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October 22, 2002 9:00 a.m. The ghost of ol’ Joe, art for Atta’s sake, us “Taliban Republicans,” and more.

ou may have read the story about the Democratic Socialists of America: The DSA has called the reelection of Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone its top electoral priority (guess Bernie Sanders is safe in Vermont). The group said that, to win, Wellstone would “need a high percentage of young people to register and vote for him.” As luck would have it, “Minnesota is one of the few states that allow same-day voter registration,” the DSA noted. So they planned to bus in some socialist young’uns to boost the senator’s cause.

To which certain people objected — causing the DSA to charge, as the Wall Street Journal recorded, “red-baiting.” Yes, red-baiting, always! They — you know: they — have done this from time immemorial, or at least all of my life. It is one of the great argument-cutters-off ever. Say “Red-baiting!” and the other side has to slink away in shame.

This is a good reason to damn Joe McCarthy: what he did to discredit anti-Communism. I know, I know: He identified a lot of true Reds, and pointed to a true problem. But he did so in such a way as to set back the cause. By a lot.

I noticed something interesting in Alan Cowell’s New York Times story on the Irish referendum. He began, “With the collapse of the Soviet empire [did the Times ever admit there was a Soviet empire?], the end of the cold war conjured heady dreams among Central and Eastern Europe’s peoples that they might aspire to the kind of Western freedoms and riches once glimpsed through the chain mail of the Iron Curtain.”

My point (again): Did the Times ever admit that the line between the East and the West constituted something like chain mail? Indeed, did they ever concede that the West featured “freedoms and riches”?

Ah, but we’re all anti-Communists now, aren’t we — though not of the “McCarthyite” kind. (Are there as many anti-Communists among Western elites now as there were Resistance fighters in France — after 1945?)

As you’ve undoubtedly heard by now — I’m writing this on Sunday — some avant-garde-ists in Germany are holding an art exhibition in Mohamed Atta’s old apartment. Terror chic: It has long been with us.

To switch to language and politics: It is increasingly bothersome that Republicans have declared certain words verboten, resorting to euphemisms. The GOP — especially the George W. Bush-led GOP — should be much more direct, and less Clintonian. We’re not supposed to say “vouchers.” Screw that: Say “vouchers” and explain to the people why they’re a good and logical and noble idea. We’re not supposed to say “privatization” either. Screw that, too: Explain to people why the privatization — or at least the partial privatization — of Social Security is right, and necessary. We’re not so socialist-minded, I wouldn’t think, that “private” is a dirty word.

Bill Clinton scored a coup when he stopped saying “spending” and started saying “investing.” He wasn’t spending tax money, he was “investing” it, in education, in the old, the young, the blind, the halt, etc.

Admirable politics, I say — echoing Orwell — should start with clear, honest language.

They’re calling us “Talibanic,” a lot. “They” is . . . you know, they, and “us” is conservative Republicans. I remember back in the 1980s, when Sam Donaldson discovered Hezbollah, the terrorist group in Lebanon. He immediately began to refer to “the Hezbollah wing of the Republican party” — meaning, Reaganites, the vast majority. He thought it was so cute. And now the Left has switched to the Taliban. (Who drove the Taliban out of power and into the ground, by the way? Bunch of “Taliban Republicans,” wasn’t it?)

Caught Bill Bennett on television the other night, and he said something interesting, as always. He was on a panel in Colorado, with Karen Hughes, and the professors there — this was at a college — were calling the two Republicans “Talibanic” and “despicable.” The Left always does this, Bennett pointed out.

At which point Alan Colmes broke in and said, “You should read my e-mail, Bill! They say I’m unpatriotic, they say I should defect to Iraq,” etc. To which Bennett responded — perfectly — “Yes, but I suspect those e-mails are from cranks. I’m talking about tenured college profs, who shape the minds of our kids.”

Exactly.

Couple of quick, not very important points about Matt Bai’s piece on Karl Rove in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Bai was talking about Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota, whom Rove discouraged from running for Senate, wanting Norm Coleman instead. Bai wrote, “Pawlenty was just the kind of candidate the Republican party likes to tout: the son of a truck driver who worked his way through college and law school, a young star who had never lost an election.”

Okay. What sort of candidate do the Democrats like to tout? Is Bai implying that Republicans are normally country-club brats who play croquet?

Sure he is.

And then there was, “If Rove wants social conservatives to continue to step aside while he builds a more inclusive party around [more moderate] candidates . . .”

Folks, has anyone ever said that less liberal candidates in the Democratic party would enable that party to be more “inclusive”? Ever?

Just askin’, Bozell-style.

John F. Burns in the New York Times noted that Saddam Hussein’s regime had hailed France and Russia for their “friendship” in thwarting America’s “hegemony.”

Is it possible that France could be embarrassed by this — being praised by Saddam Hussein? Doubtful. Recall that the French built the Iraqi nuclear reactor that Menachem Begin blew up in 1981. They’re still sore about that (the French, I mean — the Iraqis may have forgotten).

Also, Burns said, “Without doubt, the international mood seems better for Iraq than it has in years. Opprobrium over the Kuwait invasion has long since faded . . . ” Yes. Even in Kuwait, I’m afraid.

Good news (although we musn’t count our chickens before they’re hatched): Oscar Elias Biscet, the great Cuban human-rights activist and political prisoner, is set to be released on October 31. He wife said, “He is in high spirits and intent on continuing his peaceful struggle for human rights in Cuba. He wants to continue to live and work inside Cuba.” Moreover, in thanking Cubans abroad for their “material and moral support,” Biscet’s wife said, “This has been a very tough period in our lives — but human solidarity has brought enormous spiritual compensation.”

Good. This space — this column — has had rather a lot to say about Dr. Biscet during his time in prison. We’ll watch him out of prison, too.

Did you hear about David Letterman’s Top Ten list concerning Barbara Walters’s suck-up — and sucky — interview with the dictator Castro? It brought cheer to a lot of Cubans and other well-wishers of freedom, democracy, and decency. Here ’tis:

TOP TEN SIGNS BARBARA WALTERS IS IN LOVE WITH FIDEL CASTRO

10. Her first question: “How’d you get so dreamy?”
9. Squeals like a schoolgirl every time he tortures a dissident
8. She’s wearing his varsity dictator jacket
7. Re-named her newsmagazine “Veinte/Veinte”
6. Told him, “You have led a violent overthrow of my heart”
5. Has same look Diane Sawyer had when she and Khomeini were dating
4. Breakfast, lunch and dinner: pulled pork
3. New sign-off line on “The View”: “Socialism or death”
2. When asking him about Camp X-Ray, she accidentally called it “Guantana-marry me”
1. The long, mangy beard hairs on her blouse

As I say, it cheered a lot of weary and disgusted people up.

Speaking of disgusting people: Leni Riefenstahl has been let off the hook. Prosecutors will not press on with the case that she “lied about Gypsies killed in Nazi death camps,” as the Reuters news agency put it. The prosecutors had “based their case on accusations from a 76-year-old Gypsy concerning the fate of about 100 people used as extras in the Riefenstahl film ‘Tiefland.’”

Frankly, I believe the 76-year-old Gypsy.

Okay, a little fun. In a review for the New York Sun (of which I’m music critic), I mentioned that Lorin Maazel, the New York Philharmonic’s conductor, rarely used a score, while André Previn is on record as saying that this is always “a conceit” — from anyone.

Someone wrote in to the paper, saying, “This brings to mind the conductor Otto Klemperer, who was asked why he always conducted from a score, unlike his contemporary, the great Arturo Toscanini. Klemperer’s response? ‘Because I can read music.’”

Ridiculous, of course. But classic Klemperer (father of Werner, from Hogan’s Heroes, by the way).

I’m indebted to George Will for noting the following: that Rep. Pete Stark, “a paleo-liberal from Northern California, cried, ‘Rich kids will not pay; their daddies will get them deferments.’ He meant” — continued Will — “draft deferments. It is almost unkind to awaken Stark from his dogmatic slumbers to notify him that there has not been a draft since 1973. And the Beatles have broken up.”

Lovely, lovely. And Will ended that column: “In Maryland, liberalism’s old melody lingers on. Ehrlich, who hopes to stop the music, tells [a] women’s club that ‘the first time the race card doesn’t work will be the last time it is used.’ But it is not true that there is a first time for everything.”

So true — and so well put.

Some language? At dinner tonight, a waiter said — wanting to brush the debris off my table (there’s always a lot when I eat) — “May I crumb your table?” I liked that verb, which was new on me: “to crumb.”

And it appears that the Romanians are getting rather Frenchy. Do they have their own academy? Listen to this from the AP: “Pity the Romanian hot-dog vendor. Under a new language law, he or she [ugh] would be called by a Romanian-only, American-slang-free sobriquet: ‘vendor of a kind of sausage in a kind of roll.’” Also, a laptop would have to be known as “an apparatus for putting at the top of the lap.”

Noted the AP, “The law, which awaits presidential approval, has some Romanians up in arms and others doubled over with laughter. Supporters say it bolsters the country’s self-esteem, while opponents see it as narrow-minded at a time when Romania is striving to mesh with the prosperous, multilingual European Union.”

Ah, the Romanians. Ah, the French! When I was a student, the Academy hated “weekend” — versus fin-de-semaine — hated “computer,” rather than ordinateur, and hated a whole lot of other things as well. The leader of this anti-English, and anti-American, crusade was Jack (yes, Jack — not Jacques, which was funny) Lang.

Me? I just like language — words in any of ’em!

Later.