Impromptus

Smoke gets in your eyes, &c.

By
Times Square, New York City, shrouded in smoke that had drifted from wildfires in Canada, June 7, 2023 (Maye-E Wong / Reuters)
On recent air quality; the budget deal; mobs; populist language; an inspired philanthropist; Al Pacino; János Starker; and more

As you may have heard — or experienced — New York City and other places have been suffused in smoke, from Quebec wildfires. A strange experience. I thought of a cartoon I saw in The Spectator, some years ago. People are outside a theater, having a smoke during the intermission of a show. You know how it gets. One of them makes for the door, saying, “Just popping in for some fresh air.”

That’s what you had to do — pop in — for a couple of days.

• About the budget deal, I’ve heard this from Democrats: “Biden ate McCarthy’s lunch. It was a slam dunk.” From Republicans, I’ve heard this: “McCarthy ate Biden’s lunch. It was a slam dunk.” I have not heard either man talk that way. It could be that the deal was a result of normal politics — with give-and-take. But in a tribalized, polarized age, there needs to be a “W” or an “L” — a win or a loss. One side has to “own” the other.

You know what I mean?


More in New York City

• I have said that hatred of bullying is almost the basis of my politics. Hatred of a mob is, too. They are related — bullying and mobs.

A news report says,

Soccer referee Anthony Taylor was swarmed by angry fans at the Budapest airport Thursday after Roma coach José Mourinho criticized then confronted him postgame following his team’s loss to Sevilla in the Europa League final.

Taylor was seen walking with his family through the Budapest airport, a day after the game was held at the city’s Puskas Arena. Multiple videos show throngs of fans chanting at and surrounding Taylor and his family. Some put their hands on Taylor.

Taylor then guided his family past the crowd as some hurled bottles in his direction. One person threw a chair. Several uniformed security officials then surrounded Taylor and his family and guided them to separate room.

A mob is just about the worst thing in the world.

• In Britain, an interesting development. A headline in The New Statesman reads, “Labour’s future will be conservative.” The subheading reads, “Keir Starmer is cautiously ending the liberal progressive politics that has dominated Labour for three decades. Now he needs a true alternative.”

As the article tells us, the Labour leader said, “I’ve got to be honest — I don’t think the language of stability comes naturally to progressive politics.” True. “I think too often we dismiss it as conservative, as a barrier to change.”

Starmer went on to say,

We must understand there are precious things — in our way of life, in our environment, in our communities — that it is our responsibility to protect and preserve and to pass on to future generations. If that sounds conservative, then let me tell you: I don’t care.

Huh.

• Say what you will about the Quebec wildfires: Their smoke covered up the “skunk weed” in New York for a bit.

• Quite possibly, the 2024 presidential race will be a rematch between Biden and Trump. Whatever such a race would be, it would not be Tweedledum vs. Tweedledee. These are two very different cats. Behold:

“A choice, not an echo”!

• When Ron DeSantis is denouncing Disney — which is daily, pretty much — he calls it a “multinational corporation.” He obviously means this as a curse word, or curse phrase. “Corporation” is bad enough, in the populist mindset — but “multinational” makes it worse.

I heard “multinational corporation” a lot when I was growing up. I heard it from the Marxists, when they were inveighing against business, trade, capitalism — all of that. To hear the same rhetoric from Republicans today is a little weird.

But that’s life in the horseshoe.

Also, DeSantis denounces the “corporate media.” By that, he may mean the “mainstream media” or the “liberal media” or something like that. Is Fox News not a corporation? Is Rupert Murdoch not a titan of the corporate world? What are the non-corporate media? Private bloggers?

In theory, populism does not have to be boobish, but it usually turns out that way in practice.

• My favorite news story of the recent period comes out of Qom. The story is headed “Defying taboos, Shiite cleric in Iran takes in street dogs and nurses them back to health.” As a rule, dogs are despised in the Middle East. All honor to Sayed Mahdi Tabatabaei for what he is doing.

• All honor to Hans-Peter Wild, too. As a Salzburg Festival press release explains, he is an entrepreneur, lawyer, and philanthropist. German-born, he is a citizen of Switzerland. He has given a major gift to the Salzburg Festival. A line from his bio popped out at me:

In gratitude and acknowledgment of the liberation of Germany from the Nazis in 1945, Dr. Wild donated 16 million dollars to the US Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, enabling about 300 children of Marines to pursue university studies.

• Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who spied for the Soviets, has died at 79. As the obit in the New York Times noted, Hanssen “informed Moscow about three K.G.B. officers who were secretly spying for the United States, two of whom were later executed.” Hanssen has a lot to answer for.

• Amitai Etizioni has died at 94. Isn’t that a beautiful name, “Amitai Etzioni”? An intellectual, he was probably the foremost communitarian in America, and, though I was cool to his political and social views, I always respected him for his obvious earnestness and goodwill. There are worse things to be than a communitarian.

(For Etzioni’s obit in the Times, go here.)

• I would like to quote the final paragraph of George Maharis’s obit:

In an interview in 2007 with The Chicago Sun-Times, he reflected on his “Route 66” days and on how the country had changed since then. “You could go from one town to the next, maybe 80 miles away, and it was a totally different world,” he said. “Now you can go 3,000 miles and one town is the same as the next.”

I worry about this: American homogenization. Maybe it is a needless worry. Maybe our star-spangled diversity persists. I think it does, by and large. Still, I worry.

• So, as this story reports, Al Pacino is to become a father again. He is 83. His friend and colleague Robert De Niro has just become a father again at 79. Both are short of Saul Bellow, who became a father again at 84. I think he’s the oldest new father I know of . . .

• Ernie Johnson is the host of Inside the NBA and a crack sportscaster. I was interested in a story he related, and you may be too:

• A little music? For my “New York chronicle” in the current New Criterion, go here. I discuss a slew of performers, composers, and issues.

• It’s not often that I come up with something aphoristic, but a thought occurred to me in a diner two days ago. An English muffin is a muffin like an English horn is a horn. (An English horn, as you know, is a woodwind instrument, not a brass instrument. It belongs to the oboe family.)

• I have headed this column “Smoke gets in your eyes, &c.” I am reminded of János Starker, in 1995. I first told this story in The Weekly Standard, that year. I have told it since. Finna tell it again.

Starker, by the way, was a great cellist, an American who was born Jewish in Hungary. Okay, here goes . . .

He had traveled to Columbia, S.C., to give a master class at the University of South Carolina and play with the South Carolina Philharmonic. (The scheduled concerto was the Elgar.) Because the concert hall was smoke-free, administrators informed Starker that he would not be able to smoke in it, even in his private dressing room.

This did not sit well with Starker. At all. He appealed for reconsideration, asking that he be informed about the final decision ASAP, even if it was in the middle of rehearsal.

It was, in fact, in the middle of rehearsal that he was called backstage. No, he would not be allowed to smoke, even in his private room. Regulations forbade it.

Starker returned to the stage and addressed the orchestra, saying roughly this: “I have lived through fascism; I have lived through communism. But I cannot abide the petty tyranny into which this country is falling, and neither should you.” With that, he collected his instrument and left.

There was a pall for a minute or two. Then a clarinetist began to play “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”

Now I can’t get the song out of my head — and I wish you a very nice weekend. Later, y’all.

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