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 adies
and gentlemen, the war is going pretty well. My evidence? Saturday
Night Live — every (lazy) journalist’s cultural barometer
— is ridiculing the press and making the secretary of defense
look pretty cool.
Last Saturday’s
show began with a (mock) press conference conducted by Rumsfeld.
The press asked questions like, “We’re getting reports
of U.S. Special Forces being dropped into Taliban areas with camouflage
and night-vision goggles. This means that Taliban soldiers won’t
be able to see our troops, but we’ll be able to see them.
Is that fair?” Another reporter says, “We are being told
that Northern Alliance forces are firing back at Taliban troops
who have fired on them, even though the Taliban troops missed. Does
the U.S. condone that?”
And so on.
The look on Rumsfeld’s face is priceless — just like the
real one. After the SecDef bloodies up these doofuses some, one
reporter says, ruefully, poutingly, “Colin Powell’s nice.”
Yeah, maybe: and he’s wrong, too, at least next to Rumsfeld.
So Saturday
Night Live is “with us” — a dollop of good news,
to go with the knocking off of Atef, etc.
 Perhaps
you, like me, were moved by a front-page story in yesterday’s Wall
Street Journal. It was about exiled folk musicians from Afghanistan,
trying to keep the flame of their culture and art alive in neighboring
Pakistan. When Kabul was “liberated” — their word — they
huddled around the TV, and they could scarcely believe their ears:
“‘When I heard the sound of music, I cried,’ said Gul Zaman,
a master of the harmonium.” The Taliban had terrorized musicians,
along with everyone else, smashing up their instruments and forbidding
them to make a peep. Said the reporter, Steve LeVine, “Now, for
the first time in five years, the possibility of playing in their
homeland again is suddenly at hand.” A second musician — Ghulam
Haider — said, “I feel like a bird set free.”
Strange, all
that grumping from the American press when Kabul fell — was liberated.
A regime that won’t allow music is a regime that won’t allow most
things good.
Remember when
Reagan used to say that Lenin refused to listen to music, for fear
it would make him go soft, make him lose his revolutionary zeal?
I don’t know whether it’s true: but I enjoyed it when Reagan said
it, and I think the spirit is right.
Take
a look at this short news item, please, then permit me to make a
brief comment:
“The state
[of New York] has placed a rush order for 300,000 ‘I Love New
York’ buttons — although it turns out the popular items are made
in Mexico. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, demand for the buttons has
been high, causing the state to place an emergency order with Promotions
First, Inc., a Saratoga Springs [N.Y.] distribution firm. But while
Promotions First provides the pins, they are manufactured in Mexico
. . . The revelation left some New York button vendors [and others]
incredulous.”
What leaves
me incredulous is why other people should be incredulous,
or the least dismayed. Once again, class: There is nothing un-American
about trade, nothing un-American or unpatriotic about having our
needs and wants supplied by those best equipped to supply them,
no matter where they live. Buttons from Mexico — or Taiwan or Timbuktu — are
as American as apple pie from Washington State or baseball at Wrigley
Field. This story reminded me of the calamity of our elementary-
and secondary-school economic education: There isn’t any, I guess.
It is the libertarian
in me that adores (say) Thomas Sowell. It is the anti-libertarian
in me that says: Americans should be forced to read Tom Sowell.
Christopher
Dodd has vowed that Otto Reich will never get a hearing. Reich,
as you know, is President Bush’s nominee to be assistant secretary
of state for the Western Hemisphere. Dodd is the leftist senator
from Connecticut who was wrong about everything in Latin America
in the 1980s — and is wrong still. Reich is a Cuban exile whose father
had fled to that island from Nazi Europe — and had to flee again
when the totalitarian and murderer Castro seized power. Reich is
an experienced Latin America diplomat, a first-rate analyst, and
an inspiring American patriot. He is ideally qualified for the position
to which he has been nominated. Dodd, from his perch on the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, is committed to keeping him out — to
denying him even the chance for a hearing.
There is only
one thing that can save this excellent and vital nomination: The
president needs to climb into his bully pulpit and yell for it,
and so does the secretary of state, Colin Powell, who is the media’s
favorite member of this administration. If they don’t do this — war
in Afghanistan or no war — they are very wrong.
Lemme
propose a candidate for Title of the Month: It is over a book review
in The (London) Spectator, a review of a new biography
of Peggy Guggenheim, the great art collector whose life was saddened
by (what she thought was) an unfortunate schnozz, and a less-than-successful
operation on it. The title? “Good Eye, Bad Nose.”
Sometimes
I think there’s no difference between me and the guy down at the
bowling alley with beer in his head and chili stains on his T-shirt,
when it comes to certain political opinions (and T-shirts too, for
that matter). And do you know what? We’re not wrong.
I thought of
this — for the thousandth time — the other day when I
spotted Edward Said at another of New York’s major cultural institutions.
Here he is, this hater of America and glorifier of all things Arab
and Third World, living his life in our principal city, flitting
from concert hall to opera house to museum . . . and I’m thinking,
“If he hates us so much — thinks we’re such a despoiler of
the world — why does he live here, enjoying the fruits of liberty
and capitalism and liberalism and pluralism and democracy and the
rule of law and the other things he evidently despises? Why doesn’t
he live in, say, one of the 22 Arab states, which he holds so innocent?”
V. S. Naipaul
says that the present conflict involves Arabs and other Third Worlders
united in one thing: the desire for a green card. It seems that
famed and decorated professors, too, are happy to dwell in Satan’s
bosom.
We are all
taught to revile the simplistic, jingoistic “Love it or leave it”
— but, now especially, it suggests a certain wisdom. If “Love
it or leave it” is too strong, how about, “Don’t wish us ill and
count us the bane of the universe — or leave it”?
I
invite you on a brief walk down Memory Lane. As I have related in
this column before, I was once enrolled in the Near Eastern Studies
department of the University of Michigan, with the thought of being
an Arabist. I had there a young professor named Joel Beinin, who
was a Marxist hothead (and therefore distinguishable from no one).
He had nothing but contempt for Israel, was well to the “left” of
the PLO, and was perfectly representative of the extremism of his
milieu.
One day, at
a particular forum, he gave what I can only describe as a kind of
beer-hall speech. Shouting and pumping his fist, he admonished the
Arabs to forget any negotiating with Israel and to stay true to
pure radicalism. (The crowd was full of students from the Middle
East, who cheered raucously.) Later, an older professor said to
Beinin, “No one gets Arabs riled up like you do.”
It was this
sort of thing that sickened me, for it had nothing to do with scholarship,
and was both intellectually and spiritually ugly. I left the department.
Why do I revisit
all this? Because I read the other day that Prof. Beinin — who has
spent the last many years at Stanford — is the new president of the
Middle Eastern Studies Association, a group that John J. Miller
perceptively criticized in a recent issue of NR.
Oh, well.
The
Nov. 19 New Yorker has an interesting piece by a Nasra Hassan
on Palestinian suicide bombers. But it is a . . . weirdly non-judgmental
piece. It is spookily dispassionate about these murderers. And in
a case like this, extreme, clinical dispassion — or objectivity — can
almost blur into sympathy.
The piece throughout
refers to the question of why these men should “blow themselves
up.” I couldn’t help thinking — each time I read this — “I don’t care
terribly much about their blowing themselves up, although this is
a curious phenomenon. I care about their blowing other people
up, these [expletive deleted] murderers.”
Also
in that issue is a piece by the great and magisterial Bernard Lewis,
titled “The Revolt of Islam.” One passage in particular arrested
me:
“One of the
most surprising revelations in the memoirs of those who held the
American Embassy in Teheran from 1979 to 1981 was that their original
intention had been to hold the building and the hostages for only
a few days. They changed their minds when statements from Washington
made it clear that there was no danger of serious action against
them. They finally released the hostages, they explained, only because
they feared that the new President, Ronald Reagan, might approach
the problem ‘like a cowboy.’”
That single
passage says infinitely much: about foreign policy, about defense
policy, about military relations, about human beings.
I have sounded
this note before: After Somalia, after Khobar Towers, after the
embassy bombings, after the USS Cole — why shouldn’t
the terrorists have felt invincible, exempt from “serious action,”
as Lewis says?
New
York Times columnist Bob Herbert had an eye-catching piece last
Thursday: “Poison Politics.” The title referred to racial politics — barely
distinguishable from our politics generally — and it began, “Have
New York Democrats learned any lessons from the mayoral debacle
of 2001? Or are they crazy enough to continue drinking from the
poisonous well of ethnic politics?” It ended, “Every group has a
grievance. And sometimes it’s legitimate. But right now there are
other matters on the table. Important matters. So let’s give it
a rest.”
Speaking of
giving it a rest, here’s hoping that Bob Herbert takes his own medicine.
He has “drunk” many, many times from that “poisonous well.” In fact,
that well is his mainstay. As Ted Cruz wrote in a powerful
piece on our site, Herbert devoted two columns to the case of
Judge Mike Luttig’s father, John Luttig, who was murdered by a thug
in Texas. Herbert argued against the death penalty for that thug,
and his columns were laced with racial arsenic (the murderer is
black). Herbert even noted — gratuitously and nauseatingly — that
the late Mr. Luttig had been driving a Mercedes-Benz at the
time he was carjacked and murdered. (The murderer tried to kill
Mr. Luttig’s wife, too, but she survived when, after she was shot,
she pretended to be dead.)
Give it a rest,
indeed — and not just in time of war.
In
the current New York magazine, Michael Wolff has an absorbing
piece on David Halberstam, one of the most influential journalists
and writers of the last, oh, couple of generations. One thing rings
false, however — is false. Wolff writes, “While they
are at opposite political extremes, Halberstam reminds me of Dick
Cheney. It’s their lack of humor, irony . . . It’s a certain pleasure
they take in grimness. I wonder if, together, they don’t represent
a new sort of man . . . No frills. No fun.”
I can’t speak
for Halberstam, but oh, is Cheney fun, and absolutely hilarious — one
of the wittiest men around. (Most smart men are witty; certainly
all witty men are smart — we can debate these propositions another
time.) Did you see Cheney in debate versus Lieberman? Not only masterly
(not masterful — we’ll debate that one sometime later,
too), but brilliantly funny.
P.S. Cheney
at a “political extreme”? I would be happy to introduce Mr.
Wolff to people waaaaay to the right of Richard B. Cheney. But he
wouldn’t want to meet them, necessarily.
And
now a word from Strunk & White: Said Colin Powell, on This
Week this week, “It’s getting harder for [bin Laden] to hide,
as more and more territory is removed from Taliban control. I don’t
think there’s any country in the region that would be anxious to
give him guest privileges if he showed up.”
Oh, they’d
be anxious, all right! But not eager. (Good night, Prof. Strunk.)
Wanna
see a bad news sentence? Okay, this comes from a recent article
in the New York Times, about press freedom in Czechoslovakia
(or the Czech Republic — what a pain): “[The prime minister] threatened
to sue the magazine and put it out of business.” One couldn’t tell
whether the prime minister had threatened to sue the magazine and
force it out of business, as a result — or had threatened the magazine
and actually succeeded in putting it out of business.
Just sayin’.
Ah,
childhood, washer-away of all sins! Peter Bart is the “embattled
Variety editor” whose career was threatened when he was reported
to have made racist and anti-homosexual remarks. His ex-wife now
comes to write in Los Angeles Magazine about Bart’s troubled,
emotionally scarring childhood. Reminds me of what Hillary Clinton
said about her husband in that notorious — and truly fascinating
— Talk magazine interview/apologia: It all had to do
with Mama and Grandmama.
If patriotism
is the last refuge of a scoundrel, how ’bout a “scarring” childhood
(and scars are healed wounds, of course)?
Democrats
today are referring to conservatives as “the Taliban wing” of the
Republican party. Some conservatives are actually complaining about
it, instead of wincing and smiling weakly. I remember, back in the
’80s, when Lebanon was heating up, that Sam Donaldson, on the Brinkley
show, would take great delight in referring to “the Hezbollah
wing of the Republican party.” The smile on his face couldn’t have
been prouder.
I thought it
was wrong then. And it’s certainly tiresome now.
Now
for a little mail. In a previous Impromptus, I mentioned the problem
of MEGO — “My eyes glaze over” — when it comes to Israeli
deaths-by-terror. Wrote one reader:
“Speaking of the MEGO factor, I think it is brilliant of the administration
to keep making visits to Ground Zero and reminding people what took
place there. I know you in N.Y. have it ‘in your face’
every day as this gaping, still-smoldering hole, but it is so
important and so necessary that the rest of the country and
the rest of the world have our faces rubbed in it, especially as
a counterpoint to the appeasers, the war-wimps, and the carping
‘it’s not going well’ idiots who’d dilute our efforts in Afghanistan
and elsewhere. That’s why, in a time when the networks have banned
the re-running of the planes-into-the-Towers footage, we need to
see that pit over and over and think about those dead over and over,
and why the Bush folks are doing so well at keeping the MEGO factor
out, unlike, alas, those in Israel, who do indeed suffer
from the ‘normalization’ of the wicked and catastrophic.”
Also, I mentioned
that, after Hillary Clinton was booed by policemen and firemen in
Madison Square Garden, a Clinton aide had said, “What do you expect?
These are people who listen to right-wing talk radio all day and
think Hillary killed Vince Foster.” I hazarded that maybe — just
maybe — these men weren’t so crazy about lying, hypocrisy,
lawlessness, egotism, etc.
A reader wrote:
“While you have a point about their not liking lies and hypocrisy,
in the case of the NYPD, there’s more. Recall that Ms. Clinton referred
to the [accidental and tragic] Amadou Diallo shooting as a ‘murder,’
before the officers involved had even been tried. In addition, a
color guard from the NYPD was heckled and booed at the 2000 Democratic
National Convention. New York cops have long memories. The convention
incident, particularly, is what makes me feel just slightly irked
when I hear Democrats lavishly praising the valor of the NYPD. Sure,
now you come around.”
Uh-huh.
And finally,
a reader writes, “If you’re going to mention both Leonard Bernstein
and Jesse Jackson in the same column, please, please warn
your readers in the first paragraph. Just one of those individuals
is enough to induce nausea and anger, and to encounter them both
while eating lunch is just too much.”
Gotcha.
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