Readers of this magazine have noticed for months that something
has been missing. They are connoisseurs of the printed word and
recognize that this magazine stands almost alone in defending good
prose, careful argument, and claptrap. The latter we celebrate from
our distinctive position as anthropologists of the absurd.
For months our readers have missed a feature that they prize.
They have looked for it with increased frustration. Many have gone
back to the March, April, May, and June issues of The American Spectator and pored over every page
for a hint, but all was for naught. They have not been able to find
a trace of the J. Gordon Coogler Award for the Worst Book of the
Year, and they know that there were many promising candidates in
2010 for this hallowed recognition. The New
York Review of Books was full of them. In fact, ever since
the J. Gordon Coogler Award Committee began sponsoring the award
back in 1975, it almost seems that the Review has been serving as a referral service to
assist our learned judges in their laborious work. Though this was
by indirection: the Review’s editors
exalt those books they find admirable and even heroic; the Coogler
Committee has its short list of trash.
Well, dear readers, you were right in your premonitions that
something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. Here is the problem. In
February 1980 we awarded “The Worst Book of the Year Award” to the
British writer William Shawcross for his Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of
Cambodia. The late and gifted Peter Rodman reviewed the
book in The American
Spectator and took issue with its narrative and
methodology, for instance the maps were off according to his
calculations; and yes, the New York Review
of Books had done cartwheels over Sideshow. We had our worst book of the year. Our
problem arose because in the years since then Shawcross has become
increasingly sound, an admirer of George W. Bush (though with
qualifications), a friend of America, a proponent of America’s
special relationship with the UK, and even a defender of Israel.
Some members of the Coogler board began to grumble that we should
strip Shawcross of his 1980 award, cruel as that might sound.
Actually, even when we gave him the award he did not act like
the ordinary knavish Liberal. We sent him Rodman’s review, and he
responded to it, politely but for the most part negatively; and
Rodman answered, not so politely but intelligently. The exchange
took place in our July 1981 issue. But that was not all. Shawcross
published the whole exchange in the paperback edition of his book.
He relished the debate! He encouraged his readers to witness the
exchange. I should have known then that this fellow Shawcross was
not your normal run-of-the-mill intellectual antagonist. He
believed in the give and take of ideas even then. It is very rare.
Most intellectuals run and hide, except perhaps for misanthropes
like Paul Krugman who really should run and hide.
Moreover, Shawcross has not flinched from standing up for those
that defend Western values. On Israel he recently wrote that the
country “is an imperfect society (like any other), but it has
extraordinary social, scientific, and scholastic achievements.
Despite living under endless threats, it is far closer to the
liberal ideal of a free society than any other in the Middle East.
But it gets scant credit.” In his book on the Iraq war,
Allies: The U.S., Britain, Europe, and the
War in Iraq, he concluded, “Hatred of America is a
powerful and a very destructive force in the world today. Some of
that hatred is caused by America’s mistakes, though that is not
true of the rage of the Islamic nihilists, a minority that nothing
can assuage. I believe that the bottom line is this: For all its
faults, American commitment and American sacrifice are essential to
the world. As in the twentieth century, so in the twenty-first,
only America has the power and the optimism to defend the
international community against what really are the forces of
darkness.”
More recently he leapt to the defense of the sainted Rupert
Murdoch in the Spectator of
London and in the correspondence section of the
New York Times, where he
challenged the Times’ reporter for
suggesting “that Mr. Murdoch was losing his grip at 80” because of
his halting diction. Shawcross wrote that Murdoch spoke that way 20
years ago when Shawcross was writing his biography. Since then
Murdoch has created a diverse media empire, and it is the
Times that has aged and grown
monotonous.
So I flew to London late in June to demand the Coogler laureate
give us our Coogler back. He seemed agreeable on the telephone but
cagey. He promised a meeting on neutral ground. We would meet over
lunch at the London Spectator’s offices, which proved to be
astonishingly plush and just a short distance from Number 10
Downing Street. Fraser Nelson, the magazine’s talented and
energetic editor, presided along with several Spectator staff members, one allegedly
betrothed to the playboy Taki. There were no security personnel
present, at least none that I could see. I told Fraser that in the
States only a pornographic magazine could afford such amenities. We
were offered Pol Roger and before lunch took a walk in the
magazine’s garden.
As for Shawcross, he is rather large. This posed an immediate
consideration. What if he did not see the amusing aspect of my
project? What if he did not agree to let bygones be bygones,
acknowledge that a lot of water had flown under the bridge — that
sort of thing? In the entire history of the award we have never
rescinded it from any Coogler laureate, and in the case of Jimmy
Carter we have given it to that anile little scamp three times.
Jimmy has not even thanked us once.
Of course, William Shawcross proved to be the embodiment of a
gentleman. He actually arrived bearing a gift for me, an obscure
book: Barack Obama: The Greatest Story
Ever Told by none other than J. Gordon Coogler himself,
who I thought died in 1901 in Dung Heap, South Carolina. Well, you
learn something new every day. And so I took Shawcross’s gift back
to the United States. The U.S. customs agents made no objections
when I brought it into the country. My guess is that will not be
possible a few more months into the Obama Renaissance. As for
Shawcross, he has uttered such good sense for years across a whole
range of vital issues that I cannot fathom why we did not strip him
of his award years ago. Not only that, but he writes commendable
prose. So after lunch I headed off to Paul Johnson’s house to
inform this illustrious member of the Committee that I had
accomplished my task. We had a good laugh, and Shawcross promises
to write for us in the months to come…but he is keeping his
statuette. Probably he has an honored spot for it in his London
home, perhaps on a mantle piece, possibly with other literary and
humanitarian awards that he has won along the way. I can understand
his pride. Still, let us remember 2011 as the year the J. Gordon
Coogler Award Committee flip-flopped.
