Lancers, Fusiliers, Rats...The ongoing glory of the British regiment

National Review, April 21, 2003

WHEN the British, over 40,000 strong, arrived in the Persian Gulf they brought more than troops, hardware, support staff, and supplies. There was history, too, in their baggage. One need look no further than the names of just some of the units now deployed in the war—storied regiments with lineages that stretch back through the centuries, from Kuwait to Normandy, the Somme, the Crimea, and often far past. The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (the successors of a regiment that served in Afghanistan, but in 1879-80) are in the Gulf for the war against Saddam, and so to pick out but a few more, are the Black Watch (whose battle honors include, ahem, a "'successful action" in Brooklyn. N.Y.. against one George Washington), the Life Guards (who first saw action in 1685), and that enduring symbol of Churchill's defiance and determination, the Parachute Regiment.

Each British regiment usually specializes in a specific type of soldiering. There are, for example, artillery, infantry, armored, and engineering (the "sappers") regiments—but when they go to war they are joined together in larger formations, "much like," a brigadier explained to me, "the way in which the different sections. woodwind, strings, and so on, are combined to make up an orchestra." This orchestra is one that often reprises the past: Much of the move across the sands towards Basra has been led by formations grouped together into the 7th Armoured Brigade, a unit that still wears the insignia of the "Desert Rat," that strange scrawny rodent that became a symbol of strange scrawny Monty's World War II triumphs in North Africa.

British history, it seems, is not ready to end quite yet. Who would have thought it? When, more than 20 years ago, the "task force," Margaret Thatcher's marvelous makeshift armada, returned from its Falklands victory to cheers, tears, and Union Jacks on the quayside, Brits were told that it was. at last, goodbye to all that. The curtain had fallen, chaps, and there was no time for an encore. The rascally, glittering, wicked, and glorious age of empire was finally done, finished, buried, and anathematized—exchanged for the obligations of a grayer, more sober era.

And so, it seemed, was the British military. The downsized heirs of Kipling's rough-and-tumble conquistadors were destined now for the shrunken campaigns of a mid-sized European power, fighting budget cuts at home, terrorists in Belfast, and boredom in West Germany as they waited, and watched, and waited some more for the Red Army that never came.

After the Wall came down, so did the money that the U.K. was prepared to spend on its military. A defense "review," carrying the sort of bland. vaguely threatening name—"Options for Change"—that is more McKinsey & Co. than Sandhurst, saw the size of the army reduced by a little under one-third; to not much more than 100,000 men. Regiments were merged or disbanded, often with startlingly little sentiment. To take just one example, the 16th/5th Lancers, a regiment with roots that stretched back over 300 years, led the way into Iraq in February 1991, yet within two years found its proud name on the scrap pile, lost in a merger with little patience for the past.

Yet, somehow, the past has endured, taught in every recruit's basic training and nourished by a system that is the British army's greatest strength: the regiment. To borrow the words of Field Marshal Wavell, "The regiment is the foundation of everything." The concept of the regiment stems from the fact that recruitment was once organized on a local basis, but its survival as an institution owes a great deal to one crucial psychological insight: Men may enlist to serve their country, but they will fight hardest to protect their friends. Most British soldiers spend their entire career within the same regiment—over the years it becomes their principal source of friendship, their clan., their community, almost a surrogate family.

This sense of community is intensified still further by the British army's perception of itself as a caste set somewhat apart from the rest of society. Currently the army is, as it has been for much of British history, made up entirely of volunteers. The notion of the citizen soldier has been rejected in favor of the creation of a smallish force of highly trained professionals. This professionalism is a source of enormous pride to the troops, something Donald Rumsfeld may have discovered if he paid heed to Sgt. McMenamy of the Queen's Royal Lancers in early March. After hearing misinterpreted reports that the defense secretary was considering either leaving the Brits behind or giving them a secondary role in the coming conflict, the sergeant (described by the London Times as an "intimidating figure") was quoted as saying: "We are second to none, so it's a bit cheeky to suggest we can't be trusted to fight in the front line." ("A bit cheeky," let's be clear, is a classic example of British understatement.)

Like any community, the regiment has its own institutional memory that, added to the shared experience of highly intensive training and active duty, binds together the current generation and develops a sense of collective identity far more effectively than abstract notions of patriotism ever could. Visit the head- quarters of a British regiment, and there will almost certainly be a museum dedicated to its past campaigns; dine in its officers' mess and you will, in all probability, eat amid the portraits and the heirlooms of those who came before—silver from India, perhaps, or a tattered banner from one of Napoleon's lost legions.

Even the regiments that have been merged or amalgamated away into bureaucratic oblivion still manage to live on in the souls of their successors. Take the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, which is now with the Desert Rats in Iraq. Its men celebrate their regimental forebears—the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, the Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers, the City of London Regiment, and the Lancashire Fusiliers—on four separate days each year (for Gallipoli, Normandy, Albuhera, and Minden). These honored ancestors are the insistent ghosts of countless past glories, and it would not do to let them down.

Today's warriors, the latest in a long line of British expeditionary forces, as they march through a dusty landscape not so different from the battlefields of Victoria's old empire, are fighting for the honor of their clan, for its past, and for its totems. For some of the men, a former captain in the Irish Guards told me, it's a little "like playing for a famous football team." And would a little scrap of cloth bearing the caricature of a rat really mean something to those who wore it? "Oh yes," he said. Another officer agreed, particularly for those who fought together as Desert Rats in the last Gulf War, but stressed that much of the attention on that famous rodent has been a media creation. a hook to catch the attention of the wider British public, to whom the name of Monty's legendary army will mean much more than the history of any one regiment.

But to the soldiers themselves, it is their regiment that counts the most—not the Desert Rats. It should come as no surprise that Lt. Col. Tim Collins of the Royal Irish, when he spoke to his troops about the conduct that would be expected of them as they prepared to fight in Iraq, chose to emphasize the duty they owed their regiment: Cruelty or cowardice, he warned, could "harm the regiment or its history." And nothing could be worse than that.

It's early yet in this war, but somehow I don't think that Lt. Col. Collins will he disappointed.

The President of the Left

National Review, March 24, 2003 

If there is anyone more sanctimonious than The West Wing’s Jed Bartlet. it's the moralizing old ham who plays him. But prissy, preachy Martin Sheen wasn't always this way. There were times, back in the depths of the wicked, whacked-out 1970s, when today's straitlaced star was a boozer, a three-packs-of-cigarettes-a-day man, and who knows what else. It was also the decade when he gave two of the greatest performances in the history of American cinema. As the restless, murderous Kit Carruthers, Sheen was an astonishingly convincing guide to the beauty, brutality, and strangeness of Terrence Malick's hypnotic Badlands. In Apocalypse Now, he took audiences on a different journey, this time deep into a heart of darkness so profound that it engulfed not only the character he portrayed but also, ultimately, Sheen himself.

The making of Apocalypse Now was—like the war it described—a chaotic, prolonged nightmare, with the tropical heat of its Philippines location only adding to the pressure on an actor "interiorly confused" and also busy partying far, far too hard. By the end of filming, Sheen had suffered a heart attack so severe that he was given last rites. But the "white light" that was, reportedly, a part of his near-death experience seems to have had an effect roughly equivalent to that more famous light seen on the road to Damascus. He cut back on the drink, reconnected with the Catholic Church, and. in the ominous words of a profile in the London Daily Telegraph, "took up politics." While his movie career seemed doomed never to regain its former heights (forget Damascus, the road from Apocalypse Now to Beverly Hills Brats can't have been easy), when it came to politics, Sheen shone.

He has opposed Star Wars (Pentagon, not George Lucas), excessive violence in movies (probably not George Lucas either) sanctions against Iraq, the proposed invasion of Iraq, and, a little belatedly, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. He's campaigned for the homeless, pacifism, migrant workers. Bill Clinton (a "hero"). Janet Reno (also a "hero"). Al Gore (heroic status unclear), animal rights, and the environmentalist movement. Gerry Adams, the murkiest of Northern Ireland's politicians, was yet another "hero." although there was to be some subsequent (rather muddled) backtracking. The Contras were not heroes. They were "obscene assassins." Cop-killer Mumia, on the other hand, is an "incisive critic of our criminal-justice system" and a "voice for the voiceless"— except, presumably, when they are murdered Philadelphia policemen.

His authority reinforced by the fact that he portrays a president on an upscale soap opera. Sheen uses celebrity status to push his causes (fair enough—it's our fault, not his, if we take an actor seriously just because of the roles he plays). But "Jed Bartlet" has not been his only taste of office, either on screen (he has played other presidents and at least two Kennedy brothers) or off. In 1989, Sheen was named honorary mayor of Malibu. Naturally, His Honor marked his appointment with a decree proclaiming the area "a nuclear-free zone, a sanctuary for [illegal] aliens and the homeless, and a protected environment for all life, wild and tame." Interviewed more than a decade later by Hispanic magazine. Sheen relived the moment with obvious pleasure;

"The reaction was what I kind of half- expected, and it wasn't favorable. I was considered a radical who sold out the city. It just shows you the power of words and the power of someone's convictions. It just scared the hell out of them."

Well, not really—it just shows that people don't like having a loopy mayor. But no matter; If Sheen had become a St. Paul, the rest of us were, to him, like so many Galatians, an errant people to be hectored, lectured, and generally harangued.

And that's the best way to understand his politics - as an extension of his deeply held religious beliefs. Sheen's political views may be wrongheaded, but, despite all the controversy, they are hardly that unusual. Yes, they show strong traces of what Sheen once referred to as the "radical way of the cross," a version of that 1960s Latin American "liberation theology" which in the end proved to be neither liberation nor theology (it's no surprise to discover that Sheen enjoyed a long friendship with those "activist" priests, the Berrigan brothers, both of them, you guessed it, "heroes"), but they are not so far removed from the more mainstream market-skeptical, leftish strain of thought often found within Catholicism. Even his vocal opposition to an invasion of Iraq (which has, most recently, included filming a commercial for Win Without War) looks less exceptional when seen in the light of the Vatican's obvious discomfort with the direction of U.S. policy in the region.

That said, so what? That Sheen's numerous crusades may have religious roots should not exempt them from criticism, nor should the fact that the actor is, by all accounts, "sincere." When it comes to an agenda like Sheen's, sincerity in and of itself is no defense.

His lawyers might wish it were. One of the hallmarks of Sheen's activism is the number of times he has been arrested, around 70 at the latest count, often carefully choreographed for photogenic spectacle, which might include, say, prayer (yet another Nagasaki protest, this one at Los Alamos in 1999) or, for real excitement, fake blood (Fort Benning, same year).

There is another way in which these martyrdoms have been a touch theatrical. None were likely to have serious consequences. Now that there's a chance that they might, Sheen has seemed to shy away. Following a conviction for trespass at a demonstration at Vandenberg Air Force Base, he is on three years" probation and is taking care to avoid the police, handcuffs, and the judiciary. As he explained to Newsday last fall, "If I get arrested for anything now, I go right in the slammer." The actor's taste for martyrdom clearly includes neither the big house nor the loss of hundreds of thousands in dollars from his appearances in Aaron Sorkin's fake White House (Sheen reportedly earns around $300,000 for each episode of The West Wing, not so much less than the $400,000 that George W. Bush makes for a year in the real thing), but it's telling that it has taken this, rather than any change of heart, to stop—at least until his probation expires—the seemingly endless run of arrests.

To get arrested once is unfortunate, to get arrested 70 times looks rather more like arrogance. We live in a democracy, a system that, for all its flaws, does offer a legal mechanism for peaceful change. It's called voting. But in a democracy no one, not even Barbra Streisand, always gets his or her way. Most people accept that they have, at least temporarily, to live under some laws with which they may profoundly disagree. In his repeated recourse to (let's be euphemistic) "direct action," Sheen appears not to—an approach that is, at its core, undeniably undemocratic. Sheen's justification would, doubtless, be that much-vaunted "morality" of his. It's a morality that may be commendable in the context of his private life, but applied in the public sphere, it has clearly led him to the belief that he is entitled to ignore the ground rules of a democratic society. In breaking the law to make a political point, he is, in effect, saying that his morality trumps your vote.

Revealingly, when the law and his own notions of what is right coincide, Sheen is only too happy to don the jackboots. For example, driven in part, doubtless, by one son's painful battle with substance abuse, he was a leading opponent of a California ballot initiative designed to allow certain low-level drug users to receive treatment rather than jail. That shouldn't be a surprise. Sheen is a zealot: a man so convinced of his own rectitude that, for him, any compromise becomes a sin. Needless to say, such moral absolutism usually comes with a profound disdain for the points of view of those who disagree—to Sheen, I suspect, their opinions count for no more than their votes.

And when it comes to disdain, Sheen wins the Oscar. For a man supposedly dedicated to Christian values of reconciliation and love, Martin Sheen has a very sharp tongue indeed. George W. Bush, he says, is a "thug," "dull," "dangerous," "a bad comic working the crowd," a "moron." and a "white-knuckle drunk" in denial about his past difficulties with alcohol.

There's not a lot of humility either. Interviewed last year by Time Out, the actor explained how his commitment to "social justice" had helped win him the role of Jed Bartlet:

"It gives the character a level of credibility that somebody who didn't take a stand on issues of social justice wouldn't have projected. And it isn't anything I've done overtly, it's just who I am. I cannot not be who I am, regardless of what part I am playing."

Translation: "My goodness shines through."

Testing Our Mettle

Mister  Sterling

National Review  Online, Jan 31 2003

There's a nasty little truth about network TV's portrayal of an idealist — right-wingers need not apply. Doctor, say, lawyer, or teacher, the careers of television's paragons may vary, but their politics rarely do. There are many Josiah Bartlets, but few John Galts. And, as might be expected from the network that spawned The West Wing, NBC's Mister Sterling is no exception. As NBC describes it, the new drama is dedicated to "chronicling the daily struggles of [a] well-intentioned young senator…who brings a fresh perspective — and his own agenda — to Capitol Hill." "Well-intentioned" with a "fresh perspective"? Anyone familiar with the entertainment industry's idea of political thought (or writer Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., a veteran of the West Wing and a former Democratic chief of staff on the Senate Finance Committee) will know what that means; and, trust me, it's not an enthusiasm for trickle-down economics.

O'Donnell himself appears to acknowledge this, sort of. According to the New York Times, he sees his hero as an "activist" rather than someone who is particularly Democratic or liberal. He then goes on to note that it "would be a little problematic dramatically if you tried to make a show about a conservative and the Republicans would probably agree. They want to do less in government, and that's a trickier thing to go at in drama. How does a scene work when your character is the guy who doesn't want to do something? It's a trickier thing to find the drama in that. So for a TV show, being activist is a good thing."

It's a nutty argument, and one that must rely on the assumption that there can be no real (or, at least, no real likeable) activism on the right. Of course, Mr. O'Donnell is quick to deny that he is trying to use the show "to teach any lessons," a claim that reveals he has indeed found his true vocation in fiction.

When we first meet young Mr. Sterling (Josh Brolin — with a dour, holier-than-thou attitude and the biggest hair since LA Law's Michael Kuzak) he is working as a teacher, a top profession in the world of prime-time altruism. Nobler still, his school is inside a prison. As if all that wasn't enough, when the governor of California comes calling, Sterling keeps him waiting — naturally he is not prepared to interrupt a lesson or — whatever Mr. O'Donnell may say — ever stop giving us one.

The governor, Carl Moreno, a wily and enjoyably sly Democrat nicely portrayed by Bob Gunton, has arrived at the big house carrying a ticket to D.C.'s upper house — the Senate. One of California's Democratic senators (so crooked that he is known as "Senator Scandal") has dropped dead, and who can blame him? The threat of indictment with, presumably, a stint at Sterling's grim little class to follow, was simply too much to bear. Moreno needs a safe replacement to serve out the remainder of Scandal's term — and Sterling, the squeaky clean son of a beloved former Democratic governor, has the good name and the lack of a bad reputation that Moreno needs.

Needless to say, Sterling, a hipper, less agrarian Cincinnatus, has to hesitate before taking the job. To be too quick to accept would be to show too much ambition, an unacceptable emotion in this universe, albeit one that is necessary if this series is to proceed beyond its premiere. This difficult dilemma is resolved by virtuous posturing ("I don't like politics"), self-important posturing (can he be replaced at the jailhouse schoolhouse?), Top Gun-style "rebellious" motorbike ride posturing (against a setting sun backdrop, inevitably), self-indulgently melodramatic father and son posturing (Sterling Junior has a tricky relationship with Sterling Senior) and, finally, of course, by an agreement to serve as old Scandal's successor.

The D.C. Sterling finds is the Washington of John McCain's more fevered propaganda — a fat-cat fat city of vulpine corporate lobbyists, where senators might be won over by the price of a good breakfast and no meal can pass without glad-handing interruption from big-business shills. The first lobbyist he meets represents nuclear power, the second something even less popular: Wall Street. Of those other, more politically correct, lobbyists, the environmentalists, the "good government" types, the trial lawyers, the race hustlers, and the unions, no mention is made.

So far, so predictable. More surprising is the revelation that Sterling is not actually a Democrat. Unknown to those who had appointed him their man is, in fact, a "registered independent." His team, all of whom were happy enough to work for the crooked Senator Scandal, are horrified — financial unorthodoxy is one thing, but political unorthodoxy, it seems, is quite another. Sterling's replies to a quick quiz from a panicked staffer provide just enough reassurance — it turns out that he's anti-death penalty, pro-choice, and, forced to decide between a capital-gains tax cut and healthcare spending for the elderly, he reveals himself to be no supply-sider — the green, he agrees, should be reserved for the gray. In a rare — and welcome — nod to the dark side, Sterling does, however, favor drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, ("better than on the California coast, don't you think?").

So, if he's an independent, he's been house-trained in the big-media consensus. Karey Burke, EVP for development of prime-time series in NBC told the New York Times, "It's the same thing we saw with E.R. Those were the doctors you wished could treat you. With Mister Sterling, these characters are the people we wish had these jobs in Washington in real life."

And what "we" want, it seems, is a liberal.

When it comes to his independence, Sterling is Jim Jeffords, not Teddy Roosevelt, and, like the Vermont "independent," he is a committee whore. Sterling has arrived in a Senate where the Democrats are in control, but only by the narrowest of margins and, sensing his opportunity, he bluffs their leadership into thinking that he will only support them in exchange for seats on a couple of key committees. These maneuvers could have been a nicely cynical touch, but they are merely used as a device to underline the youthful vigor of the new arrival, impatient with world-weary Senate convention and eager to press ahead with that sanctimonious "agenda" of his.

And as to what that agenda might be, we can only be sure of two things — it will come drenched in sub-Capra corn (the first item on Sterling's wish list is, for D.C., pathetically modest — $38,000 for his former jailhouse school, an echo of the boy's camp that Jimmy Stewart's Mr. Smith wanted when he went to Washington) and it will be liberal. The senator may not formally be a Democrat (indeed, Mister Sterling's roster of the villainous, cynical, and complacent includes a fair number of Democrats), but the show's scripts are designed to leave viewers in no doubt that virtue is generally found on the left.

So Sterling's only real problem with his father's party is that it is not liberal or "authentic" enough. Thus he marches (despite being told that "senators don't do marches") with protesting farm workers (cue: jolly Mexican music — if there's one thing less subtle than Mister Sterling's script, it is its soundtrack), adding to the pressure on the (Democratic) California governor to sign a bill to give these fine, hardworking but oppressed folk more rights.

Of course, (well, this is network TV) the new senator's policy prescriptions are not so iconoclastic that they might alarm the show's presumably upscale target demographic. Sterling is in favor of the "decriminalization" of marijuana, but (the wimp) not its legalization. Similarly, the new senator may have taught in a jail, but he's no softie, he's also a former prosecutor and (we have been told earlier) a supporter of military tribunals for suspected terrorists.

The only hint, so far, of any originality in this series came with the appearance of a Native American character in the second episode. Under the conventions of contemporary television this is normally the prelude to faltering flute tunes, embarrassingly banal folk wisdom, and dollops of environmentalist pap. Senator Jack Thunderhawk Jackson (portrayed with devious aplomb by the always watchable Graham Greene) is made of sterner, more cunning, stuff. He is a man who knows how to play the Indian card. His office is filled with more upscale Native American kitsch (Teepee-shaped lamps! The rugs! The Remington warrior!) than a Santa Fe furniture store, and so is his conversation. Over a shared pipe of sage-scented tobacco Jackson cleverly manipulates Sterling's reflexively deferential attitude towards a representative of a wronged, but noble people.

As a result Sterling agrees to co-sponsor a bill that supposedly allows Indian tribes to control the access to their reservations, only to be told later that its real purpose is to allow them to use some of their land as storage for nuclear waste. Whoops. Has a saint just been tricked into endorsing Satan? Pressed by his staff to renege on the deal, Sterling confronts Jackson, who explains that the bill will never pass, but the mere fact that Thunderhawk has found it another sponsor will be seen by Native Americans as a sign that they too should believe in the legislative process. Sterling's gesture will thus be both meaningless yet mean a lot. Sterling agrees to stick with this flawed, cynical, yet good-hearted plan.

In a show that is rarely able to rise beyond the level of the crudest of morality plays, it was a surprisingly subtle storyline. With more like it Mister Sterling might deserve a full term.

Spirits in the Sky

National Review Online, January 17, 2003

Their cloning techniques may (or, more likely, may not) be cutting edge, but there's nothing particularly novel about the Raelians. That's true both literally (they have been around since the 1970s) and, ahem, spiritually — the wilder realms of UFO lore have long been filled with numerous cults, creeds, and true believers in salvation from the skies.

Distinguishing between all the varieties of alien enlightenment can be confusing. To use a possibly unfortunate word, "space" does not permit a detailed survey of what is on offer, so here's a quick guide to some of the players, with a handy comparison of certain key issues to help you choose the group best suited to your needs. NRO's dedicated team of in-house sensitivity counselors insist that the word "cult," with its pejorative connotations, be avoided, so let's just say that all these people have managed, at one time or another, to attract an enthusiastic following. All claims of alien contact have been taken at face value.

Before making your choice, here are some questions you might want to ask:

Should I go for an established brand?

Undoubtedly. We have selected four for your consideration.

The grandfather of galactic goodwill was George Adamski. Highly qualified in both bunkum (he founded the "Royal Order of Tibet" — in, naturally, California), and burgers (he ran a fast-food stand), Adamski's rendezvous with destiny was in 1952, the year he first met up with the likeable Venusian, Orthon. Subsequent highlights included a trip to Saturn and a number of best-selling books. Less successful than some in his field, Adamski failed to transform his saucer sorties into a more-lasting creed, despite claims of a mysterious meeting with Pope John XXIII. Adamski died in 1965, leaving behind a rich legacy of blurry photographs, wild tales, and entertaining conspiracy theories. His memory lives on at the Adamski Foundation.

A year or so after Adamski and Orthon first exchanged small talk (via hand signals and telepathy) Englishman "Sir" George King heard a voice telling him that he was to become the "voice of the Interplanetary Parliament." King was, apparently, "shocked by the implications of this statement" but rapidly came to terms with his new role, which included contact with a "Cosmic Master" known as Aetherius, also based in Venus, but not, strangely, an acquaintance of Orthon. Not long afterwards, "Sir" George founded the Aetherius Society, probably the first UFO-based religion. It's still in existence today after almost half a century, an impressive feat — the original Star Trek only lasted three seasons.

Nearly two decades later, it was Claude Vorilhon's turn. Following an encounter with a pint-sized alien exuding "harmony and humor," Claude, a French journalist, became the prophet Rael. His disciples, the Raelians, are now said to number 55,000 — not counting clones.

Aliens have even been seen in Switzerland, a sensible country generally better known for its banks than its cranks. Despite this, at least one of its citizens, Eduard "Billy" Meier, has been chatting to extraterrestrials for years. Matters really took off, so to speak, in the mid-1970s when Semjase, a sexy siren from the Pleiades, started allowing Billy to photograph her "beamships." It wasn't long before fame and Shirley MacLaine came knocking at Meier's door. The actress went away "amazed" and she wasn't alone. Meier admirers soon formed themselves into an acronym known as FIGU, an ambitious institution dedicated to the "worldwide dissemination of the truth" — under the circumstances a possibly self-defeating enterprise.

Will my new friends ask me to commit suicide?

Probably not, but the Heaven's Gate fiasco offers some useful hints for those wishing to avoid such unwelcome requests. References to human bodies as temporary "vehicles" are a bad sign. An unhealthy interest in plastic bags, sleeping pills, and vodka is even worse. Do not accept any offers of Kool-Aid.

Morks or dorks? How cool are their aliens?

The aliens featured in this survey all predate the Model E. T. standardized in the popular imagination by Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As a result they look more like inhabitants of this planet than Spielberg has taught us to expect. Billy Meier's Semjase, tall, slender, blonde, and blue-eyed, a space chick with more than a hint of Stockholm about her, is undoubtedly the coolest in this cosmic collection, but that's not saying much. Look at the competition. Orthon (one-piece brown leisure suit, red shoes) had no style and Rael's alien (four-feet tall) had no stature. It's difficult to draw any conclusions about the elusive "Cosmic Masters" favored by the Aetherius Society. They appear to believe that they should be heard, but not seen, and clearly prefer to communicate through human intermediaries.

Did the group's founder change or otherwise enhance his name?

This seems to be essential. Claude turned into "Rael," and Eduard became "Billy," a homespun, if not particularly Swiss choice, somewhat eclipsed by the names of Billy's kids — Gilgamesha, Atlantis-Sokrates, and Methusalem. Adamski was a "professor" and "Sir" George King discovered that a knighthood was not enough. He ended his career as both a "prince" and an "archbishop."

Should I worry if the group's founder looks a little weird?

No. Would-be recruits for these groups have much more-important things to worry about. Still, it's an understandable question when confronted with pictures of Billy Meier's beard (a Jehovah/ZZ Top mix) and Rael's topknot, which functions, reportedly, as an excellent antenna for extraterrestrial communication.

They may be nuts, but are they liberal nuts?

An important question for any regular reader of NRO and the answer, regrettably, is yes. Our alien friends often come across as Left-wing Democrats, particularly in their loopy environmentalism (insert Al Gore joke of choice here), welfare largesse, pacifist leanings, and hopelessly utopian worldview. Is it only coincidence that Jimmy Carter once claimed to have seen a flying saucer?

The current tensions in the Middle East are, naturally, a focus of concern. Rael, who has had an interest in the region for many years (there were long-standing plans to build an embassy for incoming aliens near Jerusalem) is opposed to an invasion of Iraq, and, if recent commentary published by Billy Meier's FIGU is any guide, so is Semjase. The "war-waging howling American, G. W. Bush" clearly has a major P.R. problem in the Pleiades, but Dubya's support elsewhere in our solar system remains unclear. Orthon hasn't been heard from for years, but a patchy Cold War record suggests that Adamski's spaceman would not be chummy with Rummy. That's no surprise. Orthon came from Venus, not Mars.

What will be expected of me?

This can vary, but it may be more than just cash. For example, members of the Aetherius Society are often busy charging "Spiritual Energy Batteries" (don't ask) and climbing the mountains first charged with spiritual power back in the heady days of Operation Starlight.

Raelians seem to prefer mounting to mountains. Their "sensual education" ("sensual education allows us to learn to take pleasure with our organs") may be as strenuous as an Aetherian hike, but it sounds like more fun. (For more on this topic, see Any chance of a date?, below).

Will I be cloned?

It's only the Raelians who are concerned with cloning. All life on earth is, apparently, the product of genetic engineering by an alien race known as the Elohim. The Raelians want to repeat the trick, but their cloning technology is optimistic, not mandatory.

I'm interested in one of these groups, but has it ever suffered any embarrassments?

You're considering signing up with one of these groups and you are concerned about embarrassment? That's like being worried about the beard and the topknot. The answer to this question ought, of course, to be yes. These beliefs are the superstitions of a technological age. They are often attached to highly specific "scientific" claims, which have a nasty habit of being subsequently refuted. The Raelians might be about to run into this difficulty very shortly. However, such moments tend to turn out to be less of an embarrassment than might be thought. To take one analogy, many religious sects have a long tradition of forecasting the end of the world on a specific date — only to see that day pass by without apocalyptic incident. They then continue on as if nothing had happened, which indeed it hadn't.

In similar vein George Adamski was unperturbed when shown the first photographs (taken by the Soviet lunar orbiter — Luna 3) of a bleak and lifeless dark side of the moon (a place where this most curious George had earlier claimed to have seen trees, cities and snow-capped mountains). Adamski simply denounced the pictures as fakes, a subject on which he was something of an authority, and stuck to his stories of those handsome folk from Saturn, Venus and Mars. In this field, ordinary notions of embarrassment do not seem to exist.

Despite this, the Aetherius Society has been more cautious:  "People on Venus, Mars and the other planets in this solar system are living on higher vibratory planes and even if we go there we will not see anybody unless they decide to make themselves visible to us." 

Disprove that.

Any chance of a date?

That's hard to say. When it comes to sex, no sects are the same. Nineteenth Century Christianity included the Shakers (celibate) and the Oneida Community (not at all celibate). The same is certainly true in the UFO sphere. The best bet for space-age swingers? Probably the Raelians. They seem to be up for pretty much anything. This has led, naturally, to stern criticism in NRO but it may explain why the Raelians were always more successful in attracting recruits than the determinedly asexual (some devotees even chose to be castrated) Heaven's Gate.

Conclusion

Are you now bewildered, lost, and completely confused? Has your mind now been filled with useless "knowledge"? Excellent. You are now ready to make your choice.

The truth is out there.

Keepers Without Peace

Frederick Fleitz: Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s : Causes, Solutions, and U.S. Interests

With his good intentions and his blue helmet, the U.N. peacekeeper was an icon of post-World War II internationalism. He was G.I. Joe for the Eleanor Roosevelt set, muscular assurance that the days of the feeble League of Nations would never return. And for a while it seemed to work. The record was far from perfect, but from Cyprus to West New Guinea to Namibia, the presence of relatively small numbers of U.N. troops was sufficient to separate warring forces and supervise the return to peace. The key to their success was evenhandedness and the consent of those whom they had come to police.

In the wake of the Gulf War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, this comparatively restrained approach to peace-keeping underwent a transmutation. The shambles that ensued is neatly summarized in this book’s delightfully blunt title. The author, Frederick Fleitz Jr., knows his material well: He is a former CIA analyst who covered the U.N. and its peacekeeping efforts during parts of the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton administrations. Today, he is special assistant to the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, though readers are warned that his opinions "do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, or the U.S. government." But what Fleitz has to say makes a great deal of sense, so we must hope that warning is not to be taken literally.

The real starting point for this book is the Soviet collapse, which made it possible for the West to intervene more aggressively in some of the world's most dangerous trouble spots. Fleitz's central thesis is that U.S. policymakers threw this opportunity away; Instead of building on the Cold War victory with a foreign policy that combined the judicious use of force with enlightened national interest, the government decided to expand the United Nations' global role in peacekeeping. The Clinton administration's poorly thought-out liberal-internationalist agenda combined sanctimony, parsimony, and ineffectiveness in roughly equal measure. The consequences were had for the U.N., in that they made a mockery of belief in that organization’s potential usefulness, and often disastrous for the U.S. There is a good reason that this book is dedicated to the U.S. Army Rangers and aircrew killed in Somalia in the terrible events of October 1993.

The rot began in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War. As Fleitz explains, supporters of a more activist U.N. "seized on the fact that Operation Desert Storm was authorized by the U.N. Security Council" as proof that a new era had arrived. The U.N.'s role in approving the Gulf War was said by many liberals to herald "an end to the unilateral use of military force, at least by the United States." But as Fleitz correctly observes, "these claims ... ignored the reality that the first Bush administration used the U.N. endorsement... largely as a fig leaf to protect the sensitivities of America's Middle East allies."

These claims may have ignored reality, but they helped create a climate in which U.N. peacekeeping could be transformed. The scope of peace- keeping operations became more ambitious and the traditional requirements of consent and impartiality were abandoned. U.N. forces could now be empowered to impose "peace" on warring parties and, if necessary, take sides in a conflict. Fleitz argues that this more aggressive definition of peacekeeping (and the expansion of the U.N.'s role it implied) fitted in well with a liberal foreign-policy agenda in Washington. "It represented a way to implement . . . dreams of Wilsonian internationalism while drastically cutting defense spending." Beyond that, it is not necessary to hear the whirring of black helicopters to recall, as Fleitz does, that this was also a time when some foreign-policy gurus who were to be influential in the Clinton administration were "talking about how the new world order meant the lowering of national boundaries . . . and the beginning of a slow movement toward world government." It's also worth noting (although Fleitz never does so explicitly) that arguments for a more activist United Nations were always likely to find favor in a Clinton White House instinctively suspicious of the U.S. military and its use as an instrument of American power.

Much of the rest of the book is devoted to an examination of how these expanded notions of peacekeeping have worked or, far too frequently, failed to work. With topics that include Rwanda, Cambodia, Liberia, and Bosnia, this makes for grim but never sensationalist reading: Despite its title, this book is not an exercise in simple U.N.-bashing, satisfying though that would doubtless be. Fleitz is, quite justifiably, highly critical of the U.N., but he is also quick to acknowledge the way the organization has all too often been used as a scapegoat for feckless Western policymaking. And just as the book’s narrative is not sensationalist, neither is its style: The text is often highly detailed (this book will be found on the bookshelves of our more sensible universities for years to come) and brutally burdened down by the fact that U.N. military operations are rich in acronyms if not in achievements.

Above all, Fleitz stresses that these fiascoes were nothing if not predictable. With the precondition of consent abandoned, U.N. peacekeepers ran the risk of being seen as an occupying or hostile force, even when the motives for their mission were primarily humanitarian. The umpires had become players. Despite that, the troops sent in to do the dirty work were often as under-equipped as their objectives were ill-defined. In the course of this book, the author offers up various reasons as to why this was, but touches only briefly on one of the most likely explanations: the fact that the U.N. has been used by Western elites to pursue an internationalist agenda that ordinarily would not secure domestic political approval in their home countries. Using the United Nations to this end is a clever trick, but it ensures that peacekeeping missions will almost always be shortchanged when it comes to resources; proper funding would require politicians to admit the full scope of these operations to their electorates. And voters are rarely enthused by the idea of endangering their soldiers in the name of the United Nations.

This absence of democratic accountability—and the level of blame it should bear for foreign-policy disasters—would make an ideal topic for Fleitz's next book. In the meantime, Fleitz offers some highly practical advice: Continue to use U.N. peacekeepers, but only along the lines of the traditional, limited model that used to work so well. Combine a return to that more modest approach with the adoption by Washington of a realistic foreign policy in which bien pensant internationalism is discarded, American interests are put first, and the isolationist temptation is avoided, and the results could be impressive.

It won't be easy, but an intelligent foreign policy never is.

Chick-Tac-Toe

National Review, December 23, 2002

Las Vegas, August 2002  © Andrew Stuttaford 

MOST people go to Las Vegas for the gambling. Dazzled by neon, crazed by greed and Wayne Newton, they challenge the odds, trying to outwit the trickster goddess, Lady Luck herself. But I was there for a different, wilier adversary. I was in town for the chicken. It was payback time, a chance for the revenge I'd seen waiting for since that shameful, sultry night in Manhattan's Chinatown all those years ago. You know the sort of evening—too much Tsingtao, not enough sense. Next thing, you're in a seedy airless room doing something you shouldn't: in my case, playing a chicken at tic-tac-toe—and losing. Years later I tried to track the bird down for a rematch, hut it had flown the coop: dead in a heat wave, said some, off hustling in another hutch, said others. And then the rumors began—whispers about tic-tac-toe-playing poultry spotted in Atlantic City, claims of sightings in Indiana and Las Vegas, reports of the theft of three uncannily smart birds from a county fair in Bensalem, Pa. And always there in the background, a muttered, mysterious name: Bunky Boger.

The stories are true. A slick chicken is back on the scene, hut this time it's not alone. Chickens skilled in tic-tac-toe have come home to roost in no fewer than three locales—all of them casinos (and two of them called Tropicana)-— while others, avian carny folk, work the county-fair circuit, usually without being stolen. The source of this scourge? Bunky Boger. Turns out he runs a Springdale, Ark., farm known for training animals to perform the feats some call remarkable and others just plain peculiar. Bunky's brainy brood docs not stop at the O's and the X's. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, these chickens dance and play basketball too.

NATIONAL REVIEW's budget for investigating strange tales from Arkansas has shrunk over the last couple of years, so I can't claim to have checked Boger's methods. There's talk, however, of "positive reinforcement" (basically the use of food as a reward) and other behaviorist techniques of the sort developed by the psychologist B. F. Skinner. Broadly speaking. Skinner saw personality as a blank slate, pliant and ripe for conditioning. This is an idea that played no small part in the disasters of 20th-century collectivism, but it seems to work well when applied to chickens. Far mightier than the Mighty Ducks, Boger's chickens are tricky to lick. Recorded defeats are few and hit between; just a handful this year, so rare that the two Tropicanas (Atlantic City and Las Vegas) are prepared to offer $10,000 to any customer able to take on the chicken, mano a claw, and win.

Ten thousand dollars? That's not chickenfeed. Maybe I was counting chickens before they were dispatched, but revenge, it seemed, was going to be profitable as well as sweet.

Outside the Las Vegas Tropicana, all is anticipation. Large signs proclaim the "Chicken Challenge—Play Tic-Tac-Toe With a Live Chicken." A poster shows a chicken contemplating a tic-tac-toe Götterdämmerung. The creature's blue eyes (contacts?) are bulging with tension. It's sweating pullets. Good.

Las Vegas, August 2002  © Andrew Stuttaford

Once you're inside, there is a brief detour for paperwork (tackling the chicken is free, but prospective foes of the fowl have to sign up beforehand for the casino's optimistically named "Winner's Club") and then it's on to the main event, first heralded by a glimpse of white feathers fluttering in a large, glass-fronted booth and an amazed Italian muttering, "Pollo? Un pollo?”

A crowd has gathered behind the velvet rope, would-be contestants (around 500 over a twelve-hour day) looking for- ward to the game, and, less admirably, spectators waiting to jeer. It's a tough arena. Be felled by the fowl, and the display attached to the booth will declare your shame for all to see with flashing lights and an announcement of the result ("Chicken wins"), followed by insulting slogans ("You're no egg-spert" is one of the milder examples). The crowd is no kinder. The losers slink off amid mocking laughter, crushed and beaten-—well, a little embarrassed anyway.

And then it's my turn. I step up to the booth, staring fiercely at the chicken. It's time for some psychological warfare. The creature gazes back imperturbably. Is that intelligence I see in those beady black eyes? Is it a brainy bird or merely bird-brained? Mr. Boger seems unable to decide. In a confusing interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Springdale Svengali boasted that his chickens were "smart little peckers" but then, in a disloyal twist (did a cock crow three times?), he went on to condemn them as "kind of simple-minded." "You wouldn't," he said, "want to take their advice on the stock market"—which, if New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer is to be believed, would put the chickens on a par with a number of Wall Street's leading investment banks.

Simple-minded or not, my chicken moves away from the glass window of her booth and heads at a leisurely pace into a more secluded area, a "thinking" booth within the booth. Suddenly the chicken makes its choice (the bird always gets to go first). An O appears on an illuminated touch screen, together with the information that I have 15 seconds to respond. And so I do. X. My opponent operates under no such time constraints. As the seconds drag by, the display flashes up the words "Chicken's thinking," this contest's equivalent of the annoying little hourglass that always accompanies those slower software moments. There are, of course, some skeptics, wild-eyed folk—Chicken Challenge's Capricorn One crowd. They whine that the bird is a fake, a feint, fowl play at its worst. The thinking booth, they claim, is nothing more than a device to hide the fact that the chicken does nothing—its "moves" are all the work of a pre-programmed computer. Is there a HAL in the henhouse, an updated twist on "The Turk," that supposedly chess-playing automaton once famous for puzzling 18th-century Europe.' I prefer not to think so.

The Tropicana, Las Vegas, August 2002  © Andrew Stuttaford

O, X, O. As the game progresses, it becomes clear that it's too soon for the chicken to crow. The hen tenses. At one point a move is preceded by a savage, primeval display. Wings beat, and that noble head turns towards me, cruel, merciless, and proud. It's a chilling moment. The chicken, like all birds, is descended from the dinosaur. Could the Tropicana be transformed into Jurassic Park?

Well, no. An O and an X or so later, and the game draws to its close. It's a tie. The chicken acknowledges the result with a curt nod and turns away, ready for the next challenger. I walk off, honor satisfied, but true revenge for the Chinatown fiasco remains elusive. Next stop, Atlantic City.

In conclusion, it's important to point out that, in keeping with NATIONAL REVIEW’s policy, no birds were harmed in the writing of this article. PETA, however, has complained about the Chicken Challenge, and a representative of the chicken activists at the Virginia-based United Poultry Concerns condemned the whole spectacle as "degrading" and "derisive." Judging by the Las Vegas setup, that seems harsh. The Chicken Challenge booth is relatively spacious and housed in an air-conditioned environment. There's food and water inside. What's more, according to a spokeswoman from the Tropicana, no one chicken has to play for more than about 90 minutes at a time. The booth is manned—if that's the word—by chickens drawn from a squad of 15 (all known as "Ginger"). Each Ginger is regularly rotated but never, apparently, rotisseried.

Bunky Boger himself seems untroubled by the controversy. As he explained to the Review-Journal; "A chicken would rather play tic-tac-toe than float around in a can with noodles."

Find me a chicken that could argue with that.

Sex in the City

National Review Online, December 3, 2002

There's a gift shop at the entrance to New York's new Museum of Sex with "edible body chocolate," "Kama Sutra" oils, nudie pens, and books such as New York Girls, Fetish Girls, Forbidden Erotica, Strip Flips, Peek — Photographs from the Kinsey Institute, The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline, and Bob Flanagan: Supermasochist — but none of this was enough for one downtown Jezebel, grumpy in Winona black as she gazed idly at pictures of Bob Flanagan's tortured form. "You'd think," she grumbled, "that there would be more here than this. There ought to be, like, you know, toys." After all the foreplay — the carding (no one under 18 allowed), the $17 admission ticket (now there's an obscenity), the bawdy, giggling anticipation, the titillating costume (all visitors are issued with a self-adhesive scarlet "X"), and the come-hither enticement (the museum's advertising features boots, spurs, and a very, very short skirt), was this a first hint that the actual Museum of Sex experience might, well, fall a little flat?

The museum, which opened in October, is located, appropriately enough, near a street corner. It's on 27th and 5th, just to the east of the old "Satan's circus," Manhattan's former Tenderloin district, in a slightly shabby building that may once have known some very shabby times: There's fevered talk that it was used as a brothel. The interior — whitewashed walls, bare floors, and (cathouse chic?) bead curtains — is almost as drab. Perhaps the austerity is designed to emphasize the seriousness of the museum's "mission": "breaking new ground in an area of human life that…museums…have previously treated at best with benign neglect. This… includes the consideration of both high and low sexual culture (in all their endlessly fascinating manifestations)…" High culture? Who cares about that? I was there for the low (in all its endlessly fascinating manifestations). The academic flummery is best seen as a disguise, camouflage for the peepshow, a scholar's gown for those too prim to be seen in a dirty gray raincoat.

But back to that "mission" — according to the museum's publicity materials, its inaugural exhibition, NYC Sex: How New York City Transformed Sex in America is devoted to an investigation of "the sexual subcultures of the city's past and present, and…the means by which they have influenced the development of modern attitudes about sex and sexuality." It's an appropriately narcissistic theme for a perennially self-absorbed city (or, more accurately, borough — the references to queens in this exhibition have nothing to do with Archie Bunker's old stamping ground). It comes with a flattering subtext: Out there in the sticks, the rubes, the birds and the bees were stuck doing it the same old way until those enlightened and sophisticated Manhattan folk started spreading the news.

That said, the first part of the exhibition is dedicated to prostitution, a business that even New Yorkers cannot claim to have invented. On this topic, the museum's main emphasis is on the 19th century: its most beguiling feature an interactive display highlighting extracts from Zagat-style guides to Manhattan's whorehouses, clearly a necessity for anyone wishing to avoid the perils of locales such as 14 Mercer Street, an unsavory joint where "gentlemen are never known to call a second time."

There's more to see than hooker handbooks, of course, not least a mummified penis, a chorus girl's costume, and a skull rotted by syphilis, but the real delight lies not in curios but in absorbing the details of this lost city of sin, a Gomorrah on the Hudson that had, in its downtown "fairy resorts," a suggestion of Sodom too. To be frank, though, this evidence of Victorian vice mainly comes across as a little bland. The passing of time and large amounts of soft sepia coloring mask both its erotic force and the brutality and squalor that must have lain not so far below it. All that remains is surface strangeness, best seen in a 1890s illustration of the Bowery by night, teeming, exotic, and menacing with more than a hint of a Blade Runner streetscape about it.

When the museum's visitors arrive in those sections of the exhibition that deal with the 20th century, improved photographic techniques literally bring the picture, and the reality behind it, into far clearer focus. This is just as well if the show is to hold our attention. Age can lend fascination to the most banal of knick-knacks, but once we reach the modern era there is not much in the way of alluring artifacts for the museum to display. An old tin of Ramses may be vaguely "Egyptian," but it's not exactly the treasure of Tutankhamen. Brave attempts are made: Exhibits include some nasty-looking bondage gear, a poster for the Village People and a 1971 handbook used to instruct the police on how to identify "toilet snipes," but a showcase featuring a forlorn pile of vintage peepshow tokens is a reminder why photography has to be an essential resource for this exhibition.

But, in a museum looking to chronicle behavior at its most intimate, this becomes, paradoxically, a problem. It's simply not that often that couples bring a camera into the bedroom and, unless they are a Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson, it's even more unusual for the rest of us to see the results. Every type of picture can tell a story, but when it comes to recording this area of human conduct, the paintbrush can be more effective than the lens. It's surprising how little art is included in this show. The heavy reliance on photography inevitably shifts the exhibition's balance away from the private sphere to public — or quasi-public — displays of sexuality, primarily pin-ups, pornography, and an orgy or two; interesting enough, but something of a caricature. We are shown more, but, somehow, it feels like less. It is an impression only heightened by a selection of photographs more weighted towards, shall we say, the mechanics of this show's subject matter than its broader social context. This is not history, just a vision of the past reflected in a funhouse mirror.

This doesn't always matter. That part of the exhibition concerned with New York's contribution to 1970s pornography succeeds on its own terms. As porn is never meant to be anything more than dirty pix there is no intimacy to lose. Spectacle is simply replayed as spectacle, and becomes the source of the museum's most entertaining sight — small groups of visitors earnestly clustered around monitors showing continuous loops of disco era smut. As the crowd gawped at the gropers, portable audio guides related the (forgive the phrase) blow-by-blow reminiscences of a star from that time, Vanessa del Rio — the "Latin from Manhattan," reduced, these days, to Brooklyn.

To see how a display lined with photographs can fail as a record of the history of sex, check out the installation devoted to S&M. It is redeemed only by the revelation that the ranks of the spanked received a significant boost from the arrival of refugees from Nazi Germany, a place where sadism was no fantasy. For the most part, however, this segment of the show is, ahem, dominated by pin-ups of the pinioned, the pummeled, and the trussed, posed by professionals and packaged by profiteers. These pictures tell a picaresque tale (the saga of Irving Klaw, bondage entrepreneur, cries out for a Tim Burton movie), but they are far from enlightening. They record not authenticity, but performance. On the other hand, having also glanced at the museum's small, but painful (holy urethra!), sample of the undeniably authentic Mapplethorpe oeuvre, I'm not inclined to complain too much.

When the museum turns its attention to homosexuality, the results are somewhat better. Whether it's in the bleak camera work of Thomas Painter, the Brassai of Manhattan's mid-century gay demimonde, or in plain brown envelope beefcake photos (including one of a naked Yul Brynner — the real shock is his full head of hair) from the 1940s and 1950s, pseudo-exotic, claustrophobic, and vaguely ill at ease, the impact of that era's repression is obvious. Later came the Stonewall riot (visitors can study the Village Voice's remarkable report of that "fairy tale the likes of which the area has never seen") and then the Dionysian 1970s (exhibits include a board game, "Gay Weekend," featuring Scott, Billy, Mark, Glen, Terry, Ritchie, a beach, a bar, and a truck stop). Inevitably, there's also an installation designed to describe the horror of the plague years that followed.

What we are never really shown is the gradual acceptance of gays into "respectable" society, an omission typical of an exhibition that consistently confuses the extreme with the cutting edge, and also tends to neglect the mainstream by much more than the show's stated purpose would suggest. That's a distortion of the historical record even for supposedly go-ahead Gotham, and it has another disadvantage. The exaggerated emphasis on the far out, and the touch of Coney Island that it brings to this exhibition, reinforces the sense of alienation and emotional distance already implicit in viewing images of other people's sex lives. For all the low culture thrills, I left the museum lost in mild, but oddly persistent melancholy.

Post-coital depression by proxy? I doubt it. Intriguing, prurient and more than a little kitsch, the Museum of Sex is certainly worth trying but you won't need a cigarette afterwards.

Goodnight, John Boy

National Review Online, October 11, 2002

The Pax TV network promises "quality, family-friendly entertainment, free of senseless violence, explicit sex and foul language." That's one good reason for me to avoid it. Just Cause, a new show that premiered a couple of weeks ago, is another. Described by the self-proclaimed "feel good" network as a "compelling legal drama" this dreary offering is, in fact, no more than populist pabulum for the age of Enron. Promoted with the slogan "Cleaning up America…one crooked CEO at a time," Just Cause is a gimcrack morality play tailored for dunces. More ominously, it is almost certainly an early example of how the recent corporate scandals have, once again, turned bashing business into showbiz fare. The show's premiere opens in a women's prison, that familiar location for overheated fantasy, which on this occasion involves not sex (well, this is Pax), but racial harmony, pizza deliveries, benignly butch wardresses and a rendering of "I Will Survive." The occasion is the release of Alex DeMonaco (played by the marvelously named Lisa Lackey), paroled towards the end of a five-year sentence for insurance fraud. Naturally, like many of her fellow inmates, she is a "bona fide member" of the "been done wrong by a man club", a victim, not a criminal. In her case, she has taken the fall for her crooked lawyer of a husband, who has, the brute, disappeared with the loot, taking the couple's young daughter with him. In a final confirmation of this monster's wickedness, we learn that he used to wear a $3,000 suit, while poor Alex had to make do with "pantyhose with holes in them."

Alex, however, did not entirely waste her time in prison. Not only did she find true friendship amongst the salt of the cellblock, but she also managed to complete a law degree. On leaving prison, Alex works as a cleaning woman, but not for long. This very briefest of stints amongst the working poor was probably included only to establish her street credibility — her coworkers are impressed that she's a "home girl" from East L.A., who can speak Spanish. She then manages to talk herself into the offices of Hamilton Whitney III, a tony (we know that because of his name, his number, and the fact that he is the last man in America to wear a three-piece suit) San Francisco lawyer, whose firm's caseload will, after the arrival of Alex, move decidedly downscale.

As Jacqueline Zambrano ("a surfer and a Buddhist," according to a press release), the show's producer and co-creator, has explained, "We kind of feel like we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore… Our stories are going to be about corporate greed, drug companies that don't give us disclosure, the Army [not paying] for Agent Orange veterans, fast-food companies that give us breakouts of [bacteria]," a predictably shrill agenda so narrow-minded that to describe it as one-sided would be a compliment.

None of this seems to worry Hamilton Whitney III. His pleasantly profitable commercial practice (described in Pax's promotional materials as "helping rich people keep their money") will probably be wrecked by the militantly anti-business DeMonaco, but, by the end of the first episode, Alex's crusading zeal has fired up Whitney's old enthusiasm for the legal profession (apparently the practice of corporate law doesn't really count as a truly satisfactory calling) and the ex-con has become a member of his team. Perhaps casting is to blame. Whitney is played by Richard Thomas, an actor who became infamous as "John Boy" Walton, that simpering scion of a sanctimonious clan which, for all its supposedly conservative appeal, always seemed more Roosevelt than Coolidge.

Revealed as a man with a painfully clichéd social conscience, and thus, in all likelihood, a bore, the character of Whitney runs the risk, despite the best efforts of the amiable Mr. Thomas, of being too dull to watch. To spice him up a little, the show's scriptwriters have given this antiseptic attorney a racy past that is more Fox than Pax. Whitney III has three ex-wives! The problem is that, as a Casanova, the erstwhile sage of Walton's Mountain simply does not convince, and nor, for that matter, does Rebecca, the only one of his former spouses to make an appearance so far. Presumably one of the show's promised "comedic undercurrents," she's a curvy FBI agent in a Sue-Ellen Ewing power suit sashaying through her scenes in a way that reminds us yet again that the departure of a far more likeable G-woman, the restrained and classy Dana Scully, was a tragedy for the discerning viewer.

As for the series' storylines, they operate as little more than a showcase for the scriptwriters' ideological posturing. The premiere was, opportunistically but understandably enough, dedicated to financial and other shenanigans in an Enron-like corporation, Coltar, "a Bay-area energy giant." While aspects of the drama (the way in which the document shredder has become the getaway car of early twenty-first century robbery) were bang up to date, many of its characterizations were archaic caricatures, not much fresher than that old cliché of the capitalist bogeyman in his top hat and frock-coat, albeit adapted to the movie of the week sensibilities of contemporary TV.

Thus, while Enron's real-life chieftains seemed to have succeeded in maintaining at least a veneer of sophistication, the Coltar entourage includes a posse of Texan Neanderthals, complete with bolo ties, hee-haw accents, talk of executive jets, and a deplorably sexist attitude towards poor, pawed Alex, who is referred to as "Honey" and, in the ultimate display of crassness, asked to stick her "pretty finger" into the coffee "in order to sweeten it up." It's not only the bad manners that are exaggerated — Coltar's crimes are also far worse than anything now alleged about the home of that infamous crooked E.

Given Enron's current difficulties, it's difficult to become too upset when that company is parodied, even if unfairly. Suspicions, however, that the evil Coltar was being used as a device to make broader comments about the wickedness of corporate America were confirmed in the second episode of Just Cause. This saw the scriptwriters turn their attention to a far-less-deserving target: the pharmaceutical industry, a familiar punching bag for the unthinking Left. The story revolved around a rogue drug company testing its possibly dangerous products on an appropriately helpless community (the patients of a free clinic in an impoverished part of town). That's not an outlandish plot for a TV drama these days, but what marked out this episode was a series of observations by Alex that seemed to suggest that our heroine wants to see the U.S. adopt a Soviet-style medical system or, failing that, revert to the era of the apothecary and the leech.

On asking the clinic's doctor (long-haired, sincere, sympathetic) why a pharmaceutical company should want to manufacture a drug almost identical to one that is already available, Alex is told that the answer is "greed." If a company sees a competitor's product doing well, it will want to "whip up a me-too product and get a little of the action." Alex shakes her head at this disgraceful example of free market competition, mutters angrily about "capitalism at work" and looks sadly across at, you guessed it, some children. Needless to say the principal victim in this episode is also, Rodham-style, a child — of Russian immigrants, no less. Within minutes of his mother telling him about the joys of being brought up in the United States, the land of equality and democracy, the unfortunate tyke has (like, I suspect, most of the Just Cause audience) fallen into a coma. In poor Yuri's case, the grasping capitalists of the American pharmaceutical industry are to blame. Subtle, this show is not.

Other contributions by Ms. DeMonaco to the healthcare debate include misleading statistics hurled into the conversation in a way rather reminiscent of The West Wing and, in a comment on the drug companies' efforts to develop their business, the remark that "pushers aren't just on the street." There are, quite clearly, few depths to which this tawdry piece of agitprop will not sink.

So, Ms. Zambrano says that she is as mad as hell. I don't know about that, but she certainly ought to be embarrassed.

Gas-Mask Chic: Dressing for Armageddon

National Review, September 30, 2002

For reasons that need, sadly, no explanation, we find ourselves living in a nervous, uneasy era, a time when every backfiring car becomes a bomb, every spilled sachet of sugar a plague. Once again, an enemy is out there, but the threat now is not the familiar Soviet-style Armageddon, but the occasional hit-and-run, jihad on the installment plan, which although revoltingly vicious, should, with luck— and preparation—leave most of us unscathed. Preparation? Back in the Cold War years, that never seemed necessary. Mutually Assured Destruction meant that the threat to civilians was both minimal and total. Now attacks seem certain, but the odds of survival are good. Still, with homeland security in the hands of Tom Ridge and Norman Mineta, it may be wise to improve on those odds—and that's just what many Americans are starting to do. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist strikes some stores saw a surge in demand for guns and televisions, a good first step, but then what?

In Gotham, where I live, New York magazine tried to help out. Its "Survivalist's Guide to Living with Terrorism" offered a series of spooky lists, tailored (of course!) to income level. Silk-stocking survivalists were told to get ready for a designer doomsday with equipment that included a Maxa Beam searchlight ($1,687), Altec suspension expedition backpacks ($329), Eagle Gear "War Bags" ($195), Mobiflex portable shelter systems ($2,700), a Sea Eagle HSR sport boat ($3,200), and, to keep the irradiated rabble at bay, two pneumatic Tasers (priceless). Poorer folk were expected to make do with rather less. Recommendations for Archie's bunker included candles, Ziploc bags, and (don't ask) kitty litter.

Missed that issue? Never mind, there's always the Internet. With its themes of menace, conspiracy, government ineptitude, and the chance to make a buck, the current crisis may be the web's finest hour. And why not? As is pointed out at www.gammascout.com (home of the "Gamma-Scout" radiation detector), "government can only do so much." Indeed. At www.gasmasks.com they avoid talk of politics and get straight to the point: "Do you really want you, your spouse or your children to go through life with breathing disorders or scarred flesh from 3rd degree burns, or worse? It's just not necessary." Well, it you put it that way . . .

So where to begin? With the threat of NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical) attacks, we are now being offered carnage a la carte. I'll start with the nukes, but first, a disclaimer. As trial lawyers, like cockroaches, will undoubtedly survive the worst that bin Laden can throw at us, it's necessary to say that neither NATIONAL REVIEW nor I am endorsing—or condemning—any of the products mentioned in this survey, which is, I should add, about as comprehensive as this nation's airport security. Full disclosure: My own supplies include a radio, bottled water. Red Army-designed flashlights, a .357 Magnum (Tasers are for wimps), Cipro, potassium iodate, and cans of some nasty-looking beans (my wife is a vegetarian).

Now, back to the nukes. If a nuclear device explodes on top of you, there's not much to be done, but in the case of a dirty bomb, or a more conventional nuke that has gone off at a somewhat safer distance, there are some useful steps that can be taken. First swallow a pill. Fallout will contain radioactive iodine, something that is not only highly carcinogenic, but also thrilling fodder for the thyroid, a gluttonous gland, always greedy for a little more iodine, radioactive or otherwise. Greed, though, can be good: An effective defense against this menace comes from preemptively swallowing "clean" iodine, which should ensure that the duly sated thyroid has no room to absorb any iodine that glows. My own iodine stash comes in the form of potassium iodate pills from www.medicalcorps.org. I'm not convinced there's a huge distinction, but at www.nukepills.com they're selling "FDA-approved" potassium iodide ("different spelling, different drug").

After pills, pillboxes. Those wanting their own purpose-built shelters should check out www.disastershelter.com, but the homes in this line may be of limited use in Manhattan—some of these constructions are rather larger than the average apartment. Helpfully, at www.disastershelters.net (no relation) guidance is given on how to design a better-than-nothing shelter (the euphemism is "expedient") for the real-estate-starved or the simply improvident. One suggestion is to huddle under a table in a basement with "two feet of books or other heavy objects . . . placed on and around the table." Anything by Bernard Lewis should work particularly well. For those who have forgotten their kitty litter, "a 5 gallon bucket with plastic bags could be used for sanitation."

But what exactly would you be sheltering from.' Fallout is see-through, and if you want to see it through, some sort of radiation meter will be essential. But be careful. At the cheerfully named www.planetwide-exodus.com, they warn, accurately enough, that many Geiger counters now on the market were designed for geological research and "cannot handle" the amounts of radiation that would be produced in the aftermath of an attack, which is something they may have in common with us humans. The uncomfortably frank realists at www.homelandprotection.net are offering the Raditect: "the first Gamma Radiation Detector designed for home and office use" for those "nuclear emergencies that would present a long-term health risk, not immediate annihilation." Despite its promising name the focus at www.geigercounters.com seems to be on products for a more sedate era, including the "Inspector," which is, apparently, suitable for "applications requiring higher levels of sensitivity such as checking food for radioactive contamination." Forget food. What about me? At www.twotigersonline.com, there's a "pocket dosimeter" (in essence a personal nuclear odometer) designed to tell you just how irradiated you really are.

If the assault is biological rather than nuclear, coping may be a lot less work. We are already tragically familiar with the effects of anthrax, but conventional medicine—often antibiotics—will usually be able to deal effectively with most biological threats. If you have problems getting hold of antibiotics, www.tetrahedton.org ("an educational corporation" that deals with "health science and government cover-up[s]”) seems to be recommending a rummage through the feedlots. But with supplies of Advance Calf Medic (a possible source of oxytetracyline) being as scarce in Manhattan as a barnyard and a pitchfork, your HMO might, for once, be a better bet.

More practical, if a little unsentimental, are the folks at Gasmasks.com, the compassionate conservatives of viral Armageddon. Their "Biological Survivors Caring Kit" is a complete head-to-toe outfit for someone who doesn't want to get too close: It's something to wear "while caring for a loved one contaminated with a deadly virus, so the caregiver cannot get infected."

Mention of Gasmasks.com raises the question of chemical attacks, the third pony of bin Laden's bargain-basement apocalypse. Comfortingly, some of the protective gear against this threat may be of use against N and B, as well as C, but be sure to watch out for gas-mask grifters. At www.homelandgasmasks.com, there's dark talk of the older (and often foreign) military-surplus masks being offered to "unsuspecting Americans." You can see a few of them (masks, not unsuspecting Americans) at www.approvedgasmasks.com with its rogues' gallery of gas masks fit only for use as a "Halloween costume or conversation piece," a list that includes the Russian M4I Aardvark. From the look of it, you will die laughing long before the gas gets to you.

Approvedgasmasks.com also boasts a wide range of hopefully more effective devices: the Scott ProMask, the SGE 1000, the SGE 400se, the MSA Advantage 1000, the MSA Advantage 3000, the MSA Night Ranger (lens resistant to shrapnel!), the MSA Ultra-Twin, and the M-95 Military. If that's too much to choose from, try the narrower selection at Homelandgasmasks.com (Panoramic Visor, Economy, and, for the kids, the Junior). Fashionistas will appreciate the different colors available at Gasmasks.com: neon yellow, midnight black, or, for the tactless, cobalt blue.

Of course, most such masks are somewhat bulky and difficult to carry around, at least without raising a few eyebrows. In preparing to save your life, you might well lose your job. At www.gasmasks-usa.com, they have a solution for this, a compact "Quick Escape Mask." This may buy just enough time for you to parachute out of your building (www.aerialegress.com), swallow your pill, grab your "One Person Tote N Go Survival Kit" (from www.areyouprepared.com—comes complete with emergency poncho and nine towelettes), and head for the hills, or, possibly, that book-lined table.

Once in the hills, thoughts will turn to longer-term survival. True pessimists will have bought the $6,320 Super Pak (one year, two people, 344 cans, one can-opener) from www.healthywealthyandwise.net. The state of kitchen facilities will, of course, be uncertain, but that won't worry purchasers of "super fresh, super tasting" MREs (Meals Ready to Eat, including country captain chicken, Jamaican pork chop, and many others) from Two-tigersonline.com. Cooking instructions include placing the unopened pouch "inside your shirt, allowing your body temperature to help warm the food inside."

That's the spirit: determined, dauntless, and a little bit daffy. Al-Qaeda doesn't stand a chance.

Basic Instinct

American Outlook, September 1, 2002

Joseph Epstein: Snobbery - The American Version

The Englishman said to me, “oh you are writing for an American magazine.” The eyebrow arched, the lip curled, the cliché was confirmed over a smugly sipped cup of tea. English snobbery, again. To the rest of the world, it is our defining vice (full disclosure: I’m also from the scepter’d isle), something as English as military defeat is French. Fair enough: mine is a country obsessed by class. Only in England could a humorous essay (published in the 1950s by one of the Mitfords, naturally) on the distinctions between the language (“U”) of the upper classes and that spoken by everyone else (“Non-U”) become a national obsession. Lavatory was “U,” toilet was (and, some would say, still is) a social catastrophe. Of course, such refinement should be no surprise in a nation with a sense of class so acute that, only a few years ago, it was usually possible to tell a man’s social origins by his socks (ideally dark blue or black, calf-length, and never, ever patterned).

But if snobbery is our vice, it isn’t ours alone. England’s trick was to market its snobbery as the best in the world, and then to put it to work. In this, if nothing else, Britain succeeded brilliantly. In his Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire, historian David Cannadine makes the case that the British colonizers often co-opted the “native” social hierarchy (medals all ’round!) into their own in order to assist in the preservation of colonial rule. As any reader of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim will know, class did not always trump race, but as a prop (in both senses) of the glittering imperial structure, it certainly played its part. Even today snobbery remains a useful weapon in London’s diplomatic arsenal, most notably in the awarding of knighthoods to the occasional friendly foreigners. Step forward, “Sir” Norman Schwarzkopf.

Snobbery, then, is not confined to those damp islands off the northwestern coast of Europe. In his entertaining new book, Snobbery: The American Version, author and Northwestern University lecturer Joseph Epstein gives credit where credit is due (“the English are more practiced in snobbery than any other people”), but chooses not to linger too long in Albion. The main focus of his book is snootiness on the western side of the pond, “its perplexities and its perils, its complications and not least its comedy.” On a more serious note (this is, after all, a book by an American academic), he aims to examine “whether snobbery is a constituent part of human nature or instead an aberration brought about by any particular social conditions.” He succeeds admirably in the analysis of the first part of his objective, stumbles over the second, and has problems too with a third, no less important question: what exactly is a snob?

That last difficulty puts Epstein in good company. In his 1848 collection, The Book of Snobs, Thackeray complains that although “the word snob has taken a place in our honest English vocabulary,” it can’t be defined. “We can’t say what it is, any more than we can define wit or humor or humbug; but we know what it is.” Epstein has a similar problem. His notion of the “essence of snobbery” (“arranging to make yourself superior at the expense of other people”) seems to miss the point. Ray Kroc, no snob icon but the man who made McDonald’s what it is today, reportedly said that if he saw a competitor drowning, he would put a live fire hose in his mouth. Superiority is often achieved at the expense of someone else. Such leapfrogging has taken our species from mud huts to the moon. But how superior is that superiority? Epstein writes that “snobbery often entails taking a petty, superficial, or irrelevant distinction and running with it.” He’s right, and if anything is the essence of snobbery, that would be it. Some of his examples, however, are strangely unpersuasive.

Contrary to what Epstein suggests, the driver of a BMW 740i is indeed quite entitled to feel “quietly, assuredly better than the poor vulgarian in his garish Cadillac.” As is acknowledged elsewhere in this book, good taste is not the same as snobbery. Equally, whatever Epstein may think, the parent of a daughter “studying art history at Harvard” need not be ashamed of the “calm pleasure” with which he greets the news that the child of an acquaintance is able to manage only a major in photojournalism at Arizona State University. That parent has, in all probability, earned that moment of satisfaction. The snob is not distinguished from the man of taste by his ability and willingness to discern the difference between a Beamer and a Caddy but by the use he makes of that discernment. Coming to the conclusion that Harvard is better than ASU is not necessarily the mark of the snob: treating an ASU graduate worse, merely because of where he went to college, most surely is.

These lapses into a dismaying (and, one hopes, insincere) egalitarianism are the exception rather than the rule in this book. Epstein soon finds himself on safer ground. Like Thackeray (a comparison that he would, doubtless, accept with “calm pleasure”), Epstein is rather better at identifying snobs than at analyzing snobbery. From a vantage point of somewhat tweedy, curmudgeonly disdain, he offers his readers an enjoyably vicious introduction to the different types of American snob. They are presented as a ludicrous and absurd spectacle, lampooned with a vim and biliousness that is all too rare in an era wherein there is no offense greater than giving offense. Among Epstein’s victims are Susan Sontag (“when young, a knockout American woman who did a fairly decent impression of a European intellectual”), PC “virtucrats” (“What makes the virtucrat a snob is that not only is he smug about the righteousness of his views, but he imputes bad faith to anyone who doesn’t share them. Upon this imputed bad faith he erects his own superiority.”), Gore Vidal (“Self-love, which in him never goes unrequited, is sufficient for this remarkably confident snob.”), and foodies (“When did my dentist begin using the word pasta?”).

Epstein appears to concede that he himself may be something of a snob, but it would be wrong to dismiss his tastes (there are, for example, touches of PBS, academe, and the hair shirt in his rather ostentatious lack of interest in material gain) as routine examples of intellectual snobbery. As he explains elsewhere in the book:

High standards far from being snobbish are required to maintain decency in life. When the people who value these things are called snobs, the word is usually being used in a purely sour-grapes way. Elitist is almost invariably another sour-grapes word, at least when used to denigrate people who insist on a high standard. The distinction is that the elitist desires the best; the snob wants other people to think he has, or is associated with, the best. Delight in excellence is easily confused with snobbery by the ignorant.

Quite. The mere fact that he is so obviously comfortable using a shockingly abrasive word like ignorant tells the reader all he needs to know about Joseph Epstein.

Epstein is even prepared to risk being labeled snobbish about snobbery with his suggestion that American snobbery has itself gone down in the world. In a key chapter (“O WASP, Where Is Thy Sting-a-Ling?”), he chronicles how America’s old White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite walked away from power (and, as he notes in a brilliant, brutal aside, “came away disliked, diminished, maybe even a little despised for having done so”), leaving snobbery unanchored, “setting it afloat if not aloft, to alight on objects other than those connected exclusively with social class,” including, presumably, pasta.

But that’s an exaggeration. Class sensibility was no longer so rooted in ethnicity or tradition as in the past, but, as Paul Fussell showed in his book Class (1983), it was flourishing well into the Reagan era. It continues to do so today, but, so far as snobs are concerned, class has lost much of its glitter. The years of fluid hierarchy and social change have taken their toll. Old notions of caste no longer suffice for truly effective one-upmanship. In response, snobs did what they had to. They evolved.

As snobbery is such a basic instinct, this was only to be expected. Yet, despite the fact that the force and existence of such an instinct explains much of what Epstein describes, he seems curiously unwilling to accept it. In an attempt designed, presumably, to satisfy his objective of seeing whether snobbery can be linked to “particular social conditions,” Epstein asserts that “snobbery as we know it today, [the] snobbery meant to shore up one’s own sense of importance and to make others sorely feel their insignificance” was rarely seen before the nineteenth century. The reason for its expansion, he argues, was the spread of democracy. By unsettling a previously fixed social order, democracy increased the level of insecurity within society. Epstein quotes H. L. Mencken’s observation that, socially speaking, the American is on a perpetually icy slope, wanting to climb “a notch or two,” but “with no wall of caste to protect him if he slips.” As an ersatz class system, snobbery could assist in the struggle to survive within a society that had become suddenly, and frighteningly, competitive.

It is an ingenious theory, but it fails. Snobbery, and its simpering handmaiden, deference, could be witnessed long before the emergence of mass democracy. Epstein need have no doubt that it is, indeed, “a constituent part of human nature.” Let’s take one example. “Novelists,” writes Epstein, “are our keenest sociologists,” and there were none keener than Jane Austen. At the time she was writing, the ballot box was yet to cast much of a shadow over England’s country gentry, and yet her novels are filled with snobbish tension and social unease. And that’s only natural. People have always understood that no social order can be guaranteed to endure forever. Our species has emerged through millennia of turmoil, conflict, disaster, and war, and the lesson it has drawn has been simple: there is never, ever a bad time to be jockeying for position.

If there’s one person who knows about jockeying for position, it is a snob. On its face, Epstein’s comment that “there is something deeply antisocial about the snob” seems puzzling. There is, on the contrary, no one more social. Lacking the talent to succeed on his own merits, the snob is forced to manipulate social convention in such a way as to ensure that he achieves that all-too-necessary commodity, status. Epstein’s complaint, however, is subtler: it is not the snob who is antisocial, but his methods. The snob, he grumbles, “is, in a profound sense, in business for himself,” to which the obvious retort is, “Who isn’t?” Where snobbery can be said to be antisocial is in the misdirection of effort and ability that it implies; but like it or not, its existence is inevitable in any functioning society: a successful organism will always attract parasites.

It is difficult to avoid the feeling that Epstein’s disapproval of his snooty subjects colors his other main theme: that snobs have no fun. His description of the miseries of the snob’s life is bleak indeed. Epstein contends that the snob has only one standard, “that of comparison,” and that this approach to life can bring no “lengthy contentment” because “comparison inevitably implies competition.” There’s something to this; the snob’s self-esteem may be unusually susceptible to the opinions of others. But this is only a question of degree: almost all of us worry about how we are seen by the outside world. Besides, what’s the problem with competition? Epstein’s notion that competition is automatically an ordeal is a view that I suspect (perhaps snobbishly) only an academic could hold. Competition can be agony (check out the scene in Bret Easton Ellis’s repulsive but perceptive novel American Psycho, in which various Wall Street types compare the quality of their business cards), but it can also be ecstasy (Ray Kroc again). It depends on the nature not of the game (which can be snobbish or not), but of the individual who is playing it.

The truth is that, disapproving of snobbery as he does, Epstein desperately wants to believe that snobs must, by definition, be unhappy. In this he is doomed to be disappointed. Like all primates, we are social animals, and therefore status in itself—deserved or not—can be a source of profound satisfaction. The rewards from the superficial can run very, very deep.

It’s not “fair,” of course, but so far as snobs are concerned, that’s just the point.