Clintons and Condits, Yangs and Wangs, Bork’s beard, cont., &c.

August 13, 2001 8:10 a.m.

hroughout this ghastly Gary Condit thing, Republicans have been chiding Democrats for circling the wagons, and Democrats have been saying, “You’d do the same thing, if it were a Republican.” (Frankly, the Republican congressmen have been silent as well.)

I would like to take issue with this: If this were a Republican, I believe that Republicans (me, for example) would be all over Condit, demanding that he cooperate with the police, hounding him out of Congress, as (at least) a reprobate and a liar. I think we would be extra-tough on our own.

Which brings me back to the Lewinsky affair (which is far too light a term to describe it). Worse than Bill Clinton’s individual behavior was the behavior of the Democratic party, in which there was barely a peep of complaint or disapproval about Clinton. Many Democrats — pundits and others — charged, “Well, you’d be the same way if this were a president of your own.”

Actually, no. I always responded, “If this were a Republican president, we’d be screaming for him to depart the White House, to resign and allow honor to return to the office, because, for one thing, he would be staining our party, just as Nixon had.” Bob Livingston didn’t last two seconds as Speaker-designate. Newt Gingrich, in my view, would have been out on his ear two seconds after it was discovered that he had dumped his wife to take up with a staffer. I don’t think Republicans generally would have stood for it.

Many people would view the above as hopelessly, blindly partisan. But I believe it’s true: Republicans would have treated a Clinton or a Condit of their own party far differently than the Democrats have. I can speak for one Republican (for, as I once heard Bill Buckley say, I’m the world’s foremost authority on my own opinion): I would have been baying for a Republican Clinton or Condit to leave — much faster than I would a Democrat.

You may recall that, when President Clinton made his finger-wagging denial, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) was in the room. And when Clinton semi-confessed his lie, seven months later, Feinstein allowed as how her faith in him had been “badly shattered.” (I loved that line: “badly shattered.” Something is shattered or it’s not, right? When I discussed this with my friend Mike Potemra, back then, he remembered a line from Mr. T in one of the Rocky movies: “I’m gonna crucify ’im — real bad!”)

Well, Feinstein was one of those California Democrats who were assured by their fellow California Democrat, Gary Condit, that he had not had an affair with the missing Chandra Levy — that he had not used this intern for sex. And when Condit had to fess up, Feinstein let it be known that she’d never forgive the man.

I couldn’t help thinking, in my spiteful, Clinton-hating, grudge-nursing way, that she wasn’t as clear on a president who similarly had lied to her, and everyone else.

Among the very best — the most admirable, the bravest, the greatest — people I have ever met have been Chinese democracy activists. Learning of their efforts, and the risks they take, one all of a sudden feels very small.

Anyway, I was talking with a few such people recently, one of whom is Jian-li Yang, a research fellow at the Kennedy School and head of the Foundation for China in the 21st Century. Where to begin about him? He was a Tiananmen Square leader. He had already been in the U.S. studying at Berkeley, but he flew home when the protests began, to join and lead them — at tremendous personal risk. He is now in the top tier of the PRC’s black list, along with about 50 others. Mr. Yang has earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Berkeley and a Ph.D. in political economy from Harvard. In addition to being brilliant and brave, he is marvelously kind.

The foundation he leads is staging a conference next month on interethnic conflict in China. The group can be phoned at (617) 735-9166 or e-mailed at china21century@yahoo.com.

Talking to Jian-li, I asked him what book best described the Chinese situation, as far as intellectuals were concerned. And his answer I found touching: He said, “Milosz’s Captive Mind.” This is, indeed, one of the great explanatory books of our time, and it reaches across every boundary and every age, really.

Another great scholar and activist is Youqin Wang, a lecturer in Chinese at the University of Chicago. Her main work — to which she devotes all her “spare” time — is the memorializing of the victims of the Cultural Revolution. Her website, a powerful, appalling, and necessary thing, is located at www.chinese-memorial.org.

I interviewed her recently, and one of the questions I asked was, “Do the Chinese want to remember, document, and memorialize the Cultural Revolution?” She gave me a brief and acceptable answer, and that was that.

But she e-mailed back the next day to say she wanted to give a different answer, which I now relate. In the introduction to her website (only the Chinese version, not the English), she tells a story she learned from a teacher who had been sent to a labor-reform camp. His job was to tend the cattle and chickens, and one day they killed a cow, which had gotten too old to work. They killed it near a willow tree, where abundant, green grass always grew. After the killing, the cattle wouldn’t go near the tree, even when there was luxuriant grass to be had. They also kind of moaned, bellowed, as if in protest.

When you slaughtered a chicken, in contrast, you threw its intestines on the ground, and all the other chickens would scratch at it, fighting over those intestines.

On her website, Youqin Wang asks, Which way shall we Chinese adopt — the way of the cattle or the way of the chicken?

She didn’t think much of it, but she was surprised to find that this story was the one thing her fellow Chinese most responded to, when they perused her website and wrote to her. They would write such things as, “I hope I have the courage to reject the way of the chicken — but I don’t know.”

Shiver-making stuff, presented in a profoundly simple way.

One of the things that Youqin Wang does is detail the multifarious methods of torture and murder used during the Cultural Revolution. For example, they would force victims to drink chemicals, thereby killing them.

Don’t think it’s not still going on. There was a report the other day that a Falun Gong member, Wu Qingbin, 37, father of a twelve-year-old boy, was killed in this fashion on July 20 at Huainan labor camp. He was forced to consume a disinfectant. Said the report, “Wu had been in and out of reeducation and labor camps since March 2000, and had suffered repeated beatings and torture for his refusal to renounce his faith.”

Every day, by e-mail, from those who care, I receive reports like this, concerning brutality — evil — in China and Cuba, especially. This makes it hard to forget.

You saw, probably, that the new head of CNN, Walter Isaacson, trekked to Capitol Hill to meet with Republicans, wanting to hear their concerns about CNN’s bias. It was widely remarked that Isaacson had to do this because his network desperately needs to attract or recapture conservative viewers, whom they are losing to Fox. I think it’s great that CNN is being made to recognize the need for balance and fairness: but commerce (ratings) shouldn’t be the motive; right journalistic standards ought to be. But if the market drives them there, at least they will have gotten there.

The press is terribly down on W. because he’s spending a month in Crawford, Texas. They were never down on Clinton when he hobnobbed with the swells in Martha’s Vineyard. It always amazed me that Clinton got away with that: with such snooty vacationing habits. What an Arkansas wannabe! Of course, he didn’t go to the Vineyard in the summer of 1996, when he was running for reelection. His pollster told him to go camping out West — more prole, more common, don’t you know. And then, the next summer, safely reelected, he was right back with his peeps (not eyes, but people) in Martha’s Vineyard.

The press, generally, was shockingly uncynical about this. They are said to be hard-boiled, cynical, skeptical, unrelenting, etc. But the truth is that many in the press are now themselves in the Vineyard class — and they appreciated Clinton as one of their own.

What has made the new Italian premier, Silvio Berlusconi, popular? He has raised the Italian speed limit to about 100 m.p.h., thrilling his joy-riding constituents. This reminded me of the sardonic remark of one Republican in Washington: that the greatest achievement of the GOP Congress, elected in the Gingrich Revolution, was to abolish the federal speed limit — and that was pretty much it.

Still, that was a nice achievement: The uniformity of the speed limit, from Maine to California, encompassing Manhattan and Montana, was a perfect symbol of left-liberal policy and thought.

I have a report from Dan Bloom, a journalist in Taipei: Apparently, the World Trade Organization’s website requires people from Taiwan to register their names under the country title “Taiwan, Province of China.” This is even worse than the Olympics, in which Taiwan (or the Republic of China) has to compete under the absurd name “Chinese Taipei.” The WTO should get bent.

In further Chinese news, you may have noticed that Tibetan freedom activists have been jailed (to use far too perfumed a word) for “splittist” activity. As monstrous as Communists are, at least they give you their language — their asinine, straight-from-Nineteen-Eighty-four terms — for comic relief.

In Friday’s edition of Impromptus, I recalled that Judge Bork had been attacked for his beard, grown during a riverboat vacation in France. I also remembered, or half-remembered, that he had decided to grow the beard to avoid the hassle of shaving. (This came up in a discussion of Al Gore’s new whiskers, also sprouted while on a European vacation.) I can now report, on unimpeachable authority, that it was not a riverboat in France, but a canal boat in England, and that the judge had stopped shaving, not to avoid the hassle, but because it was pretty much impossible, physically, in the quarters of the boat.

And, no, I’m still not over it, by the way--those hearings, in darkest 1987.

Was out in Hollywood the other day when I was approached by a person I knew to be a conservative. This was in his work environment. Before speaking to him, at least in a normal tone of voice, I said, “Are you out?” Meaning, of course, “Are you known, to one and all, as a conservative? Because, if not, I don’t want to blow your cover.” It came naturally to me to use the word “out.” I wasn’t trying to be cute. But it does say something.

Also saying something is a curious fact I happened to learn today: There is a certain organization — a relatively secret organization — that uses a strict quota system, whereby one member must be accepted from each of the following categories: black, gay, and conservative.

One cheer for affirmative action?

Who was the most famous loser — or non-winner — in the history of the PGA Tour? Probably Bobby Wadkins, who also carried the burden of being the brother of Lanny Wadkins, a great champion. Bobby always played well and he always made money — he was the winningest player, in dollar terms, of any non-tournament-winning player ever.

And when he turned 50, he joined the Senior Tour, and in his very first tournament — won. This was just last week. I assure you that this is an amazing story, and I feel terrific about it. Bobby Wadkins in the winner’s circle at last, in style.

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il was scared — deathly scared — to fly, which is why he took the train from Pyongyang to Moscow, a very fur piece, as Faulkner would write. My friend Larry Henry wrote to remind me that Kim was once reported, by official organs, to have shot a 38 in an 18-hole round of golf. As Larry remarked, “This says something about delusions, dictatorship, Communism, and I don’t know what else.” Does it ever.

On Friday, I had one item about dumb clichés, including “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” and an item about the pain of a misspelled byline — a newspaper had me as “Jay Nordingler” (when the correct spelling is bad enough). I received the following, delicious note:

“As my dear old dad used to say, ‘If you can’t judge the book by its cover, don’t buy the book.’ And if you think misspelling is bad for some last names, try mispronouncing! I could tell you stories.” Signed, Roy Sheetz.

Okay, I got in a cab this morning, and the driver — who, sadly, was crazy — wanted to argue with me about something. In the course of his fulminations, he said, “Who do you think you are, the vice president?” I didn’t fully appreciate until a couple minutes later, when I had gotten out of the cab (aborted trip), what he’d said: the vice president. What a strange comment! A tribute to Cheney? To Gore? To some ignorant or devious pundits’ view that Cheney is “really” running things? In any case, I might have said, “No, the president.”

Who do you think you are, the vice president? John Nance Garner would be amazed.