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saw the other day that Ralph Nader was speaking on yet another college
campus — that’s what he does: speak to
college students. That’s pretty much his whole life. And this
tells you something, because college kids tend to be uninformed,
inexperienced, and vulnerable to demagoguery and snake oil. I was
conscious of this even when I was a student myself: that there were
certain types who delighted in preying on kids, mentally, ideologically,
mainly because they couldn’t scare up a respectful adult audience.
It must be embarrassing, after a while, to be Ralph Nader and 65
years old (or whatever) and realize that the only people you can
get to cheer and mob and love you are ignorant, impressionable kids.
College students haven’t paid any taxes. When they hear the
word “corporation,” they’re liable to think “Nazi.”
And this is Nader’s constituency. Well, Allard Lowenstein did
it (in large measure) for the sex. Nader? If he can win over a Kiwanis
Club or an Elks lodge or even Local #1066, then I’ll be kind
of impressed.
 I caught
Don Hewitt — the 60 Minutes producer — being interviewed
by Fox’s Judith Regan the other night. Asked what he thought
about Bill O’Reilly, he said (roughly) this: “I have my
political views, and he has his, but what he has, that I don’t
have, is disdain. He has disdain toward people who hold other
views, and I just don’t get that.” Of course, we all know
that 60 Minutes has been a model of respect and fairness
toward conservatives and conservative ideas and conservative sensibilities
over the years. True, Bill Buckley was treated okay — but he
is often a grand exception. Others haven’t fared so well, have
they?
Funny
that Bill Clinton hasn’t taken the heat he ought to for leaving
Bush with all that environmental nonsense — arsenic in the
water, salmonella in our gullets, that kind of thing. This isn’t
in the nature of governing so much as of a juvenile prank: The outgoing
campers of Cabin 14 short-sheet the beds of incoming campers! They
stop up the toilets, too! Clinton’s last-minute trap-laying
— “He has been a busy beaver,” said Bush spokesman
Ari Fleischer at the time — is yet more proof — final
proof, as much as the pardons — that he was never fit to govern.
He seemed never to take his responsibilities with the seriousness
required. Yet it’s Bush who takes the heat on this: “The
Republicans are putting arsenic back in the water!”
says Jay Leno.
I think it would be kind of cool if Bush looked the American public
in the eye and said (something like), “My predecessor did a
nasty, prankish thing — and has left me to clean up the mess.
So I’m going to, like the adult president I am.” In my
view, W. has taken this gentlemanliness thing — this “new
tone” and “new civility” — too far.
Anyone
would rather be published in the Washington Post than in
the Washington Times. So it was no surprise that the energy
secretary, Spencer Abraham, gave an op-ed piece recently to the
Post. But why not give it to the Times? Who says that
the Post has to be an official paper — the equivalent
of the Pyongyang Whatever? I think it would be sort of neat
if a major figure — like the energy secretary — went to
the Times when he had something to say. It would still be
news. It would still get the word out. And it might give a deserving
underdog a hand. The major figure would be big enough to do it:
He’s a Cabinet secretary (for example). What does he care about
a lousy byline in the Post? If I were a Cabinet member —
heck, if I were president (since we’re being pretty
scary anyway) — I’d offer my scribbles to the Washington
Times. A little competition — a little variety, a little
diversity — isn’t a bad thing anyway.
Michael
McCurry, I kid you not, began a recent letter to The New Republic
as follows: “No one would mistake me for an apologist for my
ex-boss President Clinton, but…” Thing is, McCurry probably
does think of himself as a brave, independent type. He has
suggested, on occasion, that Clinton is perhaps slightly less than
perfect — which must, indeed, make him a heretic in the Sidney
Blumenthal school (to use a shorthand). That would make ex-toady
and now-sometime critic George Stephanopoulos a beyond-heretic.
As for McCurry, who could have known that his service to the disgraced
senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey would stand as the most
honorable segment of his career?
It
seems that the Republican National Committee is busily “reaching
out” — setting up various task forces to appeal to this
ethnic group and this religious group, and so on. I understand the
necessity for practical politics, but I still think it’s a
shame. I would rather the Democrats played this kind of politics,
alone. If Republicans made a hard appeal to Americanism — to
Americans as Americans, rather than as members of groups, each in
his lil’ tribe — the political effect could be thrilling,
glorious. Someday, I hope to see a full-hearted, unabashed anti-identity-politics
campaign. Someday, I would like to see a frontal assault on the
“disuniting of America,” to use a useful phrase from a
surprising source (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.). If no one else will,
maybe I’ll have to run such a campaign myself.
Okay,
I’m at this party, and this guy — a liberal academic —
can’t get over that I’m a “conservative,” because
conservatives are supposed to have horns and tails, etc. Introducing
me, he says (more than once), “This is Jay, who’s a conservative,
but a surprisingly pleasant fellow” (or something like that).
This is the equivalent of the old, “For a fat girl, you don’t
sweat much.” I’m used to this, as many other conservatives
are too, I imagine. But it’s still damn annoying. And it can
ruin your whole day (or, at least, party). The wife of a cousin
once said to me, “You know, I’ve never met a decent person
who was a Republican.” This inspired a column of mine, which
was one of the hottest, quickest things I ever wrote. Its theme
was (approximately): This is what you think of me? Oh, superior
one, let me tell you what I think of you!
I love it, though (I’m sounding like Bob Hope here — that
was definitely a Bob Hope transition) — I love it, though,
when a liberal tries to be all open-minded and magnanimous and tolerant
with you. When I worked in a big Washington office that was heavily
left-wing, I would come up in the elevator carrying both D.C. papers:
the Post and the Times. And my colleagues would give
me absolute hell for having the Times. You’d have thought
I was bringing in kiddie porn (which might have been more acceptable).
In an effort to embarrass or shame them, I’d say things like,
“I don’t think it’s healthful to rely on a single
news source — I like a little diversity.” But it never
did much good.
One day, a guy confided to me, ”I sometimes peer into the newspaper
box on the street to see what the headlines of the [Washington]
Times are.” He said this in a tone that suggested I
ought to be in awe of him for his immense broadmindedness. He seemed
to imagine that this should qualify him for Albert Schweitzer status.
And, in his milieu, it probably did.
The other thing I get is, “Oh, you work for National Review?
I pick it up occasionally when I’m on the shuttle.” Allow
me to translate: I wouldn’t buy the thing if my life depended
on it, but when I’m about to board the New York-Washington
(or Washington-New York) shuttle, and it’s sitting there for
free, amid many other publications, I now and again deign to pick
it up. For a fat girl, you don’t sweat much.
Back to that party for just a moment. The aforementioned liberal
says to me — sensing my annoyance, seeking to mollify — “Don’t
you have a guy who works for you named … what is it, Noah?
Noah something? [He’s thinking of Jonah Goldberg.] I sometimes
read him when [get this] he’s linked to Arts
& Letters”! Do you love it? Peering into newspaper boxes;
picking up a copy of NR on the shuttle; condescending to
read our dear Noah when his material is linked to another site.
Ahh.
It
so happens that I grow very, very tired of defending my politics
— and I’ve had my fill of busman’s holidays —
but I got into it a little with the guy. One of the things he alleged
was that Bush’s tax policies are … “redistributionist.”
Yes. He quite seriously maintained that a policy of allowing taxpayers
to keep more of their own earnings — a policy of the government’s
taking less of those earnings — constitutes redistributionism.
I realize we all tend to overuse the word “Orwellian,”
but …
On
April 18, the Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley had
a wonderful piece entitled “Do Black Americans Still Need Black
Leadership?” He suggested that today’s “civil rights”
leaders are engaged in, among other things, job-protection (for
themselves). I remember well that President Reagan made a similar
suggestion, all those years ago. This sent Benjamin Hooks, then-head
of the NAACP, into a tizzy. He went on Nightline (as I recall)
to detail all the jobs he had held in his life — paperboy,
waiter, and on up — and all the jobs he might be capable of
holding in the future. Reagan had obviously struck a nerve.
It had been a long time since I thought of Hooks — a man who
spent the 1980s accusing Reagan of racism, and generally making
a jackass of himself, and bringing dishonor on his organization.
In fact, it was because of Hooks that I first suspected something
was wrong with the NAACP. A woman named Hazel Dukes didn’t
help much either (or rather, she did). And all this, mind you, was
well before Ben Chavis and the big money scandals (which
are, of course, forgotten).
In
the previous installment of “Impromptus,”
I cited Barbara J. Fields, one of my best professors in college
— and one of the best historians in the nation, and one of
its best users of the English language (either written or spoken).
She always warned against the careless use of the word “crisis”
(which made me sheepish for employing it during the recent Hainan
… whatever: standoff). Lately, she has complained of the perpetual
use of the word “males,” and I have taken up this cause,
keeping the pages of NR relatively clean of this strange,
irritating, contemporary habit. “Males” should come up
primarily in a biological context. For example, Marlin Perkins,
in an episode of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, might
say, “When the males of the species meet the females of the
species — yowza!” But where have the “men” gone?
We read, very, very often, about “black males,” or “young
black males.” Why not “men”? Probably, we should
use “males” chiefly in a sarcastic way, mocking conventions,
as in, “But then, James Fenimore Cooper is a dead white
male.” If the words “MEN” and “WOMEN”
disappear from bathroom doors, in favor of “MALES” and
“FEMALES,” we’ll be in big trouble.
(By the way, someone should do a list, or book — maybe someone
already has — of the cutesy designations on bathroom doors
across the country. You know, in seafood restaurants, “Buoys”
and “Gulls” — that sort of thing.)
While
we’re on language: Almost every day, I see “panoply”
used to mean “array” — and so it does. But I was
taught (many years ago) that it meant, first and foremost, a suit
of armor. This latter definition appears to be gone, while “panoply”
has become basically a synonym for “array.” Odd.
The
drums are beginning to beat against Judge Michael Luttig, of the
U.S. Court of Appeals. He is one of the best judges in the country
— a dream judge for any constitutionalist — and therefore
the Left must bork him good, even before Bush thinks of nominating
him to the Supreme Court. If Bush named him — and got him through
— that, alone, would be worth this entire presidency. (Although
this would not let the president off the hook for missile
defense and Social Security reform.)
Did
you notice how snippy certain journalists got over Bush’s speaking
to one of the Hainan guys “pilot to pilot”? They just
can’t stand the fact that Bush served in the National Guard
and learned to fly military planes. Sure, Bush is no McCain, war-wise,
and the press worships the one and disdains the other, but most
journalists (including me, naturally) never did half as much as
George W. Bush did. Hell, we didn’t do 1 percent of what he
did.
Those
thugs who wander from trade conference to trade conference? They’re
not just idealistic, if misguided, activist-protesters: They are
quasi-terrorists who cause fear or worse wherever they tread. I
saw them in action at the two political conventions last summer.
They have nothing at all in common with, for example, the civil-rights
protesters of yore (or even with the anti-nuclear protesters of
the 1980s, imbecilic as they were). They are masked, Shining Path-like
goons, and free peoples ought to be vigilant against them.
Pick
up a left-leaning newspaper or magazine, and you’re bound to
find a little Tiger Woods resentment. It’s usually on the grounds
of: Couldn’t he be blacker? The resenters may not put it so
frankly, but that’s usually what they mean. A magazine called
Savoy — “African-American-oriented,” as we
say — has Tiger on its current cover, and the message is, largely,
Tige, baby: Couldn’t you start being … you know: a little
more racial? And then there is the egregious Robert Lipsyte, one
of the collection of egregious sports columnists whom the New
York Times publishes. He had a piece the other day entitled
“One Writer’s Tiger Woods Problem.” In it, his major
offense isn’t against Woods, but against Bobby Jones, about
whom he writes: “Jones has been promoted as the saint of the
links, this irascible Confederate princeling whose elitist and racist
upbringing helped create that bastion of bigotry, the Augusta National
Golf Club, and its absurdly cosseted premier event, the Masters,
with its green straitjacket.”
This is what we might term, in other contexts, hate speech. Honestly,
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much resentment and bile
and idiocy packed into one sentence. Lipsyte has an exceptionally
severe case of Masters hatred (and there is more of it about than
you might think). As for his Jones hatred, it is simply … well,
I hate to get medical, but it is not the sign of a well person.
Jones was an Atlantan and a man of his times, to be sure. (He also
held a Harvard degree in literature.) But to write him off as —
I don’t care to repeat, or even recall, Lipsyte's words —
is indefensible. Jones was a great man, who established golf in
America, defined sportsmanship, and exemplified grace under pressure.
No one ever lived more brilliantly through a hideous, debilitating
illness than he did. I could tell Jones stories for ages; there
are books of them. But the main point of them is that this was a
great — a great — man.
No section of the Times is more dismaying than its sports
section. And the other sections are apolitical and race-unconscious
by comparison.
A quick
dip into the mail bag: I wrote, last time, of the loss of the word
“stewardess,” along with a couple of others, and a reader
e-mailed to say that “stewardesses” is the longest word
in the English language that is typed by the left hand alone. He
thereby provoked a memory: I had a junior-high basketball coach
named Ken Treaster. “Cool name,” I said to him once. “Thanks,”
he replied, “and ‘Treaster’ can be typed with only
the left hand.”
So weird, what one remembers — I’ve really forgotten just
about everything about (for example) this morning.
More
than one reader wrote — in response to my blast
at Colin Powell for his “disproportionality” blast
at Israel — that Powell, in judging as he did, was going against
his own doctrine, the Powell Doctrine, which prescribes the use
of overwhelming force, for a quick and just peace.
We are talking, of course, about more than abstractions — as
I was reminded by a letter from a woman in Israel. I would like
to excerpt it:
“Remember this: The fact that the U.S. criticized Israel so
vehemently completely destroyed any possible deterrent effect our
counterattack might have had. I cannot tell you how depressing it
is to sit here, worrying every minute of the day whether my kids
are okay, whether the bus I’m next to at the intersection is
going to blow up and take me with it, and on and on and on. We haven’t
changed our lives. We went hiking during last week’s vacation,
but it’s now an ever-present shadow inside my head somewhere.
And then when the U.S. does something like this … well, how
do you spell isolation?”
Please, I know: Arab mothers worry too. But, as has been true at
every moment for more than 50 years now, Israel’s enemies can
have peace whenever they want it — they need only to consent
to coexist.
And on it goes. (Oof, that sounded a lot like Linda Ellerbee —
sorry.)
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