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July 31, 2002 9:30 a.m. The “lurking” enemy. They’re all DLC-ers. Your name, your bane. And more.

ow, I wouldn’t be serving you if I didn’t bring you the latest from Sandra Bernhard, the loudmouth — and not very funny, is she? — comedienne. (Are you still allowed to say “comedienne,” without being shot? I know that “actress” is virtually verboten. Phyllis Diller prefers “comic,” going to great lengths to parse the distinctions between “comedian/enne,” “comic,” and “comedic actor.” ) (I must say I’m now more relaxed about “between” and “among” than I used to be. I used to adhere rigidly to, “‘Between’ for two — ‘between you and me’ — and ‘among’ for three or more — ‘among you, me, and the City of Dallas.’” But now I’m prepared to intone what I once decried as the chant of the linguistic loser: “Whatever sounds better . . .”) (Are you sick of these digressions and ready for the column to begin? Okay.)

Sandra Bernhard told the Guardian, “Americans are lazy. They don’t have a concept of how the world interacts . . . It’s a little scary to be in a country so detached from reality and so ready to buy into the propaganda that the enemy is out there lurking, ready to attack us again.”

I know it’s silly, silly to engage with Sandra Bernhard — at least about world issues — but just one question: How does she know? That is, how does she know that our enemies (assuming we have them) won’t strike again?

As I said — silly.

I see that Bill Clinton is ready to rumble on the corporate scandals. He told a reporter, “There was corporate malfeasance both before [George W. Bush] took office and after [a generous admission]. The difference is, I actually tried to do something about it, and their party stopped it.”

The White House responded, via a spokesman, “There is a long-held tradition of former presidents’ acting in the national interest, not their own partisan interests. That long-held tradition has served the nation well, and President Bush is looking forward, not backward.”

I was perhaps not the only Bush-booster not entirely satisfied with that answer. I understand the desire to look statesmanlike, while getting in your shot at the same time. But slightly more direct and serious engagement can be useful, and “the White House,” that strange person, ought to find a way to bring it off.

Also, this “looking forward, not backward” business is a bit of a dodge, though a tempting one. Much of what we do is look backward, and not wrongly — particularly if it aids a present situation.

I remember when I had a chance to question Hillary Clinton at a press conference. This was when she announced she was running for Senate. No one else — it had been two years, I think — had ever asked this question, and it seemed such an obvious one: “Do you still attribute the charges against your husband to a ‘vast, right-wing conspiracy’?” She fixed me with a look that was almost inhuman for its coldness and said, “I’m looking forward, not backward,” while jabbing her finger at another questioner.

Fine and dandy — and any political counselor would counsel it, probably. But a little thought — a little reflection — and engagement can be so refreshing, and so attractive.

I’ve complained before, and will again: They’re all DLC-ers now. That is, the Democratic Leadership Council started out as a moderate group, aiming at pulling the Democratic party to the center. Then they got successful — Clinton’s nomination did it. (Only his nomination in ’92, mind you, not his election, because once he was elected, he threw the DLC over the side. The Hillary left-wingers got the plums.)

There’s now no Democrat who won’t embrace the DLC — short of Maxine Waters, I guess — and no Democrat whom the DLC won’t embrace back, delightedly. It’s the same old thing, perceivable at most high schools: the lure of popularity.

So, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, Dick Gregory, for all I know: They’re all DLC-ers, smooching up, and being smooched back. If the group had meaning — and, disputing some, I believe it did — it has lost that meaning now. Principle seems to be invisible, as reduced as Al From himself.

Added to this is the spectacle of Joe Lieberman complaining that Al Gore, in 2000, campaigned too far to the left. As I explained in a semi-exhaustive and fully infuriated piece for NR (“Orthodox Democrat: The Fall of Joe Lieberman,” Dec. 31, 2000), the veep nominee was a willing, gleeful, and, in fact, effective participant in this campaign to the left. Now he’s kvetching and backtracking.

Too late — except to position himself for ’04. I said, back in that piece, that I — I guess I more implied this — wouldn’t let him get away with it. But get away with it, he almost certainly will.

For one thing, who but a few blessed nuts goes through back issues of NR?

In a recent issue of The Spectator, there was a fascinating interview with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator. (The piece, by Justin Marozzi, is titled “Son of Mad Dog.”) The young man said many eyebrow-raising things, some of them unnerving, some of them not.

In the latter category: “We don’t have democracy in the Middle East, no doubt about it.” Arab leaders may claim they have their own versions of it, but “democracy is democracy. Either you have it or you don’t. We need democracy, and it’s the most important thing. It’s Policy Number One for us. First thing, democracy; second thing, democracy; third thing, democracy.”

And, “Really, I’m very enthusiastic to see Libya as an oasis of democracy, a society that respects the environment and human rights and so on, and is a model in the region.”

Respects the environment, when there are about 850 other things on a democracy’s list? Ah, he’s learned his talking points well, from someone.

At long last, President Bush has mixed it up a little on tort reform. This is a ripe issue for him, and for conservatives, and for Republicans — and it’s just left there, hanging on the tree.

In North Carolina, home state of his potential 2004 opponent John Edwards — a vastly rich trial lawyer — he talked about frivolous lawsuits, lawyer greed, rising health-care costs, and crazy insurance. Now he should talk about it some more — all over.

I’ve been thinking about Washington — George Washington — thanks to Rick Brookhiser’s recent documentary on PBS, which was masterful (to go with his book on the first president, Founding Father).

So I was especially attentive to the story in Monday’s New York Times about the attempt to juice up Mount Vernon a little. Author Stephen Kinzer — who’s better on Washington than he is on Nicaragua — said that “many scholars . . . are in a state of near panic after watching Washington all but disappear from the national consciousness in the space of a single generation.”

David W. Saxe, described as “a professor of education at Pennsylvania State University who studies American history textbooks,” says, “When teachers and curriculum planners and textbook authors look at the Founding Fathers today, they see too many white males. [Ugh, what an awful phrase. What’s wrong with ‘men’? Ah, we know.] George Washington is [disappearing] from the textbooks. He’s still mentioned, but you don’t spend a week in February talking about him, doing plays and reciting the Farewell Address. In the interest of being inclusive, material about women and minorities is taking the place of material about the Founders of our country.”

Later, another professor, Peter R. Henriques, says, “Let’s face it: He was an 18th-century elitist slaveholder, and that doesn’t fit in well with the modern age. We’re in an age when white male heroes on horseback are not so popular.”

Yeah, among whom? They would be popular — to the extent they were admirable — if they were allowed to be, by those controlling education.

Have you been following the row over the recent firing at the English National Opera? I didn’t think so, but I’ve been following it for you.

Upshot is, Nicholas Payne, the director, was kicked out — not for what he did, but for a lack of profits. He might have been kicked out for what he did, too.

As an article in the Times put it, he was the man “who brought fellatio and homosexual rape to the London stage.” (At this late date?) A recent production of Verdi’s Masked Ball — I say “Masked Ball” instead of “Un ballo in maschera,” because the ENO is an English-only company — “featured anal rape, singers on lavatories, simulated sex, and masturbation.” A previous Don Giovanni was famously branded a “coke-fueled fellatio fest.” (Where do you sign up? Read another column, bub.)

Payne’s sacking — again, not for moral and artistic offenses, but for a dead box office — brought the usual self-righteous and misdirected howls. The ENO would go from “a pioneering British opera showcase” to “a home for bland and traditional classics.” Payne was “running a theater that was alive.” We were “abandoning the risky and the innovative.”

Oh, how nice it must be to be a modern opera director, when you can applaud yourself as risky and innovative, and tar your critics as merely fuddy-duddy. We have long had shock radio; now we have shock opera — though it’s been hoist on its petard, a little.

I loved one view, summed up in the Observer: “In an age where you can see nudity, sex, and mutual masturbation on television every night, you do not need to pay to see it in an opera house.”

No. Nor should you. Look, opera is exciting — and decadent — enough, without this sort of gilding (or tarnishing). And it sounds like London opera-goers voted with their feet (so to speak). Goody.

(Did I just say “goody”?)

Haven’t yet made it through the current issue of Opera News? No worries, I’ll point out something amusing.

The theme of the issue is “crossover between opera and theater,” and there’s a blurb on June Lockhart, star of Lost in Space (as well as Petticoat Junction). (Lockhart appeared as a child at the Met.) The blurb informs us that Lockhart — as an adult — showed up for the final day at the old Met, “where her husband cut off a couple of pieces of fringe from the great gold curtain. ‘I have one framed in my living room,’ she says, ‘and the other one I gave to Jonathan Harris, who played Dr. Smith on Lost in Space. He’s a big opera buff.”

You don’t say?

The recent Spectator, earlier mentioned, had a review of Leonardo Sciascia’s new book, The Moro Affair. Sciascia is a great, Sicilian author, one I studied in college. The reviewer lamented that Sciascia wasn’t a bigger deal in Britain, offering several explanations, including, “Might it be, even, that English readers are not quite sure how to pronounce his name, so don’t ask for him in bookshops or recommend him to their friends?” (It’s “sha-sha.”)

I immediately thought of Roger Kimball, who says that this has been a similar problem — the identical problem, actually — for Walter Bagehot, the great British journalist. (It’s “badge-it.”) (Roger wrote the introduction for the recent edition of Bagehot’s Physics and Politics — that title is another thing that drags Bagehot down, as Roger also says.)

An author with a name that people are afraid to say is, indeed, a little screwed.

Let’s have a little mail. Many Impromtuses ago, I had an item about hissing in movie theaters (I’m against, emphatically). (Here’s that column.)

A reader says, “I went to a screening of a documentary called American Mullet, which was part of the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. The festival director, in introducing the film and thanking the various sponsors, etc., mentioned that since it was Father’s Day, she wanted to thank all fathers. The hissing was louder than the applause. The director flinched noticeably.”

This reader also adds — on a different subject from the same column — “I live in Yellow Springs, Ohio (home of kooky diploma mill Antioch College), and about a year ago I put my house on the market. When I delivered the copy for my ad to the local paper, I was told that in Ohio it is actually illegal to say ‘within walking distance.’”

No surprise — disrespectful of the lame.

Last, says this reader, “One constant during my time at the University of Michigan law school was the hissing whenever the name of Ronald Reagan was mentioned.”

Yes, I too was first acquainted with hissing in Ann Arbor, my hometown. Even if the Left were right, I think I would have resented them for that. So coarse, and abrasive, and even slightly frightening. You can feel the mob stir.

Didn’t they hiss in the Cultural Revolution, along with putting on the dunce hats and the torture and all? Of course, that could be just a sweet imagination — anti-Communist, anti-hissing wishful thinking.

Another reader writes, “Your comments on movie-theater hissing struck a note with me. I recall from my younger days that whenever a movie ended, the audience would applaud — as if the creators were there to receive their appreciation for the work. At some point, this practice stopped. It strikes me occasionally, as when we went to see Spiderman. I thought the movie was quite good, and when the closing credits appeared I started to applaud, and was the only one to do so. Do you remember this phenomenon? If so, what happened?”

I do remember. And it was good. Not only expressed appreciation, but afforded a sense of community. Perhaps it’s still done in certain places.

And I applaud those who do it.