The New Criterion

Oct 10, 2008 06:13 PM

Nixonland

by Michael Weiss

William Ibershof, the lead prosecutor of the Weathermen in 1972 (and so the Marcia Clark to Bill Ayers' O.J.), has written a letter to the editor of the New York Times in response to its article on Obama's association with the domestic terrorist. Ibershof does little beyond add another layer of sediment on top of a story that partisans of the Illinois senator, and evidently two-thirds of voters polled by Fox News, wish to see dead and buried. However, one point he makes merits attention for its historical irony:

I do take issue with the statement in your news article that the Weathermen indictment was dismissed because of “prosecutorial misconduct.” It was dismissed because of illegal activities, including wiretaps, break-ins and mail interceptions, initiated by John N. Mitchell, attorney general at that time, and W. Mark Felt, an F.B.I. assistant director.

So Deep Throat's incompetence enabled Ayers escape jail, become a fixture in the radical groves of academia, and then head up an education program endowed by Richard Nixon's former ambassador to Great Britain.

As Yogi Berra said upon learning of the Jewish mayor of Dublin: Only in America.

Oct 09, 2008 05:39 PM

Who killed “reality”? Who but the media?

by James Bowman

Sometimes you can only shake your head in wonderment at the obtuseness of the media in failing to understand the world that they themselves have created. In a column titled "Running from Reality" in today’s Washington Post, the veteran commentator and pundit, David Broder cited something that stood out as "strange" even in this, the "strangest of all presidential contests" —

John McCain and Barack Obama have been asked twice — once in the Mississippi debate and again on Tuesday night — what their priorities would be. McCain flat-out refused to choose, arguing that the United States can do it all. Obama mentioned energy, health care and education but did not acknowledge that he might have to choose among them. Similarly, they declined to spell out what sacrifices they might have to ask Americans to make, beyond moderating their energy use or easing their demands for Washington-financed projects. It was a stunning rejection of reality.

A rejection of reality, certainly, but what on earth is "stunning" about it? What would be stunning would be a candidate with the courage — more like the suicidal foolhardiness — even to acknowledge "reality," let alone accept it. Mr Broder’s Post colleague, Tom Shales,had similarly complained that neither candidate "gave a particularly electrifying performance and neither seemed truly responsive to the current frightening headlines about the potential collapse of the U.S. economy." He, too, used the "R" word, noting that "the debate had the aura of an almost meaningless ritual being conducted in a soundproof room while outside, panic and calamity were spreading like giant cracks in the earth. The candidates seemed protected from reality rather than having met on the field of battle to confront it."

Dear, dear. Can it be that two such seasoned observers of the American political scene and the media’s coverage of it could be surprised at this evasion of reality, or not understand the reasons for it? More interestingly, can they really be as unaware as they seem to be of their own part, and that of their media colleagues, in making the debates as boring as they are almost bound to be?

For there are only two ways in which candidates at all levels are allowed to compete with each other under the ground rules set up for them by the media. One is in mouthing platitudes, truisms and inspirational autobiographical vignettes, and the other is in casting aspersions on the moral or intellectual character or the bona fides of one’s opponent. That’s how the thing has been set up to run because (a) anything substantive would be too boring to command the sort of audience the media have come to depend on and (b) the substantive differences between the candidates are, in any case, relatively small — though that, too, is probably as a result of the media’s demands — and must be made to seem much larger than they are, as well as more exciting and dramatic, by being moralized and personalized. Besides, a debate which took place in the realm of what the media wise men are pleased to call reality would provide no interpretative role for the media themselves in telling their audience what the candidate’s words really mean.

I can only assume those who cover the election only in terms of what their critics call the "horse race" have so far taken this approach for granted that they don’t see how politics has adapted to the tenor of their coverage. The gaffe, the manufactured outrage, the mini-scandal, all these are the media’s contribution to the coverage of politics, but we are now at the point where the coverage and the politics are indistinct and inseparable. The candidates are playing the same game, trying to catch each other out in falsehood or scandal just like the media, which means that nothing will ever be discussed in a political campaign that is not as bland and safe as they can make it. When your first consideration is protecting yourself from scandal, safe means sticking to the general, the inspirational and the utopian — or the sins of the other guy. No one is going to ask for sacrifice or the choice between unpalatable options because both the media and his opponent would immediately treat it as a gaffe, a breakthrough to something that might be unpopular and therefore cause him to lose the election. And who’s going to win or lose the election is the only story the media really care about.

Oct 08, 2008 06:20 PM

Yeah, “right”

by Stefan Beck

The most philosophically engaging question of last night’s debate may go unremarked: “Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?”

Here is McCain’s response, in part: “I think it’s a responsibility, in this respect, in that we should have available and affordable health care to every American citizen, to every family member. And with the plan that—that I have, that will do that.”

Here is Obama’s response, in part: “Well, I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can’t pay their medical bills—for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

Here, for reference, is The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy on the first ten amendments to the Constitution, in full: “Among other provisions, they protect the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, and the press (see First Amendment); restrict governmental rights of search and seizure; and list several rights of persons accused of crimes (see Fifth Amendment).”

What the rights enshrined in these amendments have in common is that they pertain to things that cannot be taken away: speech, press, assembly, arms, protection from quartering of troops, protection from search and seizure, due process, fair trial, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and states’ rights. Freedom of the press and the right to bear arms, for example, do not entitle you to free printing presses or guns.

Health care is provided by doctors. No one can be forced to practice medicine. No one, having learned to practice medicine, can be forced to treat you. ER physicians are required to treat all comers only in the sense that they can lose their jobs if they don’t. I’ve never heard it convincingly argued that one can have a “right” to a commodity produced by someone else. (Does one, by extension, have a standing “right” to treatments not yet developed?)

McCain said the responsible thing: It would be great if there were “available and affordable health care“ for “every American.” No sane or compassionate person can argue with that. Obama said that it “should be a right.” But rights have nothing to do with “should.” Rights are entitlements contingent on nothing but birth—you might even say they are “God-given.”

A civilized and wealthy country, one that provides roads, schools, and a postal service, ought to be able to provide rudimentary health care for its citizens. But that is a far cry from saying that one has a “right” to it. To say that one has a “right“ to transportation, education, or mailing a letter is to allow that some people, in the service of that “right,” must be compelled to lay asphalt, teach algebra, and deliver mail. I’d like to see anyone make that argument on a national stage. Affordable health care is a worthy goal, but to claim that it’s an entitlement is to wantonly deceive the electorate—and it has to stop.

Oct 07, 2008 08:14 PM

Putting on Ayers

by Stefan Beck

A friend and I have been having a spirited discussion about whether or not Palin’s comments about William Ayers represent a “political ploy.” The dictionary defines a “ploy” as “a maneuver or stratagem, as in conversation, to gain the advantage.” My friend—and everyone else—seems to define it as “a sleazy, dishonest maneuver or strategem to gain an unfair and undeserved advantage.” Palin’s remarks were certainly a ploy; the question is by which definition.

If Obama’s association with Ayers is irrelevant—if he cannot in any sense be guilty by association—why has Obama tried to misrepresent that association? Even CNN concedes that Obama has deliberately played down his work with Ayers. It’s almost as if he knows that there’s something untoward about working, in any capacity, with man who tried to murder a judge and his family.

I am here reminded of the many poets and writers who have received accolades for refusing to appear at White House literary functions on the grounds that “Bush is a terrorist.” Obama had a number of chances to do the same with respect to an actual terrorist, and didn’t. Try to imagine inviting your friends to a party where the other host is an unrepentant attempted murderer. Try to imagine, for that matter, being in the same room with an unrepentant attempted murderer, the revulsion and contempt it would be natural to feel.

Why are they bringing this up now? my friend asked. I have a theory. They haven’t hammered on it because it’s a very risky thing to hammer on. Consider how many people are more offended that it’s being mentioned than that it happened in the first place. Or how many people object to describing Ayers as a “terrorist.” (In fact, my friend provided a cogent but, to my mind, unconvincing argument for why it’s the wrong word; he had no problem, however, with “attempted murderer,” and added that Ayers was worse than that, since he was also attempting to influence the justice system through violence.)

Consider how many people participated in the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Do you suppose they like being reminded that some of their comrades were violent sociopaths? Consider how many people, never having directly experienced violence, can only think of it in the abstract. What are the odds that those people will fill in the missing parts of the story, like the terrified young boy “thinking that someone was lifting and dropping [his] bed as the explosions jolted [him] awake”?

They haven’t hammered on it because of the very real danger—the danger being born out now—that people will think it’s unfair, a smear, and a character assassination. Well, William Ayers was an assassin, albeit an unsuccessful one. Palin should have said, “Obama engineered a radical ‘social justice’-based school reform program with the help of an attempted assassin.” It accomplishes the feat of being closer to the truth while being even more damning than her actual words.

Oct 06, 2008 04:21 PM

Pigs Might Fly

by James Bowman

Readers of my last post here who are fans of Rudyard Kipling will have recognized the allusion in it to his great poem, "The Gods of the Copybook Headings." The fact that liquids only trickle downwards, I wrote, is one of those inescapable realities — as, for instance, that "water will certainly wet us" and "fire will certainly burn" — which from time to time political hucksters emerge to persuade us are not inescapable at all. On the contrary, they are as subject to the hitherto undreamt-of political powers of what Kipling calls these "smooth-tongued wizards" as the laws of gravity are to the advocates of "trickle-up economics." Eventually, of course, the promises of the hucksters always end in tears, which is why everyone ought to read and, indeed, memorize Kipling’s poem. It could have been written as a warning against the dangers of the political fantasies currently being peddled by The Chosen One, Barack Obama.

So, at least, I thought until I picked up my copy of The New York Times this morning to read Roger Cohen’s tribute to "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" as a rebuke to, of all people, Sarah Palin! How, you might wonder, had Governor Palin, spokesman for and champion of small town America, contrived to range herself with the promisers of political utopia? Turns out that, according to Mr Cohen, it was by saying "never again" to the irresponsible and greedy bankers who, as she saw it, had produced the crisis on Wall Street. According to this way of thinking, you are — or at least Sarah Palin is — only ever allowed to say "never again" to the Holocaust or, possibly, another example of genocide, which sort of spoils the point of saying it at all. But to use the expression about any lesser human calamity is apparently to risk becoming one of the smooth-tongued wizards and promisers of political pie in the sky that Kipling’s poem was written to discredit.

Well, he’s got this much of a point at least: neither Governor Palin nor anyone else is ever going to be in a position to banish from the world greed and irresponsibility. But then, neither is anyone ever going to be in a position to banish genocide. In any case, she didn’t promise that she would abolish either. She only called on ordinary people — "just everyday American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation" — to "band together" to make sure that nothing like this credit crisis, based on foolishly improvident loans, would happen again. Nor is the rhetorical sin, if such it be, in claiming as one’s political goal an ambition to prevent from happening the bad things that are pretty certain to happen anyway a very grave one. It’s not like telling us that the moon is made of cheese or that pigs can fly, which are two of Kipling’s examples.

Here’s another one, quoted by Roger Cohen himself as an example of how "Truth, in short, confronts delusion and utopia." (Would that it did!)

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul.
But though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don’t work you die."

Now I appeal to my fair-minded readers, whom does that snatch of verse sound more like: the "maverick" populist McCain-Palin campaign or the smooth-talking Obama-Biden one? Is it not Mr Cohen’s favored candidate who promises to pay for the massive increases in spending his abundance-for-all health plan will require by raising taxes only on "the rich"? And is not collective Paul, the beneficiary of this imaginary largesse supposedly taken from rich Peter, further promised his own "middle class tax cut"? These things, I’m afraid, are only slightly more likely to happen than pigs’ flying.

Coincidentally, The Wall Street Journal today offers a powerful editorial titled "Biden’s Fantasy World" in which it enumerates the falsehoods and fantasies of Governor Palin’s opponent in the debate where she so injudiciously uttered the fatal words, "never again." It will be interesting to see if Senator Biden is ever called to account by the media and forced to retract these mis-statements of fact — as, for example, that Senator Obama never said he would meet with the Iranian president without conditions or that the U.S. and France kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. I’m betting that pigs will fly before that happens. Roger Cohen is certainly right to say in his peroration that "The world’s still a dangerous place" so that "it’s time for copybook realists in the White House." But to suppose that Obama-Biden is the realistic ticket is itself an example of political fantasy.

Oct 06, 2008 11:27 AM

Where's my Nobel?

by Michael Weiss

The last time I made my way throught the vast ergonomic jungle of an Ikea warehouse, I noticed that all the books on the shelves of the affordable and funky bookcases were copies of Philip Roth's I Married a Communist -- in Swedish translation. I thought it curious and amusing then that a proud Nordic furniture manufacturer would think a satire on McCarthyism written by the ranking Jewish-American satyr should be a place-holder in every recent college graduate's fantasy living room. But now I'm not so sure Ikea wasn't onto something. Writing at Slate, Adam Kirsch suggests that that Roth is the best rejoinder to Nobel academy's permanent secretary Horace Engdahl, who issued the instantly infamous comment last week that Americans are the also-rans of world literature, thereby also removing one country from the running this year:

Engdahl accuses Americans of not "participating in the big dialogue of literature," but no American writer has been more cosmopolitan than Roth. As editor of Penguin's "Writers From the Other Europe" series, he was responsible for introducing many of Eastern Europe's great writers to America, from Danilo Kiš to Witold Gombrowicz; his 2001 nonfiction book Shop Talk includes interviews with Milan Kundera, Ivan Klima, and Primo Levi. In his own fiction, too, Roth has been as adventurously Postmodern as Calvino while also making room for the kind of detailed realism that has long been a strength of American literature. Unless and until Roth gets the Nobel Prize, there's no reason for Americans to pay attention to any insults from the Swedes.

That's a good point, but it ignores the real scandal of Engdahl's cheap and philistine remark; i.e., that a cosmopolitan interest in literature, rather than the writing of cosmopolitan literature itself, is the sufficient precondition for nabbing the million dollar bauble endowed by the inventor of dynamite. If ownership of a polyglot library is what does it for the Stockholm judges these days, then hell, I'm entitled to the prize, and a distinction that's already something of a cliche for bad taste and political tendentiousness is even more of a joke than we thought.

A shame, too, because there is an American whom I can envision receiving the Nobel for Literature... Assuming, that is, we piss off Europe and fail to elect him president next month.