Times bashing, blacklist envy, a few thoughts on porn, &.

November 2, 2001 9:00 a.m.

p for a little New York Times bashing? I didn’t think I’d have to twist your arm.

I’d like to concentrate on columnist Thomas Friedman: not because he’s a hack or idiot. For quite the opposite reason: because he’s extremely knowledgeable and experienced — and should know better. That’s why Friedman has driven many of us nuts for years. We hardly bother to be bothered by, say, Friedman’s fellow op-ed-ist, Anthony Lewis — that would be like being bothered by the wetness of rain. No, Friedman is a special case because he’s 90 percent satisfying and cogent — and then kills you with that other 10 percent.

A Friedman trademark, for many years, has been contempt for the Likud party of Israel. He tends to be understanding of Labor-governed Israel; but if Likud should get in — watch it. He will lump that party in with the “crazies” in the Middle East, “on all sides.” It makes him the consummate, all-inclusive anti-extremist.

A couple of days ago, I received an e-mail from a dear, left-liberal cousin with the Friedman column of October 26 attached. On the subject line, my cousin had typed: “On Target.” It wasn’t. But it illustrated beautifully the maddening quality of Tom Friedman.

The column is about how America has no true friends in this fight, except for Great Britain. It begins,

[L]et me see if I’ve got this all straight now: Pakistan will allow us to use its bases Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays — provided we bomb only Taliban whose names begin with Omar and who don’t have cousins in the Pakistani secret service. India is with us on Tuesdays and Fridays, provided it can shell Pakistani forces around Kashmir all other days. Egypt is with us on Sundays, provided we don’t tell anyone and provided we never mention that we give the Egyptians $2 billion a year in aid. Yasir Arafat is with us only after 10 p.m. on weekdays, when Palestinians who have been dancing in the streets over the World Trade Center attack have gone to bed. The Northern Alliance is with us, provided we buy all its troops new sandals and give U.S. passports to the first 1,000 to reach Kabul.

So far, so good, huh? And pretty cute. Then here it comes:

Israel is with us provided we never question the lunacy of 7,000 Israeli colonial settlers living in the middle of a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Ahh: There’s the famous Friedmanite “evenhandedness” and all-inclusiveness, the pox-on-all-their-houses stance that makes people think of this columnist as exquisitely wise. You know: The Paks, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Israelis — they all make our lives miserable, those wacky sand-dwellers. Yet Tom Friedman knows perfectly well — or should know — that Israel is “with us” regardless of Washington’s position on Jerusalem’s settlement policies. The Israelis are “with us” because they are, in fact, fighting the same war: against Arab extremism, rejectionism, and murder. Against the Arab unwillingness to live peaceably with other peoples. It’s not so much that Israel is “with us” as that we, more than ever, are with them. Or at least it is reasonable to see it that way. That Friedman should include the Israelis with the rest of the Middle Eastern unreliables may be unobjectionable in the New York Times newsrooms, or editorial offices, but it should be objectionable everywhere thinking is less clouded.

Evenhandedness can be bunk. And it can be especially bunk with regard to the Middle East. If there are two sides, one of which wants to co-exist with the other, and the other of which wants to annihilate the other, to be “evenhanded” toward them is, in fact, to side with the would-be annihilators. This is an A-B-C lesson; but it is the time for such lessons.

But Friedman isn’t done, with this not-on-target column. He continues,

The unilateralist message the Bush team sent from its first day in office — get rid of the Kyoto climate treaty, forget the biological treaty, forget arms control, and if the world doesn’t like it that’s tough — has now come back to haunt us.

And who can blame other countries for wanting to shake down U.S. taxpayers when Dick Armey and his greedy band of House Republicans are doing the same thing — pushing a stimulus bill with more tax breaks for the rich, lobbyists and corporations, and virtually nothing for the working Americans who will fight this war?

I trust you see what I mean about the killer 10 percent.

Now, Thomas Friedman knows about 100 times more about the Middle East than most of us will ever know, in that he has devoted much of his career to that region. And yet the conclusions he draws, or the poses he indulges in, can be shockingly off-key, to the point of seeming completely untutored.

Which brings us to another Timesman, or rather, woman. Regular readers are familiar with my vow never to read or talk about Maureen Dowd — a vow similar to my friend’s never to read anything having to do with race in America, for the sake of his health. Well, I break my vow every now and then, as I did the other day, simply to glance at Dowd’s column, to check out its subject.

In it, I read, “This is the first war since World War II that is personal. Vietnam was inspired by the domino theory, and dragged on because Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara did not want to lose face.”

This is not a totally absurd statement — although the writer seems to think that the domino theory was laughable. Chances are she has not talked to many Cambodians or Laotians. And I wonder whether she has talked to many Vietnamese themselves about what they took to be the purpose of the American war.

But then, she writes, “Desert Storm was about keeping our gas prices low.”

I mean, that’s it: That’s all she says about it. So I guess we have a columnist for the New York Times — for the New York Times, for chrissakes! — who is no different from the know-nothing campus protester bearing the sign that said, “No Blood for Oil.”

What Desert Storm was chiefly “about,” of course, was the stopping of a totalitarian, expansionist dictator, who was starting a rampage through the Middle East. He had invaded and devoured a sovereign country, Kuwait. He was threatening Saudi Arabia. And then . . . talk about a domino theory. Oil was a factor, to be sure: the economic life blood of the world. But in the 1930s and ’40s, we learned something, or should have, about the importance of checking a totalitarian, expansionist dictator, about allowing a country (Kuwait, Czechoslovakia, Poland) to be thrown to the wolves — about attempting to appease the unappeasable.

And if we hadn’t stopped Saddam then: how much worse off would we be now?

I hate to be such a basher (really), but consider for a moment what it means for an op-ed columnist at the New York Times — the most august, most important perch a political-opinion writer can have — to be capable of writing the sentence, “Desert Storm was about keeping our gas prices low.” Consider what it means for the Times to employ a columnist capable of writing the sentence, “Desert Storm was about keeping our gas prices low.” This is not a college rag, where ignorant sophomores pop off, ignorantly. This is big stuff.

One last thought about Dowd & Co. (meaning, commentators like this): You will recall the fuss they kicked up about the new president, Bush, and arsenic regulations. Bill Clinton, in his last days in office, decided to impose a super-stringent standard, and the Bush administration responded that perhaps this standard was unnecessary and unwise, as well as politically motivated. Democrats everywhere shouted, “REPUBLICANS ARE PUTTING ARSENIC IN THE WATER” (or, even more absurdly, “. . . BACK IN THE WATER”). Maureen Dowd was one of the worst offenders, constantly twitting the Bushies about this arsenic nonsense, writing such things as,

You can just hear Rummy [Donald Rumsfeld], slugging back a Scotch with Cheney in the Oval after they’ve put the Kid [Bush] to bed, grousing about the gazillion dollars’ worth of investments he has to sell to avoid a conflict, and growling: “Real men can drink twice that much arsenic. And how soon can we get some lead back in the lousy paint?”

And,

As W. and Uncle Dick went about strip-mining the nation, allowing arsenic in the water and turning Alaska into a gas station . . .

Why am I bringing this up? We’re told that everything is ultra-serious now, no more time for frivolities: Lewinsky (not a frivolity), Condit (not a frivolity), and the like. We’re also told that conservatives ought to feel ashamed for being “anti-government,” seeing how much government is needed now (to defeat a mortal foreign enemy — not to provide “free” prescription drugs to the well-off — but that’s another subject).

Well, in that spirit, shouldn’t liberals feel a small grain of shame at having shouted about how Republicans were hell-bent on poisoning people with arsenic: when real and deadly poison is flying around, from real enemies, killing people?

Get serious, indeed. The arsenic thing was always a sham and an offense; now it appears to be obscene.

If I could ask the president one question, at a news conference, what would it be? (How nice of you to ask.) It would be, “Mr. President, are you at all uneasy in faulting Israel for doing exactly what you’re doing — going after the terrorists who kill your citizens? Israel has now lost a cabinet minister. I mean, how would you feel?”

Wonder what he’d say.

I have written, from time to time, about “civil rights envy”: the envy of people who weren’t around for the real thing, and who have to make up fake causes under the rubric “civil rights.” Well, there is such a thing as blacklist envy, too, as exemplified by Aaron Sorkin, the flagrantly left-wing but also apparently very talented producer of television’s West Wing. He said recently, “In the Fifties, there was a blacklist, and it ruined lives. . . . Well, we’re there, right now. It’s happening all over again.” Yeah, he wishes. He wishes we were living in a McCarthyite atmosphere, in which expressing skepticism about the war would get you branded as a traitor and barred from work. This is sheer envy. Everybody’s gotta be a victim — even the most successful TV producer in Hollywood! Nobody’s going to shut Sorkin up; but that doesn’t mean we can’t exercise our First Amendment right to call him a fool.

Say, didn’t the director Robert Altman say he’d leave the country if Bush won the election a year ago? Well, I can report that the missus and I saw him in a restaurant on W. 70th St. the other night. He didn’t look too persecuted, either. Pity.

Inside journalism, we snicker at journalists who talk about cabbies: you know, semi-isolated journo rubbing shoulders with the common man, ha-ha. (“The driver who met me at the Dubuque airport said he figured Smith was more popular than Jones in this district.”) Well, I write about cabbies from time to time — though I snicker as well — and I’d like to relate a story now.

I got into a cab the other day. For reasons I won’t bother to explain, the cabbie — an Arab of some kind, but with very lightly accented English — was in a severe shouting match with someone driving a small truck beside him. The trucker said, “Speak English!” The cabbie said, “I am speaking English, you [so-and-so]. I’ve been here since I was five. I’m from North Africa. [Touching, that: as though the Maghrib were somehow “better” than the Middle East.] I may not be an American, but you’re Spanish. You’re Spanish! Why are you talking to me?” Trucker: “F*** you! Go home!” Cabbie: “You’re f***ing Spanish!” Trucker: “F*** you!”

The altercation was soon over, but the cabbie remained extremely agitated. As we drove on, I could see that he was fuming. (Young guy, about 23.) It seemed that tears were coming to his eyes. After a while, I talked to him. I offered that it must have been a rough month or two. He nodded. He said, “What right did he have to talk to me that way? I mean, I know I’m not an American . . .” Here I cut him off: “Don’t say that: You have as much right to call yourself an American as anyone else.” He would have none of it, though: “No, I’m not an American, but I’ve been here since I was five. I have no memory of the country I was born in. I love this country. I’ve worked hard. Soon my father and I are going to have our twenty-second medallion [cab medallion]. We own the company — but I still work. We’ve made a success. We’re not Americans, but that guy had no right!”

It went on like this, for about 20 minutes, until we parted, in a moving way. Why do I bother to relate this story? Mainly for this reason: I, and others, have been awfully tough on Arab-Americans, and Arabs living in America. I’ve been tough on Arab cabbies, too — tough on their bin Ladenism, tough on their callousness, tough on their ingratitude. I’m all for deporting those who cheer our murders. But it can be hell — absolute hell — for a man such as the one I encountered, a fact that should surely be acknowledged.

There. That’s my cabbie story.

You may have noticed that the new issue of NR concerns pornography: its pervasiveness and what to do about it. I delved into this subject for an extended period, and I must say I came out of it a little shaken. Porn — the worst kind — isn’t harmless, isn’t a mere “cathartic,” as was once widely said. Some of it — and not only that involving children — is downright evil. It is a destroyer of love, a destroyer of dignity, a destroyer of innocence, marriages, health, sanity, respect, and much else that is good. It is not a picayune problem.

Years ago, Bill Buckley observed that “within every conservative there is a streak of libertarianism.” Well, how wide is your streak? Mine’s pretty wide: but it is not quite wide enough to cover the most abhorrent porn.

You may have heard about the hard-core and sick sex clubs provided by Yahoo. (Hell, you may have visited them.) Several social-Right groups are campaigning against Yahoo, trying to sweep away the worst of the clubs. Amusingly enough, some full-time pornographers have taken up cudgels against Yahoo, too (and against other Internet portals, such as MSN). The Los Angeles Times reported recently that the porn industry “fears that MSN’s and Yahoo’s adult clubs are starting to lure consumers away from for-pay porn services.” Okay, here’s the beauty part: Scott Chialin, CEO of a company that operates such sites as Café Flesh, says, “These clubs have more extreme stuff than anyone in the legitimate side of this business would ever do. There’s no way we can compete against this”!

I had a thought about old-fashioned stigmatizing. There’s an amazing lack of stigmatizing, of pornographers, these days. If only they sold cigarettes! Just as there were “mob lawyers,” who were held in some disrepute within the legal profession, there are today porn lawyers, who make fortunes off their clients, building multiple mansions and swimming pools. And just as the mob boss would deposit a turkey on every front porch at Thanksgiving, or build the community rec center, porn kings are dispensing charity, buying some respect for themselves.

Pornographers may even “campaign for condoms,” as they say! This brings to mind Christopher Buckley’s delicious satirical novel Thank You for Smoking, in which — as I recall — the booze distributors form something called “The Moderation Council.”

I also wonder whether it might be possible actually to shame people into not selling pornography, whether that porn is legal or not. Back in my hometown, Ann Arbor, I used to work at a bookstore called The Little Professor. The manager there refused to put out conservative magazines, because they offended his conscience, and he thought this material should be kept from the public. A friend of mine, on hearing this, nicknamed the store “The Little Suppressor.”

But suppression of some of the viler porn? That would be okay, wouldn’t it?

I’d like to mention a couple of books. The first is Rock ’til You Drop: The Decline from Rebellion to Nostalgia. The author is my friend John Strausbaugh, editor of New York Press, here in the big city. Strausbaugh knows just about everything there is to know about rock, and about many other things too. And rock, really, is more influential than most people suppose. To understand it is to understand a lot about our culture. And here is a book that understands.

The other book is a most unusual one called It’s Who You Know: How to Make the Right Business Connections — and Make Them Pay Off. The authors are Bret Saxon and Elliot Goldman. Now, my friend Elliot is one of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met: a go-getter, a business wiz, a “T-shirt mogul,” as our friends call him, a brainy conservative, one of the least shy, most open, most engaging people imaginable. One of his pastimes is collecting rare and cool objects — I mean, rare and cool, such as FDR’s white fedora. Elliot owns that fedora: the one you see in the pictures, when the president has his head cocked, and a cigarette (with holder) hanging from his mouth. When last I saw Elliot, he was toting a scrapbook containing the signatures of President Taft and his entire Cabinet. Or was it Coolidge? I forget. Anyway, an extraordinary man, Elliot.

One of his specialties is making connections, and with his friend Saxon he tells readers how. Also, please know that Elliot has one of the most entertaining websites around: www.peoplewhoknowme.com. There you will see photos of Elliot with a zillion prominent people, including presidents, Supreme Court justices, movie stars, sit-com bimbos: the works. The guy is a juggernaut. Be amazed.

In a previous Impromptus, I made reference to students at Amherst who burned American flags. I quoted one student in particular — and an official at Amherst is keen for me to point out that the student in question is not enrolled at Amherst. All right, then.

So help me, I had a George Wallace moment today. I found myself saying, “We’ve got to stop pussyfooting around in Afghanistan.” Really: Has anyone said “pussyfootin’” since ol’ George Corley discoursed on Vietnam?

A final note. Have you had a favorite story, amid the gloom? I have: the one about business owners in Boston withdrawing support for their local NPR station. They were simply sick of the anti-Israel tenor of public radio. They no longer wanted to fund it. Before 9/11, you could live with something like that. But after 9/11 — not so tolerable. And the businessmen voted with their charitable dollars, even though they figured it would give them a black eye in the community — Boston is a very NPR-y place.

Nice, huh?