August 07, 2004
Christmas In Cambodia: Kerry's Intellectual Laziness On Parade
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com
One more thing about the Swiftvets and John Kerry that certainly indicates that Kerry habitually either exaggerated or lied about his service in Viet Nam appears in the letter posted below. John Kerry has repeatedly insisted that he spent Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia, which would have been an illegal act as we were not at war with Cambodia at that time. Kerry said his disillusion with the US government and the war began on this night, as he spent his night in Cambodia listening to President Richard Nixon claim that no American troops were there. Here's the relevant section of John O'Neill's letter:
If there is a consistent[1] repeated story by John Kerry about his Vietnam experience, it is his story about how he and his boat spent Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1968 illegally present in Cambodia and, listening to President Nixon's contrary assurances, developed "a deep mistrust of U.S. government pronouncements." See Exhibit 24, Kranish book, p. 84. The point of his story was that his government and his commanders were lying about Kerry's presence in Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. During a critical debate on the floor of the United States Senate on March 27, 1986, Senator John Kerry said:
Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia.
I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me ....
Exhibit 25, Congressional Record - Senate of March 27, 1986, page 3594.
By way of further example, Kerry wrote an article for the Boston Herald on October 14, 1979:
"I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."
See Exhibit 26.
The Christmas in Cambodia story of John Kerry was repeated as recently as July 7, 2004 by Michael Kranish, a principal biographer of Kerry from The Boston Globe. On the Hannity & Colmes television show, Kranish indicated that Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia was a critical turning point in Kerry's life.
The story is a total preposterous fabrication by Kerry. Exhibit 8 is an affidavit by the Commander of the Swift boats in Vietnam, Admiral Roy Hoffmann, stating that Kerry's claim to be in Cambodia for Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1968 is a total lie. If necessary, similar affidavits are available from the entire chain of command. In reality, Kerry was at Sa Dec -- easily locatable on any map more than fifty miles from Cambodia. Kerry himself inadvertently admits that he was in Sa Dec for Christmas Eve and Christmas and not in Cambodia, as he had stated for so many years on the Senate Floor, in the newspapers, and elsewhere. Exhibit 27, Tour, pp. 213-219. Sa Dec is hardly "close" to the Cambodian border. In reality, far from being ordered secretly to Cambodia, Kerry spent a pleasant night at Sa Dec with "visions of sugar plums" dancing in his head. Exhibit 27, p. 219. At Sa Dec where the Swift boat patrol area ended, there were many miles of other boats (PBR's) leading to the Cambodian border. There were also gunboats on the border to prevent any crossing. If Kerry tried to get through, he would have been arrested. Obviously, Kerry has hardly been honest about his service in Vietnam.
Here's a fun fact for those who think that Kerry told the truth and the Swiftvets are just dishonorable (and highly decorated) veterans trying to grab some attention to themselves -- Nixon wasn't President in 1968. Sure, he'd been elected in November, but he didn't take office until 1969, and it would be highly unlikely that Nixon would have been pontificating about military deployments over which he had no control. Nixon hadn't even been in government for eight years.
For over 30 years, Kerry has told that story, apparently far too intellectually lazy or simply stupid to cross-reference an encyclopedia in order to identify the occupant of the White House in 1968. And Democrats call George Bush stupid?
Posted by Captain Ed at 09:48 PM Comments (28) TrackBack (3)
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The Swifties Fire Back
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have hired their own lawyers in response to the Kerry/Edwards campaign's threat of ruinous lawsuits for anyone who allows the independent 527 to purchase ad time at their media outlet. For some reason, the Democrats seem to have a problem with the actual practice of free speech, even after having their party chairman, Terry McAuliffe, call George Bush a deserter and John Kerry question the quality of his National Guard service. When the shoe moves to the other foot, suddenly the Democrats switch from "Bring It On" to "We'll Sue You Into Silence," quite a difference in tone.
Does America need a President this pusillanimous? At least now we understand the reason Kerry selected John Edwards as his vice-president. I suppose that we can expect trial attorneys to attack anyone who dares criticize John Kerry during a Kerry administration, only those trial attorneys will work for the legal offices of the FBI and US Attorneys General.
At any rate, the Swifties intend to stand their ground, showing a bit more character than anyone at the Kerry/Edwards campaign. I've been forwarded a copy of their legal team's response to Kerry's extortionate threats that they have sent to media outlets in which they've made their ad buys. I'm posting the letter below, placing most of it in the extended entry. I think it aptly demonstrates the specificity of the recollections of more than 200 men who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by coming forward -- except for setting the record straight.
They've made a convert out of me.
UPDATE, 8/8: Big thanks to Instapundit and Power Line for their links this morning. Not so incidentally, it was Rocket Man who pointed out to me the Nixon inconsistency of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia fantasy.
UPDATE II: Also, welcome to readers from Lucianne and The Corner!
Dear Station Manager:The purpose of this letter is to present some of the factual support for the advertisement "Any Questions?" produced and used by Swift Boat Veterans For Truth ("Swiftvets"), an organization properly registered under Internal Revenue Code § 527, and which has filed all required reports. Swiftvets is an organization led by Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, USN (retired), Commander of all Swift boats in Vietnam during the period of John Kerry's four-month abbreviated tour in Swift boats between late November 1968 and mid-March 1969. A list of the 254 members may be found on www.swiftvets.com. A large majority of those who served with John Kerry in Swift boats in Vietnam and whose location is known have joined the organization. Thus, for example, sixteen of the twenty-three surviving officers who served in Coastal Division 11 with Kerry (the place where Kerry spent most of his time) have joined the organization, together with most of Kerry's Vietnam commanders and 254 sailors from Coastal Squadron One, ranging from Vice-Admirals to Seamen.The purpose of Swiftvets is to present the truth about John Kerry's post-Vietnam charges of war crimes and John Kerry's own Vietnam record. Swiftvets is uniquely positioned to do so since it includes most of the locatable sailors and officers who served with John Kerry in Vietnam.John Kerry has made his Vietnam record the central focus of his presidential candidacy, depicting purported Vietnam events in nearly $100 million in advertising. Copies of ads such as "Lifetime" and "No Man Left Behind" may be found on Kerry's website. Kerry's authorized campaign biography, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, by Douglas Brinkley (New York: HarperCollins, 2004) ("Tour"), centers on his short Vietnam tour and contains Kerry's account of these events. Additional accounts by Kerry of his Vietnam experience may be found on his website.The AdvertisementA true and correct transcript of the advertisement entitled "Any Questions?" is attached as Exhibit 1. Affidavits are attached (as Exhibits 2 through 14) from each participant in the advertisement, except from John Edwards, the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, whose often-repeated invitation to learn about John Kerry by speaking to the men who served with him begins the advertisement. The filmed comment of Senator Edwards has been made so many times as to be general knowledge.As described in the attached affidavits, Al French (Exhibit 2), Bob Elder (Exhibit 3), Jack Chenoweth (Exhibit 7), Larry Thurlow (Exhibit 10), and Bob Hildreth (Exhibit 14) were all officers in charge of Swift boats in Vietnam in Coastal Division 11 with John Kerry. Coastal Division 11 was a small naval unit with about one hundred sailors and fifteen or sixteen boats which operated in groups of two to six boats. Each of these boat officers operated directly with John Kerry on numerous occasions. Van Odell (Exhibit 6) is a retired Navy enlisted man who also served in Coastal Division 11 on the Chenoweth boat, a few yards from John Kerry during Kerry's March 13, 1969 Bronze Star action.Captain George Elliott, USN (retired), (Exhibit 4) was John Kerry's direct commander in Coastal Division 11, while Captain Adrian Lonsdale, USCG (retired), (Exhibit 9) was Kerry's administrative commander. Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, USN (retired), (Exhibit 8) commanded all Swift boats (including Kerry's) in Vietnam. Each of these commanders interacted on numerous occasions with Kerry and, for example, are discussed for many pages in Kerry's own authorized book, Tour.Dr. Louis Letson (Exhibit 5) was the doctor in Cam Rahn Bay who treated Kerry's first Purple Heart "wound," while Commander Grant Hibbard (Exhibit 11) was John Kerry's commander at Coastal Division 14 where Kerry claimed to have suffered the wound. Finally, Joe Ponder (Exhibit 13) and Shelton White (Exhibit 12) are veterans of Coastal Division 11 who were badly wounded near the Song Bo De River where Kerry served most of his short tour.The Kerry campaign has utilized a revolving group of eight veterans from Coastal Division 11 (none of whom served with Kerry as much as two months). In stark contrast to this small stable of supporters, the veterans on "Any Questions?" have intimate knowledge of John Kerry or (in the case of Ponder and White) of the falsehood and injury of his false war crimes charges. Although many more of the over 250 signers of the Swiftvets' letter served directly with John Kerry, it would be hard to locate people with more detailed and first-hand knowledge of John Kerry's short Vietnam stay than those in the advertisement. They are well-suited to respond with first-hand knowledge to Edward's invitation. Their sworn affidavits are attached (in order of appearance in the advertisement) as Exhibits 2 through 14.Kerry's obtaining of three Purple Hearts permitted him to leave Vietnam some 243 days short of the normal one-year tour. See Exhibit 20, Thrice Wounded Reassignment. Whether or not he fraudulently obtained these awards (the Purple Heart being among the most sacred of all awards) is critical to his true Vietnam story. Continue reading "The Swifties Fire Back"
Posted by Captain Ed at 09:28 PM Comments (88) TrackBack (21)
Monday, August 09, 2004
Captain's Quarters Blog: Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia
Christmas In Cambodia, Part IV: Patrol Or Tourist?
Longtime CQ reader Retired Military points out yet another article with yet another version of the Christmas in Cambodia story from John Kerry. Kerry had long insisted that he was ordered to patrol in Cambodian waters, and spoke of his disillusionment with the war and how it kindled when he heard the president deny that any servicemen were in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968, while he patrolled their waters. He claims that the moment was "seared into his memory," an embittered recollection that would cause him to protest the war and American actions in it on his return to the US.
However, in June 2003, as part of a profile written by Michael Kranish (a name that keeps popping up in Kerry mythmaking), John Kerry tells the Boston Globe that his patrol area was within South Viet Nam -- and he only went into Cambodia to chase down attackers:
The Christmas Eve truce of 1968 was three minutes old when mortar fire exploded around John Forbes Kerry and his five-man crew on a 50-foot aluminum boat near Cambodia. ''Where is the enemy?'' a crewmate shouted.
In the distance, an elderly man was tending his water buffalo -- and serving as human cover for a dozen Viet Cong manning a machine-gun nest.
"Open fire; let's take 'em," Kerry ordered, according to his second-in-command, James Wasser of Illinois. Wasser blasted away with his M-60, hitting the old man, who slumped into the water, presumably dead. With a clear path to the enemy, the fusillade from Kerry's Navy boat, backed by a pair of other small vessels, silenced the machine-gun nest.
When it was over, the Viet Cong were dead, wounded, or on the run. A civilian apparently was killed, and two South Vietnamese allies who had alerted Kerry's crew to the enemy were either wounded or killed.
On the same night, Kerry and his crew had come within a half-inch of being killed by "friendly fire," when some South Vietnamese allies launched several rounds into the river to celebrate the holiday.
To top it off, Kerry said, he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits, prompting Kerry to send a sarcastic message to his superiors that he was writing from the Navy's "most inland" unit.
Back at his base, a weary, disconsolate Kerry sat at his typewriter, as he often did, and poured out his grief. "You hope that they'll courtmartial you or something because that would make sense," Kerry typed that night. He would later recall using court-martial as "a joke," because nothing made sense to him -- the war policy, the deaths, and his presence in the middle of it all.
This narrative makes clear that Kerry disobeyed orders in order to continue his attack, if it happened at all. Otherwise, why would he have sat at his desk hoping to be court-martialed? Compare this to his statement to the Senate in 1986, when his seared-in memory of sitting on a patrol boat in Cambodia, listening to the US president deny he was there embittered him against the war.
Inconsistencies? You bet:
1. Given this account of his Christman in Cambodia, the president (whichever one) couldn't possibly have known of his incursion into Cambodia, since no one authorized it, and even Kerry somewhat hoped to get court-martialed for it.
2. Pushing his Swiftboat into hostile territory to chase down the VC, when would Kerry have time to listen in on American Armed Forces radio? If so, who commanded the boat while he listened to the radio?
3. Wouldn't it be incredibly stupid to have the radio on while trying to engage the enemy on a clandestine mission inside unauthorized territory?
Kerry's story keeps changing over the years -- and the changes are significant, not just minor details. His Christmas in Cambodia myth has had him at various times doing routine patrols to a reckless disregard of orders to complete an engagement. In both cases, having a radio on would almost be equivalent to shouting over a bullhorn that Americans were on the river. It doesn't add up, and neither does Kerry.
Posted by Captain Ed at 07:37 AM Comments (22) TrackBack (2)
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August 08, 2004
Christmas In Cambodia, Part III: Time Flies
Tom Maguire at the excellent blog Just One Minute points out this AP story from twelve years ago explaining Kerry's Cambodia experience. See if you can point out the inconsistencies in Kerry's story back in 1992:
Navy Lt. John Kerry knew he had no business steering his Mekong River patrol boat across the border into Cambodia, but orders were orders. A quarter-century later, Sen. John Kerry says newly declassified documents have convinced him fellow servicemen captured on such trips were left behind at war's end. ...
But for Kerry, who spent six violent months commanding a patrol boat on the Mekong River, there's always been a ring of truth to allegations of abandoned Americans. By Christmas 1968, part of Kerry's patrol extended across the border of South Vietnam into Cambodia.
"We were told, `Just go up there and do your patrol. Everybody was over there (in Cambodia). Nobody thought twice about it," Kerry said. One of the missions, which Kerry, at the time, was ordered not to discuss, involved taking CIA operatives into Cambodia to search for enemy enclaves.
"I can remember wondering, `If you're going to go, what happens to you,"' Kerry said.
Here are the inconsistencies I see:
1. Kerry served four months, not six, in country.2. Christmas in Cambodia switched to Winter in Cambodia after eight years in the Senate.3. "Everybody was over there," except for half of John Kerry's crew, who insist they never went into Cambodia. Perhaps only half of the boat ever crossed into Cambodian waters, or the trio waterskied behind on a really long tow rope.
As Maguire says, "Kerry has no after-action reports, no witnesses, a story by Brinkley that puts him too far from the border, and a less-than-full crew supporting him - not good. Unless everyone is lying except John!"
There's only one way to settle this factually -- John Kerry should do what he and his party chairman insisted of George Bush earlier this year, and release his complete military records. If he does that, we can review the records and find out exactly what kind of officer John Kerry was. As long as he threatens lawsuits and has his minions planning character assassinations on other decorated Viet Nam veterans, then we can safely assume that the 200+ men in the Swiftvets are telling the truth about Kerry.
Posted by Captain Ed at 11:19 PM Comments (6) TrackBack (0)
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Christmas In Cambodia, Part II: Not Without My Shipmates
Drudge reports that the Christmas in Cambodia story continues to fall apart. John O'Neill of Swiftboat Veterans for the Truth writes in his upcoming book at more length on the Cambodia story than his letter to the station managers I reprinted last night. Here's the key passage that points out the dangerous situation the Kerry campaign faces:
All the living commanders in Kerry’s chain of command . . . deny that Kerry was ever ordered to Cambodia. They indicate that Kerry would have been seriously disciplined or court-martialed had he gone there. At least three of the five crewmen on Kerry’s boat, Bill Zaldonis, Steven Hatch, and Steve Gardner, deny that they or their boat were ever in Cambodia [emph mine -- CE].
O’Neill observed that the Cambodia incursion story is not included in Tour of Duty (Kerry’s recent biography). Instead, Kerry replaced the story with a report about a mortar attack that occurred on Christmas Eve 1968 “near the Cambodian border” in a town called Sa Dec and Christmas day was spent at the base writing entries in his journal.
This report destroys the argument coming from various Kerry defenders that the criticisms of his combat record come from second- and third-hand sources. One of the recent comments on my blog disputed the Swiftvets story because of a lack of corroboration from those who served closest to the young Lieutenant. In this case, 60% of his own crew disavow Kerry's statements to Congress on his combat record, including Stephen Gardner but also two other crew members.
The effect of the collapse of Kerry's Cambodian Christmas should be devastating. It shows that Kerry repeatedly lied about the nature of his service in Viet Nam, destroying his credibility and bolstering that of the Swiftvets. It also casts a lot of doubt on Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony regarding widespread atrocities committed by American soldiers and Marines in the war and the complicity of US leadership. In fact, such blatantly false assertions and testimony undermine the confidence any reasonable person would have in Kerry's entire character.
No wonder he sicced a passel of attorneys onto John O'Neill and the more than 200 Swiftboat veterans who have stood up to him this year. I guess the combat hero of Cambodia couldn't find the courage to stand up to a collection of Viet Nam veterans, his own colleagues, and release his military records to prove his story once and for all. After all, it's all he and Terry McAuliffe could talk about this winter and spring, releasing military records, as long as the subject was George Bush.
Kerry can spare himself the attorney fees. In the clash of character, Kerry has already lost.
UPDATE: Instapundit and reader Captain Joe point out one report of how the Kerry campaign plans to face up, man to man, with his band of brothers:
The Democrat National Committee has prepared a full-scale assault against the Vietnam Veterans for Truth to draw their character and veracity into question, according to one anonymous source inside the DNC. The campaign of character assassination is scheduled to coincide with the release of the book Unfit for Command which reveals inconvenient facts for the Kerry campaign.
“We have prepared what we call ‘Brown Books’ that contain damaging military records, personal credit histories, medical histories, psychiatric histories, divorce records, you name it,” our source told us. "We've got the goods on the Veterans who oppose Kerry." ...
The “Brown Books” are so called because of their distinctive plain brown covers, which contain no words. Some books have already been delivered to Kerry-friendly reporters. Others are on their way, our source told us. When asked if we could have a copy, our source declined, saying there is a limited number of “Brown Books” and they have been carefully inventoried to control in whose hands the books ended up.
Ultimately the “Brown Books” will end up in the hands of pro-Kerry news agencies and reporters. According to our source, who demanded to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, The New York Times is already on the hook to run a negative series on the Vets, as is the Boston Globe, which is owned by the Times.
Here's a message to John Kerry: If you want to discredit the Swiftvets, release your military records!
Posted by Captain Ed at 09:02 PM Comments (20) TrackBack (0)
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Bruce Springsteen: The Backstreets Interview
http://www.backstreets.com
News updated August 5, 2004
"What's at the heart of it is still the same sort of questing after the country that you're carrying in your heart, the country that you want your kids to grow up in."
A few months back, there was a movement afoot to "Draft Bruce" for a proposed political concert that would go head-to-head with the GOP Convention. A statement from Springsteen's publicist read simply, "Bruce Springsteen will definitely not perform at any concerts tied to either the Republican or Democratic conventions." True -- but that wasn't to say that he didn't have plans of his own.
Back in the spring, a group of artists including Springsteen had begun to privately discuss how they could make a difference in the November election. The resulting Vote for Change coalition attracted a large roster of musicians that will be descending on swing states in October, pairing Springsteen and the E Street Band with R.E.M., John Fogerty, and Bright Eyes for five concerts from Philly to Florida (see further down this page for complete Vote for Change tour details).
On the Friday after the Democratic National Convention ended, Bruce Springsteen spoke with Backstreets by phone about the state of the nation, his motivations behind these concerts, misinterpretation of his songs, and how activism affects the artist/audience bond.
Interview by Backstreets Editor Christopher Phillips
©2004 The Backstreets Publishing Empire
Backstreets: You've supported a lot of causes over the years, but as political and socially conscious as a lot of your work has been, this is the first time you've really weighed in on electoral politics. So I guess the big question is, why now?
Bruce Springsteen: Basically, this is probably the most important election of my lifetime. I think that the government has drifted too far from American values. After 9/11, I was like everybody else -- I supported going into Afghanistan, and I felt tremendous unity in the country that I don't think I've ever felt exactly like that before. It was a moment of great sadness, but also tremendous possibility. And I think that was dashed when we jumped headlong into the Iraq war, which I never understood, and I talked about that on the road. I never understood how or why we really ended up there. We offered up the lives of the best of our young people under circumstances that have been discredited. I had to live through that when I was young myself, and for any of us that lived through the Vietnam War, it was just very devastating.
Along with that, the deficits, the squeezing of services like the after-school services for the kids who need it the most, the big windfall tax cuts, the division of wealth that has threatened our connection to one another over the past 20 years that is increasing.... these are things that as the election time neared -- I couldn't really keep true to the ideas that I'd written about for 30 years without weighing in on this one.
I don't think I've seen anything like it before in my lifetime. I think that the freedoms that we've taken for granted -- I spoke about this on the road a little bit, too -- they are slowly being eroded. In the past I've gotten involved in a lot of grassroots organizations that sort of expressed my views, and where I thought I could be of some small help. I guess I’ve been doing that for about 20 years, and that was a way that I was very happy to work. I always believed that it was good for the artist to remain distant from the seat of power, to retain your independent voice, and that was the way I liked to conduct my work. But the stakes in this one are just too high. I felt like, given what I've written about, the things that I've wanted our band to stand for over the years, it's just too big a battle to lay out of.
Backstreets: A lot of great, unique artists are coming together for these shows -- R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Jurassic 5, Bonnie Raitt –- so I'm guessing that even with the unity of at least one common goal, there will be some different viewpoints. How much expression of that do you think there will be? Will we get different perspectives from different artists?
Springsteen: I would imagine so -- as different as all the artists involved. I think we've all come together with one goal in mind, but I think everybody's idea of where it goes from there could very well be different. Myself, I like John Kerry a lot. I don't think he has all the answers, or that John Edwards has all the answers, but I think they have the experience, the life experience, and I think they have the sincerity to ask the hard questions about America and to try to search for honest solutions. I believe they're going to do that. And I don't feel that way about the guys who are in there right now. I feel that trust has been broken, and there's no going back.
Backstreets: What did you think of Kerry's speech [at the Democratic National Convention]?
Springsteen: I thought it was fantastic -- the best one I've heard him give.
Backstreets: And using "No Surrender" for his entrance music -- is that something the campaign clears with you in advance?
Springsteen: No -- somebody mentioned to me that they'd heard it at different rallies here and there, around the country... but it was a nice call.
Backstreets: You've focused a whole lot more on issues than labels or parties over the years -- whether that's Democrat, Republican, Independent, Reform, Green, or anything else. That has appeared to be a very conscious decision, so in this case was it just that things reached a tipping point?
Springsteen: Yeah, I would say. I mean, I grew up in a Democratic house. The only political discussion I ever remember in my house was when I came home from school when I was little -- I think someone asked me at school what we were, it must have been during an election season at some point, and I was probably around my son's age, eight or nine. And I came home and said, "Mom, what are we?" And she said, "Oh, we're Democrats. We're Democrats because they're for the working people." And that was it -- that was the political discussion that went on in my house over about 18 years.
So I've always held progressive beliefs, or liberal beliefs. I think that when I went to write -- you're shaped by your background, fundamentally, there's no getting around it. I lived in a household that was caught in the squeeze, endlessly trying to make ends meet. My mother running down to the finance company, borrowing money to have a Christmas, and then paying it back all year until the next Christmas and borrowing some more. So I know what that's like. This time out, there just wasn't really any way I could sit on the sidelines.
Backstreets: That makes me think about that "criticism" you always seem to get: how can a millionaire still write about blue collar concerns? Something similar gets leveled at Edwards: he's the son of a mill worker, and yet he turned into a millionaire lawyer, as if one negates the other. But clearly those formative experiences help shape how you see the world.
Springsteen: That criticism is also a tremendously muddled idea of how writers write. First of all, have you ever been to Mark Twain's house?
Backstreets: No, I never have.
Springsteen: It's really nice [laughs]. The room he wrote in is beautiful.
Backstreets: It wasn't a whitewashed shack with a bunch of frogs hopping around outside?
Springsteen: No, it's a really beautiful Victorian home. So it's been done before! [laughs]... It seems to me that particular criticism gets aimed at musicians rather than, say, filmmakers. Nobody complains that Marty Scorcese isn't actually in the Mafia. It always comes up -- I've settled into the fact that I'll be answering that question for the rest of my working life. But it's a muddled understanding of the way that things get written.
Backstreets: Well, I hear you've been writing up a storm these days.
Springsteen: People say that all the time. I wish that were true!
Backstreets: Just wondering if we should be looking for any new material on the tour, if you've written anything for it specifically?
Springsteen: I'm always trying... I don't have anything until I have it, you know? Actually, I took a lot of time off -- Patti was working on her record, and so I've been spending time with the kids, and I enjoyed watching her work. I'm always writing, I'm always trying to come up with something, but until I have it, I don't have it. So I can't predict.
Backstreets: You've said that "a writer writes to be understood." And there's been so much misinterpretation of your songs over the years, the obvious ones being "Born in the U.S.A." and "American Skin (41 Shots)." For the most part, you've let your songs do the talking, but I'm wondering, in addition to the changes these shows are trying to effect in the country, if you think this will give your audience more clarity as far as the meaning and intent of your writing?
Springsteen: I don't know, it's possible. Basically, I have faith in the songs. And I also surrender to the reality that once your songs are out there, that you're simply another voice in the ongoing discussion to define them. That's just the way it plays. And that's okay -- I think they're out there to be debated, some of them. It's funny with "American Skin," I do run into people who thoroughly believed the New York Post's interpretation of that piece of music! But I've also run into a lot of people who completely understood what I was trying to say. And that's the way that it goes. When those songs go out there, then you add your voice to the chorus of people fighting for their definition and what they stand for. I have an edge, because I've still got the guitar in my hand.
But it's possible -- it's not something I thought about, but it may.
Backstreets: In the past when you've felt the need to define something more clearly -- I'm thinking right now of "Empty Sky" at the [2003] Atlantic City show, when you made it very clear what you intended "an eye for an eye" to mean -- what goes through your head when you decide to clarify things like that?
Springsteen: I have no compunction about stopping and telling someone what I mean. There's a moment to do that. And so, hey, I had the stage at the moment [laughs], and generally if I feel any sort of recurring misunderstanding that's occurred more than a few nights running, I'll say, "Okay, there's a few people...." Maybe there's 100, maybe there's ten. Maybe there's two. Maybe I'm just hearing the guy who's making the noise at that moment. But in the end, I am speaking to you. I'm speaking to you individually. And so I don't have a problem stopping at a particular moment and making clear my intentions. And now with the fabulous help of the Internet [laughs], those intentions are instantaneously around the world, and it helps clear things up even faster.
Backstreets: Well, hey, happy we could be of service!
Springsteen: Or muddle things even quicker, I suppose.... But when you have an audience the size of mine, that audience is broad. And when I spoke about the Iraq war during this past tour, before the truth came out, there were people who cheered, and there were people who booed. And that's the way it rolls. I tended to keep my comments down to approximately two minutes at the end of the night, which I felt was a pretty good balance to the three hours that we'd spent playing, you know?
I do believe that you serve at the behest of the audience. But, at the same time, I believe that my ideas and the beliefs that our band has stood for over the years are an integral part of our work, and we have a duty to make those ideas as clear as possible. To make our stand at different moments as clear as possible. I think that's part of what people look to us for, that's a part of what we have provided to a portion of our audience. And I think on any given night I'm playing to many of my audiences out there. There's the Tom Joad audience, there's the "Dancing in the Dark" audience, but hey, they're all there at that particular moment. So I look at it as a part of our process. You also figure, these are the times we're working in. And I think you've got to take your stand in them.
Backstreets: When some conservative fans bristled at some of that stuff last summer, like your mention of the Al Franken book, I think some people felt that it was a contradiction of your welcome to fans of all political persuasions. I guess I always just took that as, "Everybody is welcome here, but that doesn't mean that I won't speak my mind or challenge you on occasion."
Springsteen: That's right. It's pretty simple. I don't need people cheering everything I'm doing -- I don't go out expecting that, and we've done enough that I've seen both sides of the coin. And that's all right. The show is a forum of ideas. That's one of the things that we try to provide over the course of the evening. And as such, that's part of what you're getting when you walk through the doors.
Backstreets: Which shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody who has been following you for any decent length of time. Some fans seem to have been taken aback by the posting of Al Gore's speech on your website, or the impeachment jokes onstage, but it seems to me that your political stance and your social concerns have been consistent for a long time.
Springsteen: Yeah, I would be surprised if there are longtime fans who were surprised. I could see somebody who sort of casually comes in and out depending on what you're doing, or on a particular song, but I think if you followed us over the past 30 years, our positions on most social issues have been consistent and straightforward.
Backstreets: Some people may have blinders on and just choose not to see it, or choose to take the "good parts" and leave the rest.
Springsteen: That's true -- I think that part of the audience/artist relationship is one of intense identification. "You're me, I'm you." That is a big part of the deal. And I think part of what we do is say, "Well, yeah, we are one. But we are not the same one."
I love John Wayne's work like crazy. I've found great inspiration and soul in it my whole life. I'm not a fan of John Wayne's politics. But I love John Wayne, and I love the work he's done. And so that's how it bounces sometimes.
Backstreets: So who inspires you not just artistically but politically as well? It looks like John Fogerty is going to be on the bill, and his songs seem to be a touchstone for you in that way.
Springsteen: Really, if I go back to it, when I was really young, even with Steel Mill, we did the local benefits, marches down to Washington in the late '60s. So the truth of it is, if you're in my generation and if you grew up in any part of the alternative culture, that was just a part of your birthright. Whether you want to call it activism, or concerned citizenry, that came as a part of those times. I find it unusual when I meet people who did not have that experience from my generation. They are out there, you know? But for me and most of my friends, those were things that were just a part of growing up when we did. And the people who we admired and emulated -- which for me obviously begins with Dylan -- had a very clear political voice. John [Fogerty] did it more subtly, but fabulously also.
And so I took my own spin on it. I couldn't exactly tell you why I started writing in that direction. It's funny, Steve [Van Zandt] went on to be one of the most political songwriters, but back in the early times, he was like, "I don't know if those should mix." [laughs] That's classic Steve -- when he goes, he goes! There's no coming back! That's Steve Van Zandt. [laughs]
But yeah, when I was very young, maybe it was because of my background, or because of the music that I liked -- I was interested in the class-conscious music of the Animals -- these are things that spoke to me and that I also wanted to address in my own music. That was really the way I came to it. I didn't have a political education when I was young, as I said, I didn't really grow up in a political family. The politics in my town were small-town politics. So it was something that, in truth, I really came to through popular music. Through a combination of the times and popular music.
Backstreets: As political awakenings go, I've always had the impression that the time around The River was big for both you and Steve, as far as getting out of the States and seeing our country through other eyes.
Springsteen: I know for Steve it was a tremendous awakening, that tour. More so for him maybe than for me, because I had kind of started to write about it on Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River already, really before we went overseas. But I know for Steve it was tremendous. We went to East Berlin together, and it was quite an experience, East Berlin at that time. It was real noticeable, what that does to you. And also, when you spend a good amount of time over there, you do have a moment to step out of the United States and look back with a critical eye.
If there was one single thing I'd like to give every high school kid in the United States, it would be a two-month trip through Europe at some point during the formative years. Because it's very difficult to conjure up a real worldview from within our borders. It's hard. It's hard because we're so big, and the hegemony of American culture is so weighty and so heavy that it's very difficult without stepping outside and realizing what it's like to have the next country just a two-hour drive away, to have a certain kind of interdependence that is different than what we have here. It's just a certain view of the way the world works that is different. So if I could give every young kid one thing, that would be it -- because it would broaden what we listen to, the way we perceive ourselves, the types of leaders we choose. It would change the nation dramatically.
I always remember going down to South America on the Amnesty tour and hearing incredible music, or going into Africa and seeing some amazing acts that opened up for us on that tour, and realizing that only a miniscule amount of people are going to hear this music back in the United States. Meanwhile, a six- or seven-piece rock band from Central Jersey is playing the Ivory Coast, and people who have barely heard our music before are going crazy. And we're speaking English, you know? The openness I've found outside the United States contrasted a bit to some of the closedness that we have here. And it’s not intentional – it's cultural. And it comes from a lack of exposure to other things.
Backstreets: What opened your eyes to some of those things initially? On the River tour you talked about the Joe Klein book, Woody Guthrie: A Life. Was that book pivotal for you?
Springsteen: That's a big book, a very powerful book. I was looking for ways that other people went about creating work that spoke to all of these things -- emotional, and social, and political, the environment of the day. How did other people do that? How did they balance their creative instincts and their political instincts? I was a very different creature in that, hey, I was a successful pop musician, and that changes the cards to some degree. But at the same time, what's at the heart of it is still the same sort of questing after the country that you're carrying in your heart, the country that you want your kids to grow up in. So I studied all of my forefathers very intently along the way. And I just put together something that felt right for us, and for me.
Backstreets: One of the purposes of art is to reflect our world back to us. And there's so much animosity and fear surrounding that right now -- a lot of people, the whole "shut up and sing" faction, seem to think that's not what an artist should be doing. But considering the folk tradition you're a part of, thinking about Woody Guthrie, "shut up and sing" is a real oxymoron.
Springsteen: First of all, there's a long tradition of artist involvement in the nation's social and political life. Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Public Enemy... not only was their music joyous and exhilarating, but it was timely. And it was essential, for me, to understanding some of the events of the day. When they spoke, I heard myself speaking. I felt a connectedness. So I think that any time somebody in this country is telling somebody else to shut up, they're going in the wrong direction. No, no, no, you're supposed to be promoting speech. You may like it, you may not like it -- I hear a lot of things I don't like, either, but hey. [laughs]
Also, if you listen to the airwaves and the level of discussion out there, we can't screw it up. It's already broke! It's screwed already [laughs]. So it's not like the musicians are going to come in and screw all this up now, you know? That's not going to happen.
Backstreets: It's amazing how violent some of the reactions have been -- like what happened to Linda Rondstadt last week in Vegas.
Springsteen: A tragicomedy... [laughs] The description of it was hilarious, you know? The idea that people actually got worked up enough to throw drinks, pull down concert posters, and storm the lobby or whatever, and that they felt the need to escort her off the premises -- for mentioning a film. That's scary. Or even the Dixie Chicks, who were pounded so relentlessly. So it's kind of crazy. But right now we live in very divided times; people's feelings about these issues are very intense, and people are going to have strong responses to anybody coming out and moving toward one side or the other. Particularly if it's somebody who you like, or whose music you admire. I think for a lot of people it severs a part of that artist/audience bond. But that bond is a little more complicated than that. It's just a little more complicated. I know what you're saying: I think we're waiting for the drums to start.
Backstreets: Considering how divided things are, ideally, what's your goal on this tour? What's the message, or the result that you're looking for?
Springsteen: Well, the best thing is that we have a very simple result in mind -- and that result is to change the administration in November. So at its core, it's a very direct goal. At the same time, working with MoveOn and America Coming Together, we're trying to get voters registered, trying to get people mobilized to vote, trying to get people out on the street to mobilize the progressive voters, to get people involved in the democratic process. That's the means to the end. But the end is very clear for this short tour: we're out trying to change the direction of the government, to add our voices to the folks who are trying to make a change at the top.
This interview with Springsteen will appear in the new Summer 2004 issue of Backstreets: The Boss Magazine, due this month. This issue, our 80th over 24 years, will also feature the Backstreets Interview with Patti Scialfa, our chats with Marah and Gary U.S. Bonds, an in-depth look at the Boss and the King to celebrate 50 years since Elvis Presley's first single -- all presented by Springsteen fans, for Springsteen fans. Subscribe now!
FURTHER READING:
"Chords for Change" by Bruce Springsteen, from the August 5 New York Times Op-Ed section
"The Politics of Dancing in the Dark," from Backstreets #78
Star-Ledger interview by Jay Lustig
America Coming Together
- Updated August 5, 2004
News updated August 5, 2004"What's at the heart of it is still the same sort of questing after the country that you're carrying in your heart, the country that you want your kids to grow up in."
A few months back, there was a movement afoot to "Draft Bruce" for a proposed political concert that would go head-to-head with the GOP Convention. A statement from Springsteen's publicist read simply, "Bruce Springsteen will definitely not perform at any concerts tied to either the Republican or Democratic conventions." True -- but that wasn't to say that he didn't have plans of his own.
Back in the spring, a group of artists including Springsteen had begun to privately discuss how they could make a difference in the November election. The resulting Vote for Change coalition attracted a large roster of musicians that will be descending on swing states in October, pairing Springsteen and the E Street Band with R.E.M., John Fogerty, and Bright Eyes for five concerts from Philly to Florida (see further down this page for complete Vote for Change tour details).
On the Friday after the Democratic National Convention ended, Bruce Springsteen spoke with Backstreets by phone about the state of the nation, his motivations behind these concerts, misinterpretation of his songs, and how activism affects the artist/audience bond.
Interview by Backstreets Editor Christopher Phillips
©2004 The Backstreets Publishing Empire
Backstreets: You've supported a lot of causes over the years, but as political and socially conscious as a lot of your work has been, this is the first time you've really weighed in on electoral politics. So I guess the big question is, why now?
Bruce Springsteen: Basically, this is probably the most important election of my lifetime. I think that the government has drifted too far from American values. After 9/11, I was like everybody else -- I supported going into Afghanistan, and I felt tremendous unity in the country that I don't think I've ever felt exactly like that before. It was a moment of great sadness, but also tremendous possibility. And I think that was dashed when we jumped headlong into the Iraq war, which I never understood, and I talked about that on the road. I never understood how or why we really ended up there. We offered up the lives of the best of our young people under circumstances that have been discredited. I had to live through that when I was young myself, and for any of us that lived through the Vietnam War, it was just very devastating.
Along with that, the deficits, the squeezing of services like the after-school services for the kids who need it the most, the big windfall tax cuts, the division of wealth that has threatened our connection to one another over the past 20 years that is increasing.... these are things that as the election time neared -- I couldn't really keep true to the ideas that I'd written about for 30 years without weighing in on this one.
I don't think I've seen anything like it before in my lifetime. I think that the freedoms that we've taken for granted -- I spoke about this on the road a little bit, too -- they are slowly being eroded. In the past I've gotten involved in a lot of grassroots organizations that sort of expressed my views, and where I thought I could be of some small help. I guess I’ve been doing that for about 20 years, and that was a way that I was very happy to work. I always believed that it was good for the artist to remain distant from the seat of power, to retain your independent voice, and that was the way I liked to conduct my work. But the stakes in this one are just too high. I felt like, given what I've written about, the things that I've wanted our band to stand for over the years, it's just too big a battle to lay out of.
Backstreets: A lot of great, unique artists are coming together for these shows -- R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Jurassic 5, Bonnie Raitt –- so I'm guessing that even with the unity of at least one common goal, there will be some different viewpoints. How much expression of that do you think there will be? Will we get different perspectives from different artists?
Springsteen: I would imagine so -- as different as all the artists involved. I think we've all come together with one goal in mind, but I think everybody's idea of where it goes from there could very well be different. Myself, I like John Kerry a lot. I don't think he has all the answers, or that John Edwards has all the answers, but I think they have the experience, the life experience, and I think they have the sincerity to ask the hard questions about America and to try to search for honest solutions. I believe they're going to do that. And I don't feel that way about the guys who are in there right now. I feel that trust has been broken, and there's no going back.
Backstreets: What did you think of Kerry's speech [at the Democratic National Convention]?
Springsteen: I thought it was fantastic -- the best one I've heard him give.
Backstreets: And using "No Surrender" for his entrance music -- is that something the campaign clears with you in advance?
Springsteen: No -- somebody mentioned to me that they'd heard it at different rallies here and there, around the country... but it was a nice call.
Backstreets: You've focused a whole lot more on issues than labels or parties over the years -- whether that's Democrat, Republican, Independent, Reform, Green, or anything else. That has appeared to be a very conscious decision, so in this case was it just that things reached a tipping point?
Springsteen: Yeah, I would say. I mean, I grew up in a Democratic house. The only political discussion I ever remember in my house was when I came home from school when I was little -- I think someone asked me at school what we were, it must have been during an election season at some point, and I was probably around my son's age, eight or nine. And I came home and said, "Mom, what are we?" And she said, "Oh, we're Democrats. We're Democrats because they're for the working people." And that was it -- that was the political discussion that went on in my house over about 18 years.
So I've always held progressive beliefs, or liberal beliefs. I think that when I went to write -- you're shaped by your background, fundamentally, there's no getting around it. I lived in a household that was caught in the squeeze, endlessly trying to make ends meet. My mother running down to the finance company, borrowing money to have a Christmas, and then paying it back all year until the next Christmas and borrowing some more. So I know what that's like. This time out, there just wasn't really any way I could sit on the sidelines.
Backstreets: That makes me think about that "criticism" you always seem to get: how can a millionaire still write about blue collar concerns? Something similar gets leveled at Edwards: he's the son of a mill worker, and yet he turned into a millionaire lawyer, as if one negates the other. But clearly those formative experiences help shape how you see the world.
Springsteen: That criticism is also a tremendously muddled idea of how writers write. First of all, have you ever been to Mark Twain's house?
Backstreets: No, I never have.
Springsteen: It's really nice [laughs]. The room he wrote in is beautiful.
Backstreets: It wasn't a whitewashed shack with a bunch of frogs hopping around outside?
Springsteen: No, it's a really beautiful Victorian home. So it's been done before! [laughs]... It seems to me that particular criticism gets aimed at musicians rather than, say, filmmakers. Nobody complains that Marty Scorcese isn't actually in the Mafia. It always comes up -- I've settled into the fact that I'll be answering that question for the rest of my working life. But it's a muddled understanding of the way that things get written.
Backstreets: Well, I hear you've been writing up a storm these days.
Springsteen: People say that all the time. I wish that were true!
Backstreets: Just wondering if we should be looking for any new material on the tour, if you've written anything for it specifically?
Springsteen: I'm always trying... I don't have anything until I have it, you know? Actually, I took a lot of time off -- Patti was working on her record, and so I've been spending time with the kids, and I enjoyed watching her work. I'm always writing, I'm always trying to come up with something, but until I have it, I don't have it. So I can't predict.
Backstreets: You've said that "a writer writes to be understood." And there's been so much misinterpretation of your songs over the years, the obvious ones being "Born in the U.S.A." and "American Skin (41 Shots)." For the most part, you've let your songs do the talking, but I'm wondering, in addition to the changes these shows are trying to effect in the country, if you think this will give your audience more clarity as far as the meaning and intent of your writing?
Springsteen: I don't know, it's possible. Basically, I have faith in the songs. And I also surrender to the reality that once your songs are out there, that you're simply another voice in the ongoing discussion to define them. That's just the way it plays. And that's okay -- I think they're out there to be debated, some of them. It's funny with "American Skin," I do run into people who thoroughly believed the New York Post's interpretation of that piece of music! But I've also run into a lot of people who completely understood what I was trying to say. And that's the way that it goes. When those songs go out there, then you add your voice to the chorus of people fighting for their definition and what they stand for. I have an edge, because I've still got the guitar in my hand.
But it's possible -- it's not something I thought about, but it may.
Backstreets: In the past when you've felt the need to define something more clearly -- I'm thinking right now of "Empty Sky" at the [2003] Atlantic City show, when you made it very clear what you intended "an eye for an eye" to mean -- what goes through your head when you decide to clarify things like that?
Springsteen: I have no compunction about stopping and telling someone what I mean. There's a moment to do that. And so, hey, I had the stage at the moment [laughs], and generally if I feel any sort of recurring misunderstanding that's occurred more than a few nights running, I'll say, "Okay, there's a few people...." Maybe there's 100, maybe there's ten. Maybe there's two. Maybe I'm just hearing the guy who's making the noise at that moment. But in the end, I am speaking to you. I'm speaking to you individually. And so I don't have a problem stopping at a particular moment and making clear my intentions. And now with the fabulous help of the Internet [laughs], those intentions are instantaneously around the world, and it helps clear things up even faster.
Backstreets: Well, hey, happy we could be of service!
Springsteen: Or muddle things even quicker, I suppose.... But when you have an audience the size of mine, that audience is broad. And when I spoke about the Iraq war during this past tour, before the truth came out, there were people who cheered, and there were people who booed. And that's the way it rolls. I tended to keep my comments down to approximately two minutes at the end of the night, which I felt was a pretty good balance to the three hours that we'd spent playing, you know?
I do believe that you serve at the behest of the audience. But, at the same time, I believe that my ideas and the beliefs that our band has stood for over the years are an integral part of our work, and we have a duty to make those ideas as clear as possible. To make our stand at different moments as clear as possible. I think that's part of what people look to us for, that's a part of what we have provided to a portion of our audience. And I think on any given night I'm playing to many of my audiences out there. There's the Tom Joad audience, there's the "Dancing in the Dark" audience, but hey, they're all there at that particular moment. So I look at it as a part of our process. You also figure, these are the times we're working in. And I think you've got to take your stand in them.
Backstreets: When some conservative fans bristled at some of that stuff last summer, like your mention of the Al Franken book, I think some people felt that it was a contradiction of your welcome to fans of all political persuasions. I guess I always just took that as, "Everybody is welcome here, but that doesn't mean that I won't speak my mind or challenge you on occasion."
Springsteen: That's right. It's pretty simple. I don't need people cheering everything I'm doing -- I don't go out expecting that, and we've done enough that I've seen both sides of the coin. And that's all right. The show is a forum of ideas. That's one of the things that we try to provide over the course of the evening. And as such, that's part of what you're getting when you walk through the doors.
Backstreets: Which shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody who has been following you for any decent length of time. Some fans seem to have been taken aback by the posting of Al Gore's speech on your website, or the impeachment jokes onstage, but it seems to me that your political stance and your social concerns have been consistent for a long time.
Springsteen: Yeah, I would be surprised if there are longtime fans who were surprised. I could see somebody who sort of casually comes in and out depending on what you're doing, or on a particular song, but I think if you followed us over the past 30 years, our positions on most social issues have been consistent and straightforward.
Backstreets: Some people may have blinders on and just choose not to see it, or choose to take the "good parts" and leave the rest.
Springsteen: That's true -- I think that part of the audience/artist relationship is one of intense identification. "You're me, I'm you." That is a big part of the deal. And I think part of what we do is say, "Well, yeah, we are one. But we are not the same one."
I love John Wayne's work like crazy. I've found great inspiration and soul in it my whole life. I'm not a fan of John Wayne's politics. But I love John Wayne, and I love the work he's done. And so that's how it bounces sometimes.
Backstreets: So who inspires you not just artistically but politically as well? It looks like John Fogerty is going to be on the bill, and his songs seem to be a touchstone for you in that way.
Springsteen: Really, if I go back to it, when I was really young, even with Steel Mill, we did the local benefits, marches down to Washington in the late '60s. So the truth of it is, if you're in my generation and if you grew up in any part of the alternative culture, that was just a part of your birthright. Whether you want to call it activism, or concerned citizenry, that came as a part of those times. I find it unusual when I meet people who did not have that experience from my generation. They are out there, you know? But for me and most of my friends, those were things that were just a part of growing up when we did. And the people who we admired and emulated -- which for me obviously begins with Dylan -- had a very clear political voice. John [Fogerty] did it more subtly, but fabulously also.
And so I took my own spin on it. I couldn't exactly tell you why I started writing in that direction. It's funny, Steve [Van Zandt] went on to be one of the most political songwriters, but back in the early times, he was like, "I don't know if those should mix." [laughs] That's classic Steve -- when he goes, he goes! There's no coming back! That's Steve Van Zandt. [laughs]
But yeah, when I was very young, maybe it was because of my background, or because of the music that I liked -- I was interested in the class-conscious music of the Animals -- these are things that spoke to me and that I also wanted to address in my own music. That was really the way I came to it. I didn't have a political education when I was young, as I said, I didn't really grow up in a political family. The politics in my town were small-town politics. So it was something that, in truth, I really came to through popular music. Through a combination of the times and popular music.
Backstreets: As political awakenings go, I've always had the impression that the time around The River was big for both you and Steve, as far as getting out of the States and seeing our country through other eyes.
Springsteen: I know for Steve it was a tremendous awakening, that tour. More so for him maybe than for me, because I had kind of started to write about it on Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River already, really before we went overseas. But I know for Steve it was tremendous. We went to East Berlin together, and it was quite an experience, East Berlin at that time. It was real noticeable, what that does to you. And also, when you spend a good amount of time over there, you do have a moment to step out of the United States and look back with a critical eye.
If there was one single thing I'd like to give every high school kid in the United States, it would be a two-month trip through Europe at some point during the formative years. Because it's very difficult to conjure up a real worldview from within our borders. It's hard. It's hard because we're so big, and the hegemony of American culture is so weighty and so heavy that it's very difficult without stepping outside and realizing what it's like to have the next country just a two-hour drive away, to have a certain kind of interdependence that is different than what we have here. It's just a certain view of the way the world works that is different. So if I could give every young kid one thing, that would be it -- because it would broaden what we listen to, the way we perceive ourselves, the types of leaders we choose. It would change the nation dramatically.
I always remember going down to South America on the Amnesty tour and hearing incredible music, or going into Africa and seeing some amazing acts that opened up for us on that tour, and realizing that only a miniscule amount of people are going to hear this music back in the United States. Meanwhile, a six- or seven-piece rock band from Central Jersey is playing the Ivory Coast, and people who have barely heard our music before are going crazy. And we're speaking English, you know? The openness I've found outside the United States contrasted a bit to some of the closedness that we have here. And it’s not intentional – it's cultural. And it comes from a lack of exposure to other things.
Backstreets: What opened your eyes to some of those things initially? On the River tour you talked about the Joe Klein book, Woody Guthrie: A Life. Was that book pivotal for you?
Springsteen: That's a big book, a very powerful book. I was looking for ways that other people went about creating work that spoke to all of these things -- emotional, and social, and political, the environment of the day. How did other people do that? How did they balance their creative instincts and their political instincts? I was a very different creature in that, hey, I was a successful pop musician, and that changes the cards to some degree. But at the same time, what's at the heart of it is still the same sort of questing after the country that you're carrying in your heart, the country that you want your kids to grow up in. So I studied all of my forefathers very intently along the way. And I just put together something that felt right for us, and for me.
Backstreets: One of the purposes of art is to reflect our world back to us. And there's so much animosity and fear surrounding that right now -- a lot of people, the whole "shut up and sing" faction, seem to think that's not what an artist should be doing. But considering the folk tradition you're a part of, thinking about Woody Guthrie, "shut up and sing" is a real oxymoron.
Springsteen: First of all, there's a long tradition of artist involvement in the nation's social and political life. Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Public Enemy... not only was their music joyous and exhilarating, but it was timely. And it was essential, for me, to understanding some of the events of the day. When they spoke, I heard myself speaking. I felt a connectedness. So I think that any time somebody in this country is telling somebody else to shut up, they're going in the wrong direction. No, no, no, you're supposed to be promoting speech. You may like it, you may not like it -- I hear a lot of things I don't like, either, but hey. [laughs]
Also, if you listen to the airwaves and the level of discussion out there, we can't screw it up. It's already broke! It's screwed already [laughs]. So it's not like the musicians are going to come in and screw all this up now, you know? That's not going to happen.
Backstreets: It's amazing how violent some of the reactions have been -- like what happened to Linda Rondstadt last week in Vegas.
Springsteen: A tragicomedy... [laughs] The description of it was hilarious, you know? The idea that people actually got worked up enough to throw drinks, pull down concert posters, and storm the lobby or whatever, and that they felt the need to escort her off the premises -- for mentioning a film. That's scary. Or even the Dixie Chicks, who were pounded so relentlessly. So it's kind of crazy. But right now we live in very divided times; people's feelings about these issues are very intense, and people are going to have strong responses to anybody coming out and moving toward one side or the other. Particularly if it's somebody who you like, or whose music you admire. I think for a lot of people it severs a part of that artist/audience bond. But that bond is a little more complicated than that. It's just a little more complicated. I know what you're saying: I think we're waiting for the drums to start.
Backstreets: Considering how divided things are, ideally, what's your goal on this tour? What's the message, or the result that you're looking for?
Springsteen: Well, the best thing is that we have a very simple result in mind -- and that result is to change the administration in November. So at its core, it's a very direct goal. At the same time, working with MoveOn and America Coming Together, we're trying to get voters registered, trying to get people mobilized to vote, trying to get people out on the street to mobilize the progressive voters, to get people involved in the democratic process. That's the means to the end. But the end is very clear for this short tour: we're out trying to change the direction of the government, to add our voices to the folks who are trying to make a change at the top.
This interview with Springsteen will appear in the new Summer 2004 issue of Backstreets: The Boss Magazine, due this month. This issue, our 80th over 24 years, will also feature the Backstreets Interview with Patti Scialfa, our chats with Marah and Gary U.S. Bonds, an in-depth look at the Boss and the King to celebrate 50 years since Elvis Presley's first single -- all presented by Springsteen fans, for Springsteen fans. Subscribe now!
FURTHER READING:
"Chords for Change" by Bruce Springsteen, from the August 5 New York Times Op-Ed section
"The Politics of Dancing in the Dark," from Backstreets #78
Star-Ledger interview by Jay Lustig
America Coming Together
- Updated August 5, 2004
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Victor Davis Hanson: "If the Dead Could Talk..."
They’d teach us a thing or two about war.
July 30, 2004
The last two weeks I have been following the route of the American Army's drive from Normandy into Germany in 1944-5. It is quite something to visit Aachen, Mainz, the Hürtzen forest, Bastogne, Omaha Beach, and Pointe du Hoc, and then juxtapose such visits with the daily pabulum in the International Herald Tribune, CNN, and the European dailies. And after two weeks, I think most would prefer the wisdom of the noble dead to the ignorance of the shameful living.
There are over 10,400 Americans resting in the World War II cemetery at St. Avold in the Lorraine — more dead here than at the Normandy grounds. No sitting American president, I am told, has ever visited the graveyard. One should.
The necropolis of thousands of uniform white crosses and Stars of David leaves the visitor mute — sadly, unlike the experience of visiting many of the World War II museums in Holland and Germany. The inscriptions at American graveyards admonish the visitor to remember sacrifice, courage, and freedom; they assume somebody bad once started a war to hurt the weak, only to fail when somebody better stopped them.
In contrast, the "folly" of war — to paraphrase Barbara Tuchman — is what one gleans at most World War II museums in Europe. The displays, tapes, and guides suggest that a sudden madness once descended equally upon normal-thinking Europeans and Americans at places like Nijmegen and Remagen. "Stupidity," a European visitor at Arnhem lectured me, best explains why thousands of young men killed each other for no good reason over "meaningless" bridges. Perhaps — but I suppose the answer to that also depends on whether in September 1944 you ended up on the German or on the Allied side of Arnhem.
At places like Nejmegen one now reads less about the Holocaust, the invasion of Poland, and the Nazi hijacking of German culture, and much more about the need for eternal peace, along with notes about the necessity to stop racism and oppression.
Europe now really does believe that such evil disappeared spontaneously, without Willies and Joes driving to their flaming deaths in thin-skinned Sherman tanks to stop SS murderers in 70-ton Tigers. But then in a world where George Bush last year was said to be a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein, why should one be surprised that affluent Westerners perhaps feel SS killers led by Sepp Dietrich were as much victims of war as the defenseless Belgian civilians they butchered? It was not always so: The message of Verdun is not just the wastage of a million men, but also the courage of the outmanned and outgunned French turning back and stopping a different — and far worse — vision of Europe's future.
July has been a bad month for our civilization. Islamic terrorists right out of Gibbon's pages on Attila are caught with heads of their victims in their refrigerators in Saudi Arabia — while Britain and the United States squabble over the extradition of an Islamic fascist whose career was dedicated to convincing Muslims in the West to destroy the United States while whining that infidels were occupying the ancient caliphate. In fact, the opposite is true: Detroit is the largest community of expatriate Arabs in the world outside the Middle East. Emigrants flock to gracious hosts in Michigan to live under tolerance and freedom impossible in their own Arab countries.
In response, crazy al Qaeda videos keep airing on their official mouthpiece, al Jazeera, depicting Western interlopers squatting on "Arab lands." Can someone please tell the Arab world that its millions are stampeding to the Christian infidel West, while very few Americans want to go to the "Holy Lands." Saying that Mr. Johnson had no business in Saudi Arabia is like saying that a million Arabs have no business in the American Midwest.
So the genius of bin Ladenism is that to either applause or silent approval it promulgates lies that make Hitler's best perfidies seem mild. And such untruths do seem to galvanize an Arab world that is increasingly guilty of an inability to sort truth from fiction. The receptive Arab Street lives in a perpetual world of asymmetrical thinking — nursing fantasies, inventing false grievances, and above all demanding from the West what it would never offer to others. But, after all, the Middle East once was furious at Baghdad Bob not because he lied daily but because his lies were proven ludicrous and then humiliating on the world stage by the U.S. military.
So for the record: More Arabs go to the West than Westerners go eastward. Most U.S. troops are leaving Saudi Arabia; billions of American dollars flow to Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. We have even given billions to that wretched Arafat kleptocracy and saved Muslims from Kuwait to Bosnia. U.S. jets, not deranged riff-raff from Afghanistan, stopped Milosevic. There is no legitimate complaint of the Arab world against the United States — any more than Hitler had a right to Czechoslovakia or the Japanese to Manchuria. Just because the Japanese whined that the cutting-off of U.S. petroleum forced them to bomb Pearl Harbor didn't make it true.
Those who follow bin Laden may be poor and confused; so were many of the Hitlerjugend who murdered their way into Normandy. But like the Hitler Youth, for the killers of the mujahideen all efforts at compromise and mutual understanding are the mere parlor games of the academic. We do not need to educate the Arab world that we are better than bin Laden any more than we had to beg Arab immigrants to try out new lives in an 'unknown' United States. They know what we are about, they know...
At this point the American message of religious tolerance, equality of women, democracy, and secularism is too well known — and it is no more welcome to Islamicists than the idea of tolerating Jews was to an SS Panzer division. Yet, like Hitler's young minions, the masked men in bathrobes and machetes have not yet learned to fear the power of Western democracy that could, if it so wished — as the 10,000 resting at St. Avold have so proved — put a stop to their cowardly murdering rather quickly and thus end the Arab tolerance of these beheading fanatics.
Meanwhile, the U.N. scolds Israel about its fence to keep out suicide murderers to the applause of the European and Arab worlds. Yet both sit mostly powerless while Arabs in turn systematically mass murder black Africans in the Sudan. Can we at least drop the falsity: In the new global CNN media circus, an Arab must kill 1,000 innocents deliberately to warrant the condemnation that the world allots to a Jew who kills one Arab inadvertently.
Back at home, we are told that the 9/11 Commission is to be praised for its pedestrian conclusions that we cannot afford more Taliban-like rogue regimes and thus must provide a message to match our bullets. How brilliant. But while the commission members are basking in unearned praise — remember the grandstanding of Messrs. Ben Veniste and Kerrey to the cheap applause of the gallery — would they please also tell us what to do about real problems, such as an Iran that is building a bomb, harbored many of the 9/11 terrorists, and is the natural depot of al Qaeda planners from Saudi Arabia? Preaching that we must avoid another terrorist badlands is easy; warning that we cannot any longer tolerate a fascistic Iran, well that is another thing altogether. That raises nasty, hurtful ideas like deterrence, collective action, and, yes, that evil notion of preemption.
Worse still, the commission has helped to resurrect the fable that we are hated for what we do or don't to Muslims rather than who we are. But the collective brain power of the commissioners could not adduce a simple explanation as to why French and Germans are busy rooting out plots to blow up their own citizens — despite billions of EU money sent to terrorist organizations like Hamas, support for Arafat, and cheap slurs leveled at America in Iraq. Why do Muslim radicals hate Europe when Europeans have no military power, no real presence abroad, give billions away to the Middle East, despise Israel, will sell anything to anyone anywhere at anytime, and have let millions of Arabs onto their shores? Are daily threats to Europeans earned because of what Europe does — or is the cause who they are?
For rare honesty in a dishonest age, I would prefer to return to the wisdom of those inscriptions on granite in our military resting places abroad than listen to the new global nonsense, which is as intellectually dishonest as it is dangerous in conveying the lie that ignorance, rather than evil, causes war — or that wars break out over craziness rather than the murderous intent of an aggressive party. I don't think those asleep at St. Avold would like to hear that we fought the German Nazis and Japanese fascists the "wrong way" by relying too much on the Third and Seventh Armies, and too little on education, mutual understanding, and "getting the message out."
Once, the Belgians in places like Wiltz and St. Vieth were not complaining about Americans "exporting democracy" — when Panzers were stopped in their countryside from renewing their murderous work. They did not believe that America needed quickly to join the League of Nations instead, or that the next election in Germany would bring them a better reprieve.
And the tens of thousands sleeping under their white marble crosses in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg from the Meuse-Argonne to Hamm would not agree that had we only been more reasonable and less bellicose we would have been more popular and liked. You see, they would not concede that millions followed Hitler because it was America's fault in not offering the German people an alternative to barbarism. In fact, they didn't much care why Germany hated America, only how to defeat it and then — but only then — to guide it on a new path away from its savage past.
Indeed, if our dead could rise out of their graves they would surely rebuke us for our present blasphemy — shaking their fingers and remonstrating that bin Laden and his followers, both active and passive, are no different from Hitler and the other evil killers of their own age, who deserve to be defeated, not reasoned with or apologized to, and not understood. The voices of our dead abroad murmur to us, the deaf, that a nation is liked not by being good and weak or bad and strong, but only by proving both principled and resolute.
Sleep in peace, you ten thousand of St. Avold, and let us pray that we, the smug beneficiaries of your ultimate sacrifice, may still wake up from our own slumber.
— Victor Davis Hanson, an NRO contributor, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of The Soul of Battle and Carnage and Culture, among other books. His website is http://www.victorhanson.com/.
The latest:
If the Dead Could Talk 07/30
Hedging on Iraq 07/23
History's Verdict 07/16
Civilization vs. Trivia 07/09
Previous Articles
Ripples of BattleThe wars of the past are not just the stuff of history. Read VDH's latest.Buy it through NR
Rubin: The PKK Factor 08/05 12:20 p.m.
Bartlett: The Pocketbook Vote 08/05 9:40 a.m.
Krugman Truth Squad: The Bias Card 08/05 9:23 a.m.
Kurtz: Gay Marriage Is Not Inevitable 08/05 8:45 a.m.
Kudlow: Free Speaker 08/05 8:44 a.m.
Holtsberry: How Soccer Explains the World 08/05 8:16 a.m.
Goldblatt: Bushing-Bashing B.S. 08/05 8:14 a.m.
NR Editors: Duties Shirked 08/05 8:07 a.m.
Blyth: Botox Nation 08/05 8:06 a.m.
Smith: "Iraqis Want Us There" 08/05 8:04 a.m.
Spruiell: Nixon and the New JFK 08/05 8:03 a.m.
Q&A: Not Your Father's Labor Union 08/05 8:02 a.m.
WFB: Day Two 08/04 10:02 a.m.
Goldberg: Rev. Whitewash 08/04 9:07 a.m.
Looking for a story?Click here
-->
July 30, 2004
The last two weeks I have been following the route of the American Army's drive from Normandy into Germany in 1944-5. It is quite something to visit Aachen, Mainz, the Hürtzen forest, Bastogne, Omaha Beach, and Pointe du Hoc, and then juxtapose such visits with the daily pabulum in the International Herald Tribune, CNN, and the European dailies. And after two weeks, I think most would prefer the wisdom of the noble dead to the ignorance of the shameful living.
There are over 10,400 Americans resting in the World War II cemetery at St. Avold in the Lorraine — more dead here than at the Normandy grounds. No sitting American president, I am told, has ever visited the graveyard. One should.
The necropolis of thousands of uniform white crosses and Stars of David leaves the visitor mute — sadly, unlike the experience of visiting many of the World War II museums in Holland and Germany. The inscriptions at American graveyards admonish the visitor to remember sacrifice, courage, and freedom; they assume somebody bad once started a war to hurt the weak, only to fail when somebody better stopped them.
In contrast, the "folly" of war — to paraphrase Barbara Tuchman — is what one gleans at most World War II museums in Europe. The displays, tapes, and guides suggest that a sudden madness once descended equally upon normal-thinking Europeans and Americans at places like Nijmegen and Remagen. "Stupidity," a European visitor at Arnhem lectured me, best explains why thousands of young men killed each other for no good reason over "meaningless" bridges. Perhaps — but I suppose the answer to that also depends on whether in September 1944 you ended up on the German or on the Allied side of Arnhem.
At places like Nejmegen one now reads less about the Holocaust, the invasion of Poland, and the Nazi hijacking of German culture, and much more about the need for eternal peace, along with notes about the necessity to stop racism and oppression.
Europe now really does believe that such evil disappeared spontaneously, without Willies and Joes driving to their flaming deaths in thin-skinned Sherman tanks to stop SS murderers in 70-ton Tigers. But then in a world where George Bush last year was said to be a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein, why should one be surprised that affluent Westerners perhaps feel SS killers led by Sepp Dietrich were as much victims of war as the defenseless Belgian civilians they butchered? It was not always so: The message of Verdun is not just the wastage of a million men, but also the courage of the outmanned and outgunned French turning back and stopping a different — and far worse — vision of Europe's future.
July has been a bad month for our civilization. Islamic terrorists right out of Gibbon's pages on Attila are caught with heads of their victims in their refrigerators in Saudi Arabia — while Britain and the United States squabble over the extradition of an Islamic fascist whose career was dedicated to convincing Muslims in the West to destroy the United States while whining that infidels were occupying the ancient caliphate. In fact, the opposite is true: Detroit is the largest community of expatriate Arabs in the world outside the Middle East. Emigrants flock to gracious hosts in Michigan to live under tolerance and freedom impossible in their own Arab countries.
In response, crazy al Qaeda videos keep airing on their official mouthpiece, al Jazeera, depicting Western interlopers squatting on "Arab lands." Can someone please tell the Arab world that its millions are stampeding to the Christian infidel West, while very few Americans want to go to the "Holy Lands." Saying that Mr. Johnson had no business in Saudi Arabia is like saying that a million Arabs have no business in the American Midwest.
So the genius of bin Ladenism is that to either applause or silent approval it promulgates lies that make Hitler's best perfidies seem mild. And such untruths do seem to galvanize an Arab world that is increasingly guilty of an inability to sort truth from fiction. The receptive Arab Street lives in a perpetual world of asymmetrical thinking — nursing fantasies, inventing false grievances, and above all demanding from the West what it would never offer to others. But, after all, the Middle East once was furious at Baghdad Bob not because he lied daily but because his lies were proven ludicrous and then humiliating on the world stage by the U.S. military.
So for the record: More Arabs go to the West than Westerners go eastward. Most U.S. troops are leaving Saudi Arabia; billions of American dollars flow to Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. We have even given billions to that wretched Arafat kleptocracy and saved Muslims from Kuwait to Bosnia. U.S. jets, not deranged riff-raff from Afghanistan, stopped Milosevic. There is no legitimate complaint of the Arab world against the United States — any more than Hitler had a right to Czechoslovakia or the Japanese to Manchuria. Just because the Japanese whined that the cutting-off of U.S. petroleum forced them to bomb Pearl Harbor didn't make it true.
Those who follow bin Laden may be poor and confused; so were many of the Hitlerjugend who murdered their way into Normandy. But like the Hitler Youth, for the killers of the mujahideen all efforts at compromise and mutual understanding are the mere parlor games of the academic. We do not need to educate the Arab world that we are better than bin Laden any more than we had to beg Arab immigrants to try out new lives in an 'unknown' United States. They know what we are about, they know...
At this point the American message of religious tolerance, equality of women, democracy, and secularism is too well known — and it is no more welcome to Islamicists than the idea of tolerating Jews was to an SS Panzer division. Yet, like Hitler's young minions, the masked men in bathrobes and machetes have not yet learned to fear the power of Western democracy that could, if it so wished — as the 10,000 resting at St. Avold have so proved — put a stop to their cowardly murdering rather quickly and thus end the Arab tolerance of these beheading fanatics.
Meanwhile, the U.N. scolds Israel about its fence to keep out suicide murderers to the applause of the European and Arab worlds. Yet both sit mostly powerless while Arabs in turn systematically mass murder black Africans in the Sudan. Can we at least drop the falsity: In the new global CNN media circus, an Arab must kill 1,000 innocents deliberately to warrant the condemnation that the world allots to a Jew who kills one Arab inadvertently.
Back at home, we are told that the 9/11 Commission is to be praised for its pedestrian conclusions that we cannot afford more Taliban-like rogue regimes and thus must provide a message to match our bullets. How brilliant. But while the commission members are basking in unearned praise — remember the grandstanding of Messrs. Ben Veniste and Kerrey to the cheap applause of the gallery — would they please also tell us what to do about real problems, such as an Iran that is building a bomb, harbored many of the 9/11 terrorists, and is the natural depot of al Qaeda planners from Saudi Arabia? Preaching that we must avoid another terrorist badlands is easy; warning that we cannot any longer tolerate a fascistic Iran, well that is another thing altogether. That raises nasty, hurtful ideas like deterrence, collective action, and, yes, that evil notion of preemption.
Worse still, the commission has helped to resurrect the fable that we are hated for what we do or don't to Muslims rather than who we are. But the collective brain power of the commissioners could not adduce a simple explanation as to why French and Germans are busy rooting out plots to blow up their own citizens — despite billions of EU money sent to terrorist organizations like Hamas, support for Arafat, and cheap slurs leveled at America in Iraq. Why do Muslim radicals hate Europe when Europeans have no military power, no real presence abroad, give billions away to the Middle East, despise Israel, will sell anything to anyone anywhere at anytime, and have let millions of Arabs onto their shores? Are daily threats to Europeans earned because of what Europe does — or is the cause who they are?
For rare honesty in a dishonest age, I would prefer to return to the wisdom of those inscriptions on granite in our military resting places abroad than listen to the new global nonsense, which is as intellectually dishonest as it is dangerous in conveying the lie that ignorance, rather than evil, causes war — or that wars break out over craziness rather than the murderous intent of an aggressive party. I don't think those asleep at St. Avold would like to hear that we fought the German Nazis and Japanese fascists the "wrong way" by relying too much on the Third and Seventh Armies, and too little on education, mutual understanding, and "getting the message out."
Once, the Belgians in places like Wiltz and St. Vieth were not complaining about Americans "exporting democracy" — when Panzers were stopped in their countryside from renewing their murderous work. They did not believe that America needed quickly to join the League of Nations instead, or that the next election in Germany would bring them a better reprieve.
And the tens of thousands sleeping under their white marble crosses in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg from the Meuse-Argonne to Hamm would not agree that had we only been more reasonable and less bellicose we would have been more popular and liked. You see, they would not concede that millions followed Hitler because it was America's fault in not offering the German people an alternative to barbarism. In fact, they didn't much care why Germany hated America, only how to defeat it and then — but only then — to guide it on a new path away from its savage past.
Indeed, if our dead could rise out of their graves they would surely rebuke us for our present blasphemy — shaking their fingers and remonstrating that bin Laden and his followers, both active and passive, are no different from Hitler and the other evil killers of their own age, who deserve to be defeated, not reasoned with or apologized to, and not understood. The voices of our dead abroad murmur to us, the deaf, that a nation is liked not by being good and weak or bad and strong, but only by proving both principled and resolute.
Sleep in peace, you ten thousand of St. Avold, and let us pray that we, the smug beneficiaries of your ultimate sacrifice, may still wake up from our own slumber.
— Victor Davis Hanson, an NRO contributor, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of The Soul of Battle and Carnage and Culture, among other books. His website is http://www.victorhanson.com/.
The latest:
If the Dead Could Talk 07/30
Hedging on Iraq 07/23
History's Verdict 07/16
Civilization vs. Trivia 07/09
Previous Articles
Ripples of BattleThe wars of the past are not just the stuff of history. Read VDH's latest.Buy it through NR
Rubin: The PKK Factor 08/05 12:20 p.m.
Bartlett: The Pocketbook Vote 08/05 9:40 a.m.
Krugman Truth Squad: The Bias Card 08/05 9:23 a.m.
Kurtz: Gay Marriage Is Not Inevitable 08/05 8:45 a.m.
Kudlow: Free Speaker 08/05 8:44 a.m.
Holtsberry: How Soccer Explains the World 08/05 8:16 a.m.
Goldblatt: Bushing-Bashing B.S. 08/05 8:14 a.m.
NR Editors: Duties Shirked 08/05 8:07 a.m.
Blyth: Botox Nation 08/05 8:06 a.m.
Smith: "Iraqis Want Us There" 08/05 8:04 a.m.
Spruiell: Nixon and the New JFK 08/05 8:03 a.m.
Q&A: Not Your Father's Labor Union 08/05 8:02 a.m.
WFB: Day Two 08/04 10:02 a.m.
Goldberg: Rev. Whitewash 08/04 9:07 a.m.
Looking for a story?Click here
-->
Daniel Pipes: "A Slick Islamist Heads to Jail"
From www.danielpipes.org
Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/1994 New York Sun August 3, 2004
In 2002, the spokesman for FBI director Robert Mueller memorably described the American Muslim Council (AMC) as the "the most mainstream Muslim group in the United States." A year later, the Catholic bishops called the AMC "the premier, mainstream Muslim group in Washington."
Its founder and long-time chief, Abdurahman Alamoudi, was a Washington fixture. He had many meetings with both Clintons in the White House and once joined George W. Bush at a prayer service dedicated to victims of the 9/11 attacks. Alamoudi arranged a Ramadan fast-breaking dinner for congressional leaders. He six times lectured abroad for the State Department and founded an organization to provide Muslim chaplains for the Department of Defense. One of his former AMC employees, Faisal Gill, serves as policy director at the Department of Homeland Security's intelligence division.
In brief, as the Washington Post describes him, Alamoudi was "a pillar of the local Muslim community."
But the one-time high-flyer last week signed a plea agreement with the American government admitting his multiple crimes in return for a reduced sentence. His confession makes for startling reading.
Alamoudi acknowledges having obtained money from the Libyan government and other foreign sources, "unlawfully, knowingly, and willfully falsified, concealed and covered up by a trick, scheme and device." He transmitted these funds to the United States, "outside of the knowledge of the United States government and without attracting the attention of law enforcement and regulatory authorities."
In doing so, he engaged in illegal financial transactions and filed false tax returns. He lied about his overseas travels, his interest in a Swiss bank account, his affiliation with a Specially Designated Terrorist (the Hamas leader, Mousa Abu Marzook), and his membership in terrorist-related organizations.
Of particular note are admissions by Alamoudi that he:
Was summoned by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi to two meetings and as a result of these Alamoudi helped organize the assassination of Saudi crown prince Abdullah. (The plot was foiled.)
Transported money from Libya to Saudi Arabia to the United States, where he deposited it in the American Muslim Foundation, one of his non-profits.
Omitted on his American citizenship application his connections to many radical organizations: the United Association for Studies and Research, Marzook Legal Fund, Mercy International, American Task Force for Bosnia, Fiqh Council of North America, Muslims for a Better America, Eritrean Liberation Front/People's Liberation Force, and Council for the National Interest Foundation.
Then there is the fact that Alamoudi's Palm Pilot, seized at the time of his arrest, contained contact information for seven men designated as global terrorists by U.S. authorities. Also, law enforcement found an unsigned Arabic-language document in Alamoudi's office with ideas for Hamas to undertake "operations against the Israelis to delay the peace process." And Alamoudi has at least indirect links to Osama bin Laden through the Taibah International Aid Association, an American non-profit where he served along with Abdullah A. bin Laden, Osama's nephew.
For his crimes, Alamoudi's punishment can include serving up to 23 years in prison, forfeiting US$1¼ million received from the Libyans, paying six year's worth of back taxes plus penalties, and having his U.S. citizenship revoked. Alamoudi could also be removed from the country and not allowed back in. (But the agreement defers decision on Alamoudi's expulsion until after his prison term ends, suggesting that he is singing like a bird.)
Alamoudi is hardly the only high-profile, seemingly non-violent leader of an Islamist organization to associate with terrorists. At the Council on American-Islamic Relations, five staffers and board members have been accused or convicted of terrorism-related charges and the same has happened with leaders of the Islamic Center of Greater Cleveland, Holy Land Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation, and the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom.
The Alamoudi story points to the urgent need that the FBI, White House, Congress, State Department, Pentagon, and Homeland Security – as well as other institutions, public and private, throughout the West – not continue guilelessly to assume that smooth-talking Islamists are free of criminal, extremist, or terrorist ties. Or, as I put it in late 2001: "Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers."
Militant Islam is the enemy; even its slickest adherents need to be viewed as such.
From www.danielpipes.org Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/1994
Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/1994 New York Sun August 3, 2004
In 2002, the spokesman for FBI director Robert Mueller memorably described the American Muslim Council (AMC) as the "the most mainstream Muslim group in the United States." A year later, the Catholic bishops called the AMC "the premier, mainstream Muslim group in Washington."
Its founder and long-time chief, Abdurahman Alamoudi, was a Washington fixture. He had many meetings with both Clintons in the White House and once joined George W. Bush at a prayer service dedicated to victims of the 9/11 attacks. Alamoudi arranged a Ramadan fast-breaking dinner for congressional leaders. He six times lectured abroad for the State Department and founded an organization to provide Muslim chaplains for the Department of Defense. One of his former AMC employees, Faisal Gill, serves as policy director at the Department of Homeland Security's intelligence division.
In brief, as the Washington Post describes him, Alamoudi was "a pillar of the local Muslim community."
But the one-time high-flyer last week signed a plea agreement with the American government admitting his multiple crimes in return for a reduced sentence. His confession makes for startling reading.
Alamoudi acknowledges having obtained money from the Libyan government and other foreign sources, "unlawfully, knowingly, and willfully falsified, concealed and covered up by a trick, scheme and device." He transmitted these funds to the United States, "outside of the knowledge of the United States government and without attracting the attention of law enforcement and regulatory authorities."
In doing so, he engaged in illegal financial transactions and filed false tax returns. He lied about his overseas travels, his interest in a Swiss bank account, his affiliation with a Specially Designated Terrorist (the Hamas leader, Mousa Abu Marzook), and his membership in terrorist-related organizations.
Of particular note are admissions by Alamoudi that he:
Was summoned by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi to two meetings and as a result of these Alamoudi helped organize the assassination of Saudi crown prince Abdullah. (The plot was foiled.)
Transported money from Libya to Saudi Arabia to the United States, where he deposited it in the American Muslim Foundation, one of his non-profits.
Omitted on his American citizenship application his connections to many radical organizations: the United Association for Studies and Research, Marzook Legal Fund, Mercy International, American Task Force for Bosnia, Fiqh Council of North America, Muslims for a Better America, Eritrean Liberation Front/People's Liberation Force, and Council for the National Interest Foundation.
Then there is the fact that Alamoudi's Palm Pilot, seized at the time of his arrest, contained contact information for seven men designated as global terrorists by U.S. authorities. Also, law enforcement found an unsigned Arabic-language document in Alamoudi's office with ideas for Hamas to undertake "operations against the Israelis to delay the peace process." And Alamoudi has at least indirect links to Osama bin Laden through the Taibah International Aid Association, an American non-profit where he served along with Abdullah A. bin Laden, Osama's nephew.
For his crimes, Alamoudi's punishment can include serving up to 23 years in prison, forfeiting US$1¼ million received from the Libyans, paying six year's worth of back taxes plus penalties, and having his U.S. citizenship revoked. Alamoudi could also be removed from the country and not allowed back in. (But the agreement defers decision on Alamoudi's expulsion until after his prison term ends, suggesting that he is singing like a bird.)
Alamoudi is hardly the only high-profile, seemingly non-violent leader of an Islamist organization to associate with terrorists. At the Council on American-Islamic Relations, five staffers and board members have been accused or convicted of terrorism-related charges and the same has happened with leaders of the Islamic Center of Greater Cleveland, Holy Land Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation, and the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom.
The Alamoudi story points to the urgent need that the FBI, White House, Congress, State Department, Pentagon, and Homeland Security – as well as other institutions, public and private, throughout the West – not continue guilelessly to assume that smooth-talking Islamists are free of criminal, extremist, or terrorist ties. Or, as I put it in late 2001: "Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers."
Militant Islam is the enemy; even its slickest adherents need to be viewed as such.
From www.danielpipes.org Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/1994
Ann Coulter: "I'll Have the Sandy Berger and a Side of Lies"
Ann Coulter (archive)
August 5, 2004 Print Send
I was under the naive impression that Clinton administration scandals would end once the Clinton administration ended. Even I, someone who has not exactly had her eyes closed to Clinton-era buffoonery, did not imagine that the most corrupt administration in the history of the country would find a way to keep having scandals while out of office.
But poor old Sandy Berger ends up in hot water long after everyone's gone home. Someday we'll be reading about Clinton officials causing incidents in nursing homes. (Which Clinton administration official do you imagine that might involve?)
The undisputed facts are these: Clinton's national security adviser removed documents with the highest possible security classification from the National Archives, took them home with him, and disposed of some of the documents. (Still hotly contested is whether Berger also stuffed top-secret documents in his socks.)
The New York Times' response was to hysterically accuse the Bush administration of corruption. In a front-page story the week the story broke, the Times accused the Bush administration of leaking the news of the Berger investigation for cynical political reasons – based on the Times' careful accretion of no facts whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the front-page story on the scandal itself – well, actually, that didn't make the front page. That story was demurely reported on page A-16 of the Times.
The Times' defense brief for Berger consisted of the information that Berger's friends say Berger would never do anything to harm his country. It's always good to hear Democrats assure us that one of them isn't a traitor. With the Democrats, you need constant assurances we're not dealing with another Alger Hiss. David Gergen, the Tariq Aziz for the Democrats, says the incident is "more innocent than it looks." Well, it sure couldn't be any less innocent than it looks.
These people think if Dick Cheney uses a word with the letter "H," it's a secret code from the pope proving a conspiracy with Halliburton. But they can't see what all the fuss is about when a former national security adviser comes under criminal investigation and a search warrant is executed on his office and home after he pilfers top-secret government documents. Or at least it's not nearly as consequential as the question of who leaked the story.
The Adam Nagourney of CBS News, Dan Rather, introduced the Mr. Sticky Fingers scandal this way:
Sandy Berger, who was national security adviser under President Clinton, stepped aside today as an adviser to Sen. John Kerry. CBS' John Roberts reports this was triggered by a carefully orchestrated leak about Berger, and the timing of it appears to be no coincidence.
The conspiracy nuts' story on Republicans leaking the Berger investigation has been a little short on details, inasmuch as it is based on no evidence, no witnesses, no sources – not even a plausible theory. As former Moynihan aide Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out, the Bush administration's interests were not served by the leak of the Berger investigation this early in the campaign. As the Democrats have taught us, the best time to release damaging information about your opponent – say, a 30-year-old DUI – is about 72 hours before the election.
Tending to support the theory that the Kerry campaign leaked the story is the fact that the Bush White House has known about Berger for months; Kerry was told of the investigation only the week the story was leaked.
Berger's relationship to the Kerry campaign has undergone a massive transformation since news of the Great Hanes Robbery broke. One month ago, the Times was calling Berger one of "Mr. Kerry's top foreign policy advisers." Last week the Times described Berger as "an informal, unpaid adviser to Sen. John Kerry's campaign." By next week he'll be "some guy who heckled Teresa in Milwaukee."
At least they aren't calling Berger a "stalker."
The people who should be on their knees thanking God that W is president are the National Archives employees who caught Sandy Burglar. If Clinton were still president, instead of a serious criminal investigation, we'd get six months of attacks on the poor National Archives employees as trailer trash, sluts, gold-diggers, etc., etc. (Of course, if Clinton were still president, some National Archives employees might well be on their knees, but for a different reason.)
Maybe the Kerry campaign could borrow from another Clinton-era scandal – the ransacking of the FBI files – and claim that, like Craig Livingston, no one knows who hired Berger to work on the Kerry campaign.
Given the Democratic scandals, their presidential candidates might consider the following litmus-test question before hiring their campaign staff: "Have you ever put anything into your shorts, or taken anything out of your shorts, that could negatively affect this campaign?"
Ann Coulter is host of AnnCoulter.org, a Townhall.com member group.
©2004 Universal Press Syndicate
Contact Ann Coulter
Read Coulter's biography
Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure
Amuse your conservative friends and annoy your liberal neighbors with the Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure. This incredibly lifelike action figure looks just like the beautiful Ann Coulter, and best of all . . . it sounds like Ann, too! This highly collectible doll comes in a display box with information highlighting Ann's unique contributions to America's political discourse. If you can't get enough Ann Coulter, you'll want to order the Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure today!
August 5, 2004 Print Send
I was under the naive impression that Clinton administration scandals would end once the Clinton administration ended. Even I, someone who has not exactly had her eyes closed to Clinton-era buffoonery, did not imagine that the most corrupt administration in the history of the country would find a way to keep having scandals while out of office.
But poor old Sandy Berger ends up in hot water long after everyone's gone home. Someday we'll be reading about Clinton officials causing incidents in nursing homes. (Which Clinton administration official do you imagine that might involve?)
The undisputed facts are these: Clinton's national security adviser removed documents with the highest possible security classification from the National Archives, took them home with him, and disposed of some of the documents. (Still hotly contested is whether Berger also stuffed top-secret documents in his socks.)
The New York Times' response was to hysterically accuse the Bush administration of corruption. In a front-page story the week the story broke, the Times accused the Bush administration of leaking the news of the Berger investigation for cynical political reasons – based on the Times' careful accretion of no facts whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the front-page story on the scandal itself – well, actually, that didn't make the front page. That story was demurely reported on page A-16 of the Times.
The Times' defense brief for Berger consisted of the information that Berger's friends say Berger would never do anything to harm his country. It's always good to hear Democrats assure us that one of them isn't a traitor. With the Democrats, you need constant assurances we're not dealing with another Alger Hiss. David Gergen, the Tariq Aziz for the Democrats, says the incident is "more innocent than it looks." Well, it sure couldn't be any less innocent than it looks.
These people think if Dick Cheney uses a word with the letter "H," it's a secret code from the pope proving a conspiracy with Halliburton. But they can't see what all the fuss is about when a former national security adviser comes under criminal investigation and a search warrant is executed on his office and home after he pilfers top-secret government documents. Or at least it's not nearly as consequential as the question of who leaked the story.
The Adam Nagourney of CBS News, Dan Rather, introduced the Mr. Sticky Fingers scandal this way:
Sandy Berger, who was national security adviser under President Clinton, stepped aside today as an adviser to Sen. John Kerry. CBS' John Roberts reports this was triggered by a carefully orchestrated leak about Berger, and the timing of it appears to be no coincidence.
The conspiracy nuts' story on Republicans leaking the Berger investigation has been a little short on details, inasmuch as it is based on no evidence, no witnesses, no sources – not even a plausible theory. As former Moynihan aide Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out, the Bush administration's interests were not served by the leak of the Berger investigation this early in the campaign. As the Democrats have taught us, the best time to release damaging information about your opponent – say, a 30-year-old DUI – is about 72 hours before the election.
Tending to support the theory that the Kerry campaign leaked the story is the fact that the Bush White House has known about Berger for months; Kerry was told of the investigation only the week the story was leaked.
Berger's relationship to the Kerry campaign has undergone a massive transformation since news of the Great Hanes Robbery broke. One month ago, the Times was calling Berger one of "Mr. Kerry's top foreign policy advisers." Last week the Times described Berger as "an informal, unpaid adviser to Sen. John Kerry's campaign." By next week he'll be "some guy who heckled Teresa in Milwaukee."
At least they aren't calling Berger a "stalker."
The people who should be on their knees thanking God that W is president are the National Archives employees who caught Sandy Burglar. If Clinton were still president, instead of a serious criminal investigation, we'd get six months of attacks on the poor National Archives employees as trailer trash, sluts, gold-diggers, etc., etc. (Of course, if Clinton were still president, some National Archives employees might well be on their knees, but for a different reason.)
Maybe the Kerry campaign could borrow from another Clinton-era scandal – the ransacking of the FBI files – and claim that, like Craig Livingston, no one knows who hired Berger to work on the Kerry campaign.
Given the Democratic scandals, their presidential candidates might consider the following litmus-test question before hiring their campaign staff: "Have you ever put anything into your shorts, or taken anything out of your shorts, that could negatively affect this campaign?"
Ann Coulter is host of AnnCoulter.org, a Townhall.com member group.
©2004 Universal Press Syndicate
Contact Ann Coulter
Read Coulter's biography
Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure
Amuse your conservative friends and annoy your liberal neighbors with the Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure. This incredibly lifelike action figure looks just like the beautiful Ann Coulter, and best of all . . . it sounds like Ann, too! This highly collectible doll comes in a display box with information highlighting Ann's unique contributions to America's political discourse. If you can't get enough Ann Coulter, you'll want to order the Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure today!
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Irfan Khawaja: "Critical Reception: The Meaning of Fahrenheit 9/11"
The press juggernaut for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is now well underway, and from the sound of it, what we have on our hands is a full-fledged love-fest. Given the pockmarked nature of the beloved, however, the chansons d'amour and billets doux have been marked by a curious, even schizophrenic, ambivalence. The going trend is to enumerate the film's flaws (thereby demonstrating one's nominal commitment to intellectual integrity) while pronouncing it a work of staggering filmic genius and civic commitment (thereby demonstrating that intellectual integrity makes no difference to anything).
Thus Paul Krugman tells us in The New York Times that the film promotes "a few unproven conspiracy theories," and induces its viewers to believe "some things that probably aren't true." Having done so, he then praises the film's "appeal to working-class Americans" and its "public service" for having manipulated us in the right way.
William Raspberry describes Fahrenheit 9/11 in The Washington Post as an "overwrought piece of propaganda," a "110-minute hatchet job that doesn't even pretend to be fair"-and for good measure, as dishonest, lacking in objectivity, and partially fabricated. That doesn't stop him, of course, from praising it for doing a "masterful job," for having the right "attitude" and for (literally) demonizing George W. Bush.
David Edelstein describes Fahrenheit 9/11 in Slate as disgusting, lamenting its "boorish, bullying" qualities, and describing it as "an abuse of power"; in the same breath, he tells us that the film "delighted" him, and that he "celebrates" its sheer panache.
Todd Gitlin's review in Open Democracy calls Fahrenheit 9/11 a "shoddy work": the film's "sloppy insinuations, emotional blackmail and all-around demagoguery," he argues, are an affront to one's "conscience," and make it the moral equivalent of a beer commercial. The same conscientious concern induces Gitlin to describe Fahrenheit 9/11 somewhat paradoxically as a moral necessity. Meanwhile, he lionizes Moore himself as a "master demagogue."
Juan Cole describes the film on his weblog as making "no sense," as "inaccurate" and as "full of illogic"; having said so, he goes out of his way to tell us that he found it "inspired." Stanley Kaufmann in The New Republic calls the film "slipshod in its making, juvenile in its trappings," and in considerable part, "contextually inane"-indeed, as "debased," "smug," and "regrettable." Having filled a column full of invective of this sort, he ends his review by praising Moore's fans for the "ardor" with which they've received his film.
Perhaps the first example of this "our-propaganda-good-their-propaganda-bad" genre was A.O. Scott's review of Fahrenheit 9/11 in The New York Times, which can be taken as representative of the literature as a whole June 23). Best described as a case study in sacrificium intellectus, the review repays scrutiny as much for what it says about Moore's film as for what it says about the intellectual integrity of his acquiescent critics and adoring fans.
The review begins by telling us that Moore's film "blithely tramples the boundary between documentary and demagogy." If this means anything, it means that the film exploits its audience's emotions to put something over on them. And yet, Scott insists, the film deserves high marks for being a "high spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression." And so, in the name of "democracy"-which depends for its existence on rational discourse—we're to make allowances for demagogy, which consists in the subversion of cognition. If that sounds like a contradiction, rest assured: there's more to come.
"High spirits" and "unruliness," of course, are the defining traits of infants and toddlers; to describe a film in these terms is to invite the inference that its auteur be regarded as a member of the same demographic group, and his work judged by the appropriate standards. A functionary for the local Democratic Party apparatus where I live (which has actively promoted Moore's film as a vote-getter for Kerry) summarizes the relevant attitude rather well: "I thought it would be really fun for people to see the movie with like-minded people…[The film] reaches people in a way that reading about it or just seeing news reports about what's going on in the world doesn't." The operative words here are "like-minded" and "fun."
So what insight does Fahrenheit 9/11 convey about "what's going on in the world"? Turning to Scott, we learn that the film's "argument" is "synthetic rather than comprehensive, and…not always internally consistent." How "synthetic" contrasts with "comprehensive" is anybody's guess, but "not always internally consistent" sounds like a euphemistic way of saying that Moore doesn't have much of a case at all-a theme that recurs, strangely enough, in practically every review that's so far been written, whether by his defenders or by his detractors.
Straining to find something resembling a straightforward description of the film's thesis, we learn that Moore "dwells on the connections between the Bush family and the Saudi Arabian elite." Connections, huh? Well, having spent a year debunking the supposedly discredited "connections" between Al Qaeda and the Ba'ath Party of Iraq, everyone in this fair republic ought to know a phony "connection" when they see one. Turning to the evidence for this "connection," Scott informs us that while Moore has done his level best to explain it, his "larger point is not altogether clear." So we're dealing with a "not always consistent account" of a "not altogether clear" point. Getting warmer….
But don't let the fraudulence of Moore's "connection" get in the way of the "fun." And don't let the pathetic deflation of his "Bush-flew-the-bin-Laden-family-out-of-the-country" conspiracy do so, either. After all, as Scott tells us, the film's "confusion" is precisely what makes it "an authentic and indispensable document of its time," and "worth seeing, debating, and thinking about, regardless of your political allegiances."
How one measures the "worth" of a film that evinces so brazen a contempt for the truth is unclear. How we're to "think about or debate" a film that seeks only to exploit our emotions is yet another imponderable. And how we're to "wrest clarity" (Scott's phrase) from what Scott has just described as an orgy of inscrutability, demagogy, and self-contradiction-well, let's just say that that's what makes Fahrenheit 9/11 the demanding film that it is.
Scott ends his review with the by-now hackneyed claim that "Mr. Moore's instincts have never been sharper, and he is, as ever, at his best when he turns down the showmanship and listens to what people have to say"-a roundabout way of saying that he's at his best when he isn't around. It seems almost superfluous to point out that the reprieve from his presence might be intensified if he were to absent himself altogether. But I guess Moore's instincts aren't sharp enough to turn down the showmanship to that degree, and Scott's instincts aren't sharp enough to see why he wouldn't.
I should add that Scott is referring here to a scene in the film in which a mother grieves for the son that she's just lost in Iraq. This is a reminder that death, too, is part of the "fun," "high spirits" and generally "unruly" hijinx of this madcap film—to be exploited for maximum partisan advantage so that "like-minded" and "fun-loving" audiences can avoid the exertions of inquiry about Iraq as they wallow in the sanctimonious muck of "democratic self-expression."
What's the point—you might ask—of reviews that praise a film so extravagantly for its flaws while offering so devastating an enumeration of them?
Maybe it's to embody in print what Moore's film embodies in celluloid: the desire to have things all ways at once, to do so while wearing a self-conferred badge of intellectual sophistication—and above all, to get away with the scam while winning the moral high ground. And so we get reviews that neither succeed in appeasing Moore's desire to be taken seriously, nor manage to offer a coherent critique of his malfeasances, but instead pretend to discharge both tasks at once—winking and nodding at us all the while to induce complicity in their cowardice.
Moore's film, we're told, is unfair, impolite, unsubtle, unwise, obnoxious, tendentious, and maddeningly self-contradictory—all Scott's terms, not mine. And yet, Scott insists, Moore is a "credit to the republic" for having made the film despite this. It seems not to have occurred to Scott that once you concede that crap like Fahrenheit 9/11 is a "credit to the republic," you've already conceded that the republic is itself a piece of crap—at which point it seems futile to insist that the film is but "a partisan rallying cry, an angry polemic, a muckraking inquisition into the use and abuse of power."
When you boil down the posturing of the Moore—boosting genre, you find at last a very strange and hypocritical exercise in special pleading and excuse-making. What Moore's quasi-defenders are telling us is that an illogical, dishonest and tendentious film offers an inarticulate indictment of an evil Administration. The trouble is, if we take this morally confused verdict at face value, we reach not an indictment but an equivalence—not the intended conclusion that Moore's film is "worth seeing and debating" but the rather different conclusion that Michael Moore is morally on par with George Bush, and that his film has all of the moral credibility of an ad for the Bush campaign. Is that really where these people want to go?
I guess it is. In his review of The Clinton Wars—Sidney Blumenthal's memoir of the Clinton years—Christopher Hitchens offers the following glimpse into the mentality of the liberal "apparatchik":
I'll never forget a Georgetown dinner, at which [Blumenthal] was probably the most conservative person in attendance, where various liberals wondered aloud what the limits of 'lesser evil' politics might be. One misgiving after another was mentioned, until Blumenthal impatiently quelled the bleats. 'You don't understand,' he said. 'It's our turn.'
"Our turn." Such is the standard to which the wise now repair, and which they describe in all candor as calling for "our propaganda" (Todd Gitlin's phrase). The strategy here is to mimic from the Left what the Left professes to hate about the Right. You could call it Machiavellian ("it is necessary to learn how not to be good…") or even Miltonian ("To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell…")—so long as you forgot the stature of its practitioners. But I don't want to insult them. One eventually learns that there's no feasible way to insult a crew like this one: there's no insult you can hurl at them that they aren't content to hurl at themselves. There's no contempt like self-contempt.
Michael Moore may have won his prize at Cannes, he may make his millions, and he may even change the course of Election 2004. But the fact remains that he either has to repudiate Fahrenheit 9/11 or spend the rest of his life coming up with rationalizations for it. I myself would hate to face a choice like that. But if that is Michael Moore's definition of success, as it seems to be, what more is there to say but "to the victor belongs the spoils"?
References: Paul Krugman, "Moore's Public Service," New York Times, July 2: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30911FF3A5C0C718CDDAE0894DC404482
William Raspberry, "Fiery Hatchet Job," Washington Post, June 28: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10713-2004Jun27.html
David Edelstein, "Proper Propaganda," Slate, June 24: http://slate.msn.com/id/2102859
Todd Gitlin, "Michael Moore, Alas," Open Democracy, July 1: http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article-3-1988.jsp#
Juan Cole, "Informed Comment," June 29: http://www.juancole.com/2004_06_01_juancole_archive.html#108840617546966658
Stanley Kauffman, "Accusation," The New Republic, July 19: http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040719&s=kauffmann071904
A.O. Scott, "Unruly Scorn Leaves Room for Restraint, But Not A Lot," New York Times, June 23: http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.h?title1=Fahrenheit+9%2F11+%28Movie%29&title2=Fahrenheit+9%2F11+%28Movie%29&reviewer=A.+O.+Scott&v_id=305974&pdate=20040623
Princeton Town Topics, " 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Documentary Draws Sold-Out Audiences to Garden Theater," June 30: http://www.towntopics.com/jun3004/story3.html
Alexander Bolton, "Clarke Claims Responsibility: Ex-Terrorism Czar Approved post-9/11 Flights for Bin Laden Family," The Hill, May 26: http://www.hillnews.com/news/052604/Clarke.aspx
Christopher Hitchens, "Thinking Like an Apparatchik," The Atlantic, July 2003: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/07/hitchens.htm
Irfan Khawaja is adjunct professor of philosophy at The College of New Jersey.
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Thus Paul Krugman tells us in The New York Times that the film promotes "a few unproven conspiracy theories," and induces its viewers to believe "some things that probably aren't true." Having done so, he then praises the film's "appeal to working-class Americans" and its "public service" for having manipulated us in the right way.
William Raspberry describes Fahrenheit 9/11 in The Washington Post as an "overwrought piece of propaganda," a "110-minute hatchet job that doesn't even pretend to be fair"-and for good measure, as dishonest, lacking in objectivity, and partially fabricated. That doesn't stop him, of course, from praising it for doing a "masterful job," for having the right "attitude" and for (literally) demonizing George W. Bush.
David Edelstein describes Fahrenheit 9/11 in Slate as disgusting, lamenting its "boorish, bullying" qualities, and describing it as "an abuse of power"; in the same breath, he tells us that the film "delighted" him, and that he "celebrates" its sheer panache.
Todd Gitlin's review in Open Democracy calls Fahrenheit 9/11 a "shoddy work": the film's "sloppy insinuations, emotional blackmail and all-around demagoguery," he argues, are an affront to one's "conscience," and make it the moral equivalent of a beer commercial. The same conscientious concern induces Gitlin to describe Fahrenheit 9/11 somewhat paradoxically as a moral necessity. Meanwhile, he lionizes Moore himself as a "master demagogue."
Juan Cole describes the film on his weblog as making "no sense," as "inaccurate" and as "full of illogic"; having said so, he goes out of his way to tell us that he found it "inspired." Stanley Kaufmann in The New Republic calls the film "slipshod in its making, juvenile in its trappings," and in considerable part, "contextually inane"-indeed, as "debased," "smug," and "regrettable." Having filled a column full of invective of this sort, he ends his review by praising Moore's fans for the "ardor" with which they've received his film.
Perhaps the first example of this "our-propaganda-good-their-propaganda-bad" genre was A.O. Scott's review of Fahrenheit 9/11 in The New York Times, which can be taken as representative of the literature as a whole June 23). Best described as a case study in sacrificium intellectus, the review repays scrutiny as much for what it says about Moore's film as for what it says about the intellectual integrity of his acquiescent critics and adoring fans.
The review begins by telling us that Moore's film "blithely tramples the boundary between documentary and demagogy." If this means anything, it means that the film exploits its audience's emotions to put something over on them. And yet, Scott insists, the film deserves high marks for being a "high spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression." And so, in the name of "democracy"-which depends for its existence on rational discourse—we're to make allowances for demagogy, which consists in the subversion of cognition. If that sounds like a contradiction, rest assured: there's more to come.
"High spirits" and "unruliness," of course, are the defining traits of infants and toddlers; to describe a film in these terms is to invite the inference that its auteur be regarded as a member of the same demographic group, and his work judged by the appropriate standards. A functionary for the local Democratic Party apparatus where I live (which has actively promoted Moore's film as a vote-getter for Kerry) summarizes the relevant attitude rather well: "I thought it would be really fun for people to see the movie with like-minded people…[The film] reaches people in a way that reading about it or just seeing news reports about what's going on in the world doesn't." The operative words here are "like-minded" and "fun."
So what insight does Fahrenheit 9/11 convey about "what's going on in the world"? Turning to Scott, we learn that the film's "argument" is "synthetic rather than comprehensive, and…not always internally consistent." How "synthetic" contrasts with "comprehensive" is anybody's guess, but "not always internally consistent" sounds like a euphemistic way of saying that Moore doesn't have much of a case at all-a theme that recurs, strangely enough, in practically every review that's so far been written, whether by his defenders or by his detractors.
Straining to find something resembling a straightforward description of the film's thesis, we learn that Moore "dwells on the connections between the Bush family and the Saudi Arabian elite." Connections, huh? Well, having spent a year debunking the supposedly discredited "connections" between Al Qaeda and the Ba'ath Party of Iraq, everyone in this fair republic ought to know a phony "connection" when they see one. Turning to the evidence for this "connection," Scott informs us that while Moore has done his level best to explain it, his "larger point is not altogether clear." So we're dealing with a "not always consistent account" of a "not altogether clear" point. Getting warmer….
But don't let the fraudulence of Moore's "connection" get in the way of the "fun." And don't let the pathetic deflation of his "Bush-flew-the-bin-Laden-family-out-of-the-country" conspiracy do so, either. After all, as Scott tells us, the film's "confusion" is precisely what makes it "an authentic and indispensable document of its time," and "worth seeing, debating, and thinking about, regardless of your political allegiances."
How one measures the "worth" of a film that evinces so brazen a contempt for the truth is unclear. How we're to "think about or debate" a film that seeks only to exploit our emotions is yet another imponderable. And how we're to "wrest clarity" (Scott's phrase) from what Scott has just described as an orgy of inscrutability, demagogy, and self-contradiction-well, let's just say that that's what makes Fahrenheit 9/11 the demanding film that it is.
Scott ends his review with the by-now hackneyed claim that "Mr. Moore's instincts have never been sharper, and he is, as ever, at his best when he turns down the showmanship and listens to what people have to say"-a roundabout way of saying that he's at his best when he isn't around. It seems almost superfluous to point out that the reprieve from his presence might be intensified if he were to absent himself altogether. But I guess Moore's instincts aren't sharp enough to turn down the showmanship to that degree, and Scott's instincts aren't sharp enough to see why he wouldn't.
I should add that Scott is referring here to a scene in the film in which a mother grieves for the son that she's just lost in Iraq. This is a reminder that death, too, is part of the "fun," "high spirits" and generally "unruly" hijinx of this madcap film—to be exploited for maximum partisan advantage so that "like-minded" and "fun-loving" audiences can avoid the exertions of inquiry about Iraq as they wallow in the sanctimonious muck of "democratic self-expression."
What's the point—you might ask—of reviews that praise a film so extravagantly for its flaws while offering so devastating an enumeration of them?
Maybe it's to embody in print what Moore's film embodies in celluloid: the desire to have things all ways at once, to do so while wearing a self-conferred badge of intellectual sophistication—and above all, to get away with the scam while winning the moral high ground. And so we get reviews that neither succeed in appeasing Moore's desire to be taken seriously, nor manage to offer a coherent critique of his malfeasances, but instead pretend to discharge both tasks at once—winking and nodding at us all the while to induce complicity in their cowardice.
Moore's film, we're told, is unfair, impolite, unsubtle, unwise, obnoxious, tendentious, and maddeningly self-contradictory—all Scott's terms, not mine. And yet, Scott insists, Moore is a "credit to the republic" for having made the film despite this. It seems not to have occurred to Scott that once you concede that crap like Fahrenheit 9/11 is a "credit to the republic," you've already conceded that the republic is itself a piece of crap—at which point it seems futile to insist that the film is but "a partisan rallying cry, an angry polemic, a muckraking inquisition into the use and abuse of power."
When you boil down the posturing of the Moore—boosting genre, you find at last a very strange and hypocritical exercise in special pleading and excuse-making. What Moore's quasi-defenders are telling us is that an illogical, dishonest and tendentious film offers an inarticulate indictment of an evil Administration. The trouble is, if we take this morally confused verdict at face value, we reach not an indictment but an equivalence—not the intended conclusion that Moore's film is "worth seeing and debating" but the rather different conclusion that Michael Moore is morally on par with George Bush, and that his film has all of the moral credibility of an ad for the Bush campaign. Is that really where these people want to go?
I guess it is. In his review of The Clinton Wars—Sidney Blumenthal's memoir of the Clinton years—Christopher Hitchens offers the following glimpse into the mentality of the liberal "apparatchik":
I'll never forget a Georgetown dinner, at which [Blumenthal] was probably the most conservative person in attendance, where various liberals wondered aloud what the limits of 'lesser evil' politics might be. One misgiving after another was mentioned, until Blumenthal impatiently quelled the bleats. 'You don't understand,' he said. 'It's our turn.'
"Our turn." Such is the standard to which the wise now repair, and which they describe in all candor as calling for "our propaganda" (Todd Gitlin's phrase). The strategy here is to mimic from the Left what the Left professes to hate about the Right. You could call it Machiavellian ("it is necessary to learn how not to be good…") or even Miltonian ("To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell…")—so long as you forgot the stature of its practitioners. But I don't want to insult them. One eventually learns that there's no feasible way to insult a crew like this one: there's no insult you can hurl at them that they aren't content to hurl at themselves. There's no contempt like self-contempt.
Michael Moore may have won his prize at Cannes, he may make his millions, and he may even change the course of Election 2004. But the fact remains that he either has to repudiate Fahrenheit 9/11 or spend the rest of his life coming up with rationalizations for it. I myself would hate to face a choice like that. But if that is Michael Moore's definition of success, as it seems to be, what more is there to say but "to the victor belongs the spoils"?
References: Paul Krugman, "Moore's Public Service," New York Times, July 2: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30911FF3A5C0C718CDDAE0894DC404482
William Raspberry, "Fiery Hatchet Job," Washington Post, June 28: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10713-2004Jun27.html
David Edelstein, "Proper Propaganda," Slate, June 24: http://slate.msn.com/id/2102859
Todd Gitlin, "Michael Moore, Alas," Open Democracy, July 1: http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article-3-1988.jsp#
Juan Cole, "Informed Comment," June 29: http://www.juancole.com/2004_06_01_juancole_archive.html#108840617546966658
Stanley Kauffman, "Accusation," The New Republic, July 19: http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040719&s=kauffmann071904
A.O. Scott, "Unruly Scorn Leaves Room for Restraint, But Not A Lot," New York Times, June 23: http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.h?title1=Fahrenheit+9%2F11+%28Movie%29&title2=Fahrenheit+9%2F11+%28Movie%29&reviewer=A.+O.+Scott&v_id=305974&pdate=20040623
Princeton Town Topics, " 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Documentary Draws Sold-Out Audiences to Garden Theater," June 30: http://www.towntopics.com/jun3004/story3.html
Alexander Bolton, "Clarke Claims Responsibility: Ex-Terrorism Czar Approved post-9/11 Flights for Bin Laden Family," The Hill, May 26: http://www.hillnews.com/news/052604/Clarke.aspx
Christopher Hitchens, "Thinking Like an Apparatchik," The Atlantic, July 2003: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/07/hitchens.htm
Irfan Khawaja is adjunct professor of philosophy at The College of New Jersey.
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Larry Miller: "It's Never a Lie When Your Wife Tells It"
Of domestic bliss, the white lie, and the almighty eyebrow. by Larry Miller 08/02/2004 12:00:00 AM
THE DIVINE MRS. M. went with a friend to have something done to their feet the other day. It was a Saturday afternoon, about one o'clock, and I was downstairs reading the obituaries and watching our sons build things and destroy them. (I love the obits; they're like tiny biographies of regular people, and are frequently touching.) She stuck her head down the stairs and said, "Susie just called and asked if I wanted to get a pedicure. Can Paul bring the kids by, and the two of you can watch them all together? It'll be fun.
Okay?"
I think this is what is commonly known in the political trade as plausible deniability. At some future congressional hearing, or in a court of law, or at The Hague, she can always say, "But I asked you first, honey. Remember?" (By the way, I have no idea where The Hague is, but since it's always capitalized, I assume it's a city, or a zone, or a nightclub; additionally, it can only be called sloppy thinking to have anything involved with international law rhyme with "vague.")
But every woman knows that springing something on her husband like this is akin to the school bully saying, "I'm going to take your lunch money now. Okay?" It's going to happen with or without your consent, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
When it comes to quick decision-making around the house, married men can best be described as dullards, and this is charitable. To ask a fast, three-part question is over-taxing a weak machine. Susie called about this, and Paul's going to do that, and everything is fine, and you'll be very happy . . . What husband ever does more than turn slowly, breath heavily, smile like an opium-eater, and mumble, "Wh--what?" (With pathological optimism, every man translates whatever his wife says as, "If you go along with things, maybe later I'll let you touch me." This is generally ill-founded.)
In any case, it's axiomatic that 25 minutes later she was gone like the dinosaurs, and Paul and I were dumbly handing a mountain of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to a bunch of boys who had long since abandoned their desire for food in favor of a far more nourishing buffet: running and screaming. We trudged back upstairs, sat down, silently munched a poorly-made wad from the platters in front of us, and then turned to each other in mid-chew, saying, "What just happened?" Neither of us knew, so we returned to working the torn, lumpy bread and sighed, each man giddily imagining the endless horizon of custodial "fun" over which he was poised.
Three-or-so hours later, the Duchess and the Baroness strolled back in yakking, which was natural enough, since they had only finished a third of the non-stop conversation begun when they'd left. They came downstairs to check the kids, and immediately hit the ceiling, which I thought was unwarranted, given that a very solid 80 percent of them were still alive. That's a good stat, and I don't care where you're from.
OKAY, things were a little messy. The den looked like a combination potato chip, Lego, and pillow-stuffing factory, which, for all I know, it may actually be. Yes, there was some blood, but not a lot, and most of it was smeared on brown furniture, anyway. Paul and I had let the chariot reins slacken a little, and were in the bar (only one room removed) on our second beer. Well, his second, my fourth, whatever. The more important thing by far was that we hadn't made the move to whiskey. After all, that would be irresponsible.
The women looked at us, we looked at them, and several seconds passed silently, which, if you took away the fear and hate in the air, would normally make the start of a good Penthouse letter. But they had bigger fish to fry, or at least bigger feet, so to speak. They smiled broadly, bent a knee, and said, "Well? What do you think? Susie got the baby blue, and I got the candy-apple red."
It's difficult to know what to say at a moment like that. Actually, it's easy to know, it's just difficult to do, especially when one of you has made the move to whiskey. (See if you can guess which one.) What we should've said is, "Girls, you look great. I've never seen prettier feet in my life, and we're glad you went. We insist you do it every week."
But that's not what came out. Instead, when my wife said, "Do you love the colors?" I said, "On a '64 Mustang? What man wouldn't?"
THERE WAS ANOTHER PAUSE NOW, during which the ladies tried to decide whether I had actually said that, or if it could've been just an auditory hallucination. At the same time, Paul whipped his head around and whispered, "Please don't."
Ah, but the Count of Monte Sarcasm was out of the tower and off of the island, and would certainly have danced a jig around the room, had not all four of us been saved by the oddest thing.
Paul and I leaned forward, blinked in puzzlement, and said, "What's wrong with your eyebrows?"
And Schmeling is down! It's over, it's over, it's all over!
"Nothing," they mumbled, but we could see that there was, even through the naturally gloomy and oppressive lighting I insist on in The Nineteenth Hole. (The name I call our bar in the house; sometimes I call it The Eleventh Frame, sometimes The Eighteenth Amendment, or The Eleventh Commandment. You get the idea.) Yes, no question about it, there was something wrong with their eyebrows.
For one thing, they were gone.
NOW, I'm not one to quibble about my wife's grooming habits, because I love her, it's her face, and anything she wants to do is okay with me. Within reason. I know women like to try this and that, but the plain fact is, if I never say, "Gee, I think I'd rather you didn't," The Divine Mrs. M. has sometimes begun coming up with unsubtle ideas, which is fine if you're in the cast of Hairspray, but can be less desirable in someone you would eventually like to kiss. I would be mortified to tell you some of the things she's thought of, and not just for herself. She talked me into trying a salt massage in a hotel once. She booked me an hour in the health club with a muscular guy, and exactly one minute in, he said, "You feel a little tense. Anything in particular you want?" And I said, "Yeah. What's it cost me for you to stop now?" Ten seconds later and 20 beans lighter, I was showering off the salt and walking back to the room. Turns out I guess she was right, since I felt infinitely better.
But in addition to having a structural function on the face, I think a woman's eyebrows are pretty, and these two had shaved theirs off. In their place were four high, arched, dark, curved, colored . . . lines. My wife is a natural redhead with light, freckled skin, the kind usually called English or Irish skin depending, one assumes, on whether you're English or Irish. Susie is a blond, and they both have blue eyes.
However, the new brows not only gave them both an unchangeable expression of surprise, but made them look like the two toughest manicurists in Sicily in 1958.
"Okay," my wife said, "We made a mistake. It's not that bad, is it?"
Even the normally diplomatic Paul said, "Yeah, actually, it is." For once I kept my mouth shut, but only because I was glazed with horror. I must've looked like Ricky Ricardo when he walked in on Lucy's incorrectly-mixed biscuits yeasting themselves out of the oven.
"Don't worry," she said, "It's temporary and comes right off. It's a girlie thing, okay? They wash off in two days. A couple of showers."
A week later I was watching her bath one of the kids and suddenly looked closer through the curls of water. "Uh, honey, I don't think the eyebrows are giving up the fight."
"I know," she said, rolling her eyes in good cheer and sweetness. "I think they--Oh, honey, do me a favor, and hand me the washcloth?"
A WEEK AFTER THAT we were having a spirited chat about how my letting the oldest sneak out of bed to watch The Wild Bunch with me had just undermined her authority, when I said, "Wait a minute. Those eyebrows haven't budged. In fact, I think they're getting darker. What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said, "It just takes a little bit, like I told you."
And it might have ended just like that. I might not have noticed a thing, except that she made a giant mistake that gave her clever little game away, something I knew she never would have done except in a moment of panic and desperation.
She kissed me. Then she said she thought she might have a drink, and did I want her to make one for me? Then she used this momentum to glide out of the room with a sweet smile.
She never does any of these things.
Oh, the fox! The coyote! The panther! I followed her downstairs, and she actually tried to walk around me by seven feet. A wide berth, even in a house covered with toys.
"Okay, what's wrong with your eyebrows?"
"It's going to take a few months, but it's not a big deal."
"You said two days."
"You didn't like them, and I didn't want you to get upset."
I thought about this next one for a second. "You lied."
"I didn't want you to get upset."
"So you said. Do I get to go out with an actress and lie about it, because I don't want you to get upset?"
"Don't be stupid, it's not the same thing."
"I know, I just like to bring it up every few years."
"Wives get to tell white lies sometimes, when they know it'll help the family."
I had another nifty wisecrack loaded, but she pressed the amber restorative into my hand, turned back into the bar and said, "Hey, feel like making a fire? Come on, we'll watch it from the couch."
Hmm. If this works out, she can tattoo them green next time.
Larry Miller is a contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles.
© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
THE DIVINE MRS. M. went with a friend to have something done to their feet the other day. It was a Saturday afternoon, about one o'clock, and I was downstairs reading the obituaries and watching our sons build things and destroy them. (I love the obits; they're like tiny biographies of regular people, and are frequently touching.) She stuck her head down the stairs and said, "Susie just called and asked if I wanted to get a pedicure. Can Paul bring the kids by, and the two of you can watch them all together? It'll be fun.
Okay?"
I think this is what is commonly known in the political trade as plausible deniability. At some future congressional hearing, or in a court of law, or at The Hague, she can always say, "But I asked you first, honey. Remember?" (By the way, I have no idea where The Hague is, but since it's always capitalized, I assume it's a city, or a zone, or a nightclub; additionally, it can only be called sloppy thinking to have anything involved with international law rhyme with "vague.")
But every woman knows that springing something on her husband like this is akin to the school bully saying, "I'm going to take your lunch money now. Okay?" It's going to happen with or without your consent, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
When it comes to quick decision-making around the house, married men can best be described as dullards, and this is charitable. To ask a fast, three-part question is over-taxing a weak machine. Susie called about this, and Paul's going to do that, and everything is fine, and you'll be very happy . . . What husband ever does more than turn slowly, breath heavily, smile like an opium-eater, and mumble, "Wh--what?" (With pathological optimism, every man translates whatever his wife says as, "If you go along with things, maybe later I'll let you touch me." This is generally ill-founded.)
In any case, it's axiomatic that 25 minutes later she was gone like the dinosaurs, and Paul and I were dumbly handing a mountain of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to a bunch of boys who had long since abandoned their desire for food in favor of a far more nourishing buffet: running and screaming. We trudged back upstairs, sat down, silently munched a poorly-made wad from the platters in front of us, and then turned to each other in mid-chew, saying, "What just happened?" Neither of us knew, so we returned to working the torn, lumpy bread and sighed, each man giddily imagining the endless horizon of custodial "fun" over which he was poised.
Three-or-so hours later, the Duchess and the Baroness strolled back in yakking, which was natural enough, since they had only finished a third of the non-stop conversation begun when they'd left. They came downstairs to check the kids, and immediately hit the ceiling, which I thought was unwarranted, given that a very solid 80 percent of them were still alive. That's a good stat, and I don't care where you're from.
OKAY, things were a little messy. The den looked like a combination potato chip, Lego, and pillow-stuffing factory, which, for all I know, it may actually be. Yes, there was some blood, but not a lot, and most of it was smeared on brown furniture, anyway. Paul and I had let the chariot reins slacken a little, and were in the bar (only one room removed) on our second beer. Well, his second, my fourth, whatever. The more important thing by far was that we hadn't made the move to whiskey. After all, that would be irresponsible.
The women looked at us, we looked at them, and several seconds passed silently, which, if you took away the fear and hate in the air, would normally make the start of a good Penthouse letter. But they had bigger fish to fry, or at least bigger feet, so to speak. They smiled broadly, bent a knee, and said, "Well? What do you think? Susie got the baby blue, and I got the candy-apple red."
It's difficult to know what to say at a moment like that. Actually, it's easy to know, it's just difficult to do, especially when one of you has made the move to whiskey. (See if you can guess which one.) What we should've said is, "Girls, you look great. I've never seen prettier feet in my life, and we're glad you went. We insist you do it every week."
But that's not what came out. Instead, when my wife said, "Do you love the colors?" I said, "On a '64 Mustang? What man wouldn't?"
THERE WAS ANOTHER PAUSE NOW, during which the ladies tried to decide whether I had actually said that, or if it could've been just an auditory hallucination. At the same time, Paul whipped his head around and whispered, "Please don't."
Ah, but the Count of Monte Sarcasm was out of the tower and off of the island, and would certainly have danced a jig around the room, had not all four of us been saved by the oddest thing.
Paul and I leaned forward, blinked in puzzlement, and said, "What's wrong with your eyebrows?"
And Schmeling is down! It's over, it's over, it's all over!
"Nothing," they mumbled, but we could see that there was, even through the naturally gloomy and oppressive lighting I insist on in The Nineteenth Hole. (The name I call our bar in the house; sometimes I call it The Eleventh Frame, sometimes The Eighteenth Amendment, or The Eleventh Commandment. You get the idea.) Yes, no question about it, there was something wrong with their eyebrows.
For one thing, they were gone.
NOW, I'm not one to quibble about my wife's grooming habits, because I love her, it's her face, and anything she wants to do is okay with me. Within reason. I know women like to try this and that, but the plain fact is, if I never say, "Gee, I think I'd rather you didn't," The Divine Mrs. M. has sometimes begun coming up with unsubtle ideas, which is fine if you're in the cast of Hairspray, but can be less desirable in someone you would eventually like to kiss. I would be mortified to tell you some of the things she's thought of, and not just for herself. She talked me into trying a salt massage in a hotel once. She booked me an hour in the health club with a muscular guy, and exactly one minute in, he said, "You feel a little tense. Anything in particular you want?" And I said, "Yeah. What's it cost me for you to stop now?" Ten seconds later and 20 beans lighter, I was showering off the salt and walking back to the room. Turns out I guess she was right, since I felt infinitely better.
But in addition to having a structural function on the face, I think a woman's eyebrows are pretty, and these two had shaved theirs off. In their place were four high, arched, dark, curved, colored . . . lines. My wife is a natural redhead with light, freckled skin, the kind usually called English or Irish skin depending, one assumes, on whether you're English or Irish. Susie is a blond, and they both have blue eyes.
However, the new brows not only gave them both an unchangeable expression of surprise, but made them look like the two toughest manicurists in Sicily in 1958.
"Okay," my wife said, "We made a mistake. It's not that bad, is it?"
Even the normally diplomatic Paul said, "Yeah, actually, it is." For once I kept my mouth shut, but only because I was glazed with horror. I must've looked like Ricky Ricardo when he walked in on Lucy's incorrectly-mixed biscuits yeasting themselves out of the oven.
"Don't worry," she said, "It's temporary and comes right off. It's a girlie thing, okay? They wash off in two days. A couple of showers."
A week later I was watching her bath one of the kids and suddenly looked closer through the curls of water. "Uh, honey, I don't think the eyebrows are giving up the fight."
"I know," she said, rolling her eyes in good cheer and sweetness. "I think they--Oh, honey, do me a favor, and hand me the washcloth?"
A WEEK AFTER THAT we were having a spirited chat about how my letting the oldest sneak out of bed to watch The Wild Bunch with me had just undermined her authority, when I said, "Wait a minute. Those eyebrows haven't budged. In fact, I think they're getting darker. What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said, "It just takes a little bit, like I told you."
And it might have ended just like that. I might not have noticed a thing, except that she made a giant mistake that gave her clever little game away, something I knew she never would have done except in a moment of panic and desperation.
She kissed me. Then she said she thought she might have a drink, and did I want her to make one for me? Then she used this momentum to glide out of the room with a sweet smile.
She never does any of these things.
Oh, the fox! The coyote! The panther! I followed her downstairs, and she actually tried to walk around me by seven feet. A wide berth, even in a house covered with toys.
"Okay, what's wrong with your eyebrows?"
"It's going to take a few months, but it's not a big deal."
"You said two days."
"You didn't like them, and I didn't want you to get upset."
I thought about this next one for a second. "You lied."
"I didn't want you to get upset."
"So you said. Do I get to go out with an actress and lie about it, because I don't want you to get upset?"
"Don't be stupid, it's not the same thing."
"I know, I just like to bring it up every few years."
"Wives get to tell white lies sometimes, when they know it'll help the family."
I had another nifty wisecrack loaded, but she pressed the amber restorative into my hand, turned back into the bar and said, "Hey, feel like making a fire? Come on, we'll watch it from the couch."
Hmm. If this works out, she can tattoo them green next time.
Larry Miller is a contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles.
© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
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