October
7, 2002 9:00 a.m. “Patrice
Lumumba Ford,” “What will the Gentiles think?,” Did Teddy pull a
Clinton?, &c.
ou know, you just can’t make this stuff up: The news outpaces anyone’s
satirical ability. One of the “homegrown terrorists” just apprehended?
Patrice Lumumba Ford. Beautiful. And one of his confrères was taken
into custody in Dearborn, Mich., our Arab-American stronghold and my old
stomping grounds.
If I had put “Patrice
Lumumba Ford” and Dearborn in some novel, you’d accuse me of
crudeness and heavy-handedness. (And, frankly, it never occurred to me
until this moment that Ford, the auto company, is, of course, headquartered
in Dearborn.)
Ah, the associations.
The reality.
By the way, certain Michiganders — of long standing and unimpeachable
authenticity — pronounce the name of that city “Dearburn,”
with the accent strongly on the first syllable.
Just so you know.
The Jews are worried sick again — worried that the world will blame
them. They need not worry: The world will, as always. It never lets you
down.
It is an article
of faith among anti-warriors of the right and left (but perhaps mainly
right) that the Jews are getting us into this thing. So Shimon Peres,
Jewry’s foremost worrywart (is Rabbi Hertzberg dead?), tells an audience,
“It’s not for us to appear that we are urging war. We should
contribute very little by doing so. By being too vocal, we should only
harm the U.S. position vis-à-vis the Arab world. I wouldn’t
want any American mother to think the decision was taken because we urged
them to do so.”
A nice thought, Shimon
— but you’re blamed already. Just suck it up and deal with it.
That’s what it means, in part, to be a Jew today — or most anytime.
Iran’s long-range missiles were developed specifically to hit Israel,
the head of Iran’s missile program, Ahmed Wahid, revealed recently.
Always nice to be
thought of, isn’t it?
In his
column yesterday, Thomas Friedman expressed a common Democratic (indeed,
socialist) point of view: that tax cuts are selfish, harmful, and, in
a sense, unpatriotic. He said, “Where are the Democrats who are ready
to argue forcefully that the future tax cuts that Mr. Bush pushed through
are utterly reckless and need to be repealed — because they will
erode the resources the government needs to remain a Great Power in this
age of uncertainty? [Of course, these tax cuts have kept us out of even
thicker economic soup.] And they send a terrible signal to our kids, corporate
leaders and the world: that all that matters is short-term, me-first gratification.”
I have pressed this
point before: To some people, every tax increase is an advance in civilization,
decency, humanity; and every tax cut is a backward step toward barbarism,
cruelty, night. According to this view — one must infer — a
society with an income tax of 50 percent is better than one with 40 percent,
or 49 percent. A society with a tax of 75 percent must be just a smidge
better than one with 74, and a whole lot better than one with 40. A society
that goes for the whole enchilada? 100 percent? That must be Nirvana.
I’ve often meant
to ask such liberals (though it hurts to use that word, “liberals,”
in such a context): What level of tax would you demand before you consented
that America was a great and decent society? What level of tax would you
like to see? Come on, now, no ducking — lay it out on the line: Gimme
a number. I want a number.
And after we have
this number — this level of taxation — we have to ask, “On
whom will you impose it?” “Liberals” always mean to tax
the rich — the big bad richies. But they tend to find that there
aren’t enough richies to go around — to get the job done.
One of the reasons
I favor a flat tax is that everyone pays — everyone contributes something,
everyone’s part of the commonweal, not just a “taker” but
a “giver.” Everyone pays the same percentage, fair and square.
The kid at McDonald’s contributes his mite; and so does Sandy Weill
(chairman of CitiCorp — or is it CitiBank? Ah, who cares).
But, of course, that
sort of thinking causes some people to break out in hives — and,
strangely, they’re usually the same people who regard themselves
as nice ’n’ egalitarian.
Yesterday, the New York Times had a neat piece
on famous (or infamous) political exits — this took off on the recent,
and ignominious, Torricelli exit.
I was struck by Teddy
Kennedy’s words, after Chappaquiddick (these weren’t all
exits — some of them were behind-saving efforts, such as this one).
On July 25, 1969, he said, “There is no truth, no truth whatsoever,
to the widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct that have been
leveled at my behavior and hers [Mary Jo’s] regarding that evening.
Nor was I driving under the influence of liquor.”
I had a thought:
Had Teddy pulled a Clinton avant la lettre? When he said “liquor,”
was it because he was really loaded up on wine — and did not regard
“the grape” as part of “liquor”? Pardon me for thinking
this way, but our last prez conditioned me to it. He said, “I was
never alone in the hotel with her” — of course: There were bellboys,
clerks, other guests, etc.
Teddy went on to
say, “Although my doctors informed me that I suffered a cerebral
concussion as well as shock, I do not seek to escape responsibility for
my actions by placing the blame either on the physical and emotional trauma
brought on by the accident or on anyone else.”
Of course, in reciting
these words, he was doing just that: deflecting blame. A tawdry technique.
A tawdry speech. A tawdry man.
(Pardon the rhetoric.)
Another delightful Timespiece,
this one on how the longshoremen are getting richer and richer. I mean,
really rich: In the words of Steven Greenhouse, “Full-time West Coast
dockworkers who load and unload ships make on average nearly $100,000
a year, while clerks who keep track of cargo movements average $120,000.”
And the average benefits package comes out to $42,000 a year.
But what really struck
me was that they get Harry Bridges’s birthday off. He was the great
Red leader of the longshoremen’s union. Of course, he was always
coy about whether he was a Party member, but it hardly mattered. And now
everyone has his birthday off. His is the christ of the longshoremen’s
movement, and his birthday is their Christmas.
Perfect, I think.
Hartland DeM. Molson has died, and his Times obit is here.
Molson was the Canadian brewer who also owned the Montreal hockey team.
What I love about this, in particular, is that, for many years, the man
in charge of the Times’s obits was a brilliant fellow named
Robert McG. Thomas. So now, whenever I see an unusual middle initial (or
more), I think of him. And I was quite taken with Hartland DeM. Molson,
R.I.P.
I have just finished reading, and reviewing (for the forthcoming NR),
Linda Chavez’s memoir, An
Unlikely Conservative. It is — not to beat around the bush
(or should I say “Bush,” in her instance?) — a brilliant
book. Someone called David Horowitz’s memoir, Radical Son,
the first great autobiography of that generation. Well, this is a second.
I plan to write more about it in a future Impromptus.
Chavez came up through
the ranks of the Left — in academia and politics — and was slowly
but surely repelled by the Left. A thought occurred to me, not for the
first time: Thank goodness the Left is so awful — it has driven so
many of the best people to our side.
Which reminded me
of something else: George W. Bush had, let’s face it, a dreadful
first debate against Al Gore in the Fall of 2000. But Gore, miraculously,
behaved like a complete jerk, kind of wiping out W.’s wipe-out.
Which led me to say:
Thank goodness Gore’s such a $%&@# — he saved our bacon.
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ou know, you just can’t make this stuff up: The news outpaces anyone’s
satirical ability. One of the “homegrown terrorists” just apprehended?
Patrice Lumumba Ford. Beautiful. And one of his confrères was taken
into custody in Dearborn, Mich., our Arab-American stronghold and my old
stomping grounds.
By the way, certain Michiganders — of long standing and unimpeachable
authenticity — pronounce the name of that city “Dearburn,”
with the accent strongly on the first syllable.
