|
once heard the liberal Democratic commentator Mark Shields tell
the following joke on television: Two liberals are walking down
the road, when they come upon a man in a ditch, who has been severely
beaten, who is bleeding, broken, moaning, left for dead. The one
liberal turns to the other and says, “We must find the people
who did this. They need help.”
I have had
frequent occasion to think of this joke, mainly in connection with
our domestic-policy debates (crime, etc.). But it also popped into
my head the other day, in thinking of certain reactions to “the
events of September 11.” To some people, what the attacks meant
chiefly was that we must be humbler before our enemies, and understand
them better, and feel their pain. Of course, understanding is vital
— but the kind of understanding that leads to victory, not
to excuses and rationalization. We should be under no illusion that
we can make our enemies love us. If they don’t love us now, after
all we’ve demonstrated to the world, particularly from World War
II on, when will they? What could change their hearts? The abandonment
and subsequent destruction of Israel? Not even that could sate that
hate, it seems.
And then on
the homefront, there is racism, or, better, “racism.” Racism, we
will always have with us. We will certainly have it as a staple,
or the centerpiece, of our commentary. Some seem almost disappointed
not to find a violent reaction against Arab-Americans, seem disappointed
not to find an orgy of jingoism, to tut-tut over. And every slight,
every hostile e-mail (you should see some of my mail!), every
incident is played up, for all it is worth. Mark Singer’s piece
on Dearborn, Mich., in the current New Yorker is a case in
point. Oh, we must have victims in all this (and we don’t
mean the dead in New York and Washington).
America the
Racist is a consoling, salving theme for many on the left. We’re
constantly told that, on 9/11, “everything changed,” and change,
of course, can be scary (how many times have you heard that? especially
when a liberal is pretending pity for a conservative?). Some, though,
refuse to change, grabbing for the old, familiar blanket of racism:
No matter what, they’ll always have that to fall back on.
To them, Arabs and Arab-Americans are no good unless they can be
victims. And thank heavens for Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson!
Without them to hate, one might have to concentrate on the terrorists.
It’s been said
before, better than I can say it, but it ought to be said again:
The only solution to rage, bitterness, and that peculiar, combustible
mixture of self-hatred and self-love in the Middle East is freedom
— the freedom of human rights, civil rights, democracy, pluralism,
markets, the whole nine yards. Wouldn’t it be loverly.
Greg Robinson, in his new book on Japanese internment, By
Order of the President, writes of one government investigator
after Pearl Harbor who found that the poor Japanese-Americans were
“pathetically eager” to join the war effort. They wanted, in large
measure, to prove their bona fides as Americans — and be done
with that cursed hyphen. It is pathetic, indeed, to have a situation
in which immigrant Americans or sons of immigrants are “pathetically
eager” to join a war effort — but what a contrast with the
young people in Brooklyn interviewed in the New York Times
and elsewhere who pledge to go fight for “Osama.”
Many of us who have always opposed a national ID card — shrunk
from it as a step toward 1984 — are now having at least to
take the argument for such a card seriously. Larry Ellison, in his
recent op-ed on the subject for the Wall Street Journal,
was serious indeed. This came up in the early Reagan administration,
and there is a hilarious account of the president’s brushing it
off in Martin Anderson’s book Revolution.
(James Watt, the hated former interior secretary, was particularly
adamant against a national ID card.) The idea of the card still
gives a person like me the creeps — but the arguments for it
are neither frivolous nor un-American.
A word about Bush, or “Bushie,” as his wife calls him. We hear that
Democrats are increasingly glad that he is in the White House, rather
than someone else, with a “D” after his name. Care for a little
anecdote? I was talking last night with a friend who is a pillar
of the New York cultural establishment, with all that that entails
(Gore voter, “pro-choice,” etc.). He freely acknowledged —
volunteered — that he was pleased that Bush was in office now,
and that he was especially appreciative of the advisers around him.
“My wife says that Rumsfeld scares her,” he said. “But I like his
directness.”
How many conversations
like that do you suppose are taking place around the country?
I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about the use of “Osama”
— just one name, “Osama,” like “Cher” or “Madonna” (or, hell,
“Newt,” or “Ike” ). It makes him into sort of an idol, I think.
Then too, I didn’t much like “Saddam” — made him sound like
a pop or cult figure. “Bin Laden” will do for me. The mobs in the
Middle Eastern streets say “Osama”; that’s why I shrink from doing
so.
Freedom-loving
Cubans, of course, despise the use of the name “Fidel.” It is mainly
Castroites and fellow-travelers who say “Fidel.” Freedom-loving
Cubans also despise the use of “President” in reference to Castro
— as though he had anything in common with democratic presidents.
(Remember when American broadcasters of the Olympics insisted on
referring to Communist East Germany as “the German Democratic Republic,”
the regime’s chosen name? Every time Bob Costas said it, I wanted
to ralph.)
Speaking of my Cuban friends, they’ve been desperately trying to
remind people that, when it comes to terrorist states, Castro’s
regime is high on the list — literally: the State Department’s
list. Fidel (there I go) has long been a supporter of Arab terrorism,
as of other terrorism (but most especially his own). So if Uncle
Sam is in a mood to get tough with terrorists and their sponsors
. . . ah, but that is too fond a dream.
My colleague John Podhoretz points out that, in the current drama,
many people are playing to type — the Madison, Wisc., school
system is (basically) banning the Pledge of Allegiance; the ACLU
is going to war over “God Bless America.” Take heart: It’s not
true that 9/11 changed everything!
The collective Arab governments have appointed the terrorist regime
in Syria to sit on the U.N. Security Council, which reminds me of
Solzhenitsyn’s reminder: The U.N. is not the united nations, but
united governments, or regimes.
You have noticed, I trust, that Ronald Wilson Reagan has now lived
longer than any other president in history, passing the second president,
John Adams.
I call your attention to a remarkable piece in Time magazine
by one Hazem Saghiyeh, a columnist for an Arabic newspaper in London.
It is titled “It’s Not All America’s Fault” (don’t you love that
“All”?). The piece begins, “Millions of Arabs and Muslims hold U.S.
foreign policy responsible for the calamity of Sept. 11 [I like
that “calamity,” too — just like the San Francisco earthquake
was a calamity]. Is it? The answer is: yes, but also no.” The piece
continues in this vein, and I will not quote more. But what is noteworthy
is that this must be Time’s idea of a moderate Arab voice
— and who can argue with them?
Okay, a little non-war talk. A correspondent in Taiwan, Dan Bloom,
alerts me to a fantastic recent item. I’ll let Reuters do the reporting:
“Britain’s Royal Navy mistakenly flew a Taiwanese flag during an
official visit by members of the Chinese navy, the Ministry of Defence
has admitted. The incident happened on Monday on board the HMS Ark
Royal, which played host to a delegation headed by a Chinese admiral
on a goodwill visit to Portsmouth, in southern England. ‘The
Ark Royal was preparing to welcome the party and for a short period
of time the Taiwan flag was flown,’ an MoD spokeswoman said. ‘The
mistake was pointed out to the navy by a Chinese officer and the
flag was taken down.’ She said the commander of the Ark Royal had
written a personal letter of apology to the Chinese admiral, who
had accepted it as an error.”
Ah, but would
that it had not been an error, but a thumb in the Red eye!
I’m sorry, but I just have to blurt something out: Is Rush Limbaugh
great or what? If he’s not the coolest man in the country . . .
Then, to a man who is decidedly not the coolest in the country:
Lee Bollinger is, instead, one of the most famous, and most notorious,
academic administrators we have. He has been president of the University
of Michigan, but he has moved up, accepting the presidency of Columbia.
Bollinger became famous, or infamous, for promoting and defending
admissions policies of naked racial preference. His devotion to
race, and his opposition to equality of opportunity and colorblindness,
would do the old Boer Republic proud. When it comes to judging people
by the color of their skin, not the content of their character,
Lee Bollinger is practically unsurpassed.
But he is an
amusing fellow. He gave an extraordinary convocation for incoming
freshmen in Ann Arbor this year, as reported by the local paper,
the Ann Arbor News (or, as we used to call it, Pravda West):
“First, [Bollinger] told students, understand that the more you
know, the less you know. Become comfortable with ignorance. It’s
too easy, he said, ‘to ignore the depths of our dumbness.’
Four years from now, if the students understand this, the university
will have done its job. . . .
"Second,
he said, understand that the right answer does not exist. Like Hamlet
and Moby Dick, things are complicated. ‘Don’t let yourself
be trapped by the natural wish for the answer,’ he said.
“Students
liked the third piece of advice. Don’t study too much, said Bollinger.
. . . Fourth, he said, procrastination may not be as evil as its
reputation purports. ‘Don’t underestimate the benefits of putting
things off until the last moment,’ Bollinger said. ‘Certainly,
it is our natural tendency.’”
The reporter
concluded with an interview with a student: “Bollinger’s words helped
ease the guilt of spending time away from the books, said Wheatley
Coleman, a junior. ‘I liked the fact that he said we shouldn’t
study too much,’ she said. ‘The stuff that you remember from
college isn’t how you studied for organic chemistry for three hours.’”
Well, that’s certainly true.
Really, Lee
Bollinger is the perfect modern university president, and
it is no wonder he is so sought-after. He is utterly, perfectly
consonant with his age. No right-wing satirist — no Kingsley
Amis — could make him up. He is beyond satire.
I have a tiny
bit of personal experience with Bollinger. When he was dean of Michigan’s
law school, I worked in the university’s athletic department, and
one of the things I did was act as an attendant at the school’s
Track and Tennis Building, where people would come in to jog. We
altered the direction in which people would jog on the track, to
give regulars a little variation. Bollinger, however, refused to
go along with this. He insisted on jogging in the same direction
always, no matter what the rule was for that day, complicating things
and bewildering and annoying fellow joggers.
Now, you can
look at this in two different ways (at least): It may show that
Bollinger is an exemplar of good old rule-defying American independence,
someone who refuses to run with the herd. Or it could simply mean
that Bollinger is an inconsiderate prima-donna jerk.
I won’t let
on which way I happen to lean.
A quick bit on the New York mayoral race. There is a woman here
named Hazel Dukes, who is, to use the New York Post’s invaluable
phrase, a racial arsonist. I first became aware of her in 1987,
during the Robert Bork hearings. Sen. Moynihan of New York was saying
he was undecided about the nomination, and Dukes, who was then with
the New York NAACP, said that once she “got with his people,” Moynihan
would step in line and vote to defeat Bork (which he did, for whatever
reason — Moynihan just about never bucked the Left).
Well, Hazel
Dukes is still Hazel Dukes, sadly. The leftist Mark Green, opponent
of the leftist Fernando Ferrer in the Democratic primary, ran an
ad that said the following: “At a time when our city is pulling
together, Ferrer’s been criticized for running a campaign to divide
our city.”
That’s it —
the tamest stuff. And here is the response of Dukes, a Ferrer supporter:
The ad is “the height of racism. I woke up and thought I was in
Mississippi. This is what they do in Mississippi. They do lynching
in the way they used to do hanging people, but they lynch you with
news ads.”
Ladies and
gentlemen, this is why it’s pretty much impossible to have a discussion
of race relations in the United States. The Dukeses are just too
strong, and nuts.
One nice thing is that Americans from all over the country have
expressed support for New York City. There has always been an anti-New
York current in the land, and it seems to have gone away, at least
for now. I saw a couple the other night — visitors to New York
— sporting buttons that said “Oregon [heart] NY.” (The button
included pictures of tall, Oregon-like trees.) I also enjoyed very
much the cartoon in The New Yorker that had the American
Gothic couple, standing there with their pitchforks and wearing
“I [heart] New York” T-shirts. As for New Yorkers themselves, they
love their city all the more, as exemplified by the new sign, “I
[heart] NY More Than Ever!” These days, corny is cool (although,
for some of us, it always has been).
Do you feel just a bit for Barry Bonds and Ricky Henderson, who
have achieved such milestones, with so little attention or fanfare?
Look, I’m about as partisan and W.-loving as they come, but I have
to admit that the Democrats have a point about the rebate checks:
“Tax Relief for America’s Workers,” straight from “Austin, Texas.”
That’s what I read on my own check. It is remarkable.
In August,
or whenever those things started coming out, I had one liberal Democratic
friend say to me, delightedly, “I got my George Bush check today!
And I’ve already spent it!” She was un-ironic, unsarcastic —
that’s what she called it, and she was just thrilled.
Seems a million
years ago.
A little mail. In response to the previous Impromptus, a reader
writes, “As a young soldier in the late 1970s, I was trained as
an Arab linguist. To keep up with current usage, and to have non-classified
stuff we could work with, we had Arabic newspapers and radio recordings.
What we usually got was Al-Ahram and Voice of Cairo, which
is the equivalent of the New York Times and CBS. And what
was in there was vicious. Israel was referred to only as ‘the
enemy,’ there were constant references to the ‘international
Jew conspiracy,’ and the phrase ‘the final solution’ appeared
so often we had a shorthand symbol for it in translating. And this
was from the mainstream, official Arab press.”
Another knowledgeable
correspondent wrote to say that, when Arab spokesmen and others
say “Jews,” this usually gets translated “Israelis” in English,
though, in Arabic, there is a separate word for “Israelis.” This
all comes under the rubric of: We must, in this crisis, understand
what is going on in the Arab world, in particular through its press,
both official and unofficial. And we need to know without any mediating
covering up or softening.
A correspondent
in Canada contributes the following remarkable report: “I would
like to share a racial-profiling anecdote with you. Last week, I
participated in the Canadian equivalents of Talk Back Live
and Crossfire. We discussed the highly charged topic of immigration
reform in Canada. To give you some background, anyone who states
he is in favour of stricter immigration rules is immediately branded
a racist in the land of the True North, strong and free. Given my
support of an overhauled and security-conscious immigration and
refugee policy, I was accused of bigotry. After the show went off
the air, one of the panelists who favour the ‘don’t worry,
be happy’ approach to Canada’s immigration policy asked if I was
an immigrant or if my parents were. I told her that my parents were
immigrants. She then claimed that, according to my views, my parents
would not have been allowed in Canada. At this point, I took great
pleasure in informing her that she had racially profiled me. Based
on the colour of my skin, she assumed that my parents had come to
Canada from South Asia or the Middle East and told me as much. I
painstakingly explained to her that, in fact, my parents had emigrated
from England. Moreover, Canada and England have always had the same
head of state (Her Majesty). She was quite shocked to hear this
and apologized profusely. I graciously accepted the apology and
told her that I expected no less from condescending, patronizing
rainbow coalitionists.”
What a marvelous
person, this correspondent.
Several readers
took offense at the letter-writer who joked that, rather than Colin
Powell, the luckiest man in the world was Ringo Starr. One reader
wrote, “Anyone who put up with John Lennon for more than a weekend
deserves anything he can derive from it. I met John Lennon at closing
time one night (1973?) outside the Rainbow Club on the Sunset Strip.
He was groping a young woman in a very crude manner. My fellow inebriate
(we were 19 at the time) tapped him on the shoulder and inquired,
‘Hey, John. Are ya getting’ a little instant karma?’ That led
to a torrent of abusive insults that I shall never forget. Didn’t
someone once say, ‘Show me a poet and I’ll show you a sh**’?
Well, Mr. Starkee might not have been the poet in that band; but
I once heard him interviewed on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air,’ and he came
across as nothing less than a perfectly likable gentleman.”
An NRO reader
and a “Fresh Air” listener too!
Finally, in
connection with terrorism, I mentioned the French adage, “Appetite
comes with eating” (L’appétit vient en mangeant).
A Shakespeare-minded reader wrote in to say, “There is a line in
Hamlet (I, ii) when Hamlet says of his besotted mother’s
relationship with his uncle,
Why, she
would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on.”
This caused
me to remember a line in the great “Age cannot wither her” speech
in Antony and Cleopatra:
Age cannot
wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetites they feed; but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies . . .
My, ain’t we
highbrow today!
|
