|
 kay,
lemme lead off with something hilarious — or at least, what
I regard as hilarious. Al Goldstein is standing trial here in New
York. (Goldstein is the famous pornographer, publisher of Screw.
He is accused of harassing an employee. I know, seems inconceivable.)
One of Goldstein’s character witnesses is Al Lewis, 91 years
young. Lewis is the actor best known for playing Grandpa on The
Munsters. (Wasn’t Marilyn beautiful? One of my earliest
interests — along with Judy from Lost in Space.)
The prosecutor
asks Grandpa whether he knows of anyone else who can vouch for Goldstein.
Says Grandpa, “Gilbert Gottfried [the nutty, wacked-out comedian]
and that woman from the Koch administration. She used to be Miss
America.”
The prosecutor
suggests: “Bella Abzug?” Laughter in the courtroom.
Okay, if I
have to explain this, it’s probably not very funny, but here
goes: The woman Grandpa was trying to think of was Bess Myerson,
1945’s Miss America and a sometime escort of Mayor Koch (and
sometime shoplifter too, sadly. Someone should do a deep, probing
piece on successful beauties and shoplifting. Dr. Dalrymple, call
your office — or call my office, for that matter). Bella
Abzug was the Stalinist (really) New York politico, and whatever
her virtues might have been, she was not Miss America.
Ah, the scene,
the images. Funniest thing I have heard of in many months. Maybe
longer.
Okay, here’s something that’s not funny: Toles, the cartoonist
published in The New Republic. I don’t mind that he’s
a ferocious left-winger — okay, I mind just a little bit —
but I do mind, more, that he’s . . . um, underinformed, might
be the politest way of putting it.
In this week’s
issue, he has a cartoon chastising Bush for condemning Iran and
going lighter on China. Fair enough. But here’s what he has
Bush doing: saying, “Evil! Caught in the act of buying nuclear
technology [this is directed at Iran]! And doubly evil for
corrupting my strategic partner China by buying it from them!”
Problem is,
it was Clinton and Gore who referred to China as America’s
“strategic partner.” Bush and the Republicans spent the
entire 2000 campaign decrying and mocking this term,
saying that China was this country’s “strategic competitor,”
if anything. And this cartoonist puts the Clinton/Gore term in Bush’s
mouth, where it is nonsensical.
I know, I know,
it’s “just a cartoon”— but the best cartoons
score for the truth they convey.
Here in New York, there’s a new production of Our Town
— ahhh — but this is an Our Town with a twist,
baby, nothing fuddy-duddy. This is not your father’s
Our Town. The role of the Stage Manager, you see, is taken
by a ninth-grade girl. The director, Jack Cummings III, explains,
“I do not believe that audiences would welcome — the way
they did [before] — an older white male lecturing to them on
the ways of the world with a nod and a wink.”
In her review,
the New York Times’s Anita Gates quickly opines: “That
may be true for some audiences, but an older black man or an older
black woman could have made that point while maintaining the weight
of hard-earned wisdom.”
So, you see,
you can have a ninth-grade (white) girl, an older black man, or
an older black woman, but for God’s sakes you must
not have what the playwright intended, an older white “male,”as
Cummings III puts it. (Why don’t they ever say “man”or
“men”? Why is it always out of Mutual of Omaha’s
Wild Kingdom? “We now see the white male, assuming his
role as the Stage Manager.”)
I have a feeling
I would have liked Cummingses I and II better.
While I’m on the New York Times: They published an
article on Monday that reads like a parody drawn by a talented
and mischievous right-winger. The byline is Michael Janofsky’s,
and the article is on Salt Lake City after the Olympics. The theme:
For a brief, shining moment, Salt Lake was a real place, with interesting
and “diverse” people — with life! But now it will
revert to its dark, unspeakable, Mormon-ruled self — a City
of the Dead.
Let me quote
a little (or a lot). You have to read it to believe it:
For nearly
three weeks, downtown streets here, normally deserted after 6
p.m., were crowded well into the night. Store signs spoke in a
rainbow of languages. Public squares were filled with exhibitions
and entertainment.
The Winter
Olympics . . . transformed Salt Lake City, bringing it a rich
diversity of culture and languages to lift it into the league
of cosmopolitan centers. Downtown felt more like New York or Paris
than Salt Lake’s poky old self. . . .
But . . .
what happens now? What happens with the show moving on, visitors
leaving and traditional issues, like Utah’s $200 million
budget deficit, nudging their way back into view and the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which agreed to a muted
role during the Olympics [did it?], moving back to the forefront
of daily life?
During seven
years of planning, state and local leaders looked longingly into
their Olympic future, half promising, half hoping that Salt Lake’s
17 days with destiny would change forever the profile of a city
known best as the Mormon capital of the world and of a state known
widely for its staggering conservatism [staggering conservatism?
How does conservatism stagger?] and homogeneity [uh-oh], owing
to the influence of the church [hiss].
Yet it remains
far from clear to what degree, if any, those enduring aspirations
might be achieved. . . .
Only time
will reveal which snapshot of the last few weeks might foretell
the future of the city and state. Taking the bright side, Ms.
Martinez [a local sociology professor, of course] suggested looking
at Utah like “a dull, awkward child” suddenly energized
and polished by the possibilities of life. . . .
As for residents
of the state, she was less certain the Olympics would alter their
politics. Noting that so many visitors had a good time in a safe
and festive atmosphere, she said the locals might take that as
a positive reflection of themselves.
People here,
she said, “want to be accepted, it goes so deep. I’m
sure they are feeling, ‘Wow, aren’t we proud?’
and maybe now they have a sense that other people might like them,
after all.”
If only Salt
Lakers had been reeducated during those 17 days . . . But no: They
may actually believe that they’re all right, which means that
the Olympic experience would have been wasted on them!
Look, look:
I work for a conservative opinion journal. I like opinion journalism;
I practice it. But the New York Times, our paper of record,
is not supposed to be an opinion outlet, at least in its news pages.
And this article simply reeks of class condescension and what Pat
Robertson once spoke of as “religious bigotry.” It was,
indeed, practically parodic. And it says so very much: even more
than the Washington Post’s infamous lead, about how
evangelicals are “poor, uneducated, and easily led.”
By the way, speaking of ol’ Pat (not Buchanan, the other one),
doesn’t the Rev. Robertson make a pretty good analyst of the
ways, means, and motives of radical Islam? I mean, give that man
a chairmanship of a Middle Eastern Studies department!
It was inevitable — as inevitable as anything is: Oliver Stone,
the great and gifted hard-Left propagandist, is making a movie about
Fidel Castro (or at least one that purports to be about him). He
has falsified everything else in recent history; might as well add
to the glow around the tyrannical head of Castro.
Stone has been
down in Havana with the dictator, supping, drinking, communing with
him. Granma, the Pravda of Cuba, is excited, reporting
proudly on Stone’s plans. Accounts have it that the director
is “working closely” with Alfredo Guevara, a Castro crony
and onetime head of the country’s State Cinema Institute.
Funny thing
is, Oliver Stone is a free man, operating freely in the United States.
And yet he is willing to make a movie about a Communist dictator
in conjunction with the boss of the country’s Official Cinema.
Why don’t
free people have an appreciation of their freedom, and a corresponding
indignation at the denial of other people’s freedom?
I imagine that
Oliver Stone is not a card-carrying Communist. But, to echo an old
question, in exactly what way would he behave differently if he
were? (Perhaps he’d be more discreet.)
The best rebuke
I have ever seen to Oliver Stone was written by Tom Wicker, the
liberal columnist. Wicker condemned him magnificently for his lies
in JFK, a movie that mistaught untold numbers of young people,
who unfortunately tend to get their “history” from the
entertainment world. (“No, Daddy, right-wing elements
in the U.S. government killed Kennedy!”) No one cares what
a labeled conservative like me says about Oliver Stone; but Wicker,
they might listen to.
Okay, let’s go lighter: The other day, the subject of John
Wayne Bobbitt, the man who got his thingamajig cut off by his wife,
Lorena, came up (don’t ask). My brilliant colleague Mike Potemra
commented, “Poor John Wayne [the actor]: He hasn’t had
a very good run of namesakes — John Wayne Bobbitt, John Wayne
Gacy [the mass murderer] . . .”
In a recent column, I mentioned foosball, reaching for an example
of a game. A reader wrote sternly: “Mr. Nordlinger: Foosball
is not a game. It is a way of life.”
Duly noted,
and sorry.
Also in a recent column, I suggested that “pro-choice”
was the most triumphant lexical feat in American politics (“prohibitionists,”
to denote those who support current anti-drug laws, isn’t bad
either). A reader wrote to say that — American politics aside
— there has been no greater lexical feat than Karl Marx’s
term for a free economy: “capitalism.”
Yes, that is
the all-time champeen. Case closed.
There has been a lot of mail on my “nauseous”/“nauseated”
question. The conservatives are saying: Stick to your guns; honor
that difference; don’t let the moderns obliterate it.
Yes, but they
obliterate a lot, don’t they? I guess I gave up on “healthy”/“healthful”
long ago. But would you like to know one I still cling to? “Jealousy”and
“envy.” Look, what’s the point of having two words
if you’re going to make them synonymous? That’s just redundancy.
Long ago, “jealousy”
meant the fear that something would be taken away from you —
that something you have (already) would be snatched from you. “Envy”
meant the desire for someone else’s possession (like “covetousness,”
I guess): You want an object, or a quality or whatever, that your
neighbor has.
But no one
does that anymore. A guy might say, “I’m jealous of his
success.” No, you’re not: You’re envious. You’re
jealous if he and your girlfriend start making eyes at each other.
But who cares?
Something else I cling to — no one does — is the difference
between “in behalf” and “on behalf.” Everyone
wants to say “on behalf,” all the time. When I write “in
behalf,” people actually try to correct it! (I’ve been
corrected incorrectly pretty much all my life — don’t
you hate it when that happens?) (Remember that routine on Saturday
Night Live?)
Long ago, “in
behalf” meant in support of someone: I’m here to speak
in behalf of Joe Smith (whose candidacy I support). “On behalf”
meant in the stead of: I’m here to speak on behalf of Joe Smith
(who’s sick and couldn’t make it today: Here’s what
he would’ve said).
But that’s
very fuddy-duddy.
You know another one I’ve given up on? “Due to” and “owing
to.” The due-to-ers have simply won, worn me down.
Old dictionaries
and usage books confirm that “nauseous” once meant sickening
and that “nauseated” was what you were when you were sickened
— feeling queasy. Now the queasy can just say “nauseous”
— without fear of snickers, except from moss-bound pedants.
(Don’t look at me.)
Informs a reader, “You might be interested to learn that last
night ‘The House of Terror,’ a museum remembering the
victims of Communism and Nazism, was opened in Budapest.
“The museum
is located in a building with a most instructive history. The building
served as the headquarters of the Hungarian Nazi Party (the Arrowcross
Party), which ran a Quisling government from late 1944 to early
1945. Upon the expulsion of German troops from Hungary it was quickly
turned into the headquarters of the Communist secret service (called
AVO, later AVH). Its cellars were used for torture, and saw several
thousands of freedom-loving people killed. The co-location of Communists
and Nazis is no coincidence, for hundreds of low- and middle-ranking
Nazis reinvented themselves as devout Communists in Hungary after
1945. For these reasons, this building is an especially apt illustration
of how close these two totalitarian ideologies have been.
“It was
heartening to see that more than 100,000 people — a crowd not
seen in Budapest since the burial of Hungary’s first post-Communist
prime minister in 1993 — turned up for the opening ceremony.
These people seem to illustrate the growing recognition in Hungary
that the sins of Communism should not be forgotten, no matter how
strongly the post-Communist Left claims them irrelevant. It required
more than a decade and a new, untainted generation for Germany to
start facing and fully rejecting its Nazi past after 1945. It is
very much possible that we are seeing the same phenomenon in Hungary.
“It will
be no surprise to you that the post-Communist Left is crying foul.
Its leader has already declared that if the Left comes back to power
this April, it will rename the museum the ‘House of Reconciliation.’
“I hope
that you find these developments interesting.”
Oh, I do: very.
Finally, readers may remember that I quoted an astrophysicist who
said, “When I’m on an airplane, and want a quiet ride,
I tell the person sitting next to me — if he asks — that
I’m an astrophysicist. If I feel like talking, I say I’m
an astronomer.”
Another reader
writes in to say, “I once heard a pastor say that if he wanted
a quiet flight, he would introduce himself as an evangelist. I suppose
that would work!”
|
