Nancy Rommelmann

Gary Wills on What Romney Lost

Gary Wills's lacerating post on Romney, on the New York Review of Books blog. A clip:

Many losing candidates became elder statesmen of their parties. What lessons will Romney have to teach his party? The art of crawling uselessly? How to contemn 47 percent of Americans less privileged and beautiful than his family? How to repudiate the past while damaging the future?

h/t Webster Hogeland

Draw Mohammed Day

Getting on a plane so this will be briefer and shorter than I want it to be: today, Reason magazine is sponsoring Draw Mohammed Day, for all the right reasons. Reason's Nick Gillespie explains:

It's worth meditating on the whys and wherefores of the contest, which was inspired by a jihadist death threat against the creators of South Park and was originally suggested by Seattle artist Molly Norris.

...There comes a point in any society's existence where it must ultimately, to paraphrase Martin Luther (who himself was more than happy to see opponents put to death), dig in its heels and say here we stand, we will do no other. We don't need to be perfectly consistent philosophically or historically or theologically to assert what is special and unique not just about the United States, with its bizarre and wonderful articulation of the First Amendment, but the greater classical liberal project comprising not just the "West" (whatever that is) but human beings in whatever town, country, or planet they inhabit. And at the heart of the liberal project is ultimately a recognition that individuals, for no other reason than that they exist, have rights to continue to exist. Embedded in all that is the right to expression. No one has a right to an audience or even to a sympathetic hearing, much less an engaged audience. But no one should be beaten or killed or imprisoned simply for speaking their mind or praying to one god as opposed to the other or none at all or getting on with the small business of living their life in peaceful fashion. If we cannot or will not defend that principle with a full throat, then we deserve to choke on whatever jihadists of all stripes can force down our throats.

...Our Draw Mohammed contest is not a frivolous exercise of hip, ironic, hoolarious sacrilege toward a minority religion in the United States (though even that deserves all the protection that the most serioso political commentary commands). It's a defense of what is at the core of a society that is painfully incompetent at delivering on its promise of freedom, tolerance, and equal rights. It's a rebuttal to the notion that we should go limp in the clinches precisely because bullies and bastards can punch or blow us up.

Here's my pal Amy Alkon's contribution. Where's yours?

What Communism Wrought

Six or seven years ago, we were having, as we often did in our home in Los Angeles, a few interesting people over for drinks. We would drink in the basement, where there was a full bar, and I mean a real old-fashioned wood bar, with room for eight of ten people at the rail and brass nameplates where the regulars had sat. The house had, decades earlier, been a Shriners hall, and when they left, they left the bar. Anyway, on this evening, two of the remaining people at evening's end were the political cartoonist Roman Genn, and Stuart Swezey, who owned Amok Books. I wasn't there for the beginning of the conversation, but could not help but hear the midpoint, as Roman's voice was rising; this, because Stuart was apparently expressing his admiration for communism, as it existed in the former Soviet Union.

"You're fucking kidding me," said Roman, who grew up in Moscow, and as a political cartoonist, had numerous run-ins with the police state until immigrating, in 1991, at the age of 19, to the US. "Have you BEEN there?" he asked Stuart. "Have you LIVED under this regime?"

Stuart had not, but he would not be divested of his idea that communism was a beautiful dream, all that equality, and sure, it hadn't worked out, but the ideal...

"No! No fucking ideal!" Roman was saying. Roman is a very, very funny guy, and he tried, a little, to inject some levity into explaining to Stuart that he had no idea what he was talking about, a position I roundly seconded, believing then as I only more strongly believe now, that communism is the very worst of the worst*, that it will only and only can lead to oppression and mass murder. (For a quick tour 'round, try Martin Amis's Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million.)

I am recalling this today for two reasons: I am in New York, at my mother's apartment, at the breakfast table where I used to debate communism with my late stepfather,  David Levine, a lifelong communist and someone who felt as Swezey did. Always a great way to start the day. And also, because of today's NYT front page story, about journalists around Moscow being beaten, stabbed, having their brains kicked in and worse when they call out the authorities for any reason, at which point others in authority not only do not press charges against the assailants, but against the journalists. Want change? they seem to say. Fuck you. Here's a kick in the teeth instead.

*As David posits in the comments, Nazi fascism was worse, to which I will add, it was no picnic under Pol Pot. But aside from wackadoos and hate groups, you don't have people waxing poetic -- as they do about communism -- about how utopian it would have been if only those terror regimes had worked out.

The Flight of the Intellectuals

Great Michael Totten interview with journalist and author Paul Berman, on the release of his latest book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, which I cannot wait to read. A clip:

MJT: You provided some examples in your book, and I've some experience with this myself. I was in Beirut when the Syrian military was finally thrown out by a million citizens taking to the streets, and the whole thing was dismissed by some people in the West as a right-wing Christian Gucci revolution.

Paul Berman: Yes.

MJT: It was absolutely appalling, and I will never forget it. To this day I get hate mail from these kinds of people when I write about Lebanon.

Paul Berman: It really is something remarkable. I can understand it intellectually, but not emotionally. It comes from some old and very unattractive currents in Western thought that we can see over the course of the 20th century.

Remember, a lot of people despised the Soviet dissidents, too.

MJT: Right. What do you think causes this? I think I have it mostly figured out, but I still feel like I'm missing something.

Paul Berman: Well, I don't have it entirely figured out either. [Laughs.] But I note it. In regard to the Soviet dissidents of the past, at least nowadays there is a consensus of opinion that, yes, the dissidents were correct and we should have listened to them. So why didn't we? When I say "we," I mean the intellectual community as a whole in the Western countries. And it's for a whole set of reasons.

An outright sympathy for communism and the Soviet Union itself was only one of those reasons. This only accounted for one set of people.

There were other people who dismissed the dissidents for what you might call conservative reasons. They wanted to assume the Slavic world was hopelessly steeped in traditions of autocracy and ignorance and habits of obedience and deference -- the traditions of tsarism. They could see very well that communism in the Soviet Union had replicated the whole tsarist system, in a new version. There was a leader at the top whose rule was uncontestable. There were the masses at the bottom who had to proclaim the wisdom of the leader at the top. And a lot of people looked at this and said, yes, this is what the Slavic world is supposed to be. This is the authentic thing. Slavs are inherently inferior to Westerners. They aren't capable of being free people. They aren't capable of thinking for themselves.

So when the dissidents rushed out and told us that the Soviet Union is crushing individual liberty or doing other oppressive things, our response to them was to pat them on the head and say, well, it's nice that you got out, and you are welcome to say, but you're not talking about the real world. The real world is one where Slavs are destined to remain forever victims of oppressive tyrants, and this is because Slavs enjoy being victims, so we're not going to take people like you, the dissidents, all that seriously.

The logic behind that kind of thinking is very appealing, to some people. It pictures a world that is dominated by cultures that we like to regard as authentic -- cultures with unchanging deep qualities that go back thousands of years, and may be rich with cultural jewels, but will never produce anything more progressive and will certainly never embrace the kinds of freedoms and advantages and dynamism that we celebrate in our own culture. So that's one idea.

Then there's another idea that appeals to many people, which is based not on our own feeling of superiority, but on our own inferiority. We look at ourselves in the Western countries and we say that, if we are rich, relatively speaking, as a society, it is because we have plundered our wealth from other people. Our wealth is a sign of our guilt. If we are powerful, compared with the rest of the world, it is because we treat people in other parts of the world in oppressive and morally objectionable ways. Our privileged position in the world is actually a sign of how racist we are and how imperialistic and exploitative we are. All the wonderful successes of our society are actually the signs of how morally inferior we are, and we have much to regret and feel guilty about. So when we look at the world, we should look at it in a spirit of humility and remorse, and we should recognize that other people have been unfairly treated.

We should recognize the superiority of those other people over ourselves. Money-wise, we may be richer. But, morally, the other people are richer. And so, we should despise ourselves, and we should love the other people -- the people who possess qualities so superior to our own as barely to be human. And then, filled with those very peculiar ideas, we set about looking for messianic figures who might express the superior culture of the other people, and might lead the human race to a higher stage of development. And if someone objects to this analysis, we say, oh, we inferior Westerners are incapable of understanding the mysterious thought-patterns of those other people, so who are you to judge?

MJT: I think you have it pretty well worked out.

Paul Berman: I assure you, I don't.

Read the whole thing.

Understanding the Hate

As some readers here know, I have been working about a book about a murder that took place in Portland last May. I write "murder," and in the strict sense of the word, it is that. And yet, repugnant as it may sound, even the act of taking someone's life (in this case a mother taking her young son's) becomes elastic. The more you look, the more you know, the more you understand. This is not to say forgive. That concept has not entered my head, and even if it had, that's not up to me. It's not why I'm here.

The work has brought me into contact with some people who need to talk, and some people who don't. Or more precisely, do not need to talk to me, and who actively need to let me know how loathsome my presence is. I understand this. My husband understands this. As we sat at the kitchen counter last night, he said, "You can't take it personally; they have gone through this horrible thing." Yes. And I know it's not about me, Nancy me. I know it's that this horrible thing has happened, and they must try to contain it, to catch the blood before it spills any further off the table. I know, too, the bruises left by the media, the lack of dimension that comes with making the deadline; the feeling that one has been left in space to suffer, the press has moved on, and good.

When I was told, by an attorney in the case, that the family of the woman does not want me to write about this because they don't want me making money on her, the piece of sesame chicken I was lifting to my mouth remained suspended in midair for about four seconds. I had to recalibrate my mind to apply this assessment. I got there, and said, I appreciate this; I might even feel the same way, were our positions reversed. And yet I knew, if they did not, that the world is made up of bigger ideas than that. And that if I wanted to make money, I'd be writing about Paris Hilton's panties.

I was shown yesterday, in court, again, that I am hated. And I am trying to figure out to do with this.

Rogue of the Month: Tom Hurley

More of interest to Portlanders: check out Maxine Bernstein's page 1 Metro section piece on restaurateur Tom Hurley. You remember Tom. Ran a Portland restaurant that failed, blamed Portlanders for being rubes about food; opened restaurant in Seattle, which also failed. And you'd think, poor guy, all that money down the drain... But of course, Hurley was being nicely subsidized by the city of Portland, for injuries he says he suffered while working as a firefighter in the early 90s. Since 1993, he has been receiving disability benefits. The union also paid to send him to the French Culinary Institute in New York in 2000. You'd think he might want to give a little something back, but you would be wrong.

The Portland Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Fund directed Hurley, who hasn't fought a fire since at least 1993 as a result of reported knee and back injuries, to obtain training to serve as a low-hazard fire inspector in 2006 as part of a new return-to-work program.

Hurley didn't want to return, and so, finally, in 2007, the city cut off his disability benefits, at which point Hurley's union sued on his behalf - and won! To the tune of $103,000, plus a continued $3200 a month.

Where has all this led? To a fracas within the city council, with member Randy Leonard, former firefighter and current PDX fire commissioner, backing Hurley, and council member Dan Saltzman challenging.

Saltzman's resolution notes that Hurley is no longer disabled, failed to comply with fund procedures, failed to return to work and didn't pursue a challenge through the fund's appeals process. 

What drives me batty is, we are paying these people's salaries! What a profound waste of time and money. Also, I will be very grateful if someone here can explain to me how Hurley can live with himself.

What I'm Reading/Where I've Been

Wow, am I behind. There are reasons! Will be heading to New York this week for the third time in a month, also smashed in ten days in Panama, and a wound about which the less said the better, so we'll leave it at: I had a tube hanging out of me for five days. All better now, but for the Chloroquine I am still taking once a week to ward off malaria. I don't like this drug; it makes you nauseous, but worse -- and I only figured this out eight days in -- it gives you nightmares. I have, in the past ten days, dreamed of being raped, murdering a child, having to save my child from a horrific fate, and -- over and over -- having to save people from the apocalypse and/or various untenable and terrifying to life and limb situations. There are also the little annoyances, like dreaming of my husband telling me, he's just signed on with Match.com. Suffice to say, each night is fraught; I need some sleep.

But sleeplessness does give one time to read, and much of it has been very, very good. A lovely new discovery, via my friend Kate Coe, is Charles McCarry, whose "The Miernik Dossier" is espionage at its best and much more. I am so very tempted to print here the section titled, "66. From Miernik's Diary," to show you not merely tremendous writing but tremendous thinking, but it needs context. I highly recommend the book.

Also just catching up with Michael Totten's two-part interview with Christopher Hitchens, a lunch I also attended. Hitchens asked me a question, regarding the book I am writing, that proved valuable, which was, "Did she think the children would be going to heaven?"

Bill Does What Al Never Could

Say what you want about North Koreans, they know how to paint a damn mural. Here, Bill Clinton sits with Kim Jong-il and others, post (or perhaps pre) his securing the pardons of American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee