arguments against it — good ones. Then a little voice says, “Are your reasons more like excuses? More like rationalizations?”
Maybe we can talk about this another day (perhaps over a hamburger).
• On the last day of 2021, I wrote the following:
Vladimir Putin is quite an athlete. So is Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator over in Belarus. Earlier this week, the two of them played a hockey game in St. Petersburg. Also on the ice were retired Russian hockey stars. The dictators were on the same team, which won 18 to 7. Putin scored seven goals. Lukashenko scored two. The 17-year-old son of the latter scored four.
Another paragraph or two:
As athletes, however, Putin and Lukashenko are not in the same league as Kim Jong-il, the late North Korean dictator. The very first time Kim Jong-il played golf, he shot 38 — over 18 holes. In other words, he was 34 under par. His round included eleven holes-in-one.
Bobby Jones never dreamed of that. Neither did Hogan, Nicklaus, or Woods.
I had a question:
Are dictators ever embarrassed? Does Putin, for example, ever feel insulted that real hockey players are letting him flop the puck into the net and so on? Does it ever affront their dignity?
I guess not.
You may have seen this report from our once and possibly future president — he filed it on Saturday:
A couple of days before, Trump had said that his height and weight were 6-foot-3 and 215. The golf claim is less credible even than that — much less.
He supposes that people will believe it. I’m afraid that he is right. What about his own beliefs? I will quote a friend of mine:
Do you think he thinks that he shot a 67 (so, in his mind, he’s not lying)? Or does he know he didn’t shoot a 67? I’m not sure which is more dangerous.
Neither am I. Way back, during the 2016 campaign, when I commented that Trump was a fount of lies, another friend of mine said, “He’s not a liar, he’s a bullsh**ter.” The second designation is more benign.
I don’t know. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election led to January 6 — a mob attack on the U.S. Congress, for the purpose of stopping a constitutional process. It was the worst attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812 (and that long-ago attack came from a foreign power, not our fellow citizens).
To a large degree, the Republican Party and the conservative movement have hitched their wagon to a perpetual liar, and this is a much, much bigger problem than Trump himself.
“Honesty is the coin of the realm,” said Bryce Harlow. Ought to be.
• A report out of Chicago: “Two fans were injured during Friday night’s White Sox game as a result of gunshots.” (For the complete report, go here.) This is an American story — all too. We need to get a handle on this. And by “we” I don’t mean only politicians and policymakers. I mean all of us — the whole society — starting, probably, with parents.
• Many, many people throw around the term “neocon,” pejoratively. A good way to shut them up, or make them stammer, is to ask, “What’s a neocon?” Same with people who throw around the word “Zionist,” pejoratively. “What’s a Zionist?”
But let’s stick with “neocon” for a moment. (About “Zionist,” I wrote an essay in 2011: “The Z-Word.”)
In my experience, when people say “neocon,” they usually mean, “I hate you.” Orwell observed something similar about “fascist.” People can be as ignorant as they are nasty.
Last Friday, Avik Roy tweeted,
I'm trying to keep up with all of the nationalist goalpost-moving on foreign policy. Apparently a "neocon" is now any non-isolationist who is skeptical of…invading Mexico?
— Avik Roy (@Avik) August 25, 2023
The Heritage Foundation is throwing “neocon” at people who support U.S. aid to Ukraine. National Review’s Dominic Pino took this up in an article here.
I think of the neoconservatives: Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, James Q. Wilson, Michael Novak, Charles Krauthammer, Nathan Glazer, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick . . .
Of Kirkpatrick, William F. Buckley Jr. once said, “She ought to be woven into the flag as the 51st star.” When I first met Kirkpatrick, I reminded her of this. She said, “That’s the nicest thing anybody ever said about me.” I said, “That’s the nicest thing anybody ever said about anybody.”
In 1995, Irving Kristol published Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. WFB reviewed it in the fledgling Weekly Standard. So interesting to read.
(A quick aside: WFB’s review was in the Standard’s October 8 issue. The magazine had begun the month before. I was working there. I was one of the proofreaders of WFB’s piece — which, trust me, was a kick.)
If you have time to read Irving K.’s book, I recommend it, highly. It will show you the real neoconservatism, not this cartoon that the Heritage Foundation and others have made of it. If you have less time and would like to read WFB’s review — it’s marvelous, of course.
Nationalists and populists have blackened the neocons’ name. Frankly, the way some of them behave, I think they have blackened “nationalist” and “populist” too.
• Lately, a lot of people have been asking, “Are we headed toward civil war?” Some of them ask it in a hopeful tone of voice. A friend of mine recalled a quotation from William Tecumseh Sherman:
You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about.
• Some people accuse me of seeing signs of civilizational decline, day after day — grumpy-old-man–style. I often accuse myself of the same. Guilty.
Here is something small — but not necessarily small to me:
Faculty members are spreading the word that Brandeis University, one of America’s most prestigious colleges, has abolished its PhD programs in composition and musicology . . .
(For the complete article, go here.)
I think I was particularly irked by this because a friend of mine, Robert Marshall, the eminent musicologist, is a professor emeritus at Brandeis. Earlier in his career, he was chairman of the department at Chicago.
To most people, I suppose, composition and musicology are luxuries — expendable, like ballet lessons, when the car needs to be fixed. Some of us, however, see these things as more like essentials. And their broader absence would have a bad effect on society, whether the public at large were aware of it or not.
A big subject — too big for this breezy lil’ column.
• Nick Cohen, the British journalist, is a terribly interesting writer, and utterly individualistic — unpigeonholable. Non-tribal. Even anti-tribal, I would say. If pressed, I would describe him as an anti-Left liberal. In any case, he is an honest writer, in addition to an interesting one, and an honest writer is worth his weight in gold.
He wrote a column titled “You can defeat addiction by understanding it.” The column’s subheading: “Alcohol, drug, and tobacco deaths are the price of ignorance.”
Let me quote a portion:
Drinkers fall in love with alcohol. By whacking up the dopamine levels, it convinces their brains that it brings them happiness.
By understanding the reactions the drug produced, I learned to resent it and see at as scheming enemy.
The older I get, the more I appreciate autobiography, and biography — lives. And the more I appreciate the rawly honest.
• Maybe I could end with a photo — which I took the other day in Highland Park, Ill.:
I admire such efforts — such charitable projects. There is a phrase in my head. It comes from The Greek Passion, an opera by Martinů, which I saw earlier in the month. Refugees plead with villagers, “Give us what you have too much of.”
Grateful, as always, for my readers. Check you later.
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