Dead Men Talking

National Review Online, August 12, 2001 

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Who, these days, is prepared to act their age? Teens carry on as if they were 30, the middle-aged think that they are 20, and now, if a new TV hit is to be believed, the dead are behaving as if they were alive. The show, Crossing Over with John Edward, a surprise success for cable's Sci-Fi Channel, stars the eponymous Mr. Edward. He's a fast-talking psychic with slow-witted fans, many of who like to believe that this former ballroom-dancing instructor can put them in touch with the dear departed.

For what is, presumably, a matter of fantasy, Crossing Over is surprisingly matter-of-fact. The introductory tune is mildly spooky, with a hint of the X-Files, but the rest of the format is more daytime talk show than nighttime séance. There are no Ouija boards, no startling emanations of ectoplasm, no tables are tipped. Those who prefer more mumbo in their jumbo need to look elsewhere (perhaps to Mr. Edward's series of audio tapes: his Unleashing Your Psychic Potential, for example, offers listeners the recipe for a ritual psychic spring-cleaning, something, in case you are wondering, which involves sage and plenty of Kosher salt).

On Crossing Over, the tone is conversational and relaxed. The audience sits in front of the seer, ranged in expectant rows on a dais. By talk-show standards, it appears to be a fairly upscale crowd, ranking perhaps half way between Oprah and an Al Gore town meeting. Well, I did say "fairly" upscale. Women outnumber men, and if the dead are present, they are low key and discreet, at least to start with.

Mr. Edward begins the proceedings briskly. As his fans will already understand, the great man is surfing the interred-net hoping to pick up a name, a fragment of a name, or any clue, indeed, that will sound vaguely familiar to one of the people in the room. It doesn't take long (for a show about eternity, Crossing Over is very rapidly paced). Mr. Edward typically comes out with a syllable or two, "Francesca," say, or "Francis" or "Fran." After a few moments, a member of the audience will normally react, eagerly proffering a candidate, "Francesco," perhaps, for consideration. If Francesco turns out to have "passed" ("kicked the bucket," "bought the farm," or "croaked" are not acceptable terms on this program), that will be enough for the psychic. He'll turn into a quick-fire interrogator, Sam Spade on Speed, with a bewilderingly fast Q & A designed to show that ex-Francesco is now in touch.

Mr. Edward will ask the audience member about cats, dogs, colon surgery, mantelpieces, ceramic teapots, anything. Surprisingly often (and surprisingly quickly), the psychic will succeed in turning up some precise little reference that could "only" have come from the dead man. Let's say that ex-Francesco loved ceramic teapots. By supposedly prompting the psychic's question about ceramic teapots, ex-Francesco will, to use the jargon of the show, have provided "validation." The dead guy will have "come through" by putting the idea of ceramic teapots in John Edward's head. Well, that's what the audience clearly wants to think. Crossing Over is a show for the sort of people who would have preferred The Sixth Sense to have a more upbeat finale. The amiable Mr. Edward is pleased to oblige. Bereaved relatives turn out not to be so bereaved as they had once thought, and the ratings keep on rising (particularly among women, a group previously under-represented among the dank ranks of Sci-Fi Channel viewers).

To be fair, some of Mr. Edward's findings are indeed remarkably specific. These discoveries are usually accompanied by little gasps and shouts of recognition among the not-so-bereaved-after-all. Their astonished comments are always along the same lines, "oh my God how did he do that wow that's amazing," but subtitles are provided when the exact wording of the audience's amazement comes across a little inarticulately. This happens more often than you might think. If there is one thing muddier than the reasoning on Crossing Over, it is the diction.

Then again, I have no idea either how Mr. Edward does it. Maybe it is, as is claimed in the introduction to the show, all "real." The only people who know for sure are the dead and they are not talking, to me at least (Granny, phone home). If I had to make a guess, Mr. Edward is probably an extremely able "cold reader." Cold reading is an old "psychic" trick. The term is basically a fancy way of describing the use of intuition, empathy, guesswork and, initially, very, very general questions (Francis, Francesca, Fran) to come to that one remarkable revelation that convinces the credulous that the spirits are indeed "coming through." It takes skill, which Mr. Edward certainly has, and it also takes, how can this be put politely, a certain special something in the minds of his subjects.

It cannot be put politely. Those special somethings are naivety, superstition, and a problem with rational thought, qualities that are all too common in this supposedly sophisticated country's current high tech re-run of the Dark Ages. It is a ridiculous phenomenon, and Crossing Over is very far from being its only example. What makes Mr. Edward one of its more representative figures, however, is not only his show (or considerable commercial success), but the peculiarly maudlin banality of his vision of the afterlife. It is the vision that is the sub-text to Crossing Over, but which is set out more explicitly elsewhere, notably in Mr. Edward's "inspirational" novel, What If God Were the Sun? This is a book modestly described by its publisher as "incomparable" (and, in a way, it is) but the seagulls on the cover are fair warning. Those of us old enough to remember the 1970s know what that can mean.

To describe this novel as sugary is an understatement. Diabetics should not read it except under close medical supervision. For page after page, the reader is subjected to a sickly sweet mash of simpering truisms and New Age folklore. The conclusion, of course, is that there is no conclusion. As he "crosses over," the narrator, "Timothy," finds himself floating through a "tunnel of light" with a "sensation of overwhelming love and peace," which, mercifully for the rest of us, he cannot "put into words."

Arrival on the other side is, it turns out, a little bit like Thanksgiving, only worse. All the relatives are in town ("Uncle Dominick and Aunt Gina…Aunt Marsha and Grandpa Jack, too") and so are in the in-laws (including those impolite enough to die before our hero had the chance to get to know them first time round). Before you ask, yes, this is meant to be Heaven, not Hell. And that is to be expected. The notion of Hell is far too judgmental, far too demanding for this sort of New Age cosmology. There's no St. Peter blocking the gate, just a rather vague "life review" designed to give "a type of closure." We leave Timothy surrounded by his family and his "oldest and dearest" friend, his dog Chester. "It's so wonderful to know that our beloved pets are waiting on the other side to meet us, too!"

It's not exactly Valhalla, is it? Other belief-systems have offered the prospect of a rather more inspiring afterlife than this perpetual family reunion. Unfortunately, these usually came with a fairly substantial downside. Just ask Dante. To take another example, the Ancient Egyptians believed that the newly deceased had to appear in front of Osiris, the Judge Bork of the Underworld. This was a "life review" with consequences. The hearts of those judged guilty would be fed to a beast that was part-lion, part-crocodile and part-hippopotamus. There would be no Chesters in their future.

That is not the sort of talk that many of Mr. Edward's fans would like to hear. They are looking for the comfort of faith without its rigor. They want the prospect of Heaven without the danger of Hell, and, above all, they seem to need the cozy reassurance that nothing has consequences, not even death. And why shouldn't they? After all, it would seem to be a perfect creed for a society that sees the term "endless self-indulgence" as a promise, not a criticism.

Wait a minute. Didn't I say that Crossing Over was a "surprise" success? What was I thinking?

End of a Century

National Review Online, august 6th, 2001 

A few days ago, in a quiet English country town, the long, long life of Bertie Felstead finally came to an end. And when the old man died, a small, surviving fragment of the 19th century died with him. He had been a local celebrity, an approachable Methuselah, a dapper figure in blazer, regimental tie, and, sometimes, on very special occasions, a row of medals. He had bright eyes, a cheery, amazed-to-be-here smile, and a lifespan that stretched across civilizations. Born on October 28th, 1894, Mr. Felstead was ancient enough to have seen the imperial spectacle of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, sufficiently young to have outlived the Clinton presidency. It was an astonishing achievement, made all the more remarkable by the fact that, in his youth, Mr. Felstead was to participate in an event that characterized, more than most, the last moments of the world into which he was born. Historians like to tell us that the European 19th century did not end at the moment dictated by the calendar. Its optimistic bourgeois spirit, its almost naïve belief in progress, continued to flourish for more than another decade. It took the First World War to bring that "long 19th century," and so much else, to a close. Spiritually and physically, the Europe that emerged from that conflict bore very little resemblance to the seemingly stable culture that had existed only four years before. In August 1914, totalitarian hecatombs were the stuff of nightmare, believable, perhaps, by madmen or in the dark of night, unimaginable in the reassuring light of an Edwardian morning. Forty months later Lenin was already ordering his first mass executions.

The men that went off to fight that summer were still the soldiers of the older era, still the sort of men who believed that war could be a bit of a lark. With luck, they thought, it would be over by Christmas. In Britain, poignantly, the troops were all volunteers, professional soldiers, "Territorials" (National Guardsmen) perhaps, or the first wave of that trustingly patriotic civilian army that was doomed to die in the killing fields of Flanders and of France.

Christmas 1914, of course, eventually arrived, but peace did not. Despite this, up and down the line the holiday was marked by informal cease-fires, the sound of carols, and, surprisingly often, even more. The opposing armies shared meals, drinks, and cigarettes. There were contests, peaceful for once, a shooting match, card games, some soccer. The generals did not approve, but to see these encounters as an early pacifist spasm is to believe hindsight's myth. Those sentiments would come, but only later, after the disillusion brought by countless battles over scraps of Belgian mud. In that first, almost innocent Christmas of the war the troops were celebrating a truce, not a mutiny, a day off, not a desertion, and, yes, they were pleased to do so with their counterparts in the opposite trench. The enemy was still the enemy, certainly, but that word had not yet come to bear its full, modern significance. There could be room for a break in a war that was still, just, being fought according to the rules of a dissolving, shared civility.

A year later, the orders went out. There was to be no repetition of such disgraceful scenes. Christmas fraternization was a crime, a desertion, a betrayal of the glorious dead. In the event, these instructions were largely superfluous. The sporting contest of 1914 was no more. The war had become an abattoir struggle that stretched the length of a continent. There had been too many casualties, too many tens of thousands of corpses, too many bitter memories. The hundred-yard gulf between the two trenches was no longer so easily crossed by mistletoe, schnapps, and a burst of song. In a couple of magical spots along the Front, however, wonderfully, hauntingly, the older decencies still managed to linger on. One of those places was Laventie, in France. Bertie Felstead, in those days a private in the 15th Welch Fusiliers, was there. The man who was to survive into the 21st century participated in one of the final grace notes of the long 19th.

It was a story that this last witness would often tell. "We were only one hundred yards or so apart when Christmas morning came. A German began singing All Through The Night, then more voices joined in and the British troops responded with Good KingWenceslas…you couldn't hear each other sing like that without it affecting your feelings for the other side."

"The next morning all the soldiers were shouting to another, "Hello Tommy, Hello Fritz." The Germans started it, coming out of their trenches and walking over to us. Nobody decided for us, we just climbed over our parapet and went over to them. We thought nobody would shoot at us if we all mingled together." And nor they did. No shots were exchanged, only cigars and cigarettes. "We met, we swapped cigarettes and had a good smoke…Of course, we realized we were in the most extraordinary position, wishing each other Happy Christmas one day and shooting each other the next, but we were so pleased to be able to forget the war and shake hands."

Someone started kicking around a soccer ball. "It wasn't a game as such, more of a kick-around and a free-for-all. I remember scrambling around in the snow. There could have been 50 on each side. No-one was keeping score." No one was keeping score. Ah, the relief of it. Just for a moment, just for a snatched miraculous instant, there was a pause in that daily murderous struggle, a pause in that struggle where the savage accounting never seemed to stop, a pause in that struggle where high commands always knew the score.

Just for a few minutes, it was all so different. In the age before the mass ideologies and the slaughters that they made so easy, it was still possible for these opponents to remember what they had in common. "The Germans were men of their Fatherland, and we [were men] of our Motherland, and human nature being what it is, the feelings built up overnight and so both sides [had] got up…to meet halfway in No Man's Land." To Bertie Felstead, a civilized, understated man, a man of an older era, it was the natural thing to do and, as for those Germans that day, well, they were, he said, quite simply, "all right".

It couldn't last. The 20th century was not to be kept waiting. After about half an hour an officer appeared to warn his troops that they were in France to fight "the Huns, not to make friends with them." It was not long before artillery had replaced the carols.

In 1916, there were no Christmas Truces.

Apes in Time

Planet of the Apes

National Review Online, July 28, 2001

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Well, they finally, really did it. Planet of the Apes is out, and the critics are in (except for this one: the power and global influence of NRO did not stretch to two preview tickets — thanks, Jonah), but it is not true to say that this event marks the return of our monkey masters. They have never left. The original Planet was followed by four sequels, which was no mean feat: The second in the series ended with a supposedly conclusive atomic explosion. Even the sequels had sequels. There was a TV show (the first episode was watched by half the viewing public), a cartoon series, and even a rather serious-minded documentary. Somehow, at some moment in the process, those clever monkeys managed to carve out their own long-armed, human-hunting, ram's horn blowing space right in the sweet spot of American popular culture, up in the pantheon somewhere between Captain Kirk and Danny Partridge.

If you don't believe me, what else can explain the fact that that the orangutan priest/scientist/Machiavellian wily Doctor Zaius, the shrewd guardian of ape orthodoxy, has enjoyed an afterlife that has included an interactive advice bureau over the Internet and being feted by song in The Simpsons ("Doctor Zaius, Doctor Zaius, Doctor Zaius")? Even the altogether less important Aldo, a truculent, but ambitious gorilla, who rises to the rank of general in the course of the final two movies, is celebrated by an action figure, a 96-piece jigsaw puzzle and a loyal following on the web.

So great is the force of this franchise, that it can even bring fame to the silent. In the first two movies Nova is the beautiful, but primitive girlfriend of the marooned astronaut, Taylor. She is given a two-piece costume and a one-word script. As roles go, it's no Ophelia, but more than 30 years later, the actress who played Nova can still be seen at sci-fi and collectables conventions, surrounded by fans, most of whom were born long after the moment she said that precious, unique, loyal word, "Tay-lor." Two syllables, two films. They have proved to be more than enough for immortality.

What is the secret of the simians' success? Well, interactive Doctor Zaius wouldn't tell me ("Why do you bother me with such trivia?") but clearly nostalgia is part of the explanation. By itself that would not be enough. Just ask the hoodwinked hordes who were lured in to see the Brady Bunch movies. In our age of endlessly recycled memories, all the old icons are still out there, never, quite, allowed to fade, (they even remade Mister Magoo) shown in rerun or in syndication, on Nick at Night or AMC, available in DVD, video and retro-style lunch box. Very few of them, though, still have the genuine pull still enjoyed by those damn, dirty apes.

It helped, of course, that the first Apes movie was as good as it was. From the moment that that spacecraft crashed into the stark, strange landscape of an alien planet (in reality, a part of this country now represented in the U.S. Senate by that stark, strange John McCain) the viewer is transported to a world upside down, a world transformed, to borrow Shakespeare's phrase, into a "wilderness of monkeys," where the gorillas ride horses, humans are vermin, and the Statue of Liberty is a shattered ruin, left, like our former civilization, in fragments on a deserted ocean shore.

The script, co-written by Rod Serling, is a splendid period piece, a close cousin of the writer's other great legacy, The Twilight Zone. It features the same crackpot moralizing, the same sly references to current controversies (one of the younger chimps has evidently been to Tom Hayden's Berkeley) and the same imaginative power. Like the best of those shows, it is hokey enough to be nostalgically comfortable, but clever enough, still, after all these years, to thrill, provoke, and enthrall. The cast rose to the occasion, most of all, Charlton Heston (Taylor), the film's greatest and, ironically, most savage presence (once Taylor gets his rifle, the spaceman proves unstoppable. He triumphs: No ape ever gets to pry any weapon from Taylor's cold, dead hands). Played by Heston in a style that is part Shatner, part histrionics, and wholly compelling, it is remarkable performance, made all the more memorable by the fascinating problem with which our hero is confronted. For Taylor is an angry misanthrope who has the misfortune to land on a planet where men no longer rule.

And that is the concept that has ensured the success of these movies. As a species, we have always been intrigued by the notion of a world where the usual rules did not apply. It appeals to our barely controlled love of disorder and escape. The Romans used to celebrate it during the festival of Saturnalia, a time when the aristocrat played the slave, and the plebeian the senator. In medieval Europe, peasants used to delight themselves with tales of the land of Cockaigne, a place that was like Heaven, except more fun, not least because it was the former nobility that had to do all the heavy lifting.

The planet of the apes is a sort of reverse Cockaigne, like Hell, in a way, only worse. In this world, all of us, rich and poor, turn out to have been the nobility, and now we must pay. It is a fascinating, terrifying idea, and one that proved strong enough to sustain the Apes franchise through the distinctly less impressive sequels that followed. The scripts were weaker and, critically, the power of the original concept was diluted by the fact that in the later movies, humanity was in, at least with a chance.

The second movie, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, has its moments, but had to weather a finale that involved grotesque mutants (my guess is that those folks needed no make-up: their features had already been permanently scarred by the uncontrollable laughter triggered by the sight of some of the screenplay) making their quavering way through a hymn in praise of the particularly nasty nuclear weapon that they have chosen to worship. The last three films are best seen as a separate trilogy, and they are burdened somewhat by an unattractive and not particularly subtle sub-text about race relations in mid-20th-century America.

Those wanting to know more about this politicized angle need to contact Mr. Eric Greene, the author of the wonderfully odd Planet of the Apes as American Myth — Race, Politics and Popular Culture. Despite its leaden prose and leftist polemic, Mr. Greene's book is a fascinating and insightful read, even if, at times, the author appears to have been left a little deranged by his obviously intense and repeated exposure to the Apes movies. To the best of my knowledge, he remains the only person to have spotted the sexism inherent within Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Without Mr. Greene's help, I would not have realized that Caesar's choice of mate (Would it be the "demure chimpanzee" Lisa or a "voluptuous and eager" alternative?) revealed that "even in the ape world…women's roles are divided into the stereotypes of either virgin or whore." Who knew?

The ability of the franchise to endure and to survive the occasional missteps of the later films (if you think that the hymn-singing mutants were absurd, just wait until the moment that the monkey statue starts to cry) is a tribute to the strength of its original notion, a notion made all the more seductive by its choice of protagonists, the apes. Planet of the Dogs just would not have packed the same punch. The choice of apes was the masterstroke. It made the films, somehow, believable.

For deep down, we know that, when it comes to the animal kingdom, the apes are in a class of their own, they are different, they are smarter, and they are family. They really could have made this their planet. A few million years ago, at the critical evolutionary moment, it was between them or us. We got lucky, that was all (something to do with monoliths from outer space: it was all explained in 2001: A Space Odyssey), but we never have quite escaped our simian past, and, all too often, it shows. As the 17th Century playwright Congreve, once admitted, it is not possible to "look long upon a monkey without very mortifying reflections."

We use the apes as humanity's distorted mirror, and as its chattering reproachful goad. That is why they so intrigue us, and that is why the Apes movies, with their unsettling suggestion that evolution was not, perhaps, for the best, have had such a grip on our imagination. And so, as soon as I can get my stinking paws on a ticket, I shall go to Tim Burton's new film.

So long, of course, as Doctor Zaius gives me permission.

Spirits in the Sky

National Review Online, July 24, 2001

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Is it possible, do you think, that Democratic senators are, in reality, demons sent by the Devil to pester, humiliate, and torment the rest of us? It may be a somewhat far-fetched theory, but take a look at the latest proposed policy initiative from Dianne Feinstein and see if you can come up with any other explanation.

 Ms. Feinstein, the senior senator from California, has decided that the experience of air travel in this country needs to be made worse. The senator, a lawmaker with, clearly, too little to occupy her time, has recently written to the CEOs of seven major air carriers suggesting that they should not serve any passenger more than two alcoholic drinks in the course of a domestic flight.

 Now, a "suggestion" from Dianne Feinstein is, like a "request" from Don Corleone, something to take seriously. Just in case any of the CEOs did not understand this, the sober-sided senator spelled out the threat implicit in her proposal. If the airlines would not comply "voluntarily" they would be required to do so by law. "I am," she warned sternly, "in the process of writing legislation." And that legislation would be tough. The ban, she explained, would apply "regardless of the type of alcoholic beverage served."

 Let us imagine what that could mean. You are in Coach, in a middle seat narrower than George W. Bush's Florida majority. One neighbor, grotesquely obese, is spreading out from the confines of his chair into your own space. The other, who does not appear to have washed for some days, is sobbing quietly after a nasty spot of turbulence over Des Moines. Two rows behind, a baby screams, but undeterred his mother carries on with the grim task of changing a diaper then and there (she has little choice — the line for the restroom stretches halfway down the plane). The flight itself, theoretically a six-hour hike from New York to Seattle, took off very late owing to unspecified "trouble" at O'Hare. You will, you already know, miss the meeting that was the purpose of your journey in the first place. The flight attendant has just informed you that the last chicken entrée has already been taken, leaving a choice of a bean-based mush or a packet of honey-coated pretzels. It has been two or three hours since your last drink. To numb the pain, you ask for a third Bud Light. Under the terms of the Feinstein fatwa your request will be denied.

 If there is anything guaranteed to spark an outburst of anger, this is it, which is ironic really, as the alleged purpose of the two drinks limit is to reduce "air rage." Of course, why Sen. Feinstein should be so worried by this subject is not clear. The senator was, after all, famously relaxed ("we've got to step back…let cooler minds prevail") when, in this year's most spectacular instance of aerial misbehavior, a hot-dogging Chinese jet collided into an American surveillance plane. We can only speculate as to what it is that has now led Ms. Feinstein to take a new harder line against trouble in the sky. It would, of course, be absolutely inappropriate to suggest that a double standard is at work and quite, quite wrong to hint that the senior senator from California is a self-important busybody, who finds it easier to boss around American citizens than stand up to Communist China.

 No, the answer must lie elsewhere. Was there, perhaps, an incident, senator, a squabble, maybe, on one fraught flight over just whose suitcase was going to have priority in a jam-packed overhead locker? We can only speculate. There is no evidence of such a drama, but then, why worry too much about that? There is no evidence of any epidemic of air rage either, but that does not seem to have stopped Ms. Feinstein.

 The real data are, in fact, rather reassuring. In response to the senator's proposal, a spokesman for an airline industry group, the Air Transport Association, has claimed that most of the four thousand or so (usually fairly minor) incidents of "air rage" that take place each year do so on the ground. Minor or not, that is four thousand too many, but it is worth remembering that U.S. airports catered for over six hundred million passengers last year. Based on those statistics, therefore, unruly travelers account for .0007 percent of the total, and most of those are enraged not by drink, but by delays. One of the principal causes of those delays, Sen. Feinstein, has been Washington's failure to bring the private sector into the management of the air-traffic-control system.

 What is more, when a drunken passenger is, or may become, a problem, the airlines already have all the powers they need. As Ms. Feinstein's own press release admits, under FAA regulations airlines are prohibited from serving alcoholic beverages to any person aboard who appears to be intoxicated. Disorderly passengers can be handcuffed or otherwise restrained. Quite rightly, as a number of loutish holidaymakers have recently discovered, they can also be prosecuted.

 As for those who argue that two drinks should be enough for anyone, well, that may be true for them (and for me. I'm a very frequent flier, but, in the air at least, a very infrequent drinker) but it is not for others, and those folks should be left to make their own choices. A drink or three can help wile away the time, or soothe, perhaps, the truculent traveler who might otherwise cause just the sort of problems which, supposedly, so alarm the senator. In addition, most of us know those terrified fliers (hi, Mom!) who need more than a little something to help them through their ordeal. Why should they suffer?

 In the end though, the utilitarian case misses the point. This particular example, the right to that third beer, may be not be the most important cause, but what matters here is the underlying principle, the principle that government should not take away any of our freedoms without a good reason. In this instance, Sen. Feinstein has not shown us that reason. The facts do not support her argument, and if we reject Satan as an explanation for Dianne's draft diktat (and, probably we must, although the Devil does, notoriously, find work for idle hands), then the only motive that can be found is in her own mindset, one all too typical of her party's leadership: priggish, arrogant, condescending, and unbelievably interfering.

 And you don't need to get in an airplane to be angry over that.

Another Fine Mess

National Review Online, July 18, 2001

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When the British Conservative Party decides to make a mess of things, it does so in style. Last night, Mrs. Thatcher's tatty successors did it again. Battered, humiliated, and crushed in two successive general elections, the Tories are now identified with precisely one popular policy, their opposition to any attempt to abandon the Pound in favor of the European Union's laughable single currency, the Euro. So last night, when Conservative MPs had the task of narrowing the shortlist of candidates for the party's leadership down to two contenders, what did they do? Why, naturally they gave the most votes to former finance minister Ken Clarke, who politically, at least, is best known for one thing. He wants Britain to adopt the Euro. Now, that is a perfectly respectable, if misguided, opinion, but it is a remarkable viewpoint to be held by the challenger for the leadership of a profoundly euroskeptical party, although that, in turn, is less strange than the fact that, when the final vote is held this September, Mr. Clarke is very likely to end up the winner.

In part, of course, Ken Clarke's success is the product of desperation. The Tories are patient folk, but, after two of the biggest defeats in British electoral history, they would quite like to start winning again. Opinion polls repeatedly show that Mr. Clarke is easily the most popular Conservative in the country, despite the fact that he rejects the Conservatives' most popular policy. He combines political heft (Clarke is widely perceived as having enjoyed a successful ministerial career, although no one can quite say why) with a likeable public image. Untidy (the suits!), non-workaholic (the naps!) and rather portly (the waistline!), Mr. Clarke has perfected the English art of concealing a sharp intelligence, and no small amount of arrogance, behind a façade of shabby bonhomie. He is known to enjoy a few drinks and it is a fair guess that lean cuisine remains a mystery to him. Spectacularly (he is also a former Health Minister) Mr. Clarke also smokes, and, as Deputy Chairman of British American Tobacco, he would probably like you to take up the habit as well.

Being a merchant of death, however, is not enough, by itself, to make Ken Clarke the best choice for the Tory party. When it comes to more conventionally political matters, he has shown himself to be a very conventional politician, with ideas that are very unlikely to prove much of a challenge to the Labour Party's existing dominance. Mr. Clarke came into politics in the 1960s and his attitudes stem from the orthodoxies of the compromising and vaguely defeatist Conservative Party of that era. This too is probably the source of his fixation with the EU. Back then, "Europe" was seen as a relatively prosperous, sunlit alternative to the gloom of Britain's decaying welfare state. Indeed, in those days, that is just what it was, but times have changed. Thinking in the EU has not, however, and its dirigiste economic model has now clearly run out of steam. Post-Thatcher it is the Continent that should look at the UK for economic inspiration, not the other way round.

This is a change that seems to have eluded Ken Clarke. He fails to grasp the fact that, for Britain, deeper integration within the federal European project can only mean one thing, an irrevocable return to the high-taxing, bureaucratized ways of 30 or 40 years ago. Mr. Clarke may be the most attractive of the candidates for the Tories' top job, but his failure of imagination over Europe means that he is also the most dangerous.

The GOP was faced with a similar temptation last year. John McCain offered the prospect of a landslide, but the price he asked, campaign "reform," was too much for a party that still had some principles. It was a decision made easier, of course, by the fact that, in George W. Bush, the Republicans had an alternative candidate with a reasonable chance of victory. Looking at the potential opposition to Mr. Clarke, in a party where the ranks of aspiring leaders had been thinned by electoral carnage, it is by no means sure that Britain's Conservatives have had the luxury of such a choice.

To prove this, just look at the relative success of one of Mr. Clarke's supposed rivals, the mysterious Michael Ancram, a man who had risen to obscurity as Chairman of the Tory Party. Unelectable (as a member of the hereditary aristocracy he is considered beyond the pale in Tony Blair's supposedly classless new Britain), his campaign platform consisted of two pretty daughters and one vague principle (something to do with "unity"). Nevertheless, in a sparse field it was enough. The great man got some votes, and by the end of his campaign the London Times could even talk about yet another Tory sect, the "Ancramites."

It was not to last. Ancram and the Ancramites were defeated in an earlier round of voting. Another challenger dropped out shortly thereafter, leaving two other candidates. One, Michael Portillo, a former defense minister, had been the early front-runner. Once viewed as Mrs. Thatcher's heir, Portillo, an occasionally charismatic politician, who was seen by some as a potentially exciting choice to take on Tony Blair, has, over the past few years, compounded bad luck (he was out of parliament at a crucial time) with worse tactics. A self-indulgent and very public "journey" of self-discovery designed to help him connect to a wider audience played poorly with a party that, even these days, still prefers some degree of emotional reticence. The wider audience was pretty startled too. Doubts as to what the former Thatcherite stood for were intensified by the speed of his departure from the Iron Lady's old certainties. British Conservatives are a pragmatic bunch. They understand the reason for a strategic retreat, but would, perhaps, have preferred that this one had been carried out somewhat less enthusiastically.

Unfairly, Mr. Portillo's admission a few years ago of some early homosexual relationships may also have inflicted some lasting damage, but in the end it was questions over his judgment and what he stood for that were to prove fatal. Despite a strong start, his campaign was clumsy, and, in the absence of any real evidence of his electoral pull, the old doubts returned and he was done for. He was eliminated in last night's ballot, passed on the one side by the popular appeal of Ken Clarke and, on the other, by the ideological attraction of the other remaining challenger, Iain Duncan-Smith, the most recent keeper of the Thatcherite flame.

Iain Duncan-Smith, or "IDS" as he has been dubbed by the egos of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, is an amiable former army officer and the son of a Battle of Britain hero. He is bright, well informed, and a confirmed Euroskeptic. In fact, unlike Mr. Clarke, there is no doubt that he actually supports Conservative policies. By rights, all this should make IDS the favorite for the final ballot in September (all Party members get to vote), except for one teeny-weeny problem. Many Tories worry that the undeniably retro Mr. Duncan-Smith may be completely unelectable. He is, they worry, too unknown, too old-fashioned, too uptight, and perhaps the worst offense, too bald (a no-no, allegedly, in politically sophisticated Britain). Over the next couple of months IDS will have to show that these concerns have been overdone. If he can do that, he will see off Mr. Clarke. If he cannot, Conservative Party members will face a difficult dilemma. Do they vote for Mr. Clarke, a proven vote-getter, who might win an election, but whose policy preferences run the risk of splitting the party, and enmeshing Britain in a federal Europe, or do they vote for IDS and run a high risk of a third electoral disaster, a disaster that might give Mr. Blair the mandate he needs to adopt the Euro?

IDS, I think, needs to get a move on.

Baltic Reflections

National Review Online, July 14, 2001

© Andrew Stuttaford

© Andrew Stuttaford

It is playtime now in Tallinn. The brief, bright northern summer has transformed the Estonian capital into a city of outdoor cafes, tourist buses, and long, lazy strolls. At night, if you can call it that, music bursts out of the bars and clubs, bouncing off old town walls, and echoing down winding streets still lit by a sun that seems never quite ready to set. Add to the picture some of Europe's most attractive architecture, a vista of church spires, merchant houses, and impressive medieval fortifications and you have, for once, a city that really does deserve the label "fairytale." But, as with all the best such tales, reality is not quite what it seems. A good portion of the old town is, in fact, a reconstruction, the product of years of careful rebuilding, a restoration made necessary by Russian bombardment towards the end of the Second World War. The country's prosperity is also less than Tallinn's glow may initially suggest. Estonia's current economic recovery, the most impressive of any former Soviet Republic, is the product of hard work and free-market economics, but it remains, inevitably, uneven. Outside Tallinn, much of the country remains trapped in post-Leninist torpor, while even in the capital itself existence is tough for many, particularly if they are old, dependent on a hopelessly inadequate pension, and wondering where it was that their lives had gone.

A new exhibition located, with characteristically blunt Estonian reproach, a hundred yards or so from the Russian embassy, gives part of the answer. It commemorates the 60th anniversary of the mass arrests and deportations of June 1941, an episode of totalitarian savagery that still haunts this small Baltic nation. The black mourning banners announcing the exhibit flutter in the breeze. They are dark reminders of a cruel past, a haunting contrast to the bright skies, pale stucco and cheery advertising of contemporary Tallinn, basking in the summer sun.

To enter the exhibit hall is to return to that past. Walk into the lobby and find yourself in a gray dawn, feet crunching on a gravel path. It was the last sound that many deportees were to hear in what they mistakenly thought was still their familiar, normal existence. It was the sound of visitors, but who was it, they must have wondered, so early in the morning? Secret policemen, their victims were soon to discover, prefer not to do their work in the full light of day.

The exhibit's second room, an old dining hall by the look of it, gives the background to the tragedy. On its stone floor, strangely, there are patches of illustration, faded signs of the zodiac, a relic, perhaps, of some earlier avant-garde daubing. They must have proved impossible to erase. In a way, that is appropriate. All around the room are relics of another modernist experiment, Soviet Communism, the future, the world was once told, that "worked," the future that, in June 1940, rolled into Tallinn on the back of Red Army tanks, and left an indelible stain on the history of Estonia.

It was to be the end of the country's pre-war independence, a brutal return to the foreign rule that had characterized this land for over seven hundred years, a return made worse by the fact that of all Estonia's alien rulers, the Soviets were the worst, barbarians with a Plan that had no room for small, inconvenient nationalities. Estonia's First Republic passed into memory and into myth; it was, as older people sometimes still refer to it, "the Estonian time," a lost Eden, a moment in the light no more durable, in the context of centuries of oppression, than the short Baltic summer. And yet its memory endured, preserved by the Estonians as a reminder to themselves, if not to an indifferent world, that they were still a nation. In Tallinn's museums you can still find lovingly preserved consumer products from the 1920s, chocolate bars and tins of coffee, resplendent under glass, poignant souvenirs of an outraged sovereignty.

You can see that same clutching for the past at the deportation exhibit. There is evidence, that all-important proof, of Estonia's inter-war existence prominently on display. Drawn from home movies and news reels,  jerking images of farmers, factories, picnics, politicians, parades with too many flags and all the other clumsy baby steps of a new nation flicker and shine as they are projected against the walls of the old banqueting hall.

Across the room, there are reproductions of the doomed republic's newspapers from 1940-41. They reflect the end of independence. In June and July, 1940 the front pages could still boast a few advertisements, for Alex Rahn's radio store, for example, or "Isis Kreem" ointment, but these suggestions of capitalist prosperity already have to coexist with pictures of arriving Soviet satraps, 'elections' where the communists win over 90 percent of the vote, and the first calls for Estonia to join the USSR. By August the same year, the advertising has gone, and so has the republic's independence. Free Estonia is mutated into the 'Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic', the latest recruit into Stalin's gargoyle Union. The headlines now jabber of progress, proletarians and production. The only significant information is what they leave out.

On June 14, 1941, the front page of the principal Estonian newspaper featured a photograph of rowers on a canal in Moscow. There was no mention, of course, of the real news that day, the simultaneous arrest and deportation of people across all three Baltic countries. Ten thousand were deported from tiny Estonia alone, of whom one third (counter-revolutionaries, I'm sure) were under the age of seventeen.

The Tallinn exhibit tells some of their stories. There was Niina (guilty!), arrested at 14, and Juula (guilty! Her brother was a philatelist, and thus, it was explained, a British spy). As for Ebba Saral, well, she was a criminal too dangerous to be confined to a mere cattle truck with the others. They put her on a sofa on a flatcar and, surrounded by guards, she rode into hell "like a queen." She and her husband (a professor — guilty!) both perished. There is a photograph of his grave, and copy of her death certificate, grudgingly issued nearly half a century after her execution. Fittingly, it is in Russian. This is, sadly, not a rare story. In the first year of the Soviet occupation a total of sixty thousand Estonians (four percent of the population, the equivalent of around eleven million Americans today) were deported, conscripted or murdered.

Two doors then lead from the exhibit's main hall. It is not much of a choice. One door leads to "prison," the other to "Siberia." "Prison" is an assembly of iron doors and a nightmare reconstruction of a squalid Soviet jail cell. "Siberia" displays homemade tools and rough-hewn luxuries, the former essential for existence, the latter for sanity. There are group photographs of the deportees, stoic in the tundra, dumped into a wilderness and left to adapt or to die. Some of them even managed to survive and so, miraculously, did the dream of freedom. An independent democratic Estonia finally reemerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union in August 1991.

Understandably, this new Estonia has applied to join NATO. Russia's arrogant, disturbing opposition remains one of the best reasons to agree to the request. George W. Bush appears to sympathize. Speaking recently in Warsaw, he said that, "All of Europe's new democracies, from the Baltic to the Black Sea" should have the chance of NATO membership. It was, for the peoples of the former Soviet bloc, a marvelous moment. In Western Europe, needless to say, the political classes were not quite so sure. To many of those folks, the real threat lies elsewhere. Sweden's prime minister, a Social Democrat by the name of Goran Persson, marked Mr. Bush's arrival in Europe by calling on the European Union to build itself up as an alternative to American "domination."

Of course, Swedish Social Democrats know a thing or two about "domination." Not long after those Red Army tanks rolled into Tallinn, a few weeks, perhaps, after the day that Ebba Saral was taken to her death in the East, the Swedes (the government was led by a Social Democrat then, as now) decided to do something about Moscow's Baltic land grab. And what they did was give it diplomatic recognition, one of the first two countries in the world to do so.

The other was Nazi Germany.

 

Springtime for Castro

National Review Online, May 30 2001

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It was amiable chitchat, a piece of fluff for last Sunday's New York Times. Just how do you get hold of tickets for The Producers, Broadway's hottest show, a musical about a musical devoted to Hitler? The newspaper ran through the alternatives: sleazy scalpers, cunning concierges, even a crafty charitable contribution or two, and then fell back on that most effective of Manhattan ruses, "It's whom you get to know." For, as the Times explained, every night the "house" hangs on to tickets for distribution to a favored few. Readers were told that Rocco Landesman, the show's lead producer, has 18 to hand out. "If you're Bill Clinton, we've got tickets," he told the Times. Such generosity is not extended to everyone. There will, Mr. Landesman warned, be no such tickets for George W. Bush. Well, of course not, Mr. Landesman, we understand. The man is a monster, a fanatic in cowboy boots. Who would give tickets to Arsenic Boy? Not Rocco Landesman, that is to be sure. He would rather extend his invitation to someone else, someone, presumably, far more deserving. He would give, he said, tickets to Fidel Castro.

Yes, that's right, Fidel Castro. Rocco Landesman would be glad to play host to a tyrant.

It was a revealing moment, a joke, maybe (memo to Rocco: Jokes about living dictators are a lot trickier than those about their dead counterparts), but more likely a glimpse into the contemporary liberal psyche. Characteristically, the New York Times chose not to examine it. Maybe the paper's writers were embarrassed for their interviewee. There is, after all, something more than a little nauseating about the spectacle of some self-important showbiz hustler, a hawker of grease paint and someone else's tunes, taking it upon himself to "snub" the president of the United States by withholding tickets for a night at the theater.

Perhaps, though, the awkwardness lay elsewhere. What do you say, after all, to a man who, in the course of a light-hearted interview, has, in effect, just blurted out his admiration for one of the nastier rulers of the last century, and, by implication, compared him favorably with the current incumbent of the White House? Well, what the Times should have done is called him on it. If "the paper of record" was doing its job, its journalist should have taken Mr. Landesman at his word and asked him just what it was he admired so much about Fidel.

One can only speculate. Was it, perhaps, the crushing of the Cuban trade unions, and the arrest of leaders such as David Salvador of the sugar workers? After long years of having to deal with the irritating folks at Actors' Equity, was it the thought of trade unionist Mr. Salvador spending twelve years in jail that Mr. Landesman found so inspiring, so worthy of those tickets?

It could just be a matter of culture. The Broadway promoter doubtless sees himself as an artistic individual, so maybe he was impressed by the twenty-year imprisonment of the poet Jorge Valls? Clearly Castro is a man who takes culture very seriously, so unlike that barbarian Dubya. Armando Valladares, another poet, also survived for more than two decades behind bars. Reduced to a wheelchair by years of mistreatment, he was not spared the attention of his jailers. The beatings continued with steel cable and rifle butt, while, for variety, buckets of urine and excrement were thrown in his face. Well, said the literary Mr. Castro, Valladares "was no poet." Now that, as Rocco will appreciate, is criticism, far more rigorous than anything that can be found in the pages of Playbill. We should not be surprised. Under Castro, as we are always told, literacy rates have increased exponentially: Cuba is an island of learning.

Maybe it was the Cuban justice system that Rocco wanted to honor, so much more effective than anything to be found in George W's Texas, the torture in the Villa Marista, perhaps, or the interrogation rooms in Pinar Del Rio. But why single out these centers for special praise? Over the years, Castro has run so many prisons, each of them distinguished in their own particular way, and not just because of the quality of their inmates, those impudent critics (yes, Rocco, don't you hate that word) of the Caribbean gulag. There is La Cabana of the "rat holes," for example, or Boniato with its typhus and rapes, and let us not pass over those little cages at Tres Macios del Oriente, always so handy for keeping order.

Some people (there's always somebody) did not appreciate everything that was being done for them. After enjoying ten years of Castro's compulsory hospitality and the benefits of that famed Cuban healthcare (both his legs had had to be amputated as a result of the beatings he had endured), an ungrateful former student leader by the name of Pedro Luis Boitel went on hunger strike. He died, which was just as well. Castro had already said that Boitel had to be "liquidated" so that he would not "f*** up any more." Unfortunately, Rocco Landesman has not yet given us his views on whether such a fate was deserved. We can only guess.

Maybe there was something else. Mr. Landesman is, we need to remember, a man currently making money, albeit indirectly, out of the Third Reich. Did Castro's camps strike a chord, El Manbu, perhaps, or was it the forced labor on the Isle of Pines that caught his attention? In that context, how interesting to note that, just like the Fuhrer, Castro has had no time for those awkward gays, the people he once so charmingly described as "limp-wristed, shameless creatures." Surely Mr. Landesman would not have spoken out on Castro without taking the trouble to do some research beforehand, so we can only assume that he knows that the Cuban caudillo put a good number of such "social deviants" behind barbed wire, something that Rocco may wish to reflect upon before he invites Castro to the next Landesman production of Angels in America.

Responsible government must also focus on the vulnerable. In particular, Mr. Landesman, a good liberal, is bound to be worried about "The Children." When it comes to Cuba, he can, again, find satisfaction. Castro cares too. Indeed, Il Lider Maximo was, in the past, reportedly kind enough to organize an internment camp especially for tots under ten. Unlike that hypocrite Bush, Fidel is a man who really will leave no child behind. Just ask Elian.

Finally, and maybe this is the key, as a Broadway professional, Mr. Landesman must always be interested in the grosses, and if there's one thing that is big about Castro, it is the numbers. Over the years, they have, it is estimated, been spectacular, particularly given the size of his small home market. Two million exiles! One hundred thousand jailed! Fifteen thousand executions! And what a run it has been. With no pesky free elections to spoil the show, Castro's performance has been playing for more than forty years. That's longer than Cats.

Ah yes, that must be it. No wonder Rocco is so impressed.

The Horror, The Horror

National Review Online, May 17 2001

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You don't need to have seen Scream to know that horror movies have conventions that must be followed. For example, from almost the first few minutes it is generally possible to guess who will survive, and who is going to die. Typically, a nice, likable character will be one of the first to perish. Such a death sets a suitably downbeat tone, and previews the implacability of the torment to come. So it was on last night's season finale of West Wing. It was a weirdly lurid episode, which made little or no sense until one understood it for what it was, a tribute to the cinema of fear. The story begins, therefore, with a good person in a coffin. President Bartlet's big-hearted secretary, loyal Mrs. Landingham, is dead. In fact, the scriptwriters were in such a hurry to get moving with the plot that they had killed the poor dear off in the previous episode. Bartlet, meanwhile is wrestling with an emerging crisis in Haiti. Haiti? That's no coincidence, RKO's land of voodoo can always be relied upon to add menace to any tragedy.

Next, of course, there has to be rain, wind, and lightning. Last night's West Wing was no exception. As the show progressed we learn that Washington is to be hit by a strange unseasonable storm, the worst, Bartlet is assured, for more than a century. Naturally, when such a storm is raging, one of the characters has to run through the tempest looking crazed. Shakespeare famously used such an opportunity to tear out Gloucester's eyes in King Lear. Bartlet merely turned down the offer of a raincoat, and went for a stroll in the deluge.

Add in some terrible childhood trauma to the mix. Flashbacks give us the young Bartlet as a pupil in one of those 1950s prep schools where everyone wears a tweed jacket and sensitive students feel guilty about their privilege. Unfortunately for the future President, Bartlet Senior is the headmaster and he is not played by Robin Williams (but by MSNBC pundit and West Wing writer Lawrence O'Donnell). In the space of a few minutes we watch this ogre hit his son, sneer at Catholicism, support censorship, and underpay his female staff. Well, what else can you expect from a WASP in prime time?

Not, probably, shouting at God in Latin in the National Cathedral, which is what we find President Bartlet doing at the end of Mrs. Landingham's funeral. What a display! He hurls abuse at the deity for allowing bad things to happen, particularly to a man such as himself, who has, he whines, been a good president (there then followed a laundry list of achievements that sounded suspiciously like those once claimed by Bill Clinton). It was Martin Sheen's most spectacular hissy fit since that Saigon hotel room in Apocalypse Now and about as convincing, a piece of ripe ham to add to the West Wing's usual baloney, and an ominous warning that this show was about to turn very dark indeed. For incantations in Latin are never good news. The last time one was tried in a Washington drama was for The Exorcist, and that succeeded in riling up the Devil.

Bartlet gets off lightly. The only apparition he raises is that of the late Mrs. Landingham. She returns to the Oval Office, the first dead left-wing lady to show up there since the days when Mrs. Roosevelt would drop in to chat with Hillary. Mrs. L., of course, is on a mission. In the horror genre, the dead always are. Bartlet, you see, is in crisis. Tantalizingly, at least for viewers on the Right, there is a chance that scandal (but only of the noblest sort: he concealed his Multiple Sclerosis) might cause the president to drop any bid for reelection. Mrs. Landingham will have none of it. She reminds him of the poor, the sick, and the dispossessed (of whom there seem to be a quite a lot, despite all those presidential successes that Bartlet had so recently been recently been discussing with God). The implication is clear: These are problems that need the intervention of big government and a liberal president. There is work to be done, but no one called "W." could do it. Bartlet is the man for the job.

The show ends with a reinvigorated Bartlet at a press conference. The journalists all want to know. Will he run again? Officially, we won't be told until the series returns, but take it from me, this is no cliffhanger. Bartlet will be back. That's the rule. Just ask Freddy Krueger.

In horror, there's always room for a sequel.

The Paper of Record

National Review Online, May 14 2001 

Imagine, if you can, Berlin in November 1938, the grim capital of a savage ideology heading deeper into horror and cruelty. The New York Times correspondent has just emerged from an interview with the Fuhrer. It is an exclusive. His editor will be pleased. On the way home the Times man passes a looted synagogue, and the broken bodies of those who were worshiping there. Elsewhere, homes and businesses are being ransacked, and their occupants are under attack. Other victims are rounded up and dragged to the concentration camps from which far too few will ever emerge. Filing a report that night, the journalist prefers not to dwell on such distasteful events. Instead he contents himself with a comment that stories of a Kristallnacht pogrom had been exaggerated. Yes, there had been some scattered excesses, but they had been the work of a few hotheads, nothing more. Delighted by the coverage, the Nazi hierarchy gives the correspondent privileged access. He becomes the doyen of the Third Reich's foreign press corps, the essential contact for every new visitor to Berlin. In the ultimate accolade the journalist wins a Pulitzer Prize for the "scholarship, profundity, impartiality, sound judgment and exceptional clarity" of his reporting from Germany.

In the years that follow, of course, it becomes impossible to deny the reality of Hitler's charnel-house state. The reporter is revealed for what he really was, evil's enabler, a greedy, venal man, whose soothing words had done much to calm the fears of an outside world that might otherwise have tried to step in to stop the slaughter. Amazingly, however, more than 60 years later his Pulitzer still stands, and with it, his distinguished place in the history of the New York Times. Last month, the newspaper, as it does once every year, proudly published the honor roll of its Pulitzer-winning writers. It is not difficult to find the name of the dictator's apologist. It is right up there near the top, fitting company, in the view of the New York Times for the other journalists on the list: Walter Duranty is still, it is clear, a man with whom the Grey Lady is in love.

It is a remarkable, and disgusting, story. Sadly, it is also true, with only one qualification. The journalist, Walter Duranty, was a propagandist for Stalin not Hitler, the evil that he was to witness took place in the Soviet Union, not Nazi Germany.

For well over a decade, Duranty's influential reports from Moscow described a Soviet Union run by a tough, but dedicated, elite, who could, he conceded, be cruel, but only in the cause of improving the lives of the people. As the Times man liked to say, "you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."

To Duranty, Stalin ("the greatest living statesman") represented progress and the chance of a better future for the once benighted masses. In one typical passage he gushed that, "Stalin and his associates have carried with them the strongest and most intelligent elements of the Russian people, and have created a national unity and enthusiasm which the Tsarist Empire never knew. They have learnt by their own errors and pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, and the nation has followed them." It was, he wrote, "a heroic chapter in the life of humanity."

That this "heroic chapter" was to prove fatal for large numbers of that same humanity did not seem to trouble Duranty too much. "I'm a reporter," he explained, "not a humanitarian." In fact, he was neither, something that can be seen most clearly from his treatment of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-3. This man-made famine, a deliberate attempt to break the Ukrainian peasantry, is one of history's most terrible episodes (In his Harvest of Sorrow Robert Conquest estimates the death toll in the Ukraine and neighboring regions at seven million). Walter Duranty of the New York Times, however, did what he could to cover it up.

It was behavior that puts the Pulitzer winner in the same moral category as the present day's Holocaust deniers, if not somewhere worse. Today's revisionists, I suppose, can at least claim the excuse that they were not there. By contrast, Duranty was right on the spot, in Moscow and briefly, even, in the killing fields of the Ukraine itself. He knew. Privately, he told British diplomats that as many as ten million people might have died, "The Ukraine," he admitted, "had been bled white."

Publicly, however, his story was very different. He claimed that tales of a famine were "bunk," "exaggeration," or "malignant propaganda." There was "no actual starvation." As other accounts of the tragedy filtered out, Duranty was forced to backpedal a little: his reports still avoided references to famine, but he conceded that the annual death rate in the affected areas might have trebled from its normal level of around one million to a total of three million. These unfortunates had perished not so much from "actual starvation as from manifold disease." It is an absurd distinction, as grotesque as any made by those revisionists who argue that many of the deaths in the Nazi camps were the product of typhus. Typically, such people will then sidestep the issue as to why it was that those victims were in the camps in the first place. Duranty took a similar approach. The increase in the death rate by two million was presented to his readers as an almost passive tense disaster: it just happened, nobody was really responsible.

In reality, of course, the famine was, as Duranty well understood, the organized product of a murderous regime. Had he told the truth, he could have saved lives. When today's revisionists deny the Shoah, their lies, thankfully, have little or no impact. They are simply irrelevant. Duranty's distortions, by contrast, helped mute international criticism of Stalin's lethal project at a crucial time, criticism that might, perhaps, have made the killing machine at least pause. Instead, the "Great Duranty" kept quiet, pocketed his Pulitzer, and crossed the Atlantic the following year in the company of the Soviet foreign minister, who was on his way to Washington to sign off on U.S. diplomatic recognition of the Stalinist state. Within four years an emboldened Stalin had launched the Great Terror.

As I said, it is a disgusting story, but not a new one. Back in 1974, Joe Alsop used his final syndicated column to attack Duranty's pro-Soviet stance, and Robert Conquest covered the same ground in rather more detail a few years later. 1990 saw renewed focus on this subject with the publication of Stalin's Apologist, S. J. Taylor's invaluable biography of Duranty. The New York Times responded with a favorable review of Ms. Taylor's book and an editorial comment that Walter Duranty had produced "some of the worst reporting to appear in [the] newspaper," citing, in particular his "lapse" in covering the Ukrainian famine.

That, at least, was a start, but eleven years later Duranty's name still features in the paper's annual honor roll of Pulitzer winners (the only change has been that he is now described as having won the award for his "coverage of the news from Russia," previously he was lauded for his "dispassionate interpretive reporting" of the news from Russia). For a journal that prides itself on its sensitivity this is another remarkable "lapse," one made stranger still by the Times's understanding in other contexts that the symbols of the past can still hurt. Its attacks on, say, the continued display of the Confederate flag might have more moral force if the paper could bring itself to stop its own annual celebration of an employee who was, in effect, a propagandist for genocide.

Nobody should ask the Times to rewrite history (that's something best left to Stalinists), but a Pulitzer Prize has, in the past, been withdrawn. It is a precedent that the paper should urge be followed in the case of Duranty, not for his opinions (loathsome though they may have been) but for the lies, evasions, and fabrications that characterized the reporting that won him his award. Beyond that, the paper should ask itself just what else it is going to do to make some amends to the memory of the millions of dead, victims whose murder was made just that little bit easier by the work of the man from the New York Times.

An apology might be a start.

Hopeless in the U.K.

National Review Online, May 10, 2001

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There is always something of the theatre about the announcement of a British election: the trip to Buckingham Palace to secure the Queen's approval to dissolve Parliament ahead of the vote (her Majesty was "graciously pleased to signify that she [would] comply with the request"); the press corps outside Downing Street; the over-excited intrigues in Westminster. Tuesday's decision by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to call an election for June 7th was no exception, but the leaders of the U.K.'s two principal parties both managed to add their own personal touch. The Conservatives' William Hague, a self-styled outsider, leapt on a soapbox and shouted about political correctness. The never modest Mr. Blair, meanwhile, headed for a school called St. Savior's (yes, Tony, we understand the implication) and like so many other minor despots before him, launched his campaign over the heads of some puzzled, but captive, children. Still, for all the theatrics, there was no drama. The audience, the British electorate, already knows how the play is going to end. And that should be no surprise. After all, over the past year or so the achievements of Mr. Blair's government have included a series of financial and ethical scandals, the near-collapse of the rail system, a sharp rise in crime, the biggest increase in taxation in the OECD, the alienation of the rural population, a fuel crisis, massive regulatory overreach, and the effective breakdown of the country's immigration controls. Throw in the weaker stock market, a slowing economy, and Hoof and Mouth's grotesque barbecue, and it is only possible to come to one conclusion. Labour will be driven from office, thrashed at the polls, and left for dead.

Such a conclusion would, however, be quite wrong. Despite its problems, Labour is, in fact, headed for a win which, if some polls are to be believed, would even exceed the scale of the socialists' crushing victory in the U.K.'s last election, back in 1997. Given that the 1997 defeat was the Conservatives' worst showing since 1832, this would, for the Tories, be a disaster on an epic scale, equivalent perhaps to going through Pearl Harbor, twice.

The gap is likely to close somewhat during the campaign. Local factors may also assist the Tories to ensure that their national unpopularity isn't reflected in the final distribution of parliamentary seats. Apathy may also help. After four very mixed years in government, Labour too stirs up no great enthusiasm and the Tories' core voters are more likely to vote than their counterparts on the Left. In his wilder moments, William Hague probably dreams about a Harry Truman-style upset. That is not going to happen, however, and, unfortunately for the once precocious Conservative leader, unless there is a substantial reduction in the Labour majority, the political career of Harold Stassen is a more likely, if unfair, precedent. Mr. Hague will almost certainly be made the scapegoat by his party for any electoral debacle. If this seems harsh, remember what the Tories did to Mrs. Thatcher — and she won elections.

Which for the Conservatives is not as easy as the Iron Lady's three consecutive victories once suggested. Majority public opinion in Britain has for many years been on the center-Left. Part of Mrs. Thatcher's electoral success can be explained by the fact that opposition to her was split between Labour and a smaller party of sanctimonious eccentrics now known as the Liberal Democrats. The effect of this division was exaggerated by the mathematical impact of Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system. Mrs. Thatcher was able to rack up parliamentary majorities that flattered her share of the popular vote. In 1997, Tory unpopularity and effective tactical voting turned this split into a trap. The Conservatives found themselves squeezed between the two parties of the Left, and it was their turn to suffer. This process will likely go into partial reverse this time round, but it will not be enough to save the Tories. For that, they will need another advantage once enjoyed by Mrs. Thatcher: a clear message.

And that is something that they do not have. In the aftermath of the 1997 defeat, the Conservatives sent out the signal that all their core principles were up for discussion. It was meant to make them seem open-minded, but it left them looking opportunistic and, worse, divided. Under Mr. Hague, the Tories have tacked to the Left and the Right, they have sidled up to authoritarians, and they have flirted with libertarians. Now they are surprised that nobody quite knows what they stand for.

At times in the past this would not have mattered. Just being "not Labour" would have been enough. That is now no longer the case. Under Tony Blair the Left has at least made the pretence of adopting some of the Right's more popular policies. As a result it is no longer so easy to make voters' flesh crawl at the thought of the Socialist Menace. Today's threat from New Labour is no less dangerous, but it is subtler, and more difficult to oppose, particularly when you cannot make yourself heard.

If John McCain wants to see what debate looks like when strict controls on political financing leave a liberal media free to set the agenda, he should cross the Atlantic. Of the U.K.'s ten largest selling newspapers, only two can be said to support the Tories, and the broadcast media is, if anything, even less friendly. British Conservatives are treated with the same contempt and, at times, foam-flecked hatred that the GOP must endure. Unlike the Republicans, however, they have to put up with it. There is no alternative. Mr. Hague may be the most effective parliamentary performer in Britain today, but Westminster is no longer the forum that counts. If he is to get his message out he has to do so through the media, no easy task when their normal response is to mock, distort, or ignore.

And that's a shame. For all their faults, the Conservatives do have something to say. A reelected Blair government is, as the Tories are trying to warn, likely to be bad news. To start with, internal pressures are likely to push Labour closer to its more traditionally socialist views, taxes will increase, and with them, the regulatory burden and, in a more modern touch, relentlessly PC social engineering. More malign still will be the growing sense of entitlement amongst the party leadership. As we saw in Clinton's Washington, that seems to be the inevitable consequence of government by a left-wing elite that sees itself as operating on a more elevated moral plane than everyone else. The cronyism and shabby ethics of the first Blair government are likely to prove only a taste of what the Brits can expect from a prime minister who always seemed curiously impressed by our last president. George W. Bush, by contrast, is unlikely to find many fans in a Labour 10 Downing Street. What he will see instead is petty criticism, and a steady attempt to push the U.K. deeper into the heart of an EU that makes increasingly little secret of its anti-Americanism.

I don't know about you, but my flesh is already beginning to crawl.