February 11, 2005, 7:36 a.m.
Czechs and Cubans, our SecState rock star, simian like Lincoln, &c.

What is it about the Czechs and the Cubans? Why is it that the Czechs, almost uniquely, care about the lives of Cubans? I've written about this before, and intend to do so again — more expansively.

But not at this moment. For now, I'll simply recap what you may well have heard: The EU — mainly at the urging of the new Socialist government in Spain — has suspended sanctions that it imposed on Cuba after Castro's brutal crackdown in March 2003. Spain and much of the rest of the EU are eager for things to be hunky-dory again with the regime.

But the Czechs won an important concession. You see, after the crackdown, the EU embassies in Havana began to invite oppositionists and dissidents — those still unjailed — to receptions and the like. And the Spain-led EU was on the verge of banning those invitations, as Castro has insisted.

The Czechs said no: They said they would use their veto power in the EU Council of Foreign Ministers to prevent any ban on the dissidents. And Spain et al. were forced to back down. (To read a news article on the matter, please go here.)

I also wish you to note the piece by Vaclav Havel published in the Miami Herald. It appeared before the Czech government won its victory, before the EU was forced to reverse course. Havel speaks of the importance of being related to by diplomats from democratic countries when you're a dissident in a totalitarian country. And he says,

One of the strongest and most powerful democratic institutions in the world — the European Union — has no qualms about making a public promise to the Cuban dictatorship that it will reinstitute diplomatic apartheid. The EU's embassies in Havana will now craft their guest lists in accordance with the Cuban government's wishes. The shortsightedness [there's a polite word] of Socialist prime minister José Zapatero of Spain has prevailed. . . .

Today, the EU is dancing to Fidel Castro's tune. . . .

Where will it end? The release of Milosevic? Denying a visa to Russian human-rights activist Sergey Kovalyov? An apology to Saddam Hussein? The opening of peace talks with al Qaeda?

I believe that Havel and his fellow Czechs effectively shamed the EU. (How the Czechs should know the misery of appeasement!) They were the only ones around to do so.

I noticed something else when I read Havel's piece: Not only is he a great man — boy, can he write. Of course, it's more important to be a great man. But — as with Solzhenitsyn — it helps that Havel has a great pen as well.

You've probably seen — or at least heard about — Dick Morris's column on Condi Rice, saying she ought to run for president: to beat Hillary. Morris began, "As she tours the continent after her Senate confirmation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is like a rock star — her every movement, her every meeting covered by an adoring media."

Morris continued, "America's first black female secretary of state is doing in public what she has always done in private — speaking frankly about America's priorities and the realities of the post-Cold War world. As she jokes with German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, loosening up his dogmatic anti-American policies, lectures Russia about freedom, and warns Israel of tough decisions ahead, one thing is obvious: A star is being born."

Forgive me if I go back to my 1999 piece on Rice, in which I wrote, "Here is a prediction about her: If she becomes secretary of state or even something lesser, she will be big. Rock-star big." That was the most noticed line from that piece, and Rice was teased some about it.

But it was an amazingly easy call. All you had to do was meet and talk to her.

I keep singing the glory of Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor (and a Democrat). Here's the latest: A columnist at Newsday, Les Payne, wrote of President Bush's "simian lips." And Koch wrote a letter to the paper (as is his wont). He said,

Les Payne is an editor and columnist with Newsday. He has held these positions for many years. When I read Sunday's Newsday, I was truly shocked to read his column and language describing the president of the United States and his inaugural address. Payne wrote, "The president was barely in better voice than Rehnquist, with his simian lips tripping workmanlike over his prose." I disagree with Payne's description of the speech and its delivery. I liked the substance and the style of the president's remarks, but Payne is entitled to his journalistic opinion.

However, he is not entitled to use the columns of Newsday to voice his racism. I believe that Newsday's senior editors had an obligation to edit out his vulgar and racist remark. Payne described the president as having "simian lips." The definition of simian in Webster's Dictionary is, "Relating to, characteristic of, or resembling an ape or monkey."

What if a Newsday columnist had referred to the lips of the Rev. Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson in that way? There would have been a flood of complaints, pickets at Newsday's office and cancellations of subscriptions. Rightly so. Both Newsday and Payne should apologize immediately to the president and Newsday's readers.

Payne wrote another column — repeating his charge, and damning Koch — and Koch wrote another letter (unpublished).

But my point: Mayor Koch is "on it," as I hear on the streets — "Which streets?" you may well ask — and I respect him hugely for it.

Oh, yeah, I had another point too: As I've mentioned before, Lincoln was constantly insulted in primatological terms. They called him a gorilla and "the Illinois ape"; they depicted him as hairy and stooped over, his knuckles dragging on the ground.

Indeed, Lincoln and Bush are two presidents who have a lot in common. We had an unusual Impromptus about that — remember? — last summer, based on the cherished 1952 biography by Benjamin P. Thomas. Here 'tis.

And do you remember this one? After a Lincoln speech, a Democratic editor in Chicago wrote the following: "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States."

That speech, my friends, was the Gettysburg Address.

I have been following — with interest and revulsion — the contretemps involving our Jonah Goldberg and Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan, and president-elect of the ghastly MESA (Middle East Studies Association).

I don't know Mr. Cole — although one can know him through his writings — but I do know a little something about the University of Michigan, at least the way it was 20 years ago. I wonder how much has changed.

Veteran readers may remember something I wrote in Impromptus six days after September 11. I reprint below:

. . . I'd like to say one more thing — something autobiographical. I have held off, but it seems appropriate, and — who knows? — it may be of some help to people, as they think our situation through.

When I was young, I was quite the little Arabist — cocksure, arrogant, wholly misguided. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Mich., and there were many Arab students — most of them Palestinian — in my high school. I befriended them, loved them. Was intensely interested in them. Some wore keys around their necks, and they claimed that these were the keys to the homes back in Palestine their families had been forced to abandon. I was mightily impressed. Later on, I knew to doubt the authenticity of those keys.

I remember one girl, who liked me, asking, "Jay, you're not Jewish, are you?" She had to be reassured before our friendship could continue.

I was taught to believe that the Arab-Israeli conflict was very much like the American South: a civil-rights struggle. The Arabs were the blacks — the victims, the oppressed. The Israelis were the whites, the oppressors. Menachem Begin was pretty much George Wallace; his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, was Bull Connor (they even looked alike). Arafat, of course, was Martin Luther King. It seemed very clear.

In due course, I grew up, but it took a while. I enrolled in the Near Eastern Studies Department at the University of Michigan, where I took several courses, including the Arabic language. The department was dominated by extremists. The graduate assistants, certainly, were Arabs to the "left" of the PLO, meaning, they took Arafat and Co. to be sell-outs, untrue to the cause. There was no discussion of the legitimacy of Israel: It wasn't discussable; Israel was illegitimate, and every worthy person knew it.

One day, we trooped into an auditorium to see a documentary on the conflict. I can't remember the name of the documentary or of the documentary-maker, but I can see her, and she was on hand to introduce her film and to take questions. The film featured mainly radical Palestinians talking about dismembering Israel.

During the Q&A, a middle-aged white woman — a little fat — raised her hand and asked the following question: "These were such extreme voices. You've made a wonderful film, but couldn't you have found some softer, more moderate voices?"

In the row in which I was sitting were several Arab students — older ones, graduate students — and one of them, in front of everybody, stood up and said words I will never forget. I won't forget the words, or his face, or his relatively quiet, determined tone. He said: "I will kill you." (This was directed at the woman who had asked the question.) His buddies got him to sit down.

But that's not the important part — what he said is not the important part. The important part is, no one said a word. No one reacted. We all sort of coughed, and looked away, nervously. We all pretended that what had just occurred had not, in fact, occurred — or that it was normal, acceptable. We simply ignored it.

Eventually, I took another path, both at the university and in my own thought. I could never be convinced that America and its influence were evil. I could not be convinced that Israel was illegitimate. And I could not accept the "I will kill you" and our complete cowardice, or complicity, in the face of it.

I sort of vowed, inwardly, that I wouldn't be afraid, wouldn't be intimidated, by Arab extremism. We all dance delicately around it. We tend to sweep it under the rug. We look away, all politically correct, and cough. I further vowed that, unlike my fellow white liberals, I would pay Arabs the compliment of treating them as full human beings, accountable for their words and actions, capable of good or bad, like everyone else — morally responsible. I wouldn't treat them as children, unable to help a certain savagery. I wouldn't "understand" that savagery, in the sense my teachers intended. I wouldn't have double, or triple, or quadruple standards. All men were equal.

My lessons were hard, but they have lasted, and I believe they are right ones.

Two months later, I had occasion to write the following:

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 Professor Beinin — who has spent the last many years at Stanford — is the new president of the Middle Eastern Studies Association . . .

Oh, well.

And now: Mr. Juan Cole. Lovely. Just lovely.

Not long ago, I met with a group of very impressive people in NR's offices. They were the gang from Ideazione, an Italian magazine and think tank. (They are a one-stop-shopping bunch.) These are the "American-style conservatives" of Italy, a fairly lonely group, despised by the Left, of course, and also by much of the Right, which is fascistic and vile. I urge anyone who can read Italian to avail himself of Ideazione: www.ideazione.com. And I urge everyone else to remember, somehow, this inspired and inspiring group in Italy.

One more thing about them: They remind me of NR, circa 1960. Go get 'em, fellas.

I learned a marvelous phrase from John Stossel. Speaking of his journalistic colleagues, he said, "[They are] steeped like tea bags in the New York Times, and sycophantically copy from it."

Do you know people who are "steeped like tea bags" in the New York Times? I don't think I know more than about, oh, 800. And what a perfect, perfect way of expressing it.

I hope very much you saw David Frum's blog entry for February 9, titled "Giggles and Tears." It deals with the nauseatingly common sniggering at Arab exiles who wish to do something for their stricken homelands. It is powerful, humane, and right, like David. Ought to be read and re-read — especially by those who are guilty.

And how about Charles Krauthammer's column in Time magazine? I wish to cite a favorite passage from it, because it makes a pet point of mine — and with typical Krauthammerian verve:

". . . what about the Europeans? They too were surprised by Iraqis' celebrating on election day. Their first instinct, like Kerry's, is to downplay. Hence the questioning of the legitimacy of the election on the grounds of inadequate Sunni participation. That concern for full participation in an Arab election is as touching as it is novel. Europeans have never had trouble recognizing the legitimacy of regimes in Cairo, Riyadh and Damascus, where there is no participation by anyone. Indeed, many Europeans championed the inviolability of Saddam Hussein's regime, under which election participation was routinely 100% — at the point of a gun."

For 35 years, Iraq was brutalized by the worst elements of the Sunni minority, and no one gave a damn. Now, however — when George W. Bush and the U.S. military have effected liberation — everyone's all solicitous of the Sunnis' well-being. Do you know the marvelous expression "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy"? Well, our sniveling liberals have a new expression: "If the Sunnis ain't happy, ain't nobody can be happy."

I believe the new Iraq, however, will advance with or without them — and most Sunnis will want to be included in.

As long as I'm recommending articles, you will not want to miss Daniel Mandel on Churchill, and how he relates to our present situation. Masterly. Also David Gelernter's column on Bush and Lincoln — stunningly good. And, if you can stand it, Matthew Schofield's article on resurgent anti-Semitism in Europe.

More articles? Music criticism from the New York Sun?

For a review of James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in Mahler's Lied von der Erde — and for a review of the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes in recital — please go here.

For a review of the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst, with the pianist Radu Lupu, please go here.

For a review of The Marriage of Figaro at the Met, please go here.

For a review of the soprano Christine Schäfer in recital, please go here.

And for a review of the New York Philharmonic, under Lorin Maazel, in the "New World" Symphony and the Concerto for Orchestra, please go here.

And for my January "New York Chronicle" in The New Criterion, please go here.

Well, y'all, I'm about linked out, and I should get going. I have a million letters from readers — most of them relating to my Davos journal — but I'd like to publish just one, for the moment. Check it out:

"Dear Jay: I was lucky enough to attend the president's town-hall meeting on Social Security last Friday. In fact, I was one of the first in line. As we waited to go through the metal detector, a few members of the media asked to step in front of us so they could secure their spots inside. 'No problem,' we said. At this point, AP reporter says to Miami Herald, 'You can tell they're Republicans. If they were Democrats they'd be pushing and shoving and shouting.' This from an AP reporter, so it must be true!"

Very nice. And a great weekend to all.