Before we’re attacked for our position on the matter, permit us
to announce at the outset that we did not watch the recent
Michael Jackson extravaganza. In normal conditions, you’d have to
hang us over a balcony to get us to focus on that creature. But in
pre-war conditions, we can only express regret that Mr. Jackson did
not travel to Baghdad for his interview. Surely President Saddam
has the biological and chemical expertise with which to minister to
Mr. Jackson’s sundry nose and skin problems. Inspectors would have
to search no further. Think of all the palaces Mr. Jackson could
frolic in. There’d be no going back to Santa Ynez. Scott Ritter
would be immensely jealous.
How unfortunate that Mr. Jackson blames his unprecedented
condition on his father, the impresario. He could learn a lesson in
filial devotion from Adlai Stevenson III, a former U.S. senator
from the land of Lincoln who took to the New York Times’
op-ed page today with a definitive
reading of the Adlai Stevenson “moment” in 1962 and whether
Colin Powell’s appearance before the same U.N. Security Council
this week measured up to its standards. Alas, it did not. Daddy’s
was an offensive for peace, but Powell’s wants war. Daddy prevented
war. Powell promotes war.
Daddy’s moment was famous, the stuff of legend, “but he rarely
talked about it with his family.” (Maybe because he was also
sharing “moments” in someone else’s arms, but that’s another
story.) Daddy, you see, knew the price of war. He remembered what
happened when Austria-Hungary attacked little Serbia. It led to the
end of Austria-Hungary. Now if Franz-Joseph Bush-Powell attacks
little Iraq, it will be the end of us.
Adlai III, like other doves, argues Bush should be going after
North Korea instead. One anticipates with bated breath how the
anti-warriors will shift on a dime if indeed the U.S. does decide
on a showdown with Pyongyang.
Once the mantra kicked in, Young Adlai couldn’t keep from
joining in the chorus of those who insist terrorism is rooted in
America’s failure “to address the widening gap between the haves
and the have nots” in the world — and for starters, in the failure
to resolve the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” an observation Y.A.
uses to set up these immortal words: “The United States loses
credibility when perceived as supporting terror in one part of the
Mideast, while professing to fight it elsewhere.” In the eyes of
little Adlai, in seems, Israel is the equivalent of Al Qaeda. Hence
if America wants its credibility back, it will need to join the
side of the suicide bombers. Not even Jimmy Carter has gone this
far in the name of peace in his time.
Already last week we saw the Tootsies are on a roll. Now along
comes chewy Dustin Hoffman, decrying all the self-same things. “I
don’t think, like many of us, that the reasons we have been given
for going to war are the honest reasons,” he said in London. “As an
American,” he added, he found it “painful” and “reprehensible” that
the “administration has taken the events of 9/11 and has
manipulated the grief of the country.” It would seem that Mr.
Hoffman, a famous method actor, is doing some projecting, crediting
the Bush crowd with the same emoting skill he has used for decades
to win over audiences and the leading gal. How far-sighted Whit
Stillman proved to be when in his brilliant movie
Barcelona he has its leading U.S. patriot denounce the
Hoffman on display in The Graduate as a loser and a
creep.
On the other hand, perhaps we owe Hoffman for making it possible
to think of President Bush as a practitioner of the Stanislavsky
Method. Let’s just do all in our power to keep Mr. Bush out of the
clutches of Mrs. Robinson.
John Kerry might have something to say about that, but not now.
He’s too busy making plans for his bris. Next will be his
bar-mitzvah, the first ever to be turned into a presidential
fundraiser. Did McCain-Feingold anticipate this? Which isn’t to say
we’re not happy about Kerry’s recent discovery. There’s now a
chance he might someday be mistaken for a mensch. On the down side,
we have confirming evidence why he reminded us of Madeleine
Albright.
In less happy news we have the sad decline of CNN’s conscience,
Aaron Brown. While others rushed to their anchor spots when news of
Columbia broke, Mr. Brown would not be budged from the
golf course. He had paid huge dollars just to play among largely
Republican PGA golfers at the Bob Hope classic, and in the process
took on many of their fabled selfish traits. Now his career has
missed the cut.
But there is an opening in the U.K., where Tony Benn isn’t
getting any younger. It’s a miracle Tones survived his grueling
confrontation with Saddam. We just hope Benn sees fit to pass on
his title to our Enemy of the Week, which would leave him
effectively named Aaron Neil Wedgwood-Brown, the new Viscount
Stansgate.
