As you know, NR’s Richard Brookhiser is not only a crack journalist, but a crack historian (and, no, I’m not referring to his elegant broadsides against the illegality of drugs). Rick is the author of many books, on Washington, Hamilton, the Adamses, and others.
And he has an amazing talent for coming up with an exact and arresting historical analogy. It doesn’t much matter what the subject or event is, Rick will find just the right parallel. And on this matter of Bush’s reception in London–and the British intelligentsia’s furious and fevered contempt for him–he has come up with a beaut. This is, really, the aptest thing you ever saw.
It comes from The Education of Henry Adams. Listen to this, folks:
London was altogether beside itself on one point, in especial; it created a nightmare of its own, and gave it the shape of Abraham Lincoln. Behind this it placed another demon, if possible more devilish, and called it Mr. Seward. In regard to these two men, English society seemed demented. Defence was useless; explanation was vain; one could only let the passion exhaust itself. One’s best friends were as unreasonable as enemies, for the belief in poor Mr. Lincoln’s brutality and Seward’s ferocity became a dogma of popular faith.
There was an episode in which W. M. Thackeray utterly lost it, so disturbed was he about President Lincoln:
On quite insufficient evidence, he burst into violent reproach. Had Adams carried in his pocket the proofs that the reproach was unjust, he would have gained nothing by showing them. At that moment Thackeray, and all London society with him, needed the nervous relief of expressing emotion; for if Mr. Lincoln was not what they said he was–what were they?
Yes, what were they? Apologists for, and twice-removed perpetuators of, slavery? And if Mr. Bush is not what “they” say he is–what are they? Apologists for, and twice-removed perpetuators of, terrorism and the dictatorships that abet it?
Nice going, Rick. Really nice going.
‐Was I mentioning crazy folk? Well, let’s talk a little about the Democratic party–specifically, its presidential primaries. Now, some of my Democratic friends, and readers, have chided me for using, and over-using, the “c” word–crazy–in reference to those very primaries. I have, for example, let it fly about Howard Dean–at least about his campaign demeanor (for he is giving activist voters the left-wing equivalent of what Moynihan once dubbed “boob bait for Bubbas”). But before you chide me again, consider this: Yesterday’s papers brought the news that the good doctor has been endorsed by . . . Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas.
The “c” word doesn’t sound so crazy now, does it? Hmmm?
‐Okay, let’s stick with the “crazy” theme for a minute–and consider Dick Gregory, the comedian-turned-activist-turned-faster-turned-health-food-hustler-turned-etc., and Dr. Prof. Cornel West, late of Harvard University, now of Princeton University, lucky school.
I was faxed by a PR firm called Buzzword two letters that these worthies sent to the “Chair and CEO” (“Chair” must mean chairman) of Yum! Brands, Inc., which is the parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken (now called “KFC,” I gather, lest people dwell discouragingly on that word “Fried”). Mr. Gregory and Dr. West have joined a crusade against the Colonel for what PETA, primarily, alleges is cruelty toward animals (specifically, chickens).
I don’t know the facts of the KFC case–although I know what PETA alleges, and forgive me if I don’t swallow it whole, as I would a plate of the Colonel’s delicious chicken–but I find super-amusing the letters of these gents, which are virtually identical. Apparently, they were given form letters to sign.
There are a few small differences. Dick Gregory says, “As someone who cares about injustice, wherever it rears its head . . .” (oh, is that so, Dick? Haven’t really heard you on the Islamic world, China, or Cuba, to name just three areas). Professor Doctor West says, “As a person who is concerned about all injustices . . .” (ditto). They both say, “Please respond to me via fax, care of Ingrid Newkirk at PETA . . .” Well, good thing the Chair and CEO of Yum! Brands is invited to respond, even if he must fax, and do so through Ingrid!
But I didn’t tell you the best thing about the West letter: He signs it, “Cornel West, Ph.D.”–just in case you suspected that an Ivy League professor lacked a doctoral degree. In fact, West’s sensitivity about his credentials prompted a piece of mine, some time ago, called “Is There a Dr. in the House?” (there were also spin-off Impromptus columns from the piece). As I mentioned there, Rick Brookhiser, in a survey of mail sent to WFB, decided that the most boring letters were those signed “Ph.D.” (and the most interesting ones were from prison).
Oh, that PR firm, Buzzword? Its letter to me said that “Mr. Gregory and Dr. West [good thing you got that honorific right] join a growing number of prominent African-Americans . . . calling on KFC to make improvements in animal welfare.” Well, now that African Americans are on board–I guess KFC is sunk.
What does race have to do with this controversy? Oh, never mind. It’s just another day in a very, very screwy country.
‐I suppose I should state here, pro forma, that I hate animal abuse–or any abuse–and that Dick Gregory, before he went loopy (which was a long time ago), was a fabulously talented comedian and personality.
Okie-doke?
‐In the current issue of NR–the one set to “expire” tomorrow, Friday–I have a review of Richard Pipes’s memoirs, Vixi (Latin for “I have lived”). (We were thinking of titling the review “Whistling Vixi.”) These are great memoirs, by a great man, and I will not repeat my review here. But I wanted to afford you some additional tastes of this unique scholar.
He is a blunt, direct man, who despises euphemism, coyness, or equivocation. Consider his very dedication: “I dedicate this book to the memory of my parents, Mark and Sofia Pipes, in gratitude for giving me life and then saving me from certain death at the hands of the Nazis.” There is no beating around the bush here; no poetry; nothing merely allusive. No, they saved me from certain death at the hands of–who? Let’s be specific, now–”the Nazis.” That’s Pipes.
(In his memoirs, Pipes describes his family’s harrowing escape from German-occupied Poland, and it is true that his parents were fantastically resourceful in saving themselves and their only child.)
Pipes is one of the most important Russianists of our times, and he has spent his entire career under attack. One of the things he is called, habitually, is a Russophobe, and here he answers that charge, in a way that provides food for thought, even about our current struggles with the Islamic world:
I draw a sharp distinction between Russian governments and the Russian people, and further between educated Russians and the population at large. I have immense admiration and sympathy for Russian intellectuals (even as I criticize their politics). When I read the prose of Turgenev, Tolstoy, or Chekhov, the poetry of Pasternak and Akhmatova, when I listen to the songs of an Okudzhava or Vysotsky, when I observe the heroism of a Sakharov, I am at home. Indeed, I almost feel Russian. But things appear to me in a very different light when I study Russian politics, the focus of my interests as an historian, or meet with Russians who hold a public post. Russians are an intensely personal people who have never succeeded in translating their warm human feelings into the impersonal relations required for the effective functioning of social and political institutions. Hence they require a “strong hand” to regulate their public lives: vertical controls to substitute for the missing horizontal bonds, so well developed in Western societies. I dislike this feature of Russian life and I dislike the people who implement it. I further have no sympathy for Russian nationalism and the anti-Westernism which provide a convenient bond between authority and the uneducated masses. (Incidentally, my attitude toward the United States is neatly reversed: I have the highest respect for its public life but much less for its culture.) All of this has nothing to do with Russophobia. I would hardly have devoted my life to studying a people I disliked.
And when Pipes said the following about the Soviet Union, I couldn’t help thinking of what I’ve heard about Cuba, a thousand times:
What most troubled me about visits to the Soviet Union . . . was not the poverty and drabness but the pervasive lying. I do not mean the brazen lies pouring out of the official propaganda machine: no one I met paid much attention to them. Rather, it was that all human relations there, except in the intimate circle of friends and family, rested on make-believe: everyone was lying, everyone knew you knew they were lying, and yet one had to pretend otherwise. Nothing had changed since the 1930s when André Gide paid his famous visit to the USSR: “truth,” he wrote on his return, was “spoken with hatred, and falsehood with love.” This created the suffocating ambience that made it such joy to leave the country.
Pipes is, in many respects, a glorious cuss, who takes things seriously. In fact, he may be the last serious man (along with Thomas Sowell–a very serious man, in the high sense). Writes Pipes, “[Harvard] . . . became more politicized and more partisan. Suffice it to say that when I joined the Reagan administration . . ., one senior member of the faculty referred to me in private conversation as a ‘traitor.’ The insult was passed on to me, but he never seemed to realize why I would refuse to shake hands with him.”
Care for a Pipesian aperçu? He says,
My appointment [to a Harvard chair] was greeted with warm congratulations from well-wishers and howls of envy from the others (the latter sounds reached me secondhand). Those who had aspired to the chair but failed to get it, never forgave me. As I was to learn at the time, envy is in some ways the worst of the seven deadly sins: whereas the other six harm the sinner, this one harms its object, who can fend it off only at his own expense. Balzac has well characterized envy as that “ignoble accumulation of disappointed hopes, frustrated talents, failures, and wounded pretensions.”
Pipes believes–he states explicitly–that he was spared “certain death at the hands of the Nazis” in order to live a useful life in which he spread the word about totalitarianism, particularly Communism, which dominated the globe in the second half of the 20th century. (His son, Daniel Pipes, is now working on Islamism.) (And please note, bed-wetters, that Islamism is different from Islam.) Richard Pipes believes that he was meant not only to survive but, to borrow from Faulkner, to prevail. A title of a Pipes book is “Survival Is Not Enough.” This is one of my favorite titles of all time.
Anyway, just wanted to get some of that out.
‐Ladies and gentlemen, this column has followed, for years now, the fate of Oscar Biscet, one of the bravest and most inspiring of the Cuban political prisoners. He’s a black man, but because the regime that persecutes him is of the Left, he receives no sympathy from the liberals of the West. So, it falls, essentially, to us, us callous right-wingers.
I am disgusted to report that Biscet has been transferred to a dungeon, a punishment cell, which he shares with a genuine criminal, who has committed twelve assaults. (Perhaps Biscet can help him–I mean morally.) You may read the story here. Even now, however, Biscet is full of love. He is convinced that God’s light will overwhelm the darkness of that dungeon, and I know that a great many readers are right with him.
Look, if I may end with something all too earthly, and obvious: Had Biscet the attention of the mainstreamers–the folks at 60 Minutes, the editorialists of the Times, etc.–there’s no way that Castro would dare do to him what he does. No way.
So, it falls to us, to do what we can.