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Commentary SEPTEMBER 2019 : VOLUME 148 NUMBER 2 How you can help Israel have a healthy New Year.

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Magen David Adom is Israel’s emergency medical first responder, ambulance, and blood-services organization. MDA operates 168 emergency medical stations throughout Israel, responds to nearly half a million emergency medical calls each month, and collects, safety tests, and distributes nearly all the blood for Israel’s hospitals, including all the blood needed by the IDF. If you’re looking to make a difference for Israel and secure the nation’s health and safety this coming year, there’s no better way than through a gift to MDA. Please give today. Shanah Tovah. Support Magen David Adom at afmda.org/rosh or call 866.632.2763. You can buy tickets now for The 10TH Annual COMMENTARY ROAST OF BEN SHAPIRO

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The Roast is a benefit to support COMMENTARY INC., For information email the nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization Stephanie Roberts that publishes Commentary Magazine. at sroberts@ commentarymagazine.com Commentary September 2019 Vol. 148 : No. 2

Articles

Naomi Feminism Is in Trouble 15 Schaefer Riley

Abraham O Oberlin, 22 Socher My Oberlin I taught there for 18 years, but the details of its conduct as revealed in a recent lawsuit shocked even me.

Adam J. Mueller Agonistes 33 White Misunderstanding the special counsel—and Congress.

Bruce Useful Idiot 38 Bawer The curious case of Max Blumenthal.

Jonathan The Congressman 45 Schanzer Who Hated Israel Before Ilhan Omar, there was Paul Findley.

Politics & Ideas

Noah The Smashing of the GOP 48 Rothman American Carnage by Tim Alberta

Politics & Ideas

Philip He Who Is Without Zinn 52 Terzian Land of Hope by Wilfred M. McClay

Daniella Campus Lies About Israel 54 Greenbaum Davis Israel Denial by Cary Nelson

Jonathan V. The Man Inside Me 55 Last The Man They Wanted Me to Be by Jared Yates Sexton

Culture & Civilization

Terry Mr. and Miss Words 58 Teachout Of Betty Comden and Adolph Green

Edward Aaargh 61 Kosner The Last Pirate of New York by Rich Cohen

Monthly Commentaries

Reader Commentary Washington Commentary 4 Letters Matthew Continetti 11 on the June issue The Freakout Over the New York Times

Social Commentary Jewish Commentary 8 Christine Rosen Meir Y. Soloveichik 13 The Bad Fight The Land Waited for the Jews

Hollywood Commentary Rob Long 64 The Bluest Eyeball READER COMMENTARY Searching for Alien Life

To the Editor: Our earth has one moon and sun. probably don’t exist. THAN SIEGEL’S article “Are Think of the heavens as seen from But this is not so: The Search for E We Alone in the Universe?” other planets and galaxies with vast- Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) (June) reminds me that there are ly different celestial appearances. program is based on certain as- some unexamined assumptions Would the same astronomy have sumptions of how such civiliza- regarding the search for extrater- evolved in those places? Would there tions would communicate. A suf- restrial intelligence. The main one be a “sphere of the fixed stars?” ficient explanation for the failure appears to be that other intelligent Consider also Francis Bacon’s to find the evidence sought is that beings will discover and use the doctrine of science as a project the assumptions made by SETI are same technologies used by intel- devoted to “the mastery and pos- wrong; i.e., they’ve been looking in ligent humans. Thus, we search the session of nature for the relief of the wrong place. cosmos for their radio transmis- man’s estate.” My point is that the Among the three transitions on sions. That radio waves, or frequen- evolution of the sciences is not iso- earth that Siegel deems improbable cies, are inevitable discoveries is lated from civilizations and from are non-life to life, life to complex not necessarily persuasive. Look- fundamental questions raised by life, and advanced life to advanced ing backward through our prog- those civilizations and their reign- technology. However, each of these ress, it might seem that science is a ing opinions. reflects a change in the organiza- series of inevitable discoveries and Robert Licht tion of matter that makes the sub- their practical exploitation. But an Middlebury, Vermont sequent ones more likely. None of acquaintance with the history of these is guaranteed, but none is as the sciences raises some doubts. 1 unlikely as Siegel suggests. Consider astronomy. Its evolu- But there is something else tion in Greek thought required To the Editor: needed for us to find an extrater- both plane and conic geometry, a THAN SIEGEL’S “Are We restrial civilization: That civiliza- theory of ratio and proportion, and E Alone in the Universe?” argues tion would itself have to be curi- a long prehistory of carefully mea- that if there were other technologi- ous about outside contact. SETI sured observations. The origins cal civilizations in the universe, or is based on this assumption and of those measurements, indeed certainly in the Milky Way, we that an extraterrestrial civilization of arithmetic and geometry, are should have found evidence of would channel its curiosity in a shrouded in mystery. them by now. As we haven’t, they particular way. Though we might

4 September 2019 think it likely that an advanced civilization would be curious about the existence of others, this transi- tion isn’t guaranteed any more than the previous three. Thirty years ago, there was no direct evidence of extra-so- September 2019 Vol. 148 : No. 2 lar planets. The argument Siegel makes for no technological civili- zations could have been used then John Podhoretz, Editor to infer that only our sun has Abe Greenwald, Senior Editor planets. Then the first extra-solar Noah Rothman, Associate Editor planet was discovered, disprov- Christine Rosen, Senior Writer ing any claim that they didn’t ex- � ist elsewhere. Siegel’s argument could be disproved in a similar Carol Moskot, Publisher fashion: It would take only one Kejda Gjermani, Digital Publisher signal indicating the existence of Malkie Beck, Publishing Associate another technological civilization. � Yale Zussman Ilya Leyzerzon, Business Director Framingham, Massachusetts Stephanie Roberts, Business Manager � 1 Terry Teachout, Critic-at-Large � Ethan Siegel writes: Board of Directors HERE’S AN OLD STORY about a Daniel R. Benson, Chairman drunk man leaving the bar, real- T Paul J. Isaac, Michael J. Leffell, izing that he’s lost his keys. He keeps looking underneath the same lamp- Jay P. Lefkowitz, Steven Price, post, even though it’s very obvious Gary L. Rosenthal, Michael W. Schwartz that his keys are not located there. A concerned citizen sees him and in- cover photo: keith hayes quires, “Why do you keep searching for your keys under this lamppost?” The drunk responds, “Because that’s To send us a letter to the editor: [email protected] where the light is.” We will edit letters for length and content. To an extent, all experimental and To make a tax-deductible donation: [email protected] observational scientists are guilty of For advertising inquiries: [email protected] this: We look where our tools and For customer service: [email protected] techniques enable us to look. While the search for extraterrestrial life, in the early days, was exclusively focused on listening for intelligent Commentary (ISSN 0010-2601) is published monthly (except for a combined July/ signals in the radio portion of the August issue) by Commentary, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization. Editorial and business offices: 561 Seventh Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, NY, 10018. Telephone: (212) 891-1400. Fax: (212) spectrum, that is no longer an accu- 891-6700. Customer Service: [email protected] or (212) 891-1400. rate characterization of the search. Subscriptions: One year $45, two years $79, three years $109, USA only. To subscribe please go Scientists are looking for a myriad to www.commentarymagazine.com/subscribe-digital-print. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, of signals across the electromagnetic and additional mailing offices. Subscribers will receive electronic announcements of forthcoming issues. Single copy: U.S. is $5.95; Canada is $7.00. All back issues are available in electronic spectrum, including indirect signals form at commentarymagazine.com. Postmaster: Send address changes to Commentary, P.O. Box such as solar-system modifications 420235, Palm Coast, FL, 32142. Unsolicited manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped, or correlated signals between star self-addressed envelope. Letters intended for publication may be edited. Indexed in Reader’s Guide, systems that were only mere imagin- Book Review Digest, and elsewhere. U.S. Newsstand Distribution by COMAG Marketing Group, 155 Village Blvd, Princeton, NJ, 08540. Printed in the USA. Commentary was established in ings years ago. If there are intelligent 1945 by the American Jewish Committee, which was the magazine’s publisher through 2006 and continues to support its role as an independent journal of thought and opinion. Copyright © 2019 by Commentary, Inc.; all rights reserved under International and Pan American Copyright Conventions. civilizations out there, we are looking life, complex life, or intelligent life to trust the Palestinian leadership in every way possible. beyond Earth, to make an estimate of in “land for peace” deals. If Ariel We are also looking for direct anything other than upper limits on Sharon had not disengaged from and indirect signs of life in general: the likelihood of any of those occur- Gaza in 2005, it’s likely that the bio-signatures (or, more accurately, rences. And even that we have to do Gaza problem would be far more bio-hints) that would be the result of responsibly. That is to say, within the manageable today. organic processes seen from afar. We limits of our current scientific and Schanzer accurately describes the must remember that an absence of technological capabilities. challenges that Israel has faced since evidence in favor of life beyond earth Anyone has the right to speculate Hamas seized the reins of power in is not the same as evidence for the ab- as to what might be out there, but 2007 following the 2006 elections. sence of life beyond earth, and that’s they must confront their specula- Instead of using foreign aid to mod- why it’s important to keep an open tions with the full suite of data that’s ernize Gaza, Hamas squanders it on mind. But it would be highly unsci- available. Right now, despite the oc- advanced missiles and smaller ar- entific, in the absence of a robust casional extraordinary claim to the maments targeting Israel. (or even a likely) detection of simple contrary, all we have are null results. As long as Hamas rules Gaza with an iron fist, there will be no peace for Israel and no prosperity or security for the inhabitants of Gaza. How to Deal There may be, however, a solution to the ongoing cycle of instability. First, Israel could form a coali- tion of partners to interdict the with Gaza flow of Iranian-funded weapons before they reach Hamas as well To the Editor: as Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Pro- ONATHAN SCHANZER’S excel- period of weeks may be needed to jecting strength is the only realistic Jlent article “The Gaza Conun- survey the rubble. pathway to peace. drum” (June) accurately documents If rockets and fire balloons are Next, Israel could utilize sanc- the severe problems emanating still used against Israel, a second tions against Hamas to dry up its from Gaza. The best alternative is area should be selected and taken. revenues that are used for arms simply the least bad. This means There are a couple of benefits to and tunnel development. The ter- Israel’s doing what creates the few- this approach. First, Israel will not rorist regime in Gaza must be est casualties and least pain and have to commit ground troops to squeezed until it capitulates, allow- economic cost. The hostilities will dangerous urban warfare. As build- ing for the reinstallment of a more end when the government in Gaza ings in Gaza would be destroyed moderate Fatah administration. gives up hope of causing endless from afar, Israeli soldiers would During this transition, econom- harm to the Jewish state. not have to be on the scene where ic aid to the Gazan populace could Unless there is a new and compel- they’d be subject to harm. be implemented until a viable ling alternative, the following steps Residents would have the op- economy could be created and built might be considered. The Israelis portunity to relocate to other areas to sustain itself. There might be a could notify the leaders and resi- of Gaza. As these areas became need for the IDF to provide security dents of Gaza that if rockets and fire more densely settled, it would cre- during this process, but an Israeli balloons continue to harm Israel, a ate additional pressure on Hamas occupation would be unnecessary. small amount of Gazan territory will to stop firing on Israel. Christian P. Milord be taken over, and kept, by Israel. Arthur Horn Fullerton, California The territory should be adjacent Fort Lee, New Jersey to Israel and taken only after Israel 1 has given the people of Gaza time 1 to evacuate and has used artillery Jonathan Schanzer writes: and/or tanks to destroy local build- To the Editor: HE GAZA conundrum, among ings from a safe distance. Cameras ONATHAN SCHANZER’S “The T other things, stems from the on drones can assure that no liv- JGaza Conundrum” perfectly il- fact that traditional or even creative ing enemy is located in the area. A lustrates why it’s a major mistake military approaches don’t seem to

6 Letters : September 2019 work. Deterrence is difficult to es- Grossman’s legacy. Life and Fate tablish when the terrorist group touches on basic human and social in question relishes the public- Grossman’s issues, which are highlighted at one of relations value of an Israeli strike. the crucial turns of WWII. And other The ongoing chaos on the border Legacy shorter pieces are certainly destined is explicitly designed to generate for continued rereading, although the sympathy for Hamas and outrage power of Grossman’s Russian is lost in against Israel. And that’s before a To the Editor: translation. Even though Grossman shot is even fired. Thus, the pres- AS VASILY GROSSMAN the died more than half a century ago, sure on Israel builds. The question Wgreatest writer of the past his books are still weapons in the of using public opinion against century? This question, which ap- fight against the totalitarian legacy Hamas, as Arthur Horn raises, is pears as a subtitle for Joseph Ep- in Russia and elsewhere. He was one an interesting one. We know from stein’s “The Achievement of Vasily of the best Russian writers of the sec- empirical reporting and even some Grossman” (June) sounds too de- ond half of the 20th century, and his polling data that the population manding. The short answer would influence persists into the 21st. is frustrated and disaffected. The be “No” for now—even among Izak Dimenstein question is whether that matters Russian-language writers of the Grand Rapids, Nebraska to Hamas. Until now, it certainly last century. Most of what Gross- has not made the terrorist group man wrote before Life and Fate was 1 accountable. Looking ahead, any in the mold of the Soviet propa- viable Israel strategy should try to ganda machine, reluctant socialist To the Editor: capitalize on how Hamas is reviled realism. This includes the first part OSEPH EPSTEIN’S interesting by the people it purports to govern. of the duology For the Right Cause, J piece on Vasily Grossman con- The effort to dry up smuggling to entitled Stalingrad in the English tains a serious error. Referring to Hamas, as mentioned by Christian translation. It was damaged by edi- Stalingrad, he writes, “roughly 2 mil- P. Milord, has been incredibly effec- tors, censors, and self-censorship. lion Russians and 4 million Germans tive since the 2012 rise to power of Unfortunately, Vasily Grossman’s are said to have perished there.” Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt. El-Sisi’s main book was not read by his audi- Total losses of German military per- disdain for Hamas, because of its ence in time. The Soviet authorities sonnel during the entire war were Muslim Brotherhood roots and sym- did not want to repeat the Doctor estimated at 4.3 million. While the pathies, arguably exceeds that of Is- Zhivago mistake, which led to an battle of Stalingrad was the first blow rael. Egypt, over the last seven years, international scandal. In 1961, the that contributed to the German loss has thus destroyed the vast majority KGB officially “arrested” the Life on the Eastern Front, the number of of tunnels connecting the Sinai Pen- and Fate manuscript. This meant, German soldiers killed was in the insula to the Gaza Strip. This has among other things, taking the writer vicinity of 250,000. Another 150,000 driven smuggling down in ways that hostage if the manuscript were to ap- German soldiers were captured. The Israel had never envisaged. Israel pear in the open press abroad. Gross- total Axis losses (killed, wounded, has no equivalent el-Sisi to its north, man retaliated by writing Everything and captured) at Stalingrad and so halting Hezbollah smugglers is Flows. In the beginning of the 1980s, during the German attempt to break far more difficult. Sanctions on my friend and I photocopied Every- through to the city in January 1943 Hamas should be tougher, but Israel thing Flows from a manuscript that were estimated at between 650,000 has held back because the terrorist was smuggled into the Soviet Union to 850,000 servicemen. Total Soviet group (just like its terror masters in from abroad. For us, it was a political casualties at Stalingrad were more Tehran) pass the financial pain down pamphlet in the form of a fictional than 1.1 million soldiers, of whom to the people. And, as noted in my story. Because of this, the book’s more less than half were killed. piece, Israel has been trying to find a literary aspects went unnoticed— Harry Lieber way to support the population while though Everything Flows is not up Vancouver, Canada depriving Hamas. To be sure, this is to the level of Life and Fate. Gross- not easy. If one country has shown man’s work hastened the onset of the 1 an ability to find creative solutions 1991 revolution, aiming a bullet at under adverse conditions, it’s Israel. the heart of the system, which is still Joseph Epstein writes: But it’s certainly taking its time get- very much alive in different forms. AM GRATEFUL to Harry Lieber ting there. The jury is still out regarding I for correcting my error.

Commentary 7 SOCIAL COMMENTARY The Bad Fight

CHRISTINE ROSEN

HE ELECTION OF Donald Trump in 2016 In the 1990s, The West Wing’s Jed Bartlet was triggered the liberal fight-or-flight response, Hollywood’s attempt at imagining a tough but ap- Tmost acutely in Hollywood. Celebrities such as pealingly liberal president free from the pesky im- Girls star Lena Dunham and pop singer Miley Cyrus moralities of a Bill Clinton. The Good Fight doesn’t announced that they would leave the country; others bother with fictionalizing anything. The president declared themselves shocked, shocked! that a man here is Trump—the real Trump, depicted in snippets who had embraced traditional celebrity tactics such as of video footage and occasionally with the help of an shamelessly defying social norms and ostentatiously impersonator’s voice. He is the show’s villain, foil, and boasting about his wealth and sexual prowess had omnipresent id. somehow ended up in the White House—a building By making Trump central to the show’s plot, the that Madonna claimed she now thought a lot about writers no doubt think they are elevating the form and blowing up. offering viewers hard-hitting, ripped-from-the-head- Trump’s election also weighed heavily on the lines political commentary that will galvanize their minds of Robert and Michelle King, the husband-and- audience to join the real-life #Resistance. Instead, by wife creators of the CBS streaming channel drama, trafficking in conspiracy theories and irrational anger, The Good Fight. The show, a spin-off of their popular The Good Fight is more of a fun-house mirror than a re- series The Good Wife, was originally designed to be the cruiting tool, reflecting a virulent and distorted strain story of how powerful female barrister Diane Lockhart of progressive paranoia while only sporadically enter- (Christine Baranski) was going to set herself to the task taining the subscribers to CBS’s All Access service. of shattering glass ceilings in the law in the manner of Anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders is not the her hero, Hillary Clinton. target audience for this show. Its creators made that But between the pitch in 2016 and the show’s clear from the opening scene of the first season, which premiere in 2017, there fell the shadow of Trump. shows Diane Lockhart watching footage of Trump’s As Michelle King told the Atlantic, Trump’s victory inauguration on TV with a look of shock and horror “turned this into a very different show than the one on her face. By the third season, the opening credits we thought we were gonna be making…And there’s feature televisions with still shots of Trump and Vice something exciting about that—suddenly you’re work- President Mike Pence—and Sean Hannity!—spontane- ing without a net.” Robert King agreed: “Michelle and ously exploding. I were both having to deal with what felt like was off Of course, the elevation of Trump to the highest about the country, that there was a loss of guardrails.” office in the land sent more than just Hollywood into a If you’re wondering what Hollywood drama looks panic. Many progressive pundits see in Trump’s every like with the guardrails off, the narrative arc of The Good act as president a burgeoning new authoritarianism Fight’s three seasons (a fourth is in the works) offers a (while conveniently memory-holing examples of Presi- useful case study—and a cautionary tale. dent Obama detaining people at the border or order- ing drone strikes, for example). Others descended into Christine rosen is senior writer at Commentary. deep pretension, reminding the public that Frankfurt

8 September 2019 School theorists such as Theodor Adorno had warned show are portrayed as incompetent fools; ICE agents us decades ago how a disregard for the truth and ma- are depicted as aggressive bullies and life-ruiners; and nipulation of the media were hallmarks of creeping Diane finds herself increasingly at odds with the one fascism. “‘Make America Great Again’ is one of Trump’s sympathetically portrayed conservative character on many linguistic contortions,” wrote Alex Ross in a New the show—her estranged husband, Kurt (Gary Cole). Yorker essay about the Frankfurt School. “In fact, one Eventually, Diane begins micro-dosing the halluci- of his core messages is that America should no longer nogenic psilocybin to cope with the daily news about bother with being great, that it should retreat from Trump and to handle dating an activist-anarchist who international commitments, that it should make itself talks about violently overthrowing the government small and mean.” with the casual aplomb of a sitcom character com- What does a “small and mean” administration plaining about his mother-in-law. have to do with a fictional corporate law office? A lot, The pragmatism and compromise and negotia- it turns out. tion that characterized Diane’s legal work at the start The Good Fight is ostensibly about a Chicago of the show are entirely absent in these political sto- firm founded by an iconic African-American civil- rylines; here, there is only power and corruption and rights lawyer. Diane Lockhart, a white woman, joins violence and amorality. It becomes increasingly clear the firm after she falls prey to a Bernie Madoff–style that the real theme of the show isn’t resistance. Or fear. Ponzi scheme, loses her life sav- ings, and has to delay retirement and return to work. In the early going, the show focuses on Diane’s efforts to find her footing in the firm, as its writ- ers explore of-the-moment topics such as curbing hate speech on so- cial-media platforms and custody questions related to the ownership of embryos. A running theme is hatred directed at lawyers, some of whom are being killed by disgrun- tled clients. Diane is clearly flum- moxed and angry about Trump’s presidency, as her frequent politi- cal asides suggest, but the subject doesn’t dominate her existence or the viewer’s experience over the first season’s 10 episodes. Christine Baranski as feminist senior law partner Diane Lockhart In the second season, The on the CBS streaming channel drama The Good Fight. Good Fight devotes an increasing amount of time to political plots, such as the firm’s efforts to get hired by the Democratic It’s nihilism masquerading as idealism—a nihilism National Committee to develop strategies to impeach that reaches its peak in the third season, when even the Trump. It also agrees to represent a prostitute who weather in every episode is dark and stormy. claims she’s being deported because she is one of the Diane joins a group of activist #Resistance wom- women filmed with the president on the infamous en who call themselves “the Book Club” and who are “pee tape,” which Diane attempts to verify. Diane intent on using Trump’s tactics against him in an effort also personally courts another woman who claims to to erode the support of his base. They are especially have signed a nondisclosure agreement with Trump keen on undermining his popularity among evangeli- because Trump paid for her to have an abortion after cal Christians by revealing him to be a serial adulterer their affair. When Diane asks her what she should do to (and supporter of abortions for his knocked-up mis- bring down such a terrible president, the woman tells tresses), as if any Christian who voted for him wasn’t her, “Follow the women.” already aware of his many peccadilloes. Meanwhile, the Trump-appointed judges in the The Book Club rejects moderate tactics as in-

Commentary 9 sufficient for the country’s new reality. “Democrats ed narratives and one-note anti-Trumpism as artful act like it’s the ’90s!” one member of the anti-Trump satire. New York magazine called the show “a political coven says in a moment of exasperation, before green- fantasia on the themes of right now, a glorious heady lighting the group’s version of fake news online: a story mishmash of everything...a romp and a farce and a claiming the Trump administration is lacing school jeremiad and an educational cartoon and a furious cafeteria sloppy joes with cyanide. screed and a pastiche of an All the President’s Men– Later, the group hatches a plot to kill a Trump- style thriller all at once.” administration official (a Stephen Miller lookalike In other words, it’s a mess, and by the end of the in charge of immigration policy) by “swatting” him third season, even viewers who aren’t Trump fans will (making a prank emergency call so that a SWAT team struggle to watch the endless Trump-bashing. It’s not will descend on his house). Their plan works, and he a “good fight.” It’s merely an extended liberal fever is killed, but the slight qualms expressed by Diane, dream, at times literally. After Diane’s husband Kurt is who in earlier scenes had denounced the official as injured while acting as a guide on a hunting safari with evil, seem pro forma at best. We’re not supposed to feel Eric Trump and Don Trump Jr., she lies awake late at much sympathy for a dead Trump official. night, staring at the scar on his shoulder, which gradu- Soon the group is exploring ways to rig voting ally morphs into the shape of President Trump’s face machines in 2020 to favor Democratic candidates, and begins talking to her. claiming that voter suppression justifies this end run The “conversation” they have is revealing. “What around the democratic process. Diane wonders aloud happened to men?” she asks, sounding disgusted. if this is appropriate and isn’t sure she wants to partici- “When did Trump and Kavanaugh become our idea of pate, but her moral reckoning seems inauthentic given an aggrieved man? Quivering lips blaming everyone her general behavior. While attending a Republican but themselves?” Later, she hate-scrolls through what fundraiser with her husband, for example, Diane se- we’re meant to believe is Eric Trump’s Instagram ac- cretly records some of the conversation; when he says count, which features many close-up pictures of the she should delete it, she responds, “Oh, and if we were dead exotic animals he’s presumably killed. at Goebbels’s party, you really think it would be wrong If The West Wing was “political pornography to record?” for liberals,” as John Podhoretz wrote 17 years ago in Meanwhile, back at the law firm, an associate the Weekly Standard, then The Good Fight veers into receives a call, supposedly from First Lady Melania porn’s masochistic substrate. As Kurt asks Diane at one Trump, inquiring about getting a divorce. Another point, “Is it possible for you to get past your hatred of lawyer’s prospects for a job at the firm are shattered them?” Evidently not, which leaves viewers longing for when it is revealed that the lawyer had helped “prep less performative progressivism and more straight-up Brett Kavanaugh” for his Supreme Court confirmation legal drama. hearings. Ironically, the show’s singular focus on Trump One lawyer who does find his way to the firm is reveals the destructiveness of this way of living (and Roland Blum, whom Michael Sheen plays as a deranged entertaining). The last scene in the final episode of Sea- hobbit channeling Willy Wonka. The incarnation of son Three shows a newly reconciled, postcoital Diane cynicism, Blum fornicates frequently, lies constantly, and Kurt, now exemplars of bipartisan marriage, talk- sucks on fentanyl lollipops, and claims Roy Cohn as his ing about finding happiness again. What they don’t personal hero. Oh, and he’s a Trump supporter. know is that they are about to get swatted, presumably “I know Trump. He’s not going anywhere.... He because the leftist extremist “Book Club” that Diane wants a third term,” Blum tells Diane in one scene. abandoned (and whose leader threatened to destroy “People will rise up!” she says. any dissenters) is making good on its word. Blum laughs. “Because that’s what people do So, if either Kurt or Diane ends up dead, it won’t when the jobless rate is at 3.7? Trump wins because he be because of Trump; rather, it will be because of lefty sees life as a battle…. Liberals never get that.” infighting and an insistence on ideological purity that The writers of The Good Fight are hell-bent on leads to violence when challenged. The Good Fight’s showing us that they do get it, so much so that they creators want everyone to see Trump as the existential include Schoolhouse Rock–style animated shorts in threat they believe him to be. But because the show nearly every episode that explain real-life important takes politics far too seriously and Trump far too per- things such as the supposed unfairness of the electoral sonally, it ends up making Trump’s fictional enemies college and the dangers of Pepe the Frog memes. appear more dangerously unhinged than Trump him- Fans of the show have tried to justify its disjoint- self. Hollywood has lost the plot. q

10 September 2019 WASHINGTON COMMENTARY The Freakout Over the New York Times

MATTHEW CONTINETTI

VERY EVENING on Twitter, Tom Jolly, print 10-minute speech, coming after one of the most violent editor of the New York Times, posts the front weekends in recent American history, would reposi- Epage of the next edition. August 5th was no ex- tion him as a unifier when many Americans hold him ception. At 6:05 p.m., he tweeted an image of the front responsible for inflaming racial division.” page with the lead-all headline, “Trump Urges Unity The juxtaposition of this highly critical write-up Vs. Racism.” What happened next revealed a lot about beneath a straightforward, neutral, and, yes, accurate the Times, its readers, and the role of media in contem- headline was unusual. So unusual, in fact, that Twitter porary American politics and society. It’s not pretty. users immediately began to point out the discrepancy. The article, by Michael Crowley and Maggie Like many people on Twitter, they did so in a mix of Haberman, reported on the speech that President sarcasm and shrieking, hysterical, self-righteous high Trump delivered from the White House after mass dudgeon. shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. Like Election analyst Nate Silver was among the first most Times coverage of the president, it not so subtly to raise an eyebrow. “Not sure ‘TRUMP URGES UNITY smuggled the journalists’ opinions into newsprint. VS. RACISM’ is how I would have framed the story,” he The first and third paragraphs did quote Trump con- tweeted. Pod Save America bro Tommy Vietor quoted demning “racist hate” and warning of “the perils of the Silver and tweeted, “I often find attacks on the NYT to internet and social media.” Then the story recounted be overheated and misdirected but this is just terrible.” what he did not say. Beto O’Rourke tweeted, “Unbelievable.” Trump “stopped well short of endorsing the kind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decided to raise the of broad gun control measures that activists, Demo- ante by saying that her hometown newspaper, known crats, and some Republicans have sought for years, throughout the world for its liberal politics, is a such as tougher background checks for gun buyers and handmaiden of bigotry: “Let this front page serve as the banning of some weapons and accessories such as a reminder of how white supremacy is aided by—and high-capacity magazines.” He “offered no recognition often relies upon—the cowardice of mainstream in- of his own use of those platforms to promote his brand stitutions.” And let Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet serve as a of divisive politics.” He “took no responsibility for the reminder of how, in 2019, no one, not Nancy Pelosi or atmosphere of division, nor did he recognize his own the Gray Lady, is immune to accusations of racism. reluctance to warn of the rise of white nationalism un- By 7:12 p.m.—one hour and seven minutes after til now.” Indeed, “it seemed unlikely that Mr. Trump’s the first headline went up on the website—the Times made a change. Jolly posted the new front page, bear- Matthew Continetti is the editor in chief of the ing the headline “Assailing Hate but Not Guns.” As Washington Free Beacon. prose, this version was more confusing than its prede-

Commentary 11 cessor. It lacked a subject, was written in an awkward story about Hillary’s emails”; “in 2016 they said there gerund form, and was as much a critique of Trump as were no links between Russia and Trump’s campaign”; it was a report on what he had said. Then again, the “phony headlines that normalize the white suprema- online mob outraged over “Trump Urges Unity vs. cist in the Oval Office”; Maggie Haberman; and Mau- Racism” wasn’t interested in The Elements of Style. It reen Dowd. wanted validation. Twitter user Film Crit Deathstroke said, “#Can- The #CancelNYT hashtag was trending. For celNYT and tell them they won’t re-subscribe until many on the left, the initial anodyne headline was the Bari Weiss, Bret Stephens, David Brooks, and Ross last time they would allow the Times to offend their Douthat are gone.” Another, I.F. Thunder, tweeted, sensibilities. CNN political contribu- “The New York Times hasn’t tor Joan Walsh tweeted, “I canceled The far left has long been been liberal since it helped Bush my subscription. I know a lot of folks and Cheney sell their Iraq War. It will tell me I’m wrong. I will miss it. critical of the Times, only appears liberal to right-wing But I can’t keep rewarding such awful but the outrage over this authoritarians.” news judgment. ‘Trump Urges Unity headline encompassed Many of the loudest com- Against Racism’ is almost as bad as plaints came from supporters their full-page Comey letter coverage more moderate of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth just before 2016 election. Nobody Democrats as well. The Warren. The far left has long learns.” As I write, Walsh’s statement been critical of the Times, but the has been retweeted some 4,000 times. ubiquity of the uproar outrage over the “Trump Urges Contrary to her prediction, few suggests that the center Unity” headline encompassed of the 1,200 people who replied to her of the Democratic Party more moderate Democrats as Tweet told her she was wrong. One well. The ubiquity of the up- exception was David Cay Johnston, really has moved to the roar suggests that the center of a former Times reporter, who said, left, and increasingly the Democratic Party really has “Joan you need to look at the second moved to the left, and increas- edition headline which is dramatically so during the Trump ingly so during the Trump presi- better. You know perfectly well that in presidency. dency or, as Walsh might say, the a rush to deadline bad heds and bad Trump “crisis.” writing sometimes gets published.” Walsh replied, The president’s most committed opponents are “Sorry, David, it’s not dramatically better. It’s a rush no longer interested in information about him. They to improvement but actually, it makes no sense. I’ve don’t think it’s possible to be objective about a “white put this off for almost 3 years. They are blowing their supremacist” president who has built “concentration coverage of this crisis. I’m out.” camps” on the southern border and who, in the words Dean Baquet, the Times’ top editor, told the At- of one MSNBC anchor, “is talking about exterminating lantic that it was all just a big misunderstanding. He Latinos.” These slanders are now tossed off on a daily doesn’t usually know what goes on the front page until basis. If you accept them as true, then Trump must be later in the evening, though he probably should. The removed from office sooner rather than later. Anything Times has lots of stories going all day, including video! that complicates this effort—including a five-word The print newspaper is a “mechanical thing,” in addi- newspaper headline—should be opposed. tion to being a “beloved thing.” And while people think The Times has grown its circulation during the Times changed the headline because of pressure, Trump’s presidency by trying to appeal to the Resis- the truth is that he and his underlings had already tance. But it still retains some of the habits of a news- been working on fixing the headline for the paper’s paper committed to presenting readers with accurate second edition by the time the editors even knew social news and reporting and lively analysis and commen- media had gone on the attack. tary. That is why the editors used the initial headline. This effort at damage control proved necessary It was fit to print. But a large portion of theTimes because, as a spokesman for the Times told TheWrap, readership do not read the paper to be informed. They the paper had “seen a higher volume of cancellations read it for confirmation of their worldview. That the today than is typical.” The reasons for these cancel- Times so quickly buckled to pressure after the left’s lations would strike an ordinary person as bizarre. nervous breakdown is a reminder that, while America Progressive activist Ryan Knight tweeted “5 reasons to will survive Donald Trump, American journalism #CancelNYT,” including “in 2016 they ran story after might not. q

12 September 2019 JEWISH COMMENTARY The Land Waited for the Jews

MEIR Y. SOLOVEICHIK

NE HUNDRED AND FIFTY years ago, a Yet the centerpiece of his biting wit is the anti- journalist by the name of Samuel Clemens climactic nature of the place itself. The land suppos- Opublished Innocents Abroad, the book that edly flowing with milk and honey was anything but. In made his career and which remained the best-selling the Galilee, Twain saw here and there some “evidence book in his lifetime. This was not a tale of a young of cultivation,” at most “an acre or two of rich soil stud- boy sailing the Mississippi, but of the author himself ded with last season’s dead corn-stalks.” Yet the closer sailing the Mediterranean to pay a pilgrimage to the they came to Jerusalem, “the more rocky and bare, Holy Land. For Twain aficionados, the 150th anni- repulsive and dreary the landscape became.” No sight versary of Innocents Abroad is a literary milestone. is more “tiresome to the eye,” he reflected, “than that Yet there is an aspect of the book that perhaps only which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem.” Palestine, religious Jews can understand—because they can he concluded, “sits in sackcloth and ashes,” and he take it in tandem with the reflections of a medieval cites the suggestion that the Israelites could have seen Sephardic sage who took a similar journey seven it as a goodly land only because of their “weary march centuries earlier. through the desert.” It was in 1867 that Clemens convinced a Califor- As Rabbi Moshe Taragin and others have noted, nia newspaper to fund his trip on the Quaker City, a the author of Innocents Abroad had a distinguished luxury cruise aboard a steamship bearing American predecessor. Exactly 700 years before, one of the most Christians. Twain skewers much of what he sees. He important rabbis in Jewish history arrived in the Holy pokes fun at the pilgrims with whom he was travelling. Land. He saw exactly what Twain saw but interpreted They had “dreamed all their lives of some day skim- it very differently. Moses ben Nahman—known as ming over the sacred waters of Galilee and listening Nahmanides or Ramban—was the leader of the Jewish to its hallowed story in the whisperings of its waves, community in Gerona. He was forced by the king of and had journeyed countless leagues to do it.” But they Aragon to defend Judaism publicly against the attacks then insist on bartering with the Arab boatman be- of a Jewish apostate. After he did so, he was eventually cause they thought the fare was too high. He mocks, as convicted of attacks on Christianity and sent into exile. well, many of the traditional religious sites, including In 1267, he arrived in a Jerusalem devoid of Jews. a spot in the Holy Sephulcre known as the burial place Nahmanides describes the barrenness of the of Adam, the first man. land of Israel as ordained by God with the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews by the Romans. Meir Soloveichik is the rabbi of Shearith Israel in It is for this tragedy that Jews mourn on the ninth New York City and the director of the Straus Center for of the month of Av, or “Tisha B’Av.” Yet Nahmanides Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. insists that in the midst of our mourning we mark

Commentary 13 a miracle. “From the moment we left” into exile, he enon he could never have imagined, but that Twain’s writes, the abundance of the land has failed to show work predicted in its own way. Today, millions of itself. Throughout the generations, “all seek to settle American Christians ardently love the land of Israel it,” yet the land resists cultivation. It mourns just as its and its Jewish inhabitants. Over 80 percent of evan- people mourn. He too notes what Twain had sensed gelicals in America, according to a Pew poll, affirm that as a paradox: that the earth grows more barren as one God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people. Only approaches Jerusalem. “The general principle,” he 40 percent of American Jews agree. Twain may have wrote to his son, is that “the holier the land is, the more mocked his companions, but their love of the land of desolate it remains.” After all, the Holy Land yearns for Israel was genuine, and it reflects a strain of American the Jews; the holier a speck of soil may be, the more it biblical culture that remains manifest today. refuses to provide its fruits until the Jews return. This love is, in its own way, as miraculous as the This year, on the ninth of Av, I studied Innocents blossoming of Israel itself. Just this August, as Jews Abroad and Nahmanides’s mourned on the ninth of writings with my congrega- Av, the Christian Broad- tion and then boarded a Twain and Nahmanides are an casting Network sent out plane for Israel. I type these unlikely pair, yet their common an email explaining that very words while in a hotel “Tish’a B’av commemorates that’s a short walk away reflections on their own travels the destruction of both the from the Damascus Gate remind us that history is full of First Temple and Second where Twain first entered surprises—and that its greatest twists Temple in Jerusalem,” as Jerusalem. My approach to well as “other tragedies” the very same city was stud- and turns involve the Jews. such as “the Crusades, po- ded with greenery, and, groms, the Inquisition, the in reversal of Twain’s own experience, the view grew Holocaust, terrorist attacks, and all forms of anti- more magnificent as we approached. Isaiah’s predic- Semitism.” The CBN asked its viewers on “this special tion, read in synagogues every year in the weeks fol- fast” to “pray for God’s chosen people.” lowing the ninth of Av, has come true in our time: “For The email is astounding, and it may in its own way God has consoled Zion, consoled all its ruins; and he be a harbinger of the fulfillment of another prophecy by has made its desert into an Eden, and its wilderness Isaiah: that one day multitudes of non-Jews would come into a garden of God.” to praise the God of Israel in Jerusalem. Nahmanides saw in 1267 what Twain in 1867 had Twain and Nahmanides are an unlikely pair, yet failed to see. Clemens could never have imagined that their common reflections on their own travels remind exactly 100 years after he visited the Temple Mount in us that history is full of surprises—and that somehow 1867, Jewish soldiers would stand there to claim it as its greatest twists and turns involve the Jews. More their capital of a flourishing land. Yet credit for this than 30 years after publishing Innocents Abroad, the wondrous event can in some sense be linked to Moses man who emerged from relative obscurity to publish ben Nahman, whose own arrival in Jerusalem exactly the tale of his tour and become the most famous au- 700 years before the Six-Day War marked the begin- thor in America, penned the essay “Concerning the ning of a seven-century Jewish presence in the sacred Jews.” In it he reflected on Israel’s endurance: “All city. To this day, there is a synagogue in Jerusalem things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, founded by this exiled rabbi—a man who believed that but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?” if Jews would return to Jerusalem, Jerusalem would Innocents Abroad, a book that approaches the one day return to the Jews. religion of the American masses with cynicism, re- Yet Nahmanides, who had been driven into ex- mains, in its own way and on its 150th birthday, one ile by the anti-Semitism suffusing Christian Europe, of the greatest literary testaments to the reality of would himself be amazed by a fascinating phenom- miracles. q

14 September 2019 FEMINISM

NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY

AFFY BRODESSER-AKNER’S Weiner’s mostly in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and first novel,Fleishman Is in Hilderbrand’s at the tail end of the 1960s. They portray Trouble, was released in June, a world in which women were told when (and if) they presumably so that educated could work outside the home, whom they could date, mothers might take it with when they could have sex, and what the consequences them to the beach. What Fleish- would be if they violated the rules. The strictures seem man shares with other summer both quaint and horrifying from the perspective of bestsellers trying to appeal to the same readership— 2019, and so their female characters receive our sym- Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls, Elin Hilderbrand’s pathy without even having to earn it. SummerT of ’69, and Jennifer Weiner’s Mrs. Every- This is not so when it comes to the female char- thing—is a common subject: American society’s treat- acters in Fleishman Is in Trouble, a comic novel whose ment and mistreatment of women. The others are his- searing and very Jewish humor has elicited deserved torical fiction of a kind. Gilbert’s is largely set in 1940, comparisons to Philip Roth. Brodesser-Akner’s people live in the highest echelons of today’s American elite. Naomi Schaefer Riley is a resident fellow at the They suffer none of the restrictions that limited the am- American Enterprise Institute and a senior fellow at the bitions of the protagonists of the other novels. Brodess-

PHOTO BY KEITH HAYES BY PHOTO Independent Women’s Forum. er-Akner’s characters achieve and achieve. And yet

Commentary 15 they are miserable. This is why the Hamptons. But Rachel is Fleishman Is in Trouble is the not satisfied, in part because book people will be reading Toby isn’t successful enough. years from now to understand He makes a few hundred the peculiar difficulties of 21st- thousand dollars a year, but century marriage—and the fiz- could make more by becom- zling of American feminism. ing a hospital administrator Most of Fleishman Is in or working for a biotech or Trouble is told from the point health-care company. Alas for of view of Dr. Toby Fleish- Rachel, he doesn’t want to do man, a neurotic, insecure, anything besides see patients. oversexed, middle-aged hepa- Why is Rachel so con- tologist living on the Upper cerned about her husband’s East Side of New York. His lack of ambition? She says life is thrown into chaos when that their financial status quo his ex-wife, Rachel, no longer prevents them from achieving returns his calls or cares for the things she wants for her their children during the days LIBBY AND children in Manhattan. “We when she has custody. Toby could move,” he says, which assumes that Rachel is being RACHEL HAVE leads her to think: “Where vindictive or is working too else could she do what she hard at the talent agency she IT ALL. AND IT’S did? Sure, they could live founded and runs. Then he like kings on his salary in ru- thinks she might be having NOT ENOUGH. ral Pennsylvania, but he’d be a relationship with another signing her death sentence.” man. All are true, it turns out, Never mind that To- but the real reason Rachel has OR MAYBE IT’S by’s somewhat limited career disappeared is that she has goals have allowed Rachel to had a nervous breakdown. TOO MUCH. pursue the career she wanted Her life as a working without her having to worry mother was simply too much. Indeed, it has always about whether someone besides a nanny will be there been too much. Years earlier, Rachel was putting in to give her children dinner or that a parent will be endless hours at a talent agency only to find (after get- available to pick up the kids if they need to be taken ting pregnant) that she wasn’t going to be promoted. to the doctor. Indeed, Toby’s more flexible job with its Then she founded her own agency and was wildly suc- shorter hours allows Rachel to leave her kids with him cessful—but spent all her time keeping her high-pow- unannounced after the divorce. ered clients happy. At home, her husband wanted her Nor does she want to be a stay-at-home mother. attention too, eagerly trying to share tales from his day As the reader learns from her friend Libby, once a suc- and wanting to walk to the restaurant when they went cessful writer, being a SAHM is a miserable life. And out to dinner instead of taking taxis (which would have this is true even though Libby is married to a man who allowed Rachel more time to answer work email). is both happy to support the family and go to every soc- At the same time, Rachel felt she had to get her cer game and give the kids dinner while his wife stays children into the right schools and extracurricular out all hours trying to find herself. programs. And once they were there, she had to ensure Libby reflects on the complaints she and Rachel they made the right friends, which meant that she had share: to make the right mommy friends first. Which, in turn, meant she had to pretend to have the leisure of the When you succeed, when you did out-earn stay-at-home wife of an uber-wealthy financier while and outpace, when you did exceed all expecta- balancing all her other responsibilities. tions, nothing around you really shifted. You To say that Rachel and Toby occupy a rarified still had to tiptoe around the fragility of a world is an understatement. Before their split, they man, which was okay for the women who got share a roomy apartment on the Upper East Side, send to shop and drink martinis all day—this was their children to private schools, and own a house in their compensation; they had done their own

16 Feminism Is In Trouble : September 2019 negotiations—but was absolutely intolerable is a gender pay gap, this largely disappears when you for anyone who was out there working and control for the careers women choose and the time getting respect and becoming the person that they decide to take off to raise families.* others had to tiptoe around. Birth control is universally available and all but free. And abortion, while restricted more in some Libby and Rachel have it all. And it’s not enough. states than others, is not difficult to procure. In a re- Or maybe it’s too much. Libby continues: “How could cent review of books about the experience of abortion I find my way back to a moment where my life wasn’t decades ago, Caitlin Flanagan (a staunch supporter of a flood of obligations but an endless series of choices, legal abortion) has offered a useful reminder to those each one designed to teach me something about exis- who are worried about the current environment: tence and the world as opposed to marring me for life?” Reviewers have swooned over Fleishman Is in The women described in their pages are Trouble. “Brodesser-Akner demonstrates how women travelers from an antique land, reporting get suckered into acquiescing to misogyny by sucker- about an America that is at once fairly recent ing both narrator and reader—and then showing us and utterly unfamiliar. Bearing a child out of what she’s done,” wrote Lily Myer, a critic for NPR. The wedlock is so accepted today that some of the book concludes with Rachel’s side of the story, a nar- most respected professional-class women I rative move that is designed to reverse reader expecta- know have done so intentionally. Today, no tions. Myer professed herself “floored,” and why? “I young woman can be thrown out of college, had let myself—a woman! A female writer!—get taken or fired from her job, or cast out of “society” in by a man’s story about his poor, put-upon, misun- for becoming pregnant. Nor is adoption the derstood self.” horror that it was a generation ago: No birth Ron Charles, the Washington Post reviewer, tells mother needs to feel that her child is lost in us that “Toby is not the long-suffering saint he imag- the woods; she can decide to pursue an open ines himself to be.” No, it’s Rachel we should support, adoption, she can change her mind about Rachel who is “ripped apart by the old demands of full- relinquishment, days—and in some states, time motherhood and the new requirements of full- months—after giving up the baby. time work and the sheer exhaustion of having to flatter and reassure and soothe all the fragile men in her life.” Even if abortion access in some states were more Really? Really? Is this what feminism has be- restricted, Flanagan notes, between home pregnancy come? Is this fourth-wave feminism? An assault on tests and pharmaceutically induced abortion, it is hard supposed male fragility? to imagine ever going back. The “first wave of feminism” began with the Sen- Thus, the goals of the second wave have also eca Falls Convention in 1848 and was focused mostly been largely achieved. on getting women the right to vote. Pioneering femi- The third wave of feminism began with a fight nists Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and against sexual harassment in the workplace—its be- their comrades also wanted women to be able to own ginnings are often tied to the 1991 Anita Hill hearings. property and to have greater opportunities for educa- Those efforts were stopped in their tracks when liber- tion and employment. Needless to say, such aims have als felt the need to defend Bill Clinton against his own been achieved. And with women graduating college at workplace harassments. The #Metoo corrective has higher rates than men, one might even say that women brought that subject back to the fore with a vengeance. have transcended those antiquated goals. But the third wave also stood for the idea that women The second wave of feminism, launched in the should occupy more positions of power in the work- early 1960s, sought equal pay for equal work and place. And despite the revelations about Harvey Wein- fought for the right for both married and unmarried stein’s bathrobe and Matt Lauer’s door-locking button, women to have access to birth control and abortion. women in the vast majority of American workplaces Though feminists today still point to what they believe are given more opportunities and treated infinitely better than they were a few decades ago. * That professional and economic inequalities are relatively trivial is exemplified by Brodesser-Akner’s Libby. She had a great So feminism’s fourth wave now comes at a time job as a magazine writer, but years after she left the workforce— when the two centuries of effort to ensure equal treat- her decision, not her husband’s—she is still steaming over the ment under the law and equal rights under the law fact that her bosses questioned the expenses she incurred during her reporting while they never seemed to question those of a star for women have been fulfilled. Women in America in male reporter. 2019 have the right to vote, own property, get an equal

Commentary 17 education (with equal access to sports teams), the way—choices about how much money they need to same jobs as men, and at the same rate of pay (when earn and what that will mean about how much time controlling for time on the job). Male violence against they spend with their children, where they can afford women is no longer tolerated, whether by strangers, to live, what kind of childcare they can afford. In a boyfriends, husbands, or fathers. Men have undergone home with multiple careers and multiple children, profound psychic changes to help reorganize society to there is so much to be done that it’s hard not to keep accommodate the needs of women. a running tally of how much you did compared with Fourth-wave feminism has occupied itself with what your partner has done. making men’s and women’s experiences—both the Feminists today lament all the “hidden” work personal and the professional—the same. Today’s that women have to do to make a family run. Even feminists are worried about the “unconscious bias” if they have full-time jobs, American wives are still that affects women starting from a very young age. more likely to be the ones responsible for making Even if they acknowledge that part of the pay gap dentist appointments and getting end-of-year gifts for comes from women entering lower-paid professions, teachers and making playdates and finding the right they believe that girls were somehow indoctrinated by schools and making friends with the mommies. (Un- the patriarchy into choosing those professions. And mentioned, of course, is that men tend to have their fourth-wavers are preoccupied with the question of own hidden responsibilities related to other kinds of why women tend to do more childcare than men. household management.) They are concerned about “mansplaining,” or the In an update of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s way that men regularly talk down to or interrupt women Own, former Washington Post staffer Brigid Schulte in meetings or other public settings. They demand pro- complains that women never get time to themselves tection from “microaggressions,” the insensitive state- the way men do. “Women’s time has been interrupted ments made by college professors or other men in posi- and fragmented throughout history, the rhythms of tions of power, and the way they experience certain kinds their days circumscribed by the Sisyphean tasks of of sexual pressure (even if it is not explicit) from men housework, childcare and kin work,” Schulte writes. with whom they are or are not romantically involved. “If what it takes to create are long stretches of uninter- Many of the fourth-wave battles are taking place rupted, concentrated time, time you can choose to do online with women calling out men for treating them with as you will, time that you can control, that’s some- condescendingly. There are plenty of squabbles among thing women have never had the luxury to expect.” these fourth-wave feminists over questions of inter- There is something peculiar in this portrait, since sectionality (are the experiences of black women being Schulte assumes that busy men are blissfully finding properly represented in the movement?) and econom- hours of uninterrupted time in this age of distraction ics (should we be pushing for better pay or should we and the inescapable demands of work coming through just throw capitalism overboard?). every phone. Though the chatter of radical feminists seems to Schulte wonders: “What if we really did do the be growing—because the Internet makes all things radi- work to create a world where the sisters of Shake- cal seem larger than they are—this wave does not seem speare and Mozart, or any woman, really, could thrive? to have the same hold on the imaginations of ordinary What would happen if we decided women deserved women that previous waves did. The day-to-day lives the time [to themselves]?” Well, for one thing, many of women and men do seem more equal than ever. Get women would simply decide that they preferred to married, stay single, live with a partner or partners. spend it with their families, friends, and communities. Have kids young or wait till you’re 45 or don’t have It is possible that they don’t want to spend long chunks them at all. Work longer hours or stay home. Go back to of uninterrupted hours at their keyboards waiting for school. Take time off. Travel the world. Whatever. genius to strike. These fourth-wave feminists even have men Moreover, though feminists are loath to admit who are willing to support any choice they make. And, it, women tend to care more about whether their frankly, it’s driving women crazy. children are enrolled in the right gymnastics classes and invited to certain playdates. Is it nature or nur- IKE RACHEL of Fleishman Is in Trouble, ture that causes this? Who knows? What is clear is fourth-wave feminists have found them- that some of this hidden work is necessary and some selves with the freedom and the obliga- of it…not so much. In Allison Pearson’s 2009 novel, tion to make choices that women before I Don’t Know How She Does It, the lead character L them did not have to make in the same feels the need to make her store-bought dessert for 18 Feminism Is In Trouble : September 2019 the school bake sale look homemade and beats it up Toby is not as rare as you might think. Among late at night. A man in her position might reasonably middle-class couples, plenty of men are perfectly wonder why it matters. Rachel thinks that her kids willing to support the careers of their wives, if that’s will suffer if they do not attend the right sleepovers. what their wives want. In survey after survey, though, Toby is not as concerned. mothers consistently say that they prefer to work part- The oppressive “hidden work” narrative is every- time when they have school-age children. The fact that where. It starts even before the kids are born, as dem- many highly-educated women decide to drop out of onstrated in a recent article in Fast Company titled “I the workforce while their children are young is not an thought we had an equal partnership—until I planned indication of patriarchal oppression but rather a sign our wedding.” that their husbands’ salaries have allowed them to “For many brides, the wedding process feels like make the choice. yet another way women are saddled with the lion’s Then there are the husbands who are happy to share of unpaid labor,” the article explains. As one support their wife’s professional ambitions. Take the woman tells the reporter: Her husband does laundry Democratic presidential candidates, for instance. For and chores around the house, but when it comes to tak- all the chatter about whether our country will be able ing calls from wedding vendors at the office, well, he to swallow its sexist attitudes and vote for Elizabeth is falling down on the job. Another complains, “There Warren or Kamala Harris, their own husbands are were so many decisions to be made. Just help me make hardly passive cheerleaders, let alone Neanderthals some of them—care a little about the flowers!” resentful of women’s success. If “care a little about the flowers” is the rallying After separating from her first husband, Eliza- cry of fourth-wave feminism, the movement is in more beth Warren was teaching in New Jersey and caring for trouble than Fleishman. The idea that men don’t have her two children. Her second husband, Bruce Mann, to think about the things women think about—but commuted back and forth from his job as a lawyer in should!—is at the heart of feminism’s complaints Connecticut, coming to coach his stepchildren’s soccer today. It is at once a silly and impossible demand. It games and attend parent-teacher conferences. Warren requires that we not only reorient society to accom- told the Boston Globe: “He did it all. Bruce flew back modate all of women’s desires but that we rewire men’s and forth and back and forth.” Kamala Harris, too, brains to share all of women’s concerns. finds herself married to a man with a high-powered career as a partner at a law firm but who also seems HIS IS A GAME men cannot win. Hav- willing to follow her around the country to campaign ing been twisted into pretzels to be events and pose for adorable selfies with Pete Butti- supportive and thoughtful and to limit gieg’s better half. their ambitions to make room for those Or take the most powerful woman in Washing- of their wives, men in the American ton, Nancy Pelosi. Her husband, Paul, father of their elite are now being publicly blamed for the fact that five children, told theLos Angeles Times why he has Ttheir wives cannot turn off their consciences, their tried to maintain a low profile professionally. “I under- sense of obligation to their children, and the nagging stand, of course, that since a woman has had such a sense that maybe making money and having things phenomenal success [people wonder], ‘Who is this guy aren’t the most rewarding things to do with your life. she’s married to for 47 years and has five kids?’ … I un- It’s not that Toby is the perfect man, mind you. derstand the curiosity about that. But it’s her celebrity. Since his divorce, he has been doing his share of It’s her career. It’s her responsibility. I’m enormously “Internet dating,” which basically consists of quick supportive and proud about it but I see absolutely no assignations with desperate middle-aged women. But percentage in trying to share the limelight.” he still manages to do his job (even compassionately), According to Pew, fathers made up 17 percent of take walks with his children, cook them dinner, notice all stay-at-home parents in 2016, up from 10 percent in the drama going on their lives, fire the nanny when 1989—a 70 percent increase over three decades. And he realizes that she has not been properly supervising the time that all fathers devote to childcare has grown the kids, and take off all the time he can from work significantly. “In 2016, fathers reported spending an to handle the fallout. In other words, he’s doing more average of eight hours a week on child care—about than most. And among the other things about Toby of triple the time they provided in 1965,” according to which Rachel seems most jealous—though it is what a Pew Research report. “And fathers put in about 10 initially attracts her to him—is his strong connection hours a week on household chores in 2016, up from to his own family. four hours in 1965. By comparison, mothers spent an

Commentary 19 average of about 14 hours a week on child care and 18 “Why Women Are Still Doing More Emotional Labor hours a week on housework in 2016.” in Relationships Than Men” and “Why Women Are These facts do not earn men any credit because Tired: The Price of Unpaid Emotional Labor” abound. these hours are still not distributed equally. Today’s But how are we to measure emotional labor? Would father gets no respect; he might as well be passing out everything fall apart if women didn’t do it? And how cigars in a hospital waiting room or expecting well- are we sure men aren’t doing it? behaved children to fetch his slippers while his wife Today’s feminists are also professional mind- puts a home-cooked dinner on the table each night. readers, to judge by their recent pronouncements. Men, Even when they go out of their way to recognize Tamblyn writes, “don’t think about the ramifications the difficulties women face in trying to balance the dif- of things they have said or done because they’ve never ferent aspects of their lives and honor the work women had to.” Women, by contrast, “are raised to doubt first do, men are thrown under the bus. A recent column in and decide last.” How Tamblyn knows what goes on in the New York Times mocked “wife guys,” that is, men the minds of most women or most men, she doesn’t say. who write flattering things on social media about their Instead she offers her own experience. Tamblyn wives. The author, Amanda Hess, notes that a wife guy comes up with an idea for a movie and then is plagued “is crafting a whole persona around being that guy. He by doubt. She recounts: “What came next was a fa- married a woman, and now that is his personality.” miliar feeling for most women who step outside their Women used to complain that they were defined comfort zone—a pang of fear. How would I get the by their husbands. But when husbands do the reverse, rights to the book? Who would let me write the movie? they are dubbed “ludicrous” and “embarrassing.” Who would I get to direct me? What if my agents In her new book, Era of Ignition, the actress just shined me on? What if everyone said no to me?” and young feminist icon Amber Tamblyn recounts her Tamblyn suggests, with no irony whatever, that such story of a successful and well-compensated career in thoughts just don’t occur to men. And that women Hollywood before then marrying David, a man who will have achieved true equality only when men and was supportive of all her choices—including her uni- women care about the same things. lateral decision to abort their first child. David (she does not offer up his last name, which is weird, since HILE Fleishman Is in Trouble he is the actor and comedian David Cross) is nothing if is a comic novel, it is in fact not a committed feminist by the definition of an older the perfect representation of generation. “He has long been a champion for women the existential crisis at the in our business, supporting and amplifying the careers heart of fourth-wave femi- and voices of comedians, writers and even actresses nism—which is itself a reaction to the fundamental like myself,” Tamblyn writes. “So when I told him I problemW posed by feminism’s success. The rage felt was ready to adapt and direct my first feature film, he by Rachel and Libby and Amber Tamblyn and Brigid couldn’t have been more encouraging and supportive.” Schulte and the bride who is forced to make floral deci- But the problem remains that David is a man. sions by herself is a rage against a supposed unfairness Men, writes Tamblyn, “are the gatekeepers and women that is not correctable. Feminism has already largely are locked outside, doing everything we can and some- corrected everything it can possibly correct, including times things we don’t want to just to unlock the gate, the behavior of men. So now what? let alone get a set of our own keys.” Fourth-wave feminists are living through a pe- What specifically is Tamblyn talking about? It riod in which feminist dreams have become reality. starts out as some kind of sotto voce discrimination: And they are finding that reality unpleasant. They were “Women are passed over for promotions, jobs, scholar- sold a false bill of goods. It was a fantasy that if they ships, or public office because of deeply ingrained biases did what they were supposed to do—get good grades, against our voices, bodies and perspectives.” She feels become successful in journalism or business, like Libby little need to present any evidence of this, but the fact and Rachel—everything else would fall into place. But that women graduate college at higher rates than men real life doesn’t work that way for anybody. You have an and earn the same salary as men until they drop out of important powerful job that pays a lot of money? You’re the workforce to have children has not crossed her radar. not going to be able to spend a lot of time with your kids. The accusations by women against the other half You have crazy ambition? You’re going to feel like an of the population simply broaden and become harder impostor and be filled with anxiety about performance. to quantify. Women have to do more “emotional labor” And, evidently, if you’re a woman, you’re going to fanta- than men, these advocates complain. Articles like size that men don’t have exactly these same problems,

20 Feminism Is In Trouble : September 2019 even when they do. and resentment. Even when As Fleishman Is in Trou- confronted with a generation ble reveals, both honestly and of husbands who are support- inadvertently, elite women in ive of women’s professional 2019 exhibit a kind of para- choices, husbands who want noia—they are convinced that to be more involved in their even when women seem to children’s lives and who ac- have gotten exactly what they knowledge the “hidden” con- want, men still have it better. tributions their wives make to Maybe we shouldn’t be the success of their families, it surprised. Feminism may have is not enough. delivered greater freedom for By moving the goalpost women, but it has never deliv- beyond changing the behav- ered greater happiness. In fact, iors and attitudes of indi- longitudinal surveys suggest vidual men—fathers, teachers, that women are less satisfied bosses, etc.—to fighting an with their lives today than amorphous structural misog- they were a few decades ago. ELITE WOMEN yny that seems to exist more Having more choices—as we in women’s minds than in all do in an age where Amazon IN 2019 ARE reality, women can continue can bring thousands of brands to play the victim. They cannot of shampoo to our doorstep to- CONVINCED be held truly responsible for morrow and Facebook allows the choices they make or the us to pick among 17 different THAT EVEN WHEN consequences of them for their gender identities—does not own happiness or the well- make our lives richer. being of their families. In fact, all these choices WOMEN SEEM The truth is simple: seem to make things harder Men and women both want for both men and women liv- TO HAVE GOTTEN to achieve loving relation- ing in middle- and upper-class ships with their families, some America today. We perpetu- EXACLY WHAT amount of professional suc- ally wonder whether we have cess, as well as the opportu- chosen the right profession, THEY WANT, MEN nity to make a contribution to married the right person, their communities and enjoy moved to the right house in some leisure every once in a the right neighborhood in the STILL HAVE IT while. Alas, the time and ef- right city, sent our kids to the fort we devote to each will be right schools. Are we spend- BETTER. constrained by the number of ing enough time with our sons hours in a day and the number and daughters, giving them the right kinds of enrich- of days in a year and years in a lifetime. And feminists, ment? Are we saving enough for college or for retire- for all their power to change society, have thus far been ment? Every time we make a choice, we are faced with unable to make time into a social construct. social-media posts and television shows presenting us “How could I find my way back to a moment with all the other roads we could have traveled, each where my life wasn’t a flood of obligations but an end- one a potential cause for regret. less series of choices?” What does Libby of Fleishman And these choices become all the more complex Is in Trouble mean by this? I think she is really asking when we make them in conjunction with a partner. We to turn back the clock, to find a lost youth, to feel the ask ourselves: Is he feeling the same guilt about time kind of freedom that comes from being young and spent away from the kids? Is she suffering the same unattached, to have a whole life in front of you, to feel difficulties concentrating at work? Is he being treated that you have not made any tradeoffs, let alone any differently by the boss for leaving early? Would I be mistakes. This is not a problem that feminism or any happier if the school called him first when my child political or social movement can solve. It is not a prob- was sick? Such thoughts build up a stream of jealousy lem at all. It is the human condition.q

Commentary 21 O Oberlin, My Oberlin I taught there for 18 years, but the details of its conduct as revealed in a recent lawsuit shocked even me By Abraham Socher

WENT BACK TO OBERLIN on a Friday in The jury found that Oberlin College and its dean June for the first time in a year or so. Even of students had maliciously libeled the Gibson family retired professors like me have to return as racists and deliberately damaged their business by books to the library (eventually). Driving suspending and later cancelling its century-long busi- off the Ohio-10 freeway, down East Lorain ness relationship with the bakery—all while unofficial- Street, past the organic George Jones ly encouraging a student boycott. And the jury found Farm—named for a beloved botany profes- that the college had intentionally inflicted emotional sor, not the great country-and-western singer—I saw distress on the Gibsons themselves. the firstI of several yard signs supporting Gibson’s At least neither Dean Raimondo nor anyone in Bakery in its lawsuit against Oberlin College and its the Oberlin administration was found to have harmed dean of students, Meredith Raimondo, who is also vice the Gibson family dog. But someone did slash the president of the college. The previous day, a Lorain tires of their employees’ cars; there were anonymous County jury had awarded Gibson’s an astounding $33 threats; and someone harassed the 90-year-old pa- million in punitive damages in addition to the $11.2 terfamilias, Allyn W. Gibson, in the middle of the million it had already assigned to the family business night, causing him to slip and crack three vertebrae. for compensatory damages. All because on November 9, 2016, his grandson and namesake, Allyn Gibson, who is white, had caught an Abraham Socher is the editor of the Jewish Review underage African-American student named Jonathan of Books. Aladin first trying to buy and then trying to steal wine

22 September 2019 Oberlin’s president rejected the Gibson family’s pleas to renounce the charge that they were racists, even when presented with strong evidence that this was not the case. from the store with two college friends. When Gibson tomer who had just shown him a clearly fake I.D. and tried first to call the police and then to take a picture of now had two bottles of wine under his shirt? Perhaps Aladin with two bottles of wine under his shirt, Aladin if Gibson had said something like “Come let us reason slapped the phone out of his hands and ran out of the together: I can’t sell you wine, but I can share a nice store. Gibson chased him across the street, tried to cold Snapple with you while we discuss my family’s stop him, and was beaten up by Aladin and his friends. exceedingly thin profit margins and how we are both “I’m going to kill you,” Gibson reported Aladin saying. oppressed under neoliberalism,” things would have Aladin and his friends, Endia Lawrence and Cecelia been different. They might even have found out that Whettstone, were arrested. The Gibsons pressed they had something in common, since Jonathan Ala- charges against the students despite the college’s re- din was the student treasurer at Oberlin, which also peated demands that they drop them. has thin margins. In court, Raimondo and other key players in the In the fall of 2017, Roger Copeland, a distin- Oberlin administration were shown to have actively guished professor of the history of theater, wrote in supported two days of student protests against Gib- to the student paper. The college’s stance toward Gib- son’s after the arrests, cursed and derided the Gibson son’s, he said, had been “evocative of the topsy-turvy family and its supporters in emails and texts—“idiots” value system in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was among the milder epithets—and ignored those wherein the Red Queen declares, ‘Sentence first—ver- within the college who urged deliberation, compro- dict afterward.’” Now that an actual legal verdict was mise, and restraint. Oberlin President Marvin Krislov in, he urged the students, faculty, and administration and others rejected the Gibson family’s repeated pleas to accept it: to renounce the charge that they were racists, even when presented with strong statistical and anecdotal The facts of this case are no longer in question. evidence that this was not the case. And yet, a counter-narrative has taken hold, In August 2017, nine months after his arrest, one that refuses to allow mere “facts” to get Jonathan Aladin pled guilty to misdemeanor charges in the way. . . . At what point do you accept the of attempted theft, aggravated trespassing, and un- empirical evidence, even if that means having derage purchase of alcohol. His friends pled guilty to embrace an “inconvenient” truth? . . . The to the first two charges. All three students read state- time has come for the Dean of Students, on be- ments to the court acknowledging that Allyn Gibson half of the College, to apologize to the Gibson had been within his rights to detain them and that family for damaging not only their livelihood his actions had not been racially motivated. On the but something more precious and difficult to sidelines of the court, the director of Oberlin’s Multi- restore—their reputation and good standing cultural Resource Center and interim assistant dean in the community. of students, Antoinette Myers, texted her supervisor, Dean Raimondo. “After a year”—that is, after the Copeland’s letter was headlined “Gibson’s students were eligible to have their criminal records Boycott Denies Due Process.” He wasn’t wrong about expunged—“I hope we rain fire and brimstone on that the boycott. As the student editor of another campus store,” Myers wrote. publication wrote that fall, addressing new students, The fact that the students’ guilty plea was the “the social implications of being seen at Gibson’s result of a plea deal, as most criminal convictions are, are much worse than any freshman faux pas I can and that the students’ allocution was compelled by the imagine.” court (a feature of criminal justice with deep roots in But it was Copeland’s letter that upset admin- common law) encouraged many students and faculty istrators. Upon reading it, Oberlin’s Vice President to believe that somehow this had still been a racist of Communications Ben Jones texted Meredith Rai- incident. How, exactly, was never made clear. What mondo the following: “FUCK ROGER COPELAND!” should Allyn Gibson have done with an underage cus- To which Raimondo responded, “Fuck him. I’d say

Commentary 23 Oberlin students were rarely as disciplined as the intimidating academic thoroughbreds I had briefly taught at Stanford, but they were often more interesting. unleash the students if I wasn’t convinced this needs O HOW, EXACTLY, did a famously liberal liber- to be put behind us.” Which is to say, if prudence hadn’t al-arts college end up looking and acting like the suggested otherwise at that moment, Oberlin’s dean of Sarrogant, small-minded, vindictive corporation students thought it would be a good idea to incite stu- in a second-rate John Grisham novel? dents against a professor for urging a respect for facts, Turning from East Lorain onto College Street law, and the welfare of one’s neighbors. with its spreading old elm and maple trees, I put that Copeland knew something about unleashed question out of my mind and thought instead of the students and summary social justice on campus. quirky, talented, sometimes brilliant students I had Three years earlier, he had had a sharp exchange with taught at Oberlin for 18 years, from 2000 to my retire- a student during the rehearsal of a play and ended up ment in 2018. There was the scholarship kid from Indi- being investigated for “a possible violation of Title IX,” anapolis who ended up clerking on the D.C. Circuit, the the civil-rights law that prohibits discrimination in violinist who became obsessed with how Maimonides education based on sex. He was directed to sign a docu- cited scripture, the girl from rural Minnesota who ment acknowledging the complaint, though he was understood Spinoza better than anybody else, the neo- not allowed to know his accuser or the details of the Hasidic defensive lineman, the kid from Cameroon complaint. In what is perhaps the best-known line of who compared the Talmudic law of lost objects to the a widely read New Yorker article about radical politics oral traditions his mother had memorized . . . at Oberlin, Copeland told author Nathan Heller that Oberlin students were rarely as disciplined he had thought “I’m cast in one of my least favorite as the intimidating academic thoroughbreds I had plays of all time, ‘The Crucible,’ by Arthur Miller!” briefly taught at Stanford, but they were often more Raimondo was in charge of Title IX enforcement at interesting. They had come to Oberlin, literally, out of the time. When Copeland got a lawyer, the complaint curiosity. evaporated. (After reading the crude texts about him, So to reframe the question: How does an institu- the Gibsons, and others from erstwhile colleagues, tion take kids like that, and, by precept and example, one wonders if Copeland now thinks Oberlin might teach them to rush to judgment, ignore evidence, be closer to Mamet than Miller. Call it “Ideological disdain the legal system, and demonize neighbors Perversity in Ohio.”) who are different? On that last point—that of differ- Copeland wasn’t the only professor urging rec- ence, as we say in the academy—Dean Raimondo went onciliation now that the Gibson’s version of events to Brown and Emory, President Krislov had been a had been unambiguously vindicated. Booker Peek, a Rhodes scholar, Jonathan Aladin had come to Oberlin longtime professor of education and Africana studies from Phillips Andover. who heads a program in which Oberlin students tutor Allyn Gibson? He’s a fifth-generation townie. students in the local school, lamented the rift between Oberlin doesn’t run summer sessions, so there the town and the college, and urged an out-of-court weren’t many students in town when I drove in, but settlement, noting that Gibson’s had, “to its credit, there were a lot of middle-aged folks on College Street [done] all that it could to keep the matter from ever with nametags and shopping bags. It looked like an going to trial in the first place.” Appealing to history, alumni event, but it turned out to be the annual con- he reminded his readers that the Gibson family had ference of the Socialist Workers Party—the Trotskyite come to Oberlin in the 19th century because of their group that broke with the Communist Party during the opposition to slavery. Moreover, “a bare-knuckled, 1930s Stalinist show trials. When I walked into Gib- nasty, public fight will leave ugly scars and a putrid son’s, there was an unusually large stack of the local smell with no true winner.” Meanwhile, Kirk Ormand, newspaper, the Chronicle Telegram, with the headline a professor of classics, urged the administration to “Gibson’s Total Award: $44M.” Along with Gibson’s address the problem of student shoplifting more seri- chocolates and locally famous whole-wheat donuts, ously. “I’m so sick of Kirk,” Dean Raimondo wrote to the Socialist Workers were buying up souvenir cop- her colleagues. ies of the newspaper and congratulating the cashier

24 O Oberlin, My Oberlin : September 2019 Whether the extraordinary verdict against Oberlin will force a cultural reckoning of some kind remains an open question. Oberlin’s reputation has certainly suffered. on the victory. They seemed not to have gotten Ober- grocery that has depended on the college in direct and lin’s progressive memo about Gibson’s—or rather to indirect ways for its business for over a century. have rejected it. “This was always bullshit,” a demure Whether the extraordinary verdict against Ober- woman with an SWP nametag said. “I’ve been coming lin will force a cultural reckoning of some kind to Gibson’s for years, they’re good people.” remains an open question. Oberlin’s reputation has I’ve also been coming to Gibson’s for years. When certainly suffered, as Professor Peek predicted, and the I interviewed for a job here two decades ago, one of my college has signaled that it will appeal. Immediately af- faculty hosts, who, like many professors, was himself ter the verdict, current college president Carmen Twil- an Oberlin graduate, took me by the store, rhapsodized lie Ambar wrote to faculty and alumni, stating: “This about those whole-wheat donuts, and bought me one is, in fact, just one step along the way of what may turn of the Gibson’s postcards they still have up by the cash out to be a lengthy and complex legal process. I want to register. It’s an undated picture of the storefront in the assure you that none of this will sway us from our core twilight after a light snow and looks as if it could have values.” Even if the college were to win its appeal on, been taken anytime since the 1930s (in fact, the store say, narrow technical grounds, it wouldn’t show that was founded in 1885 and has been at its current loca- the assault on Gibson’s was somehow about anyone’s tion since 1905). Allyn W. Gibson, who must have been “core values,” even Oberlin’s. about 70 at the time, rung up the sale. Walking around the store now, I was struck by how sparsely the shelves ERE is what happened. were stocked, and wondered if it was a result of the Although Jonathan Aladin, his friends, student boycott. I bought three postcards, a Snapple, Hand Allyn Gibson are all formally on the re- and a copy of the paper. cord as agreeing on the events in Gibson’s on the after- The Chronicle Telegram has followed the Gib- noon of November 9, third-party accounts begin with son’s case from the outset, with detailed reporting the Oberlin police arriving a few minutes after the ini- from reporters Scott Mahoney, Dave O’Brien, and Jodi tial contretemps. When Officer Victor Ortiz got there, Weinberger. Cornell Law School professor William he later testified, “We saw two young ladies standing Jacobson has also discussed it from the beginning on over [Gibson] and throwing haymakers…The two his Legal Insurrection blog, along with local freelance women would stand over him and kick him, and then reporter Daniel McGraw, who covered every day of the crouch down and throw punches. As we got closer, we trial in great detail for Legal Insurrection. While fol- could see [Gibson] on his back, with the male [Aladin] lowing the case as a former Oberlin professor was de- on top of him and punching him.” pressing, reading all of these excellent, unpretentious The next day, between 200 and 300 Oberlin journalists as they chronicled the conduct of local po- students mounted a protest against Gibson’s. They lice officers, attorneys, and judges calmly ascertaining chanted “wake up, stay woke” as they held up hand- facts and administering justice was a bit restorative. lettered signs, some of which had familiar slogans (“No The Gibson’s v. Oberlin College story is about Justice, No Peace,” “Black Lives Matter”) and others of campus politics. As such, it is frequently ridiculous. which specifically called out Allyn Gibson and his fam- But insofar as it shows in stark, petty detail the ideo- ily as racists who should be boycotted. logically driven failures of deliberation and judgment, A confident representative of the black student the craven political calculations, and the cynical organization, ABUSUA, led chants and danced a little abuses of power in an institution ostensibly devoted to as she read a statement to kick things off: higher learning, it is instructive. Robert Caro famously wrote that “if you really want to show power in its We are here today because yesterday three larger aspects, you need to show the effects on the pow- students from the Africana community were erless, for good or ill.” Oberlin College has more than assaulted and arrested as a result of a history $1 billion in assets, about 3,000 students, and several of racial profiling and racial discrimination by hundred faculty and staff. Gibson’s is a small family Gibson’s Bakery. There is a need for justice to

Commentary 25 No history of racial profiling and discrimination by Gibson’s was demonstrated in the court, or for that matter, outside it. Oberlin’s legal defense implicitly acknowledged this.

be served to hold Gibson’s accountable for its tend to degrade or disgrace plaintiffs, or hold plain- injustices and patterns of unlawful behavior. tiffs up to public hatred, contempt, or scorn [and] ... injure plaintiffs in their trade or profession.” Using She made no mention of shoplifting. Neither did Oberlin equipment to make copies of the flyers was a the protest flyers, which had an old-school agitprop ruinous decision—since no history of racial profiling aesthetic and read, in part, “This is a Racist establish- and discrimination by Gibson’s, long or short, was ment with a LONG ACCOUNT [sic] of RACIAL PRO- demonstrated in the court or, for that matter, outside FILING and DISCRIMINATION. Today we urge you to it. Indeed, Oberlin’s legal defense implicitly acknowl- shop elsewhere in light of a particularly heinous event edged this by arguing not that such claims were true involving the owners of this establishment and local but that it had had no part in making them. It was law enforcement. PLEASE STAND WITH US.” Above just the students. these words was a starburst with “DON’T BUY” at And what of the “particularly heinous event” its center. It also had the following description of the perpetrated by Gibson and the police as described in event at Gibson’s: the flyer? Well, Allyn Gibson’s actions in chasing down a shoplifter may have been overzealous or foolhardy A member of our community was assaulted (given the beating he took), but they were certainly not by the owner of this establishment yesterday. heinous. Moreover, police bodycam footage depicted A nineteen y/o young man was apprehended officers calmly going about their business, acting firm- and choked by Allyn Gibson…. The young ly but avoiding confrontation and collecting evidence, man, who was accompanied by 2 friends was trying to understand what happened. The footage choked until the 2 forced Allyn to let go. After shows Aladin asking the officer why he is being ar- The young man was free, Allyn chased him. . rested and not Gibson, and the officer responds, “Well, . tackled him and restrained him again until when we got here, you all were on top of him whaling Oberlin police arrived. The 3 were racially pro- on him.” Every statement—every statement—on the filed on the scene. They were arrested without protest flyer was false and defamatory. being questioned, asked their names, or read The protest did not take place on campus, but their rights. Dean Raimondo was on hand. Indeed, emails show her calling a staff meeting to prepare for it early that The flyers were apparently run off for free on an morning. Raimondo and the college maintain that Oberlin College copier in the nearby Conservatory of she was merely there to “support” the students in the Music. Students were told that if they ran out of flyers, value-neutral sense of that word. However, accounts they could go back and copy more. The administrative of her actions at the rally by several witnesses do not assistant at the Conservatory who helped them was paint the picture of a neutral bureaucrat-observer. also fairly certain that an assistant dean who worked Although she at first denied doing so, Dean Raimondo for Meredith Raimondo had himself run some off gave a copy of the defamatory flyer to at least one during the protest, though he denied it on the witness person at the protest—who, unfortunately for her and stand. the college, turned out to be Jason Hawk, editor of the One of the principal requirements for proving Oberlin News-Tribune. She also tried to prevent him libel is to show that the defendant has in some sense from taking pictures. (“Very challenging interaction published the defamatory claims—for instance, by with guy who says he’s a photographer for the Tri- printing hundreds of copies and handing them out bune,” she texted Director of Communications Scott at a rally. In his jury instructions, trial judge John R. Wargo.) Hawk testified that he saw her addressing the Miraldi explained that, if the flyer’s statements were crowd with a bullhorn to tell them there was free pizza determined to have been false, that would suggest and soda for them provided by the college in the Music the flyers were “libelous per se, meaning that they Conservatory building across the street. According to are of such a nature that it is presumed that they a FAQ sheet Oberlin sent to professors and staff after

26 O Oberlin, My Oberlin : September 2019 Although the mood of the students ranged from boisterous to a kind of glum self-righteousness, there seemed to be very little sense that the Gibsons themselves might be suffering. the verdict, Raimondo handled the bullhorn for no Among the “nuances” Dunbar and his fellow more than two minutes, but Rick McDaniel, a former protesters appeared not to get was the relevance of Oberlin College director of security, thought she was the facts of the case and the financial and emotional on the bullhorn for more than 20 minutes. McDaniel stress being inflicted upon an innocent family. A also testified to being harassed by a college employee liberal-arts education is often said to teach students when he tried to take pictures. how to put themselves in the shoes of their fellow Trey James, an African-American employee of citizens. Suppose that Dunbar and his friends had Gibson’s who was working during the protests, testi- thought about what it was like for the Gibsons and fied that he saw Raimondo “standing directly in front their employees to see hundreds of angry students of the store with a megaphone,” as Legal Insurrection marching out of their castle- and cathedral-like reported. “It appeared she was the voice of authority. campus buildings and over the massive manicured She was telling the kids what to do, where to go. Where lawn of Tappan Square to try to destroy their busi- to get water, use the restrooms, where to make copies.” ness because they had the temerity to try to stop a As for those flyers, James testified that “she had a stack shoplifter. (Neither the New York Times, nor Roll- of them and while she was talking on the bullhorn, ing Stone, nor any of the other media outlets that she handed out half of them to a student who then quoted Dunbar noted that he worked alongside went and passed them out.” James, a thoughtful, witty Jonathan Aladin in the Office of the Student Trea- man with whom I’ve chitchatted over the years, has surer and was a paid blogger for Oberlin’s Office of also forcefully and repeatedly asserted that the Gib- Communications.) sons are not racists, as have other African-American When it got a little chilly in the evening of the friends and neighbors. During the protests, a shaken first day of the protests, a student-organizer bought Lorna Gibson, Allyn Gibson’s mother, was comforted the remaining protesters gloves. Raimondo approved by Vicky Gaines, an African-American nurse who grew a reimbursement for the gloves the next day. up in Oberlin and works for the college. Later she told On the first day of the protest, less than 24 hours the jury, “I’ve known them for about 40 years, our after the incident, the Oberlin Student Senate passed kids played together, we go to their sporting event, a resolution that began by saying that as a result of eat at each other’s homes, no, never even heard of the “conversations with students involved, statements thought of them as being racist.” from witnesses, and a thorough reading of the police Although the mood of the students ranged from report, we find it important to share a few key facts.” boisterous to a kind of glum self-righteousness, there It went on: seemed to be very little sense that the Gibsons them- selves might be suffering. Student Kameron Dunbar, A Black student was chased and assaulted who was perhaps the most widely quoted of the pro- at Gibson’s after being accused of stealing. testers, instead emphasized, in an interview with the Several other students, attempting to prevent Blade, how hard the protest was on him. the assaulted student from sustaining further injury, were arrested and held by the Oberlin “Nobody wants to protest. Students don’t get Police Department. In the midst of all this joy from waking up in the morning and ask- Gibson’s employees were never detained, and ing, ‘What are we gonna protest next?’” he were given preferential treatment by police said. “[These] were some of the most emotion- officers. ally exhausting days of my life. ... I think it’s easy to essentialize this moment into another Gibson’s has a history of racial profiling and ‘college kids gone crazy’. ... For the Oberlin discriminatory treatment of students and community, this is so serious, and I just wish residents alike. Charged as representatives of the broader community was afforded the op- the Associated Students of Oberlin College, we portunity to gain the nuance that I have.” have passed the following resolution:

Commentary 27 It turns out that town-gown conflicts have been about stealing, drinking, and brawling with townies, in particular local shopkeepers, since the Middle Ages.

…WHEREAS, Gibson’s Food Market and Bak- controversial incidents of discrimination by Oberlin ery has made their utter lack of respect for businesses, including segregated barbershops in 1944 the community members of color strikingly and the NAACP’s protest against racial discrimination visible, therefore be it at two lunch parlors after World War II. Gibson’s had been an institution in Oberlin for more than 50 years RESOLVED that the Students of Oberlin Col- at that point—and its name is conspicuous by its ab- lege immediately cease all support, financial sence from Baumann’s history. and otherwise, of Gibson’s Food Market and Raimondo might also have checked out Charles Bakery; and be it further Homer Haskins’s The Rise of the Universities, in which it turns out that town-gown conflicts have been about RESOLVED that the students of Oberlin Col- stealing, drinking, and brawling with townies, in lege call on President Marvin Krislov, Dean particular local shopkeepers, since the Middle Ages. of Students Meredith Raimondo, all other If students of every distinguished university since the administrators and the general faculty to con- founding of the University of Paris had been caught demn by written promulgation the treatment stealing from locals and responded with fists, maybe, of students of color by Gibson’s. just maybe, Raimondo and the student senators might have speculated, this could have been the case here As with the protest flyer, virtually every state- as well. But this was not to be a “teachable moment” ment here would prove to be misleading, demon- or, at any rate, that’s not the sort of teaching that was strably false, or aimed at directly harming Gibson’s. going on. Indeed, although the student senators made a show The defamatory Student Senate resolution was of fact-finding, they plainly rejected the police report posted in the Student Union building for more than because it did not tell the story they wanted to hear, a year. That is to say that it, too, was, in the legally and the only witnesses they spoke to were the students relevant sense of the word, published. This was also hanging out across the street from Gibson’s in Tappan the case for the Department of Africana Studies mes- Square, not those who were in the store with Allyn sage on its public Facebook wall, which read: “Very Gibson and Jonathan Aladin. Very proud of our students! Gibson’s has been bad Raimondo was the official adviser to the Student for decades, their dislike of Black people is palpable. Senate. In that role, she might have advised the sena- Their food is rotten and they profile Black students. tors that it is impossible to discern facts that quickly or NO MORE!” with that much certitude—as the study of, say, history, The following day, with the picketing of Gibson’s philosophy, politics, literature, and law make plain. still ongoing, faculty and students received an email She might also have noted that, after all, incidents from President Krislov: of student shoplifting at Gibson’s were well-known all over town, so it would hardly be implausible that Regarding the incident at Gibson’s, we are Aladin and his friends had tried to steal some wine deeply troubled because we have heard from and were now denying it. Indeed, as dean of students, students that there is more to the stor… We will Raimondo must have known that two (white) students commit every resource to determining the full had been arrested for shoplifting at Gibson’s earlier and true narrative, including exploring whether that week. this is a pattern and not an isolated incident.… Or she could have walked the senators from the Accordingly, we have taken the following steps: Wilder Student Union over to the library next door 1) Dean Meredith Raimondo and her team have and checked out Roland Baumann’s documentary worked to support students and families af- history of black life and education at Oberlin from fected by these events, and will continue to do 1833 to 2007. Despite Oberlin’s genuinely admirable so. 2) Tita Reed, Special Assistant for Govern- history of race relations, Baumann discusses several ment and Community Relations, has reached

28 O Oberlin, My Oberlin : September 2019 Internal emails showed several members of the Oberlin administration discussing the financial hit Gibson’s was taking and speculating on the leverage it gave the college.

out to Mr. Gibson to engage in dialogue that will employees the bakery found itself forced to lay off. ensure that our broader community can work David Gibson brought statistics from the Ober- and learn together in an environment of mutual lin Police Department to the college showing that of respect free of discrimination. the 40 people arrested for shoplifting at Gibson’s over the previous five years, 33 were students of the college, The letter did not use the word “shoplifting,” 32 were white, six were African American and two which Krislov worried in an email to his staff might were Asian, which almost perfectly matched the racial “trigger” student anger. makeup of the city. Despite its stated determination to Meanwhile, Gibson’s supporters were getting explore “whether this is a pattern and not an isolated a little angry themselves. By the evening of the first incident,” Krislov’s administration was unmoved. At protest, people from Oberlin and all over Lorain trial, the college’s lawyers tried and failed to have the County, many of whom had grown up going to Gib- statistics quashed as evidence. son’s, were coming to support the store and walking Emails, texts, and other evidence that came out out with baked goods, ice-cream cones, and groceries. in the trial don’t paint a picture of a billion-dollar insti- Bob Frantz, a conservative talk-show host in nearby tution full of intellectually accomplished people com- Cleveland, came and urged his listeners to support mitting “every resource to determining the full and Gibson’s, and a counter-protest “cash mob” of support- true narrative.” Ben Jones, the head of Oberlin PR who ive customers was planned for the coming Saturday. drafted that letter for Krislov, called the police report Apparently concerned that the protests were backfir- “bullshit” based on vague rumor and speculation. Fer- ing, a worried Raimondo emailed the Oberlin Student dinand Protzman, Krislov’s chief of staff, was forced Senate: “At this point, demonstrations are driving u[p] to answer that although neither he nor his colleagues Gibson’s business.” The Saturday demonstrations were believed the Gibsons to be racists, they also never con- duly cancelled, a fact that suggests that Raimondo sidered publicly declaring that the Gibsons were not. knew not only how to “unleash the students,” but how As for Raimondo and Tita Reed, who were to re-leash them. named as the point persons in finding that “full and Shortly thereafter, Oberlin’s food services can- true narrative,” David Gibson testified that Raimondo celled its weekly bakery order from Gibson’s, under warned him that she had sent people door-to-door to orders from Dean Raimondo. When owner David ask if the Gibsons were racists. Raimondo denied that Gibson (Allyn Gibson’s father and the elder Allyn W. in court—but in any event, no such witnesses were Gibson’s son) met with representatives of the college, produced by Oberlin (truth is, of course, always an ab- he was told that the order would not be resumed as solute defense against libel). While she was ostensibly long as Gibson continued to press charges against the working on finding the “full and true narrative,” Reed students. The following semester the orders were re- was forwarded an email from an Oberlin employee sumed, though the crippling informal student boycott and resident of the town who wrote: “I have talked to continued; when Gibson’s later filed suit, the orders 15 townie friends who are poc (persons of color) and were cancelled again. Emails revealed at the trial they are disgusted and embarrassed by the protest. In showed several members of the Oberlin administra- their view, the kid was breaking the law, period (even tion discussing the financial hit Gibson’s was taking if he wasn’t shoplifting, he was underage). To them and speculating on the leverage it gave the college in this is not a race issue at all and they do not believe the dispute. A professor of music theory who had been the Gibsons are racist. They believe the students have at Raimondo’s planning meeting for the student pro- picked the wrong target. … I find this misdirected rage test wrote of the Gibsons that “they own so much prime very disturbing, and it’s only going to widen the gap property in oberlin [sic] that boycotting doesnt [sic] (between) town and gown.” hurt them that much. The smear on their brand does, The college president’s special assistant for com- and that’s been taken care of.” In fact, both the boycott munity relations responded: “Doesn’t change a damn and the smear hurt not only the Gibson family but the thing for me.”

Commentary 29 How, after public debacles costing millions of dollars, could Oberlin yet again condescend to its students, betray its finest traditions, and make itself a national laughingstock?

BERLIN IS PECULIAR in that which is er in the fall of 2015, the black student union, ABUSUA, good,” said John J. Shipherd, one of its presented the college with an extraordinary 14-page ‘O19th-century Christian utopian founders, list of demands. These included the complete overhaul riffing on Paul’s epistle to Titus, which, in turn, al- of the curriculum along prescribed ideological lines, ludes to God’s choice of the people of Israel as his stipends for black student leaders, the immediate or “peculiar treasure,” because of the willingness to guaranteed promotion/tenuring of 19 favored profes- obey His law. And Oberlin was peculiarly good, ac- sors and administrators, the summary dismissal of no cepting and graduating students regardless of race fewer than seven other professors and administrators, or sex from the very beginning, including some of the designated “safe spaces” for black students, a bridge most academically accomplished women and black program for recently released prisoners—the compat- Americans of the 19th century. It was also an impor- ibility of these last two demands was not addressed— tant stop on the Underground Railroad when Charles and much, much more. Krislov summarily rejected Grandison Finney, a charismatic leader of the Second the demands to significant national acclaim, but there Great Awakening of evangelical Christianity, was was grumbling on campus among radical students president of the college. and a few faculty members. It wasn’t that they actually More than a century after that, long after the expected the college to implement millennial Maoism, biblical resonance of Shipherd’s statement was forgot- but they might have sensed that this act had depleted ten, there was a campus joke that Oberlin was, instead, the presidential courage bank. “good in that which is peculiar.” But the Gibson’s epi- That spring, an article by David Gerstman at The sode wasn’t even peculiar, it was drearily predictable. Tower.org revealed that a young African-American as- In 2013, the administration fell for a racist hoax. A sistant professor of rhetoric and composition named sudden spate of Nazi graffiti and racist flyers caused Joy Karega was pushing wild anti-Semitic conspiracy such hysteria on campus that a student reported see- theories on Facebook, for instance that Israel and su- ing a hooded Klansman. Oberlin cancelled classes for per rich “Rothschild-led banksters” were really behind a day and held a teach-in against racism in Finney 9/11, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and ISIS. As it hap- Hall. I remember a first-year girl crying as she spoke, pens, Karega was one of the professors singled out for innocently asking, “Is this what it’s like here?” Well, yes guaranteed insta-tenure in the student demands. Pres- and no. The local police later suggested that the Klans- ident Krislov first issued a terse defense of free speech man was just a student with a blanket draped over her while noting only that these posts “do not represent shoulders—or maybe nothing at all. Meanwhile, by the the views of Oberlin College.” When, as chair of Jewish time the college administrators had called off classes, Studies, I pointed out to him that no one thought that they already knew that the perpetrators were a couple Oberlin held these views but that a representative of of student trolls with murky, but seemingly liberal, pol- the college ought to be able to say precisely what kind itics, and they’d quietly removed them from campus. of views they were, he demanded that I clear anything When President Krislov appeared on CNN to extoll I wrote with his PR man, Ben Jones. I ignored him and the educational value of the day off, students could be began planning my retirement, though I didn’t realize heard behind him chanting “bullshit, bullshit!” Little it at the time. Krislov had already announced his re- did they know. tirement at the end of the year, and his administration Two years later, students protested “cultural ap- continued to flounder wildly in its response to Karega propriation” in the dining hall: The banh mi sandwich until a frustrated board of trustees took the matter out was made with soggy ciabatta not a crispy baguette, of their hands and announced her dismissal. General Tso’s chicken was steamed not fried, and so on. How, after such public debacles costing millions This too made the national media, where it was widely of dollars in lost students, donors, and prestige, could noted that banh mi is already a French-Vietnamese Oberlin yet again condescend to its students, betray its mashup, that General Tso’s chicken is an American in- finest traditions, and make itself a national laughing- vention, and that, well, dorm food is . . . dorm food. Lat- stock? Or as another Oberlin professor put it to me in a

30 O Oberlin, My Oberlin : September 2019 There is a modified Pareto principle working at schools like Oberlin in which the radicalized 5 or 10 percent of the population establishes the tone of the entire institution. pithy email after the Gibson’s v. Oberlin verdict, “how their store, abutting the Music Conservatory, that the idiotic can the college be always?” Gibsons claimed was used by the college as spillover If there is one thing that Oberlin’s critics and its parking to the detriment of town businesses, includ- administration have agreed on, it’s the significance ing theirs. The Gibsons’ complaint seemed to imply of the fact that Jonathan Aladin was caught stealing that, like any ruthless monopolist, Oberlin College wine on November 9, 2016—the day after President didn’t like competition and wouldn’t mind forcing its Trump was elected. Those were extraordinary times competitors into the position of having to sell cheap. in traumatized liberal and left circles, and the college Such possible motives suggest that Oberlin Col- encouraged us to help our students work through their lege acted like a John Grisham villain because it was shock. Certainly this was part of what was going on in one. However, I think there are two other reasons that the Gibson’s protest. The small-town petit bourgeois come closer to the heart of the current crisis over the shop owners were made to stand in for all that was mission of the university and the nature of a liberal- wrong and bewildering in America. But does that re- arts education. If Oberlin and Raimondo seem to have ally explain two-and-a-half years of systematic and treated Oberlin’s activist students as a constituency to unremitting hostility? be manipulated, they also catered to them as custom- If campus politics are often ridiculous, they are ers. And the customer, unlike the student, is always always local, and the Gibson’s initial complaint sug- right. When asked why the college could not send out a gested a set of local reasons for the trouble that were notice supportive of the Gibsons, Krislov’s chief of staff, left largely unexplored in the trial and its coverage. Ferdinand Protzman, replied that “both the college and Meredith Raimondo had been appointed vice presi- Gibson’s are dealing with the same customer base,” dent and dean of students in the midst of the Karega and there was no profit in irritating the most vocal controversy with the specific mandate to “address members of that customer base. In short, the college campus climate, including . . . items identified as high participated in the “smearing of the Gibsons” because, priority by ABUSUA.” When the Gibson’s protests be- like easy grades and better banh mi sandwiches, it’s gan, Karega’s fate was still officially undecided. But, as what the customer wanted. But, of course, real educa- Raimondo must have known, and the students did not, tion consists in helping students to see that the most the trustees were going to announce her dismissal in desirable thing is knowledge. just a few days. There was thus something fortuitous in The second and final reason I would suggest be- the distraction provided by this new crisis. Whatever gins with an observation: At the height of the protests, the degree of calculation involved, it proved useful to no more than 10 percent of Oberlin’s students were the administration for activist students to have spent standing in front of Gibson’s, even though there is not what one of them called “some of the most emotion- a lot to do on a weeknight in Oberlin, Ohio. Moreover, ally exhausting days of my life” in picketing Gibson’s although an alarming number of administrators, and little storefront with the solicitous support of college perhaps a handful of professors, were involved in the administrators—rather than picketing the graceful protests and ensuing conflict with Gibson’s, it was an sandstone Mediterranean Romanesque Cox Adminis- even smaller percentage. There is a kind of modified tration Building just a couple of hundred yards away. Pareto principle working at schools like Oberlin in Indeed, as it turned out, the response to Karega’s final which the radicalized 5 or 10 percent of the popula- dismissal the following week was surprisingly muted. tion establishes the tone for the entire institution. Of Oberlin, one might conjecture, is Machiavellian in that course, this is true of all organizations, but it seems to which is politically correct. me that colleges are especially susceptible to this phe- And then there was the real estate. Oberlin is a nomenon precisely because liberal-arts education calls company town. In fact, the college was founded before out for a unifying principle or goal, something that the town. Recall the music professor’s seemingly ir- holds together this four-year experience of 130 credit relevant remark that the Gibsons “own so much prime hours in the history of this and the structure of that. property.” That property includes a parking lot behind Oberlin, like Cardinal Newman, used to have a theo-

Commentary 31 The jury found that the college had not merely protected freedom of speech but had gone out of its way to defame private individuals, which has never been protected speech. logical answer to that question, one that underwrote the wake of the Gibson’s verdict. Before the amount one of the most principled stands on racial equality in of damages had even been determined by the jury, the 19th century. Oberlin’s counsel sent a letter to the faculty express- Over the last century, politics replaced theology. ing disappointment that “the jury did not agree with “Think one person can change the world? So do we,” the clear evidence our team presented,” a statement has been Oberlin’s official motto for quite some time. that made her subsequently expressed gratitude for It’s just advertising (I remember some campus graffiti their service sound condescending and insincere. from the early 2000s—“Oberlin: changing the world She went on to say that “colleges cannot be held li- for $30,000/yr”—now it’s closer to $60,000). But the able for the independent actions of their students… attitude expresses the self-image of many liberal arts [and] are obligated to protect freedom of speech colleges, and many more professors, and since only on their campuses.” But, of course, what the jury radicals “know” how to change the world, it cedes found was that the college had not merely protected them the high ground. The upshot, at least here, has freedom of speech on its campus but had gone out been the furthest thing from idealism possible. Instead of its way (and, incidentally, off campus) to defame of unleashing the potential of students, students were private individuals, which has never been protected unleashed on an innocent family and business. speech. And the First Amendment has certainly never protected the deliberate infliction of financial THOUGHT THAT there might be a chance that I and emotional harm, which is what the jury decided would never come back to Oberlin after I dropped Oberlin had done. I by Gibson’s and returned my books to the college In the aftermath of the jury’s verdict, Krislov’s library, but I couldn’t resist browsing in the stacks (it successor as president, Carmen Ambar, along with really is an excellent library), and I ended up checking college proxies and sympathetic journalists, have out a little book called The University of Utopia, by implied that—guilty pleas, allocutions, and an exhaus- Robert Maynard Hutchins. Writing in 1953, Hutchins tive six-week civil trial notwithstanding—there really (a former Oberlin student and the son and grandson of was, after all, something to the claim that Gibson’s Oberlin professors) imagined the PR men of the future had racially profiled Aladin and others. In interviews, as secular priests who would point out to their clients Ambar has hit on a bit of bad philosophy to obfuscate not what they could get away with saying but what this point. “You can have two different lived experi- they ought to do. Such “public duty men” wouldn’t ences, and both those things can be true,” she told the be necessary for Utopia’s university, because that Wall Street Journal editorial board. One is tempted to school’s trustees would inevitably hold the university say that the facile relativism of this—there is a Gibson and its professors to live up to their ideals. Hutchins truth and an Aladin truth; a townie truth and a college had famously been the president of the University of truth—reveals the sophistry behind Oberlin’s self- Chicago, not a comedian at Second City, and his irony destructive approach, but actually it’s worse than that, was a bit heavy-handed. But he wasn’t wrong. A uni- if not philosophically at least morally. Nothing in the versity ought to remember that it is not merely a self- actions of Oberlin College or those of its dean and vice interested corporation but a community of scholars, president suggests an understanding or empathy with concerned with truth and convinced that its pursuit is the Gibson family’s experience. a genuine public good. When I go back to Oberlin to return Hutchins’s Public-spirited utopianism hasn’t been much book, I think I’ll stop by Gibson’s on the way out of in evidence in Oberlin’s spinning and messaging in town to say goodbye. q

32 O Oberlin, My Oberlin : September 2019 Mueller Agonistes Misunderstanding the special counsel—and Congress By Adam J. White

OR TWO YEARS, America scrutinized Mueller’s appointment. In the House, for example, Muel- Robert Mueller almost as closely as ler’s eventual antagonists among the president’s support- Mueller scrutinized Donald Trump. ers originally applauded his appointment. Republican But where Mueller’s investigation Representative Mark Meadows initially celebrated the produced a clear-eyed view of the choice as “a good move on behalf of the administration to 2016 election, America seems to have do this, and it means that they’re taking things seriously.” settled on a deeply confused view of (At the end of the special counsel investigation, as Muel- Mueller’s office, the Justice Department’s special coun- ler prepared to appear before House committees, Mead- sel. AndF the misapprehensions surrounding Mueller’s ows boasted to Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that “Bob office are not limited to President Trump’s own attacks. Mueller better be prepared . . . he will be cross-examined Rather, the special counsel’s investigation is profoundly for the first time and the American people will start to see misunderstood not just by Mueller’s enemies but also the flaws in his performance.”) by his own supporters, especially his supporters in In the GOP leadership, Senate Majority Leader Congress. And, most worrisome of all, our confusion Mitch McConnell and then–Speaker of the House Paul about the special counsel is but a symptom of still Ryan both issued statements in favor of Mueller’s ap- deeper confusion about Congress itself—a confusion pointment, while also emphasizing that Congress’s about Congress’s role as the “first branch” of our consti- own investigations into the 2016 election would pro- tutional government. ceed. “I welcome his role at the Department of Justice,” Members of Congress were among the special Ryan stated, adding that “the important ongoing counsel’s most ardent defenders, from the moment that investigation in the House will also continue.” McCon- Mueller was appointed to his office in May 2017 by Act- nell similarly announced that Mueller’s appointment ing Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Two years later, it “confirms that the investigation into Russian interven- is almost hard to imagine the bipartisan praise—relief, tion into our election will continue,” but “the Senate even—among congressmen and senators applauding Select Committee on Intelligence will also continue its investigation into this matter.” Adam J. White is a resident scholar at the American Yet the ability of Congress and the special coun- Enterprise Institute. sel to operate on parallel tracks was fraught with

Commentary 33 complications and cross-purposes. For example: If the look perhaps the most consequential word on that House or Senate were to grant immunity to witnesses letter: “our.” In those post-election letters, and increas- in exchange for their testimony before congressional ingly over the course of Mueller’s investigation, House committees, that immunity would undermine the spe- Democrats came to equate the special counsel’s work cial counsel’s own ability to compel the witness’s co- with their own. Or, more precisely, House Democrats operation. Similarly, any deals that the special counsel came to see the special counsel’s investigation as a nec- would strike with witnesses or targets might include essary prerequisite to their own investigations of the immunity that could undermine Congress’ ability to 2016 election and the Trump administration. compel people to testify in committee hearings. Rec- This view of the special counsel’s work was ognizing this, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s made flesh in April 2019, after Mueller completed chairman and ranking member, Senators Richard his investigation with a report to Attorney General Burr and Mark Warner, issued a bipartisan statement William Barr. The attorney general released it with upon Mueller’s appointment, vowing that the commit- limited redactions on April 18, whereupon congres- tee would “continue its own investigation” but, “to the sional Democrats immediately called on him to give extent any deconfliction is required, we will engage Congress the special counsel’s full unredacted report with Director Mueller and our expectation is that he and even the underlying records and evidence Mueller will engage with the Committee as well.” had gathered. In an April 19 letter to Barr, House and As Mueller’s investigation proceeded, congres- Senate Democratic leaders asserted that the Justice sional Democrats spoke out often in defense against Department “has a duty to submit the full report and what they perceived as threats to Mueller’s own underlying evidence to Congress so that it can fulfill investigation. In December 2017, 171 congressional its constitutional responsibilities” as “a coequal and Democrats sent a letter to the Justice Department, coordinate branch of government.” They reiterated criticizing President Trump’s and various Republican these demands in a panoply of statements in the weeks legislators’ attacks on Mueller and demanding that the leading to Special Counsel Mueller’s appearance be- special counsel “be allowed to continue his investiga- fore congressional committees on July 24. tion—unfettered by political influence or threats to his And in subpoenas, too. When the House Intelli- authority—to its natural and appropriate conclusion.” gence Committee subpoenaed the unredacted Mueller The sense of urgency among Democrats in- report and underlying materials on May 8, its chair- creased significantly a year later, when they recap- man, Adam Schiff, asserted that the committee’s inves- tured control of the House and immediately became, tigation depended on full access to Mueller’s files: “We in the apt words of the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, therefore need these materials in order to do our job.” “Bob Mueller’s wingman.” The day after the mid- Similarly, in support of the House Judiciary Commit- term elections, Democratic leaders immediately sent tee’s own subpoena for Mueller’s unredacted report and stern letters to the acting attorney general, the White underlying materials, the House Judiciary Committee House counsel, the CIA director, the FBI director, the asserted that it simply could not proceed with its own IRS commissioner, and others, demanding that they investigations without “the unredacted Mueller report “preserv[e] all materials related to any investigations and the underlying materials without further delay.” by the Special Counsel’s office” or by other parts of the These arguments were bolstered by advocates outside of Congress—especially Neal Katyal, who had served as House Democrats came to see the special the Obama Justice Department’s counsel’s investigation as a necessary deputy solicitor general. In a March 22 Washington Post op-ed, prerequisite to their own investigations urging Barr to release as much of the Mueller report as possible, of the Trump administration. Katyal warned that “there is no way impeachment can work ef- Justice Department. “Committees of the United States ficiently if Congress is not given all of the facts the spe- Congress are conducting investigations parallel to cial counsel has uncovered” (emphasis added). Katyal’s those of the Special Counsel’s office,” they added, “and advocacy attracted particular attention, because—as preservation of records is critical to ensure that we are Katyal himself often points out—he was one of the Jus- able to do our work without interference or delay.” tice Department lawyers who created the Office of the Amid those stern warnings, it was easy to over- Special Counsel in a 1999 rulemaking proceeding.

34 Mueller Agonistes : September 2019 HE SPECIAL COUNSEL’S Office exists not It is true that the DOJ regulations do not express- because Congress created it, but because the ly forbid the attorney general from releasing a special T Justice Department did. Indeed, the DOJ cre- counsel’s full report and underlying materials to Con- ated it to fill the space that had been occupied by the gress. The regulations say nothing about releasing the old independent counsel’s Office once Congress had special counsel’s report, but they do provide that the allowed the Independent Counsel statute to expire in attorney general “may” choose to “public[ly] release” the immediate aftermath of Ken Starr’s investigation the summary reports that he himself made to congres- into President Clinton. On July 9, 1999, the Justice sional leadership, regarding the special counsel’s own Department published a notice in the Federal Register, work—summary reports that, as the Clinton Justice setting forth the framework for the new Special Coun- Department emphasized in its 1999 explanation of sel’s Office and briefly explaining its major provisions. the rules, “will be brief notifications, with an outline But in that notice, the Justice Department described an office designed for purposes Mueller appears to have understood very different from the one per- fully that his office existed to carry out ceived today by House Demo- crats. It was not to undertake the executive branch’s responsibilities, investigations for the sake of the legislative branch’s respon- not the legislative branch’s. sibilities, but rather for the sake of the executive branch’s responsibilities. And rather of the [attorney general’s] actions and the reasons for than directing the special counsel to turn over all of them” (emphasis added). And while Katyal and others his materials to Congress for Congress’s own sake, the now argue that Congress can and should subpoena the Justice Department emphasized that the special coun- Mueller report and underlying materials, the Justice sel would report to the attorney general, who in turn Department framework he helped create emphasized would provide only limited information to Congress. that the special counsel’s investigation, and the release In point of fact, protecting the privacy of a spe- of its materials, was subject to the attorney general’s cial counsel’s investigation from the transparency of control, not Congress’s. As the Clinton Justice Depart- Congress was a major point of the entire framework, ment emphasized at the outset of its 1999 notice, “it is in the aftermath of the Starr report on President Clin- intended that ultimate responsibility for the matter ton. “The principal source of the problems with [the and how it is handled will continue to rest with the old independent counsel statute’s broader disclosure Attorney General.” requirements] is the fact that the report “typically has To his credit, Mueller appears to have under- been made public,” the Clinton Justice Department stood fully that his office existed to carry out the contended, “unlike the closing documentation of any executive branch’s responsibilities, not the legislative other criminal investigation.” Accordingly, “these reg- branch’s. Upon completing his report to the attorney ulations impose a limited reporting requirement on all general, he resisted the notion of testifying before Con- special counsels, in the form of a summary final report gress. In a May 29 statement, he observed that “there to the Attorney General. This report will be handled has been discussion about an appearance before Con- as a confidential document, as are internal documents gress,” but he emphasized that “any testimony from relating to any federal criminal investigation.” Instead this office would not go beyond our report. It contains of providing for full congressional access to the special our findings and analysis, and the reasons for the deci- counsel’s report and materials, the DOJ regulations sions we made. We chose those words carefully, and provide only for the attorney general to make brief the work speaks for itself. The report is my testimony.” reports of his own to congressional leadership, sum- When he finally did appear before House committees marizing aspects of the investigation process. two months later, his delivery was uneven but his Today Katyal and others contend that the Jus- commitment to self-restraint was not; he repeatedly tice Department’s framework for special counsels was declined lawmakers’ efforts to bring him beyond the intended to “set a floor, not a ceiling, on the amount of four corners of his report. transparency” (as Katyal put it in his March 22 op-ed). Rather, when he appeared before Congress, he “They require transparency and an ‘explanation of each emphasized how unusual and inappropriate it would action’ at the end of the special counsel investigation, be for the special counsel to say anything more. “It is but they don’t forbid more transparency on top of that.” unusual for a prosecutor to testify about a criminal

Commentary 35 prosecution,” he said, “and given my role as a prosecu- sentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to tor, there are reasons why my testimony will necessarily be indicted and held for trial. He may dismiss be limited.” In addition to honoring the Justice Depart- the case before trial, in which case the defense ment’s assertion of “privileges concerning investigative never has a chance to be heard. Or he may go information and decisions, ongoing matters within on with a public trial. If he obtains a conviction, the Justice Department, and deliberations within our the prosecutor can still make recommenda- office,” Mueller added that a prosecutor must take care tions as to sentence, as to whether the prisoner to “protect the fairness” of other ongoing proceedings. should get probation or a suspended sentence, His caution goes to the heart of a government’s and after he is put away, as to whether he is a fit power to prosecute—and to the difference between the subject for parole. While the prosecutor at his executive’s power to prosecute and the legislature’s best is one of the most beneficent forces in our fundamentally different powers. society, when he acts from malice or other base As Mueller noted during his congressional motives, he is one of the worst. hearings, his reticence exemplified the Justice Depart- ment’s policy and traditions. These themes resonate As Jackson recognized, we entrust prosecutors in the Department’s Justice Manual. “Much of DOJ’s with immense powers to search, to seize, to compel tes- work involves non-public, sensitive matters,” the man- timony, and even to restrain people against their will. ual explains in a subsection on the General Need for Judicial proceedings surround these powers, but even Confidentiality. “Disseminating non-public, sensitive within the limits imposed by the judicial process, the information about DOJ matters could violate federal prosecutor retains enormous power and discretion. laws, employee non-disclosure agreements, and indi- That power to affect the lives of people not ultimately vidual privacy rights; put a witness or law enforcement charged (let along convicted) of crimes is politically officer in danger; jeopardize an investigation or case; legitimate and practically tolerable only because pros- prejudice the rights of a defendant; or unfairly damage ecutors are both greatly restrained and also greatly the reputation of a person.” self-restrained so that the fruits of their investigations This and other fundamental ethics of prosecuto- are not used freely toward ends outside of the narrow rial self-restraint are indispensable, because without scope of the prosecutorial and judicial process. them, powers of prosecutors would be virtually intol- The legislative process, by contrast, is precisely erable in a government of limited powers and the rule the opposite. Where we prioritize privacy in pros- of law. Prosecutors wield awesome powers, as Attorney ecution, we prioritize transparency in the legislative General (later Supreme Court Justice) Robert Jackson process—indeed, our Constitution goes so far as to im- emphasized in his famous 1940 remarks to an assem- munize members of Congress from being punished for bly of U.S. attorneys: “any Speech or Debate in either House” of Congress. Such immunity, the Supreme Court observed in 1972, was “not written Our system necessarily relies on pro- into the Constitution simply for the secutorial self-restraint in service of personal or private benefit of Mem- bers of Congress, but to protect the privacy; it also relies on legislative integrity of the legislative process by insuring the independence of indi- freedom in service of transparency. vidual legislators.” In short, our constitutional sys- The prosecutor has more control over life, lib- tem necessarily relies on prosecutorial self-restraint in erty, and reputation than any other person in service of privacy; it also necessarily relies on legislative America. His discretion is tremendous. He can freedom in service of transparency. The public interest have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind requires both secrecy and candor—a notion that avoids of person, he can have this done to the tune paradox only when we see the difference between the of public statements and veiled or unveiled work of the legislative branch and the work of the ex- intimations. Or the prosecutor may choose a ecutive branch. more subtle course and simply have a citizen’s friends interviewed. The prosecutor can order NFORTUNATELY, we seem less and less arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret willing to honor such distinctions in govern- session, and on the basis of his one-sided pre- U ment today. Rather, we want our legislators

36 Mueller Agonistes : September 2019 to act like prosecutors, while at the same time wanting of nature of a prosecutor’s office: a rhetoric of legal- prosecutors—or at least some prosecutors, the special isms beholden to the hard-and-fast factual standards counsels—to act as part of the legislative process. of criminal prosecutions, rather than a rhetoric of the This is an example of a broader trend of collapsing public interest that draws on the more general discus- distinctions between the work of the legislature and sion of matters in public view. the work of the executive, which has real ramifications The great irony of this is that Congress claims throughout the work of government today—not just to be a coequal and independent branch of our gov- the work of the affected prosecutors but also the work ernment, while the same time acting as though it is of the legislature that has come to depend on the spe- dependent on the executive branch to do its work for cial counsel to carry out its own investigation. We see this first and fore- Members of Congress now rely on the most in congressional oversight executive branch for expertise in writing of the executive branch, which increasingly resembles pros- legislation and rely on the judicial branch ecutorial inquisitions more than broader debates of policy—leg- to check the executive branch. islative hearings that seem ever more like litigation depositions or cross-examinations, it. This irony may have reached its zenith in the Dem- and legislative “requests for information” that seem ocratic congressional leaders’ April 19 letter to Attor- ever more like litigation interrogatories. ney General Barr. They asserted that the Constitution We also see this in the increasingly legalistic makes Congress “a coequal and coordinate branch terms of our legislative debates. This is particularly of government,” while also asserting that Congress exemplified by the legislative and political debates could not actually carry out its constitutional duties surrounding the Trump administration, which are without being given the materials gathered by the constantly drawn back to debates about “obstruction Justice Department’s special counsel. Then again, the of justice” as defined technically by federal criminal irony may reach its true zenith when congressional laws as an offense involving “corrupt intent.” Our leaders turn to the federal judicial branch, pleading political debates are now replete with discussions of for a judge to force the Justice Department to help what qualifies as “obstruction of justice” or “corrupt Congress. intent,” as though congressmen (and the rest of us) are Of course, this trend of Congress proclaiming either prosecutors trying to convict the president of a itself to be the Constitution’s first branch, while rely- crime or defense attorneys trying to get him acquitted, ing so heavily on the executive and judicial branches rather than legislators (or citizens) debating whether to actually do its work for it, is not limited the Muel- the president’s words and deeds are worthy of his of- ler investigation or even to the current presidential fice and in furtherance of the public interest. administration. We long ago grew accustomed to Finally, and relatedly, we also see the effect of members of Congress relying on the executive branch changes in the “facts” at issue in Congress’s debates. for expertise in writing legislation, and relying on the When members of Congress assert that they cannot judicial branch to check the executive branch. accomplish their own constitutional responsibilities The present controversy casts this trend in par- without obtaining the factual evidence collected by ticularly stark relief. Congressional Democrats effec- the special counsel’s prosecutorial investigation into tively outsourced their oversight responsibilities to a the president, they implicitly concede that the facts Justice Department lawyer, Robert Mueller. They want already in public view are somehow insufficient for to leverage the vast power that we entrust to executive- congressmen to draw conclusions about whether the branch prosecutors, yet they eschew the duties and president’s actions are in the public interest, or im- limits that render prosecutorial power legitimate in peachable, or somewhere in between. the first place; they want to leverage the transparency In the debates surrounding the Trump admin- inherent in the legislative process, while eschewing istration, we might call this the “Muellerization” of the inherent limits of a legislature in obtaining the Congress. As President Trump’s congressional critics facts that will be made public in that process. become more and more dependent on the special Our constitutional system requires both a legis- counsel to take the lead in investigating the president, lative branch and an executive branch, and it requires Congress’s own work is shaped to resemble the terms both branches to understand the difference.q

Commentary 37 Useful Idiot The curious case of Max Blumenthal By Bruce Bawer

TS BACK COVER features encomia from It begins decades ago, when Sidney, now 70, left Reza Aslan, Andrew Cockburn, and Oliver a career in Beltway journalism to become an adviser Stone, and its jacket copy promises that in the Clinton White House. Ever since, he has been a readers will find in its pages “the real story major satellite in the Clinton orbit—writing a flatter- behind America’s dealings with the world” ing book about Bill’s presidency, taking a leading role and proof that “the extremist forces that in Hillary’s 2008 campaign, working for several years now threaten peace across the globe are the thereafter at the Clinton Foundation, and serving, to inevitable flowering of American imperial design.” The this day, not only as an official consultant to a Clinton book isI The Management of Savagery: How America’s super PAC and the Clinton-linked Media Matters for National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, America but also as an informal Clinton confidant, ISIS, and Donald Trump, and its author is Max Blu- counselor, and (as some would put it) courtier. menthal, the son of longtime Clinton associate Sidney At first it looked as if Max, born in 1977, did not Blumenthal. How the son of a member of the Clinton fall far from the tree. After studying history at the inner circle came to write a book that is, in large part, University of Pennsylvania, he set out on a career as a an indictment of both Bill’s presidency and Hillary’s left-leaning political journalist for publications such tenure as secretary of state—as well as, not incidentally, as the Nation and Salon. From the beginning, he was, an apologia for some of the most brutal tyrants and ter- like his father, nakedly partisan, focusing on targets rorist groups on the planet—is quite a story. such as Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, and various GOP politicians. Rarely if ever did he treat his Bruce Bawer’s memoir of his mother, “The Girl Who ideological opposites as honest brokers with whom he Loved Hollywood,” appeared in the September 2017 is- merely had a difference of opinion; no, almost invari- sue. He is a veteran writer and critic. ably he sought to discredit them, to tar them with guilt

38 September 2019 Blumenthal’s first book was one of countless anti- Republican jeremiads by loyal sons of the left. His fellow Democrats could therefore applaud it without hesitation. by association, to paint them (however decent, inde- act on the president as a reward for his pro-abortion pendent, and mainstream they might be) as extrem- stance, described Blumenthal in the New York Ob- ists, bigots, and tools of nefarious interests, and, not server as having “staked out a spot on the Venn dia- infrequently, to mount extremely personal assaults, gram of Middle East commentators where anti-Israel complete with unfounded rumors and even outright meets pro-Islamist.” Nothing in Goliath, she lamented, lies. In all this, he was his father’s son, for Sidney Blu- indicated that Blumenthal was “much troubled by menthal has long been known to go very far indeed in rebels who dream of the once and future caliphate and service to the Clinton cause. imposing Shariah law.” In his now woefully dated first book, Republican Extreme though Goliath was, after it came out, Gomorrah (2009), Max Blumenthal depicted a GOP Blumenthal continued his pilgrimage away from the controlled by evangelical Christians and obsessed establishment left. “Blumenthal’s anti-Israel screeds,” with abortion and homosexuality, and he purported reported the Times of Israel in 2014, “have become to psychoanalyze the party’s leaders using methods progressively more outlandish.” In that same year, employed by Erich Fromm in his 1941 study of the Nazi Blumenthal publicized a new hashtag: #JSIL, short for mind, Escape from Freedom. It was one of countless “Jewish State in the Levant”—the point of which was anti-Republican jeremiads by loyal sons of the left, and to draw an explicit moral equivalence between Israel one that many of his fellow Democrats could therefore and ISIS. The next year saw the publication of his third applaud without hesitation. book, The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. It It was his second book, Goliath: Life and Loath- was marketed, like Goliath, as a piece of reportage—in ing in Greater Israel (2013), published by Nation this case, a comprehensive on-the-ground account of Books, that marked Max Blumenthal as a genuine the six-week 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. But as it turned outlier. In describing the Israeli–Palestinian situation, out, again like Goliath, this new book was a work of he could hardly have been more extreme: He blamed pure propaganda, its assertions undergirded by a the tensions between those two parties almost entirely miasma of facts, quasi-facts, and non-facts. Notwith- on Israelis’ purported love of violence and hatred for standing Blumenthal’s claims, it emerged soon after Muslims, and he excused jihadist terror as the under- the book’s release that he had personally witnessed less standable response by innocent victims to Nazi-like than two weeks of the war (during most of it, he had oppressors. Though presented as a work of reportage, been back home in the United States). Not that he real- the book was in fact a grotesquely slanted polemic; ly needed to be in Israel and Gaza at all, the book’s con- Max Blumenthal emphasized and exaggerated every- clusions having plainly been formed before he stepped thing that might make the Israel Defense Forces, and off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport: Once more, the Israelis generally, look like the most reprehensibly IDF were the bad guys, barely distinguishable from the amoral of human beings, while suppressing facts that SS, while Hamas was a knight in shining armor. showed Hamas terrorists and other Palestinians in a During the period when he was writing these less than favorable light. first three books, one step taken by Blumenthal stood Even his comrades on the hard left couldn’t give out as being, just possibly, an act of principle. In 2011, Goliath a thumbs-up. In a column for the Nation head- he became a staff writer for the English-language on- lined “The ‘I-Hate-Israel’ Handbook,” Eric Alterman, line edition of the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar. But the himself a frequent and severe critic of the Jewish state, following year, he resigned, denouncing the newspa- wrote that the book would “likely alienate anyone but per’s editors as apologists for Syrian dictator Bashar the most fanatical anti-Zionist extremists.” Goliath al-Assad. Much of the journalism he produced during “could have been published by the Hamas Book-of-the- the next couple of years conveyed a strongly anti-Assad Month Club,” Alterman said, while declaring that Max message. In 2013, he reported for the Nation from a Blumenthal “shames all of us with his presence in our refugee camp in Jordan, where, he wrote, every single magazine.” Nina Burleigh, another Clinton partisan, so Syrian he interviewed supported a U.S. military strike dedicated that she once said she would perform a sex on their homeland.

Commentary 39 He traveled to Moscow to attend a gala dinner, hosted by Vladimir Putin himself, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of RT, the TV network owned by the Russian government.

But then something happened. We don’t know calumny, spread by Assad loyalists, that some mem- exactly what it was. All we know for certain is that in bers of the White Helmets had been “implicated in December 2015, Blumenthal traveled to Moscow—all atrocities carried out by jihadist rebel groups.” expenses paid by the Kremlin—to attend a gala din- Blumenthal isn’t alone at Grayzone—which, ner, hosted by Vladimir Putin himself, to celebrate the after a two-year-long association with the left-wing Al- 10th anniversary of RT, the international TV network ternet website, went independent when Max was fired owned by the Russian government. When he returned from it. The principal contributor to Grayzone is Ben to the U.S., his position on Assad—and on U.S. inter- Norton, a former Salon staffer who became pro-Assad vention in Syria—had turned around completely. Only around the same time (perhaps, indeed, at exactly the a month after the RT bash, Blumenthal founded some- same time) that Blumenthal did; after his conversion, thing called “The Grayzone Project,” which describes Norton even took care to remove his old anti-Assad itself as “a news and politics website dedicated to origi- writings from the Internet. In addition to providing nal investigative journalism and analysis on war and content for Grayzone, Norton and Blumenthal co-host empire.” Basically, however, Grayzone (thegrayzone. a “podcast and video show” entitled “Moderate Rebels” com) is a one-stop propaganda shop, devoted largely (moderaterebels.com). On recent episodes they have to pushing a pro-Assad line on Syria, a pro-regime presented the “real story” about Venezuela as told by line on Venezuela, a pro-Putin line on Russia, and a chavista scholars and mocked Univision journalist pro-Hamas line on Israel and Palestine. Earlier in his Jorge Ramos for telling Nicolás Maduro in an inter- career, Blumenthal had considered Muslim theocra- view that he was widely considered a dictator. Implicit cies preferable to secular autocracies and had treated in pretty much every item at the website is that it’s im- criticism of sharia law and Islamic governments, how- possible to be an opponent of Putin or Assad or Nicolás ever reasonable and fact-based that criticism might Maduro without having nefarious motives—either be, as proof of anti-Muslim hatred. Now, however, by you’re working for the CIA or Mossad, or you’re tied up way of propping up the Assad dictatorship, he did not with some terrorist group, or you’ve taken dirty money hesitate to malign Assad’s Syrian opponents, many of under the table, or you have business interests (prob- whom were Christians, Jews, and secular Muslims, as ably shady) that would benefit from regime change. fanatical jihadists or allies thereof. Even as Blumenthal is a reliable content provider Among those whom he now maligned were the for Grayzone, he continues to comment elsewhere on a White Helmets, a group of volunteers who conduct wide range of topics. He remains a staunch champion search-and-rescue operations, carry out medical and of Islam, routinely responding to explicit acts of jihad- civilian evacuations, and deliver essential goods and ist terror by denying their Islamic roots. After the June services in Syrian danger zones. The group has saved 2016 massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, more than 100,000 lives; more than 200 of its mem- which took 49 lives and wounded 53, he denied that bers have lost their lives; it has been nominated for the perpetrator Omar Mateen—who told a 9-1-1 operator Nobel Peace Prize. But none of this kept him from join- that he was a “mujahideen” and “Islamic soldier” and ing lustily in the Assad regime’s campaign to discredit that he owed his allegiance to ISIS head Abu Bakr al- it. In his attacks on the White Helmets, notably in an Baghdadi—was a jihadist. After the May 2017 bombing article that appeared on October 2, 2016, as well as at the Arianna Grande concert in Manchester, which in a number of other articles and tweets, Blumenthal killed 22 and injured 139, Blumenthal attributed it to pointed out that the group took money from USAID “blowback from interventionist policies” by the West. and accused it of being a creation of “Western gov- In an 2016 article, he denied the incontrovertible fact ernments, professional activists, and public relations that antigay prejudice is intrinsic to Islam, calling the specialists” that were drawing attention to Syrian idea a product of “talking points…first honed by the atrocities solely as a means of bolstering the argument Israeli government and its international network of for American intervention. He even charged the group supporters.” with having al-Qaeda links and repeated the baseless That’s not all. Blumenthal has also denied

40 Useful Idiot : September 2019 Blumenthal has even accused Samantha Power—whom precious few observers would categorize as pro-Israel—of being an anti-Palestinian Israeli tool. that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite. (Those who minded females disseminated daily around the Middle say otherwise, Blumenthal maintained, are actually East. irked not over Corbyn’s Jew-hatred but over his “anti- No smear job by Max Blumenthal would be imperialist” sentiments.) While quick to stand up for complete without an unfounded personal attack, so in Corbyn, Blumenthal was equally quick to deride Elie his piece on Rosenwald, one was able to read this bit Wiesel after the latter’s death in July 2016, accusing the of gossip: According to an “acquaintance” of his, “Ros- Auschwitz survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate of enwald has a penchant for launching into anti-Arab “inciting hatred, defending apartheid & palling around anti-Palestinian tirades at public forums, leaping up with fascists.” Blumenthal has written, moreover, about like ‘a jack in the box’ to denounce the evildoers.” As “anticommunism” as if it were a psychiatric affliction it happens, I have been present over the past two de- and has dismissed the Victims of Communism Foun- cades at a great many public forums attended by Ros- dation as a “neoconservative initiative.” He’s labeled enwald, and I have never observed any behavior on her Leopoldo López, the Venezuelan freedom activist and part that would remotely fit this description. I’ve also longtime political prisoner under Maduro, a “putsch spoken with other people whose paths have crossed leader”; he’s charged former UN Ambassador Nikki Rosenwald’s frequently, and none of them has ever Haley with pursuing a “vendetta against virtually the experienced such conduct either, or heard of it from entire world”; and he’s called Clarissa Ward, CNN’s anyone else. In short, another dose of pure calumny. chief international correspondent and the host of the In 2013, writing at the Electronic Intifada web- Peabody Award–winning 2016 documentary Under- site, Blumenthal sought to take down Thor Halvors- cover in Syria, an al-Qaeda stooge. He even accused sen, founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights President Obama’s UN ambassador, Samantha Pow- in Education (FIRE), the Human Rights Foundation er—whom precious few observers would categorize (HRF), and the Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF). The piece as pro-Israel—of being an anti-Palestinian Israeli tool. provided a splendid example of his six-degrees-of-sep- Some of Blumenthal’s smears are near-epic in aration approach to guilt by association. Halvorssen, scale. In a June 2012 piece for the Nation, he took Blumenthal explained, was a bad person because his on the philanthropist Nina Rosenwald, head of the organizations had received “significant funding from Gatestone Institute, for funding Israel-friendly groups the same financiers”—such as the Sarah Scaife Founda- as well as “a Who’s Who of anti-Muslim outfits” and tion and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation— thereby “fuel[ing] a rapidly emerging alliance between “who support the Islamophobes” (read, mainstream the pro-Israel mainstream and the Islamophobic conservative critics of Islam) “who inspired anti-Mus- fringe” that “serves to sanitize and legitimize profes- lim Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik.” sional anti-Muslim bigots.” Among these “bigots” were Yes, Breivik again. Note that Blumenthal doesn’t hesi- Irshad Manji and Zuhdi Jasser. Oh? Manji and Jasser tate to blame one lunatic’s massacre on critics of Islam are themselves Muslims—but their support for Is- who have never called for violence, but he refuses to rael and U.S. counterterrorism measures and their ac- acknowledge that innumerable jihadists have, in fact, knowledgment of Islam’s need for democratic reform as they themselves proudly declare, murdered count- places them, in Blumenthal’s view, beyond the pale. less innocents in obedience to what they regard as the Blumenthal also brought up the Norwegian terrorist divine commands set down in the Koran. Anders Behring Breivik’s references in his manifesto to Blumenthal’s piece on Halvorssen also displayed certain beneficiaries of Rosenwald’s largesse—which, his taste for selective quotation and the cherry-picking for Blumenthal, were enough to consider her tainted. of evidence. The half-truths and smears in the article He also tarred Rosenwald for funding the invalu- are too numerous to mention. As a student at the Uni- able Middle East Monitoring and Research Institute versity of Pennsylvania, Halvorssen had noted in an op- (MEMRI), whose subtitled online postings of Arabic- ed for the college paper that “it may be deadly to live in language TV programs provide abundant evidence of West Philadelphia.” Blumenthal presented the op-ed as the hatred of the West, Jews, gays, and independent- evidence of racism, since that neighborhood is largely

Commentary 41 It’s not enough to criticize pro-intervention American officials. Blumenthal also defends the execrable regimes that those officials have targeted for change.

African American. In fact, Halvorssen’s op-ed was mo- tices prior to his incarceration he banged away about tivated by the murder in West Philadelphia of his friend at length. Blumenthal treated other associates of Weiss Al-Moez Iqbal Alimohamed, a Pakistani Muslim teach- in a similar fashion, in addition to targeting drive-by ing assistant who had been shot in a robbery. Similarly, smears at other writers whose politics diverge from his Blumenthal called FIRE a “right-wing group” because own. The gay Spectator contributor Douglas Murray, it had “defend[ed] evangelical students against charges wrote Blumenthal, was “xenophobic” and a “hard- of anti-gay discrimination and combating hate crimes core Islamophobe,” while Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the heroic legislation.” Unmentioned was the fact that FIRE un- Muslim apostate and critic of Islam who has to live der Halvorssen’s leadership had also defended radical with around-the-clock bodyguards because of jihadist leftist Ward Churchill, PETA members, and innumer- death threats, was a “Dutch anti-Muslim activist and able gays and Muslims, including Sami Al-Arian, a serial fabricator.” Palestinian professor arrested on terrorism charges. In an article for Medium in December 2018, for- Another lengthy smear appeared in 2017 at Al- eign correspondent Sulome Anderson announced that ternet. This time Blumenthal’s target was Daily Beast she was suing Blumenthal and his colleague Ben Nor- editor and fresh CNN hire Michael Weiss, co-author of ton. As part of their “dangerous campaign of disinfor- the New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army mation against people whose work threatens Russian of Terror. Under the headline “CNN Analyst Michael and Syrian interests,” she charged, they’d accused her Weiss Hosted Anti-Muslim Rally with Far-Right Hate of being “an agent of the U.S. or Israeli governments.” Queen Pamela Geller,” Blumenthal upbraided Weiss Anderson speaks Arabic, has reported from the Middle for the crime of having helped Geller put together East for such outlets as the Atlantic, NBC News, the a protest against plans for a so-called Ground Zero Daily Beast, and Newsweek, and is the daughter of the mosque in lower Manhattan. This was false; Weiss AP reporter Terry Anderson, who was held captive by had had nothing to do with that event. Weiss was also Hezbollah for six years between 1985 and 1991. Sulome scorned for having organized a New York rally in soli- Anderson made it clear that while she was extremely darity with the Muhammad cartoonists in Denmark. reluctant to challenge anyone’s free-speech rights, she This was true; among the participants was the Danish felt compelled to file the lawsuit because the steady consul general. In his effort to blacken Weiss’s name, drumbeat of lies about her from Blumenthal and Nor- Blumenthal reached back to Weiss’s undergraduate ton has compromised her and her sources’ personal days at Dartmouth, when one of the comic strips that safety when she’s working in danger zones. They need Weiss contributed to the student paper showed a gay to understand, she wrote, that “there are consequenc- frat pledge involuntarily becoming sexually aroused es” for putting reporters like her “in harm’s way.” during a hazing ritual. Again, leave it to a man who has A few months after Anderson’s broadcast came whitewashed Islamic regimes’ execution of gay people the publication of Blumenthal’s The Management of to point to a harmless cartoon as an indication of vi- Savagery. It is a critique of the enthusiasm of many cious homophobia. American officials, including politicians in both major But Weiss’s major offense, in Blumenthal’s eyes, parties, for international military intervention. This was opposing Assad and Putin. Weiss, complained Blu- enthusiasm, the author argues, led the U.S. government menthal, dared to write about Russia even though he to fund terrorist groups during the Cold War that would “speaks little or no Russian”—this from a man who had later become its enemies, and also led America to get written books on Israel and the Palestinians without mired in Iraq. This unnecessary foreign adventurism being fluent in either Hebrew or Arabic. In another helped elect Donald Trump, and that election, in turn, characteristic move, Blumenthal noted that a website caused the D.C. establishment to push the argument run by Weiss had been funded by former billionaire that Putin had played a pivotal role in Trump’s victory. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose eight years as a prisoner Many Americans across the political spectrum of conscience in Putin’s Russia Blumenthal omitted to will concur with Blumenthal about much if not all of mention but whose allegedly corrupt business prac- the above. While many reasonable readers might share

42 Useful Idiot : September 2019 He claims that those who believe that there are terrorist cells in the U.S. or that some American Muslims cheered the fall of the Twin Towers have fallen for a ‘folk myth.’ his view that, say, the U.S. invasion of Iraq wasn’t a nize it as rooted in religion, but more often he treats it good idea, they would likely balk at his claim that the as if it’s always blowback against Western imperialism. negative image of Saddam Hussein in the U.S. was the He has no doubt, however, that the idea that jihadists product of dishonest propaganda. (Iraq, claims Blu- “hate us because we’re free” is a “crude mantra.” menthal, was “stable” before the U.S. invasion. Well, One striking feature of The Management of Sav- that’s one way to put it.) Then there’s Blumenthal’s agery is Max Blumenthal’s bluntness about the Clin- distinction between the U.S. and Soviet invasions of tons, Sidney’s personal cause for decades. The Clinton Afghanistan. The former, he maintains, was a hostile Foundation, Max writes, accepted tens of millions from act of imperialism, period, whereas the 1979 incursion Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, by the USSR was motivated by an admirable desire to and other sources even as some of these donors “were stabilize an anarchic society, and it had the effect of propping up ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria.” Blumenthal introducing a socialist government that had benign doesn’t shrink from blaming Hillary for pushing the consequences for Afghanis. Russiagate story, which he describes as a “national What about 9/11? During a nearly two-hour- security state narrative,” or from blaming Bill for ignor- long presentation at his book launch, which can be ing the threat of al-Qaeda during his presidency. At his viewed on YouTube, Blumenthal mentioned 9/11 only book launch, Blumenthal stated quite bluntly that, ow- to deplore the immediate response of some Americans ing to their actions in Libya, Barack Obama and Hillary to that monstrous atrocity and to call them Islamo- Clinton “helped bring slavery back to Africa.” phobes; the attitudes toward infidels that actually Some of the arguments made by Blumenthal drove those Muslims to commit that act of mass mur- in this book have been made before by respected der went unremarked. For him, the salient fact about writers on both the left and the right who oppose 9/11 is that the U.S., since that day, has been awash in what they see as reflexive and counterproductive U.S. “Islamophobia,” which he describes as “the language of interventions abroad—and, as with portions of his a wounded empire.” (The implication here, of course, previous work, many readers with mainstream views is that 9/11 was a “wound” that the “empire” amply will find those arguments congenial. But one cannot deserves.) Blumenthal savages post-9/11 counterter- imagine that many readers with functioning moral rorism efforts in New York City and elsewhere as the compasses will respond with anything but disgust to work of bigots, but he drops own the memory hole the the passages in which he defends the Assad regime, innumerable post-9/11 acts of Islamic terror in the U.S. maintains that people in the West have a “blinkered and Europe. He is far kinder to the “Blind Sheikh,” view” of Assad, and denounces what he describes as Omar Abdel-Rahman, who masterminded the 1993 the “Western media’s tendency to paint the Syrian World Trade Center bombing, than to the late Chris conflict as a one-sided war between a maniacal dicta- Kyle, the Navy SEAL whose life became the subject of tor and his defenseless subjects.” In his attempt to Clint Eastwood’s movie American Sniper. sugarcoat Assad, Blumenthal reminds us that in 1971, So it goes. According to Blumenthal, those who Assad’s father “sparked massive Muslim Brother- believe that there are terrorist cells in the U.S. or that hood demonstrations by issuing a stringently secular some American Muslims cheered the fall of the Twin constitution.” Towers on 9/11 have fallen for a “folk myth.” The only Again and again, in The Management of Savage- people who celebrated 9/11, he said at his book launch, ry, Blumenthal insists that Assad’s enemies in Syria are were “a mysterious group of Israelis.” He also mocks at least as bad as he is; that those enemies have been the idea of “creeping sharia”—as exemplified by, for funded and abetted by the West; that other tyrants instance, the arrest, harassment, and prosecution of in the region are, likewise, no better than Assad; and critics of Islam in many Western countries and the that Assad and his circle have long been the targets of increasing recognition by Western governments of Is- “armed Sunni Islamist groups,” presumably because lamic marriage laws. On the subject of jihad, Blumen- Assad does not share their backward theocratic views. thal is inconsistent. In some cases, he seems to recog- It is interesting to observe that whereas Blumenthal,

Commentary 43 More and more respectable members of the journalistic profession have woken up to the fact that Blumenthal’s work is simply not to be trusted—that he is a propagandist. prior to his Moscow trip, almost invariably stood up bers of the journalistic profession have woken up to for Islamic theocracies, he now sees things the other the fact that Blumenthal’s work is simply not to be way around and is willing to speak critically about trusted—that he is not a legitimate reporter but a pro- “Islamists.” He is willing to do this, that is, so long as pagandist. The bad news is that he is still able to get his he can cast them as the tools or allies of the U.S., or the books published and still has readers who, heaven help West generally, against Assad and Putin. The one con- them, take his writings seriously. stant in his view of these matters is that he has always Perhaps even more striking to contemplate are been more critical of the U.S. and other Western liberal the emails released by WikiLeaks in which Sidney democracies than of any tyrannical Middle Eastern Blumenthal proudly shared his son’s writings with regime, whether theocratic or secular. Hillary Clinton, who responded by praising them More than any other American writer who has and even passing some of them around to her State reached his level of notoriety, Blumenthal has proven Department colleagues. This included the epilogue to consistently to be too hard-left even for some of the his Israel-bashing Gomorrah. “I loved the epilogue but banner names of the hard left. “Pro-Assad, pro-Mad- it stopped abruptly and I can’t pull up the rest so I’m uro, pro-Putin—literally nothing redeemable about anxiously awaiting for the rest,” Hillary Clinton wrote this fellow and his moronic second-campism,” tweeted to Sidney. “Pls congratulate Max for another impres- the British writer James Bloodworth, an old Trotskyite sive piece. He’s so good.” and longtime Guardian contributor, on June 9. The How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a Max good news is that more and more respectable mem- Blumenthal! q

44 Useful Idiot : September 2019 The Congressman Who Hated Israel Before Ilhan Omar, there was Paul Findley By Jonathan Schanzer

ONSIDER this scenario: A legislator outrage they’ve generated are not without precedent. from the Midwest targets Israel with She is not the first U.S. representative to give public a passion and vitriol that smacks of voice to vicious anti-Israel (and anti-American) bigotry anti-Semitism. The legislator alleges and claim the mantle of righteousness. Before Omar, that Israel’s supporters in Wash- there was the Republican congressman Paul Findley, ington are bought off with Jewish who died August 9 at the age of 98. money and that they have too much Findley represented Illinois’s 20th district from influence over our politics. When many Americans 1961 to 1983. For many years of his congressional ca- expressC their outrage at such comments, the legisla- reer, his foreign-policy ideas were relatively anodyne. tor invokes the right to free speech and insists that As he put it, “I just plain had no interest in the Middle the sentiments expressed were all for the just cause East.” This made sense, as his constituents were not of getting American policy on a more reasonable and much interested in the Middle East, either. But in the moral path. late 1970s, after a trip to South Yemen to secure the re- This has been the dynamic surrounding Demo- lease of a detained constituent, he had a chance inter- cratic Representative Ilhan disturbing Omar’s com- action with representatives of the Palestine Liberation ments about Israel and America’s relationship with Organization (PLO). He soon claimed to have gotten the Jewish state. But Omar’s false accusations and the PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat to “put down on paper” an agreement to “establish peace [and] avoid controversy Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for with Israel, if an independent Palestine were estab- research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies lished on the West Bank and Gaza, with a connecting (FDD), a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. corridor.” (In an interview Findley granted in 2013, he

Commentary 45 admitted that Arafat “approved, but declined to sign” all pretense. In 1985, he authored They Dare to Speak this piece of paper.) Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby. The following year, Findley took his ties with In the book, updated and republished twice, Findley Arafat a step further and invited the infamous PLO unleashed a torrent of venom toward Israel and its terror leader for talks in New York City. Findley even supporters, and lionized Israel’s detractors. He spoke called himself “Arafat’s best friend in Congress.” disapprovingly of Jewish money, Jewish groups in At the time, Findley may not have understood Washington, Jewish groups on campus, Jewish con- why his diplomatic freelancing and his legitimizing of gressmen, and Jewish influence. Findley claimed the PLO prompted alarm. He claimed he was merely that the pro-Israel community had a stranglehold on eminently diplomatic. A former Hill staffer says that congressional politics and American foreign policy. He Findley “saw himself as a kind of secretary of state for took a shot at Christian groups too, but expressed more Congress.” The staffer recalls that concerned profes- empathy for them because their “religious convic- tions…made them susceptible to the appeals of the Israel lobby.” Findley spoke disapprovingly of Jewish Findley even lamented how for- money, Jewish groups in Washington, mer President Jimmy Carter, no fan of Zionism, was “yielding Jewish groups on campus, Jewish to the lobby on relations with Israel.” All of these claims were congressmen, and Jewish influence. not only false—they also veered into the realm of anti-Semitism. sionals from the pro-Israel community paid several Findley continued to hammer Israel and its sup- personal visits to Findley’s Capitol Hill offices to ad- porters long after his book stopped selling. For him, dress the congressman’s PLO outreach. But the more it became the very basis for his post-congressional they engaged, the more Findley strengthened his pro- career. In 1987, he asserted that American legislators PLO positions. believed that their electoral fates were controlled Findley was clearly chafed by them, and was also singularly by the Israel lobby. They are convinced, he angry at his congressional colleagues for not following noted, “that Israel’s lobby has the power, by channel- his lead. Looking back, he wrote, “scores of times over ing election-year political donations either to them or the years, I have sat in committee and in the chamber to their political opponents, to determine whether or of the House of Representatives as my colleagues be- not they will be re-elected.” Two years later, he went haved, as an undersecretary of state once described on to found the Council for the National Interest, a them, like ‘trained poodles’ jumping through hoops nonprofit organization that even now frames outrage held for them.” The “them” referred to pro-Israel or- against obsessive anti-Israel legislators as an “anti- ganizations. Semitism scam.” By 1980, the pro-Israel community in Washing- There were few realms of public life behind ton had clearly identified Findley as a problem. In which Findley couldn’t detect the purported presence 1982, he lost his seat to Richard Durbin and was, not of Zionist manipulators. In 1990, amid the lead-up to surprisingly, convinced that his defeat came at the the first war with Iraq, he asserted that Israel’s “zeal- hands of the Israel lobby. But it’s actually hard to credit ous supporters occupy influential positions through- pro-Israel activists with Findley’s ouster because their out U.S. society—not just in the media—and are em- spat with him didn’t make the headlines very often. ployed by the U.S. government in every office that has Findley rarely took public shots at his critics. And his any important relationship to the making of U.S. policy critics pulled their punches as well. This was how most in the Middle East.” He went on: “Relentlessly, step by business was conducted on Capitol Hill back then. The step, they have assiduously developed over the years a relative calm was also likely the result of staffers in tight grip on America’s Middle East policy.” Findley’s office who sought to carefully steer their boss In 1995, even after Israel and the Palestinians en- away from controversy. Both Findley’s office and the tered into the Oslo peace process, Findley published an- pro-Israel community believed that their time was best other book attacking Israel. His new screed was Deliber- spent developing friends rather than deepening public ate Deceptions: Facing the Facts about the U.S.–Israeli animosity in Washington. Relationship. It was Findley’s attempt to further cast After Findley left office, however, things got far the complexities of the Middle East as matters of right uglier. The seeming gentleman from Illinois dropped and wrong, with Israel always on the side of the latter.

46 The Congressman Who Hated Israel : September 2019 Findley’s obsession with Israel’s alleged wrong- continued: “It’s as if a blanket, a suffocating blanket, doing continued to deepen, a characteristic feature had been spread across the entire nation.” of anti-Semitism. In 2002, he blamed the 9/11 attacks Findley’s example shows how the vitriol exhib- on Israel. “Nine-eleven would not have occurred if the ited today by Ilhan Omar or her co-freshman congress- U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate woman Rashida Tlaib is nothing new. These contro- and destroy Palestinian society,” he wrote on a website versial legislators are Findley’s progeny. Of course, called If Americans Knew. “Few express this conclu- there are significant differences between then and sion publicly, but many believe it is the truth. I believe now—differences that make plain why Findley, malign the catastrophe could have been prevented if any U.S. as his anti-Israel animus was, didn’t have the effect on president during the past 35 years had had the cour- public discourse that Omar and Tlaib now enjoy. age and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel Today, the toxic and polarized political atmo- withdrew from the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab- sphere in Washington grants the most outrageous po- Israeli war.” litical flamethrowers (even ones with no experience) Findley’s preoccupation with the supposed si- an outsize megaphone. This stands in stark contrast lencing of Israel’s critics is another distinctive feature to the political norms of the 1960s and 1970s, which of pathological opposition to Israel. He asserted: “On called for more decorum among our politicians, even if Capitol Hill, criticism of Israel, even in private con- American politics had become more unwieldly relative versation, is all but forbidden, treated as downright to the generations prior. unpatriotic, if not anti-Semitic. The continued absence Then there is the impact of social media, a phe- of free speech was assured when those few who spoke nomenon that was hardly conceivable during Findley’s out…were defeated at the polls by candidates heavily days in office. Twitter and Facebook have transformed financed by pro-Israel forces.” the way politicians engage on issues and relate to their In 2005, Findley asserted that Israel was behind constituents. Rather than seeking to avoid conflict, the second Iraq war, which was by then mired in the in- legislators now run toward political feuds on these and surgency and deeply unpopular across America. “Our other platforms. forces invaded because Israel wanted us to topple Sad- Finally, there’s the difference in American at- dam,” he wrote in the Huffington Post. Of particular titudes toward Israel, both in our leading political interest was this line: “Two religious communities— parties and among the public. When Findley turned one consisting of a combination of secular and ultra- against the Jewish state in the late 1970s, the Repub- Orthodox Jews and the other of misguided Christian lican Party was split: Its old guard saw no compelling fundamentalists—control U.S. Middle East policies.” reason to upset our oil-producing Arab allies by adopt- The implication here is that Jews are simply being ing an especially close alliance with Israel. A younger Jews, while Christian supporters of Israel are merely wave of Republicans, animated by an appreciation of misguided. “Both believe their messiahs will come shared values and moved by the plight of Soviet Jewry, only when present-day Israel is strong and united,” he saw an important natural ally in Israel. That wave went on. “Until our government is liberated from those came to dominate the GOP and left voices like Find- lobbies, we face big trouble.” ley’s in the wilderness. Additionally, Israel enjoyed Findley would later be even more explicit about broad and unapologetic public support among the his views on the Iraq war. “Israel—and only Israel— American electorate. urged the United States to invade Iraq,” he wrote in Ilhan Omar is riding the crest of a very different 2007. The assertion that the United States commits political wave. Democratic support for Israel has been itself to war solely to advance Israel’s interests is a clas- dropping steadily in recent years. A Gallup poll in sic anti-Semitic canard. March found that only 43 percent of Democrats sym- The former congressman did not mellow with pathize more with the Israelis than the Palestinians in age. In 2014, the nonagenarian Findley asserted, “The the Middle East conflict. And while there were some influence of Israel, as of today, is so great on Capitol positive findings, the poll found that overall American Hill that [U.S. representatives] see dangers of not sur- support for Israel has fallen. As a result of the changes viving the next election if they challenge what Israel is in American culture and attitudes, what used to be doing.” The Anti-Defamation League noted this as an considered beyond the pale is slowly becoming main- outward sign of anti-Semitism. But Findley only dou- stream. For Omar and her fellow travelers, this means bled down. In 2015, he spoke at the National Press Club that displaying overt animosity toward Israel comes at in Washington where he lashed out at the “suffocating little to no cost. I never asked him personally, but Paul influence of the lobby for Israel across America.” He Findley would almost certainly have approved. q

Commentary 47 Politics & Ideas

The Smashing of the GOP

American Carnage: On the Front Party’s faithful fell in love with a me- able odds—two government shut- Lines of the Republican Civil War dia-savvy neophyte with an instinct downs—only to use the predictable and the Rise of President Trump for populist demagoguery, its govern- failure of these charges as an oppor- By Tim Alberta ing class was tasked with taking the tunity to fundraise against those Harper, 688 pages painful steps necessary to contain an very politicians. It was a period of unfolding economic catastrophe. cynicism and paranoia, two condi- Reviewed by Noah Rothman Amid the wreckage of the finan- tions Donald Trump capitalized cial meltdown, the architects of the on in the early part of the 2010s by IM ALBERTA’S Ameri- GOP’s fracturing made the most of advocating “birtherism”—a base- can Carnage: On the their moment. The Tea Party, an less and racially antagonistic attack Front Lines of the Re- amalgam of center-right interests on Barack Obama. All the while, publican Civil War galvanized into a movement by the sources of institutional author- and the Rise of Presi- the bailouts for America’s most ity within the Republican Party dent TrumpT is a concentrated distilla- exposed asset-holders, adopted the atrophied, audiences replaced con- tion of a decade’s worth of political language of limited-government stituencies, and ideas were subordi- trauma. Its account of the Republi- principles while expressing social nated to clickbait. can Party’s descent into populism be- anxieties. The conservative move- By the early summer of 2015, gins, aptly, in 2008, with an explora- ment’s media complex made heroes as the 2016 presidential campaign tion of two countervailing forces: the of figures in and out of govern- began in earnest, the conserva- ascension of Sarah Palin and the col- ment willing to sacrifice decorum tive firmament had been ruthlessly lapse of the mortgage market. At the in service to emotional displays of tilled and the seeds for Trumpism same moment that the Republican distress. Outside groups compelled sown. To relive the events of 2016, Republican politicians to mount as Alberta makes us do, is to reopen Noah Rothman is associate edi- doomed charges of the light bri- old wounds. Marco Rubio’s natural tor of Commentary. gades in defiance of insurmount- political talents are undone by

48 Politics & Ideas : September 2019 his tactical blunders. Jeb Bush’s that he had an idea about how to anxieties over the prospect of a The two do the job, but he didn’t. Though Trump presidency are betrayed by i he was compelled to staff his gov- his campaign’s singular focus on months ernment with Republican profes- undermining Rubio. Ted Cruz re- sionals, few of whom could be con- mains committed to a theory of the of Donald sidered true Trumpian populists, race that requires Trump’s pres- Trump’s the 45th president also elevated ence right up until Cruz is forced to to prominence a few who shared concede. Chris Christie’s and John transition from his populist fixations. Among them Kasich’s wounded egos are salved president-elect were the agitator Steve Bannon and only by the failure of their more speechwriter-turned-policymak- competent rivals. Alberta recounts to president er Stephen Miller, both of whom a secret meeting arranged by Sena- might have helped engineer some of Trump’s tor Mike Lee, a last-ditch effort to most spectacular debacles. The unify the anti-Trump vote behind calmed some of various iterations of what Trump a Cruz-Rubio ticket—but Rubio his Republican called the “Muslim ban,” the “zero- rejected the overture. tolerance” family-separation policy, All the while, an unlikely alli- critics if he had and protectionist industrial policies ance in favor of Trump was forming shown that he devoting more American steel to between the party’s populist media U.S.-based projects than American figures and their establishmentar- had an idea steel manufactures could produce— ian rivals who could not bear the about how to do these were the brainchildren of the thought of a President Cruz. “We’re new Trumpian wing of the GOP. not allowed to say anything posi- the job, but he Other policy matters were no tive about you,” Alberta alleges two better. At the beginning of the Fox News contributors told Cruz. didn’t. administration, the president had If Trump was the preferred candi- supported Ryan’s American Health date of conservative media, he was Republican politicians did not Care Act before Freedom Caucus the lesser evil for party men such know what to do. House Speak- members Mark Meadows and Jim as Bob Dole and John Boehner. er Paul Ryan regularly assailed Jordan convinced him that the “Crazy I could deal with,” Boehner Trump’s “racist” remarks and con- bill wasn’t quite ready. As ten- recalled. “But not pathological.” sidered withdrawing his endorse- sions grew within the Republican In a meeting between Trump, ment following the release of the conference, the White House spent now the presumptive nominee, infamous Access Hollywood tape, the next week sending mixed sig- and Republican veteran Karl Rove, only to be scolded and rebuffed by nals about whether the president the former reality-TV host insisted his fellow Republicans. Mick Mul- backed the bill or not. This vacil- his celebrity would lead him to win vaney, now Trump’s chief of staff, lation culminated in Trump’s 11th- states like New York and California defended the candidate “despite hour decision to stand athwart Ry- while dismissing electorally signifi- the fact that I think he’s a ter- an’s repeal-and-replacement effort. cant states like Iowa. “Why aren’t rible human being.” Rubio deemed White House Press Secretary people in my campaign talking to Trump the product of a societal Sean Spicer confirmed reports say- me about this?” Trump asked of vitriol exemplified by “the things ing Trump had told Senate Repub- the sordid figures and B-team cam- that prominent people write about licans that the House bill was sim- paign professionals with whom each other” on Twitter. Prominent ply “mean.” The president doubled he was surrounded. The looming Freedom Caucus member Mark down on his criticisms at a cam- insolvency crisis affecting entitle- Meadows “feared living with the paign-style rally in Iowa. “I’ve been ment programs; the mechanisms legacy of nominating Trump” and talking about a plan with heart,” in the World Trade Organization planned to blame Ryan for the GOP Trump declared. “I said, ‘Add some that allow for the enforcement of nominee’s inevitable loss. money to it!’” The mission to re- claims against bad actors; even the The two months of Trump’s place Obamacare died that day, to importance of conservative judicial transition from president-elect to the sound of enthusiastic applause nominees to the party’s base vot- president might have calmed his from a Republican audience. ers—all this was news to Trump. Republican critics if he had shown “Several of the members, grown

Commentary 49 men, broke into tears,” Alberta Republican coalition because Alber- writes of the House Republican Alberta ta fails to properly appreciate how conference during health-care de- i the scorched-earth tactics deployed liberations. These Republicans were fails by Barack Obama and his allies ac- paralyzed with the fear that they celerated the right’s radicalization. might accidentally defy the president, to paint a full Alberta says that Obama’s at- thus “winding up on the business portrait of the tempt to bulldoze over Republican end of a Trump tweet.” The moral- objections to the “liberal grab bag” majoritarian wing of the GOP—peo- changes in the of giveaways marketed to the public ple Trump reportedly referred to Republican in 2009 as an economic stimulus by as “those fucking evangelicals” and reminding them that “I won” was an “so-called Christians” who supported coalition “immeasurable gift to the GOP.” But Ted Cruz and were, therefore, “real because he fails he implies that the GOP’s response pieces of shit”—concocted increas- was overblown because Obama had ingly ludicrous theological constructs to properly “benign intent.” There was no be- to justify their devotion to a man who appreciate nignity to Obama’s vexation over exemplifies moral failure. CPAC, an the GOP’s good-faith objections to activist conference once populated how the tactics the president’s misuse of a true cri- by the most libertarian-minded con- deployed by sis for parochial political gain. stitutionalists, had become a cult of Alberta quotes Heritage Foun- Trumpian personality. “To attend the Barack Obama dation communications officer event was to witness an ideology con- Rory Cooper, who mourned how forming to an individual rather than accelerated Republicans in the age of Obama the other way around,” Alberta writes. the right’s cared less for policy and more for The resentment toward Trump culture war. But the example he among other professional Repub- radicalization. cites is outrage over an Agriculture licans is palpable throughout Al- Department proposal to impose a berta’s book. “It’s like he wants us who cannot bring themselves to say fee on fresh-cut Christmas trees. “A to lose!” Ted Cruz seethed amid a bad word about the president are lot of conservatives weren’t fight- Trump’s desperate efforts to trans- aware of the damage he is doing to ing on policy anymore,” Cooper form the 2018 midterm elections the party’s brand. That’s apparent laments. A tax on Christmas-tree into a referendum on his most in the Republican reaction to the producers and importers designed nativist policy prescriptions. Ex- prolonged and needless govern- to fund a program promoting ecutives within conservative activ- ment shutdown Trump instigated Christmas-tree consumption is, in ist organizations such as Heritage in 2019 in the attempt to force a fact, policy. What’s more, it’s indica- Action and the Club for Growth reluctant Congress to fund Trump’s tive of a spectacularly misguided lamented that the only way to border wall. “Republicans on Capi- understanding of how taxes affect generate traction among Repub- tol Hill were increasingly agitated, consumer behavior, and the fact lican voters was to sacrifice fiscal inwardly angry with themselves but that it was not implemented stands conservatism to cultural grievance- outwardly seething at McConnell as testimony to the legitimacy of mongering—immigration, nation- and McCarthy for having allowed the right’s arguments. al anthem, whatever worked.” But the president to embarrass the Alberta chronicles the right’s it didn’t work. Democratic House party like this,” Alberta observes. descent into unenlightened racial candidates won nearly 9 million “It’s not about ideology any- paranoia in the Obama years, but, more votes in November 2018. And more,” said Corry Bliss, execu- in the process, he conflates the those Republicans who served on tive director of the Congressional banal with the egregious. Repub- the frontlines in the GOP’s House Leadership Fund. “It’s only about licans such as Michelle Bachman majority were thanked for their Trump. Are you with him or are and Louie Gohmert who accused service with a presidential denun- you against him? That’s the only Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abe- ciation on the morning after their thing that matters to voters in the din of having links to the Mus- losses—a display that Republican Republican base.” lim Brotherhood do not belong lawmakers did not appreciate. American Carnage fails to paint in the same league with an un- The book reveals that even those a full portrait of the changes in the named Colorado lawmaker citing

50 Politics & Ideas : September 2019 a common racist idiom associated headed validation of Obama-era with the Joel Chandler Harris tale Alberta figures such as White House com- “Br’er Rabbit”—much less in the i munications director Dan Pfeffer, same paragraph. Alberta argues claims who insisted that those who advo- that the realignment of the old that Obama cated spending caps in exchange for South, away from Democrats and a debt-ceiling hike were the equiva- toward Republicans, “turned the was a careful lent of arsonists, suicide bombers, GOP into the champion of the old and hostage-takers. Confederacy’s states-rights, small- steward of race The Republican Party’s drift government creed.” No. While the relations, yet away from the civility and de- South’s segregationist lawmakers cency displayed by Mitt Romney were surely federalists, they could a 2014 poll and toward its polar opposite in hardly be said to have favored small showed that Donald Trump did not occur in government. Alberta even attempts a vacuum. Alberta claims that to save Joe Biden from himself by only 6 percent Barack Obama was a careful stew- whitewashing Biden’s claim before of Americans ard of American race relations, a mixed-race audience that Mitt yet a 2014 poll showed that only Romney and Paul Ryan wanted to in battleground 6 percent of Americans in battle- “put y’all back in chains.” states believed ground states believed American “Contextually,” Alberta writes, race relations had improved. This “the vice president’s comment was that race is neither inexplicable nor attribut- part of a broadside against Repub- relations had able to Republican agitation alone. licans’ deregulation of Wall Street.” As Gallup found on the eve of That is not context. Rather, it’s improved. the 2012 election, 50 percent of damage control straight from the Americans said race relations had Obama campaign. Moreover, Al- “greatly improved” while another berta’s contextualization ignores 39 percent said that racial comity the reelection campaign’s full-court terms.” It dismisses pro-Obama had improved “somewhat.” This press to brand Romney and his voices in the media who devoted decline was precipitous, and the party racists. It ignores how Obama themselves each day anew to the way Obama’s campaign dug into campaign surrogates such as Vir- reckless practice of deciphering America’s racial scars in pursuit of ginia state Senator Louise Lucas racist “code words” cleverly embed- reelection is partly to blame. accused Romney of appealing to ded in everyday speech. “Urban,” Just as the Obama era’s excesses voters “who don’t like a black man “Chicago,” “apartment,” “skinny,” disfigured the GOP, the Trump era in the White House.” It ignores the and “golf” were deemed “dog whis- is steadily radicalizing the left. comments of lawmakers such as tles,” supposedly audible to white Alberta dismisses the nascent out- Nancy Pelosi, who claimed that racists alone but really heard only lines of a progressive version of the Romney’s outreach to the NAACP by Romney’s obsessive critics. Tea Party taking shape today as the was a calculated maneuver to ap- Alberta even appropriates for indulgences of one “renegade rank- peal to racists, who would rally himself an irresponsible line of and-file member,” Representative to his defense when the audience attack that the Obama administra- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She has booed him (a feat of clairvoyance on tion deployed against Republicans. all but created her own small but Romney’s part). “America doesn’t negotiate with potent caucus of progressive in- It ignores how the press framed terrorists,” Alberta writes of the surgents, has thwarted Speaker the Romney campaign’s focus on House GOP’s effort to transform Ted Nancy Pelosi’s designs more than America’s underfunded liabilities Cruz’s doomed 2013 government once, and has demonstrated that as racist. Entitlement and welfare shutdown over Obamacare’s fund- the locus of power in the Demo- reform were deemed, in the words ing into a showdown with the White cratic Party isn’t with leadership of New York Times editorialist House over federal spending. Say anymore but in the grassroots and Thomas Edsall and New York’s what you will about the reckless- their allies in left-leaning media. Jonathan Chait respectively, sub- ness of the Republicans’ legislative That kind of efficacy in such a ject matter with “racial overtones” tactics, it’s not terrorism. That kind short period of time suggests there that appeal to “highly racialized of equivalency serves as a wrong- are stronger forces at work than

Commentary 51 Ocasio-Cortez’s personality alone. In the final pages of Alberta’s Smoot Tariff Act of 1930 was “disas- Just as Democrats appear to be book, a handful of knowledgeable trous… ill-conceived.” preparing for a more recalcitrant observers forecast the rise of a third Does any of this matter? Ameri- and activist identity when Trump party—one that embraces Trump’s cans may generally be preoccupied is out of office, so, too, will Republi- fusionist brand of cultural tradi- elsewhere and more engaged by cans resume the fight for the soul of tionalism and fiscal profligacy. Per- relative trivialities, but this hardly their party. That conflict was only haps, but it would have to consume distinguishes them from the av- papered over by Trump’s victory, one or the other major party if it erage Belgian or Chinese. The and Alberta makes it plain that the were to survive. American political business of life is always more president’s grip on the GOP’s elec- institutions such as the Electoral urgent than the study of the past. toral machinery is more a product College and the way majority rule And in any case, no matter what of fear than lasting admiration. works inside the two branches their philosophical posture may be, Democrats have not transformed of Congress have preserved the Americans still walk over battle- into fiscally prudent free traders two-party dynamic by making par- fields, drive to Mount Rushmore, and foreign-policy hawks in the age liamentary democracy an impru- and have their photograph taken of Trump, and partisan dynamics dent proposition. It is, in fact, in front of the Lincoln Memorial. (to say nothing of a set of looming Trump’s GOP that more resembles As much as I dislike Ken Burns’s crises just over the horizon) ensure the third party these observers de- popular documentaries on PBS, that the two major parties will scribe, which is why the fight over they respond to some measurable not be of the same mind on these control of that existing real estate need in the American soul. fundamental issues. The forces of will become imperative again in the Enter McClay, who teaches his- political gravity alone are certain post-Trump era. The Republican tory at the University of Oklahoma, to revive the GOP’s internal debate civil war Tim Alberta chronicles in where he also directs its Center over the true merits of conservative his flawed but important book is not for the History of Liberty, and is a policy prescriptions. over. It’s only dormant. q graceful writer and prolific contrib- utor to magazines and professional journals. He believes that an un- derstanding of America’s past—the facts, ma’am, in all their beauty and He Who Is ugliness—not only enriches the present day but allows us to com- prehend it as well, even welcome the future. He is also distressed, Without Zinn as any scholar ought to be, by the evidence of public indifference to Land of Hope: An Invitation to es at Harvard, conducted a century our history. More pertinent still, the Great American Story ago, that reveal startling lapses in he approaches the American past By Wilfred M. McClay basic knowledge. The myths of from an unconventional angle. He Encounter Books, 504 pages American history—the comforting is admirably direct about his inten- fairy tales and conspiracy theories tions in writing Land of Hope: “It Reviewed by Philip Terzian and outright inventions—are as nu- means to offer to American readers merous as the facts, and frequently … an accurate, responsible, coher- HE IGNORANCE of better known. Even in the heyday of ent, persuasive, and inspiring nar- Americans about their the liberal arts on campus, history rative account of their own coun- history has a long his- was never a fashionable subject for try—an account that will inform tory. You can find sur- study. As the Communists used to and deepen their sense of the land veys of freshman class- say, it is no coincidence that the fa- they inhabit and equip them for the T mous scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day privileges and responsibilities of Philip Terzian is a a contrib- Off where the teacher is lecturing citizenship.” uting writer for the Washington uninterested students involves a With the possible exception of the Examiner and author of Architects history lesson. And an important word “inspiring,” which would have of Power: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, one, for as Wilfred M. McClay ex- been implicit, almost any survey of and the American Century. plains in Land of Hope, the Hawley- American history by any American

52 Politics & Ideas : September 2019 scholar of the past would have been academic bestsellers of our time. introduced with roughly the same The So McClay has his work cut words and sentiments. But the his- i out for him. Does he succeed? torical profession is not quite what it reader Well, he begins at the beginning— was, as McClay gently explains: the archaeological evidence of our never doubts aboriginal inhabitants—and like “Citizenship”…means a vivid and the author’s most American histories, McClay’s enduring sense of one’s full mem- tends to pass a little quickly over bership in one of the greatest perspective on the first century-and-a-half of Eu- enterprises in human history: the colonists’ ropean settlement. But this is a the astonishing, perilous, and minor complaint. His description immensely consequential story revolt, or British of America on the eve of revolution of one’s own country. Let me government in is perceptive and succinct, and emphasize the word story. Pro- capacious as well. The reader never fessional historical writing has, America, but he doubts the author’s perspective on for a great many years now, been tells the story the colonists’ revolt, or British gov- resistant to the idea of history ernment in America, but he tells as narrative…. This approach with clarity and the story with illuminating clar- seems unlikely ever to succeed, fair-mindedness. ity and, above all, fair-mindedness. if for no other reason than that The answer to ignorance is not it fails to take into account the The answer to indoctrination but knowledge. ways we need stories to speak ignorance is not This virtue in the writing of his- to the fullness of our humanity tory is not necessarily self-evident. and help us orient ourselves in indoctrination The American Revolution, like any the world. such episode, was a complicated but knowledge. matter, reaching back in history and There are a handful of distin- forward in effect; and both sides— guished exceptions, of course, but of the United States, among other one is tempted to say all sides—were McClay is too generous to his col- things—is suffused with a habitual, benighted and heroic, generous and leagues. No doubt, some past chroni- obsessive Marxism. And the heroic arbitrary, products of their various clers were intent on weaving a narrative, needless to say, has been places and time. George Washing- relentlessly heroic narrative of our reversed: Scholarship is now in- ton was not without his flaws, and history. But history as scholarship vestigative journalism, uncovering the Loyalists were not without their has always involved some measure past crimes. reasons. McClay sets all this out in of interpretation, and the scholarly There have always been rancor- crisp detail, balancing his judgment consensus of one generation is in- ous debates among historians, and in conjunction with the evidence, variably superseded by the next. schools of history are often tinc- flattering his readers to draw their You need only scan random intro- tured by dogma. But our current own conclusions. ductory essays to get the idea. After predicament is, to some degree, Which is what distinguishes reciting the works and ideas of their unprecedented. What we might this from other history texts. The predecessors, scholars will report call the pathological view of the present sits not in judgment but that they have sifted and refined United States—American history inquiry. And to the extent that we the facts and literature and arrived as a chronicle of injustice, oppres- can understand people and events at the final, incontrovertible, con- sion, inequality, violence, and little in circumstances far removed from clusion. Yesterday’s conventional else—is firmly established in the our own experience, the past is re- wisdom was abhorrent; today’s is academy and insulated against vealed in Land of Hope to the pres- unassailable. institutional dissent by the custom ent, without prejudice. The dramas Yet historians, who ought to be of tenure and the folkways of aca- and their actors—the drafting of most mindful of this conceit, seem demic publishing. To make matters the Constitution, Andrew Jackson, least aware of it. And the problem is worse, one of the seminal texts of westward expansion, John C. Cal- especially aggravated, in our time, contemporary doctrine—Howard houn, the Mexican War, Samuel by the fact that contemporary aca- Zinn’s People’s History of the United Gompers, women’s suffrage, Wood- demic wisdom—about the history States (1980)—is also one of the few row Wilson, the Great Crash, Ron-

Commentary 53 ald Reagan—are given the chance to introducing modern presumption son’s full-throated defense of Israel speak for themselves in explaining to past evidence, puts the history is that he is decidedly not on a mis- themselves to modern sensibilities. of the American republic in a new sion to represent the country as pe- This is especially useful in light by revealing its inward and rennially innocent. Rather, Israel contending with subjects—slavery outward complexity. This makes Denial serves up all the nuance that and its relative significance in na- Land of Hope important, compel- dovish groups like J Street promise tional life, the Civil War and its af- ling, essential reading. but never quite deliver. Early on termath, the condition of African “Nothing about America bet- in the book, Nelson makes quite Americans in their own country— ter defines its distinctive char- clear how anti-Semitism and anti- that routinely disrupt the histori- acter than the ubiquity of hope,” Zionism intersect with each other. cal profession, and are just as rou- he writes, “a sense that the way But he doesn’t shrink from inform- tinely distorted by ideology. This things are initially given to us can- ing the reader that anti-Semitism is is no small matter, and no small not be the final word about them, “certainly not the only motivation achievement. McClay’s skill in that we can never settle for that.” I fueling opposition to Israel.” He furnishing context to emotion, in hope he’s right. q states that “Israel discriminates against segments of those under its control,” and that “Israel’s human rights record in areas over which it exercises control is imperfect.” But his broader point is that no country Campus Lies could ever live up to the impossible standards of progressive perfection expected of Israel. Where the book excels is in providing background that will pro- About Israel voke an abundance of “aha” mo- ments from anyone horrified by the Israel Denial: clear-headed about the overlap- pernicious and unrelenting anti- Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, ping nature of anti-Zionism and Zionism present on nearly every & the Faculty Campaign Against anti-Semitism. The past decade has college campus. As a recent Barnard the Jewish State seen an increasing number of Jews student, I was witness to many acts By Cary Nelson publicly expressing their internal of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Duke University Press, 427 pages conflicts over Israel, with a growing These incidents varied in nature number of progressive Jews identi- and degree: One even included stu- Reviewed by Daniella fying as anti-Zionist, and using dents shamelessly repeating “long Greenbaum Davis their own membership in the com- live the intifada” and later attempt- munity to suggest that hatred to- ing to deny their bloodthirst by NTI-ZIONISM is ward Jews and hatred toward the pretending they were calling for thus anti-Semitism’s Jewish state are in no way linked. something other than the slaugh- moral salvation, its This is a lie. Nelson, a professor tering of innocent civilians. But the perfect disguise, its emeritus of English and Jewish strangest incident involved a stu- route to legitima- culture and society at the Univer- dent group whose connection to the ‘ tion,” writes CaryA Nelson in Israel sity of Illinois, explains how. “Anti- Israeli–Palestinian conflict was not Denial, a book about the faculty Semitism,” he notes, “enables and tenuous but rather non-existent. campaign against the Jewish state. underwrites castigation of Israel It’s called No Red Tape. NRT billed In a year that’s been rife with an old whenever it is based on practices itself as a resource and advocate for hatred rearing its ugly head in new typical of other countries, not dif- students at Columbia and Barnard and myriad ways, it’s profoundly ferent from them.” Thus when Isra- who had been sexually assaulted refreshing to see an academic so el acts in an entirely unremarkable or raped. This advertising turned fashion, Jew-hatred inspires critics out to be false. The group was inter- Daniella Greenbaum Davis, a to react as if the Jewish state has ested in aiding all victims of sexual former assistant editor of Commen- committed unspeakable horrors. abuse, it turned out, except Zionists. tary, is a writer living in New York. What’s noteworthy about Nel- At first, this point was made subtly.

54 Politics & Ideas : September 2019 No Red Tape would ally itself with But that was far from the end of tions and violent demonstrations, anti-Israel groups and sign on to the story: “Former faculty member [and] that Israel has long been anti-Israel statements. Eventually it Steven Salaita took this further depriving Palestinians of sufficient was made explicit: Being pro-Israel than anyone else, demanding that nutrients so that their children and anti-rape were, in their view, Zionists be expelled from any pro- grow up stunted.” mutually exclusive. gressive meeting on campus or Alas, Nelson’s book is slow go- As a student activist single- elsewhere. Whether working on ing. In striving for honesty, warts mindedly focused on the goings- climate change, health care, voting and all, he presents a thoroughly on at Barnard and Columbia, I rights, union organizing, or better researched but data-heavy and thought this turn of events, while race relations, groups should cast dense text. Is this book a critique gravely disappointing, was prob- out Zionists before moving for- of campus activists, whether they ably unique to our campus. Cary ward.” By the time Salaita articu- be students or professors? Is it a Nelson’s Israel Denial corrects my lated this call to action, groups like review of the principles underlying assumption. Far from being iso- No Red Tape had been performing the peace process? An analysis of lated events or one-off occurrences, this excision of Zionist students for Jewish and Arabic poetry? Israel most of the anti-Zionist activities more than a few semesters. They Denial tries to do too much all at on college campuses are part of a didn’t get there on their own. once and leaves the reader a bit much broader top-down approach Nelson goes on to tell of mod- dizzy. But in the end, this book to activism. The grassroots façade ern-day blood libels, in which anti- fills a desperate need—the need to of the anti-Israel activists is a myth, Israel professors argue that “Israel expose the bigotry of the anti-Israel and one easily exposed by even a has been harvesting the organs of academy and the thinly veiled fic- cursory analysis of the similarities Palestinians killed in terrorist ac- tions they propagate. q among each campus’s pernicious incidents of anti-Semitism and Is- rael hatred. Nelson details how and why things like the No Red Tape incident came to be. In 2014, the boycott, divestment, and sanc- tions movement partnered with The Man the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, per Nelson, “to distribute its Guidelines for Academic and Cultural Boycotts.” This document Inside Me

included a prohibition against The Man They Wanted Me to Be: one must first know where any relationship that would Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis modern traditional American have the effect of “normalizing” of Our Own Making masculinity originated—more relationships with Israeli uni- By Jared Yates Sexton specifically white, cisgender versities and other institutions. Counterpoint, 288 pages masculinity, which this book Hence… a series of boycott will focus on because the patri- components were listed, all to Reviewed by Jonathan V. Last archy that has controlled our be initiated as soon as possible. culture has been defined and Among them: academic confer- HERE IS a moment enforced by this group and ences held in Israel would be early in Jared Yates includes tenets of societal privi- prohibited; reprinting papers Sexton’s memoir when lege and white supremacy. by Israelis in US and European you think that the au- journals would be disallowed; thor might be a fool. Surely no writer worth his pink collaborative research and ex- TIt’s on page 19 where, giving readers Himalayan would string so many change and study abroad pro- a roadmap, Sexton writes that clichés together unironically. And grams should be shut down; yet, Sexton is deeply, soulfully and artists should refuse to Jonathan V. Last is executive earnest. His book is titled The Man perform in the Jewish state. editor of the Bulwark. They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Mas-

Commentary 55 culinity and a Crisis of Our Own John was a violent drunk, and Making and whatever its faults, it In Patti divorced him while Sexton is unmarked by irony. i was a young boy. Two years after the Sexton’s thesis goes like this: Sexton’s divorce, John broke into their house America’s unjust economic system and, in front of Sexton, told her that has punished working men since at thesis, America’s he was going to kill first her and least the early 20th century. In or- unjust economic then the boy. Sometime later, John der to feel better about themselves, attempted to abduct Jared by force. men viewed the realms outside of system has Patti moved on to her next hus- work as places where they were brutally band, also named John. He was due enormous amounts of defer- worse. The new husband beat her ence. This deference manifested as punished and her son. He would not allow domination: of women, of children, working men. her to work and would not give her of minorities, of everything. access to money unless she begged. This tendency to dominate was These men In one incident, Patti went to the made worse by a gendered cul- view the realms bank to get money for groceries, ture that taught men to repress and upon discovering this, the sec- their emotions and act out in outside of work ond husband forced her to go back cruel ways. Today, as the economic as places where and apologize to the teller. Eventu- system has begun to change, and ally—thankfully—she left him. straight (“cisgender”) men have they were due The next husband was named found themselves displaced, they Randy. Patti met him at the same have acted out even more cruelly. enormous bar where she had met John 2. These men—again, always white amounts of He also abused her. There is a and cisgender—are responsible for moment when Sexton recounts most, if not all, of the world’s evils: deference. that his mother asked him, “How racism, murder, climate change, would you feel if I divorced Ran- Donald Trump. women. Whenever you see cisgen- dy?” Young Sexton replies, “Please? Sexton’s efforts at creating a dered male violence, it is rooted Please divorce him?” He was seven. sociological portrait of American not in chemical or biological dif- At this point, the reader finds it manhood here are silly. For in- ferences, but in gender constructs. impossible to hold Sexton’s preju- stance, he says that one in every As evidence, he points to a study dices against him. five women in America will be sex- by one Dr. Frank McAndrew of There is a great deal more in Sex- ually assaulted. This eye-popping Knox College. Well, then, whom ton’s family history. For instance, statistic comes from the National are you going to believe? Five he claims that his grandfather was Sexual Violence Resource Center, thousand years of human his- a gambler and a drunk who once which in turn took the number tory, or Dr. Frank McAndrew from used his teenage daughter as collat- from a 2011 study by the Centers Knox College? eral in a poker game: She literally for Disease Control. This study As The Man They Wanted Me to had to flee the house to avoid being suffered from slanted methodol- Be progresses, Sexton’s own jour- forced into sex to satisfy a debt. ogy and was wildly at odds with ney takes center stage. He was born Then there is another stepfa- numbers from the Department of in 1981 to a lower-class Indiana ther, this one a Jon without the “h.” Justice. (The NSVRC document couple, Patti and John. Patti was a At age 9, Patti introduces Sexton Sexton uses also promotes the deeply irresponsible mother. John to Jon by bringing him to their widely debunked claim that one in was a monster. John had joined the home, putting a movie on the VCR five women are sexually assaulted Marines as a young man and then for the boy, and taking Jon into in college. Just so you know where thought better of it. He bullied Patti her bedroom and closing the door. they’re coming from.) Anyone who into helping him get a hardship Jon is, comparatively, a peach. He accepts this stat as a stone-cold fact discharge before being deployed. does not beat his stepson. Instead, is entirely too credulous. Which is fine. Except that, by Sex- his only fault is that police eventu- Sexton says that “science has ton’s account, he then spent the ally storm Sexton’s house and Jon proven” that men are not biologi- rest of his life rhapsodizing about winds up in jail, which causes Patti cally more prone to violence than being “a hard-ass Marine.” to dragoon her child to and from

56 Politics & Ideas : September 2019 the pen with her for visits. Thus, if the floor, in the shower, shoving And so, too, is Jared Yates Sexton. anyone has license to be obsessed each other into lockers… holding He came perilously close to suicide with the idea of toxic masculinity, them down and covering their fac- but never pulled the trigger. The it’s Jared Yates Sexton. es with genitals or forcibly undress- rate at which abused men become The problem is that he general- ing them.” Time and again, the abusers is frightening. Sexton has izes from his own tragic experi- reader wants to put an arm around not done that. Despite being raised ences as if they were standard. Sexton’s shoulder and assure him in terrible circumstances by adults They are not. For instance, the per- that this is not normal. who failed him at every turn, Sexton centage of women who marry four What Sexton truly needs if he is made it out, and even—somehow— times in fewer than 20 years is so to grapple with his past is not soci- continued to love his mother and small that the Census doesn’t even ology but philosophy. Harvey Man- find the largeness of heart to forgive track it. (The closest we can find sfield’s Manliness explains that his father. is that only 3.2 percent of women “manliness” is a neutral value—a Sexton may not realize it, but over the age of 15 have been mar- cause of both a great deal of good The Man They Wanted Me to Be is ried three or more times.) and evil in the world. Donald an expression of manly thumos. In a digression on high-school Trump may be, in a certain way, It is proof that manliness is not a sports, Sexton describes what life an example of “manliness.” So was gender construct. It is real. And it was like in his school’s locker room: Josef Stalin. But then, so was Alek- can be both toxic and a force for “Naked young men wrestling on sandr Solzhenitsyn. good. q

Commentary 57 Culture & Civilization

Mr. and Miss Words

trigue deepens. Throughout the but made their joint Broadway Of Betty Comden collaboration of Betty Comden debuts with the libretto and lyrics and Adolph Green (1917–2006) and Adolph Green to On the Town, were among the (1914–2002), it was widely believed very last survivors of the golden By Terry Teachout that the two were married. Indeed, age of the American musical. Their when they inserted characters very final show,The Will Rogers Fol- LL LONG-LIVED ar- much like themselves in their lies, opened in 1991, when Green tistic partnerships screenplay for 1953’s The Band was 77 and Comden 74 (and won come with an in- Wagon, those characters were mar- them a Tony), more than 50 years triguing touch of ried. In real life, they were—to oth- after they began writing sketches mystery. Writing is er people, in both cases happily. together in Greenwich Village. In usually A such a solitary business And if there was ever a time when all that time, neither ever dis- that the very notion of a team creat- Comden and Green were romanti- cussed their working habits save in ing viable work with a unified voice cally involved with each other, nei- opaque generalities. “Everything is can be hard to fathom. Who wrote ther let anyone else in on the secret. together,” Comden said. “We don’t what in the plays of Kaufman and Theirs was a professional part- divide the work up. We develop a Hart? Which came first in the songs nership that stretched across an mental radar, bounce lines off each of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the astounding six decades. In that other.” music or the words? And when the time, they wrote nine screenplays But while they kept their meth- partners cross the genders, the in- and worked on 18 Broadway musi- ods to themselves, Comden and cals, and the now-standard songs Green were otherwise forthcom- Terry Teachout is Commen- for which they wrote the lyrics (all ing, so much so that they even tary’s critic-at-large and the drama from their stage musicals) include starred in a two-person Broadway critic of The Wall Street Journal. “Just in Time,” “Make Someone revue, A Party with Betty Comden Satchmo at the Waldorf, his one- Happy,” “New York, New York,” and and Adolph Green (1958, revived man play about Louis Armstrong, “The Party’s Over.” in 1977), in which they sang songs has been produced off Broadway No less striking is that Comden from their films and shows and and throughout America. and Green, who not only wrote talked about their tightly entwined

58 Culture & Civilization : September 2019 lives as (in Green’s phrase) “Mr. py will have to stand as the existing The one thing she can’t get is Words and Miss Words.” This spar- source material for those wanting Rhett. kling revue, along with their TV to learn more about the careers of The end! appearances, served as a reminder Comden and Green. But it is far that they had launched their ca- from the full-scale biography they After a string of failed attempts to reers as cabaret performers, only deserve, and the enthusiastic and break into the movie business, Com- starting to write their own material uncritical Propst is unable to supply den and Green returned to New York when they found that they would analytical perspective on their stage to work on a new musical inspired by have to pay to sing songs by other shows and films—few of which, as Fancy Free, Jerome Robbins’s 1944 people. it turns out, have withstood the test ballet about sailors on leave in New Between their own high-profile of time. The reasons why this is so York, for which Bernstein had writ- careers and their work with such merit closer consideration. ten a jazzy orchestral score. Comden equally famous collaborators as Like most of the finest gold- and Green transformed Fancy Free Leonard Bernstein, Fred Astaire, en-age songwriters, Comden and into On the Town, in which three sail- Lauren Bacall, Gene Kelly, André Green were the children of Jewish ors on a 24-hour pass (one of whom Previn, Jerome Robbins, and Ro- émigrés. (Her parents were from was played by Green) find love with salind Russell, it stood to reason Poland, his from Hungary.) Both a trio of young women (one of whom that Comden and Green would grew up in middle-class families, was played by Comden). The show someday attract the attention of both fell in love with Broadway was a hit, running for 462 perfor- a biographer. Now Andy Propst and Hollywood when young, and mances and turning Bernstein, Com- has written They Made Us Happy: neither seems to have considered den, Green, and Robbins into stars. Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s any other career save in pass- On the Town was the work Musicals and Movies, whose sub- ing. They initially pursued their of a quartet of ambitious young title indicates both its scope and youthful passion in different ways. artists who were mature enough its limitations.* This book is not Comden studied acting at New to listen to and profit from the a biography per se but a narrative York University and performed in shrewd counsel of George Abbott, history of the professional lives summer-stock productions. Green, the show’s 57-year-old director. of Comden and Green, one that a talented but as yet undisciplined A hard-nosed Broadway veteran, contains only enough biographi- college dropout, appeared in shows Abbott helped Comden and Green cal detail to be intelligible. It also at Jewish adult summer camps, in expand the comic sketches that labors under a near-incapacitating the process meeting and striking had been their specialty into eve- handicap: They Made Us Happy up a lifelong friendship with Leon- ning-long arcs of dramatic tension contains no verbatim quotations ard Bernstein. and resolution. Like Bernstein and from any of its subjects’ lyrics, In 1938, Comden, Green, and a Robbins, they had been impressed scripts, or screenplays. Propst does performer who would come to be by the underlying seriousness and not mention this fact in his brief known as Judy Holliday started structural soundness of Oklaho- preface, but his further failure to a group called The Revuers that ma! (which had opened on Broad- acknowledge Adam and Amanda performed at New York’s Village way the year before) and were Green, Adolph’s son and daughter, Vanguard, attracting the notice determined to write a similarly suggests that one or both of them of newspaper columnists who integrated musical that was at bot- chose not to give him permission to were charmed by their affection- tom no less emotionally expressive reprint excerpts from their father’s ate spoofery. In one routine, they than that landmark show. work. (Adam, the theater critic of pulled the leg of the then-popular For all the screwball silliness Vogue, is reportedly writing a mem- Reader’s Digest with a song sug- of its plot, no one who saw On oir of his father.) gesting how that magazine might the Town could ignore the dark In the absence of any other ac- choose to condense classic novels shadow that World War II cast counts of the twosome—save for of the past and the bestsellers of the across the stage. Gabey, Chip, and Just in Time, the 1988 autobiog- present day. This is their three-line Ozzie have just one day in which raphy of Phyllis Newman, Green’s version of Gone with the Wind: to find their true loves before widow, and Off Stage, Comden’s own sailing off to war, and possibly 1995 memoir—They Made Us Hap- Scarlett O’Hara’s a spoiled pet, to their deaths. We now think of She wants everything that she can Comden and Green primarily as * Oxford, 288 pages get, light comedians—her character in

Commentary 59 the show was an anthropologist My Sister Eileen, a 1940 play about American life—including the im- named Claire de Loone—but they two sisters from Ohio who move migrant experience that had shaped were also equal to the challenge to Greenwich Village in search of their own early lives. Instead, they of writing the heart-piercing lyrics adventure. The show itself, which were reduced to such artistically for songs like “Some Other Time,” starred Rosalind Russell, was even null ventures as Applause, the 1970 in which the sailors and their girls more popular than On the Town, stage version of All About Eve, a remind one another of what each running for 559 performances. vehicle for Lauren Bacall to which knows all too well: “When you’re Bells Are Ringing (1956, book they contributed a well-wrought in love / Time is precious stuff— / and lyrics by Comden and Green, but unmemorable book. Even a lifetime isn’t enough.” music by Jule Styne), the story It is no less noteworthy that The commercial success of On of a woman played by Judy Hol- none of their attempts to write the Town paved the way for Com- liday who works for a New York more “seriously” was more than den and Green to work in Hol- answering service and falls in love modestly successful, least of all lywood, where they joined the with one of its subscribers, was It’s Always Fair Weather (1955, legendary MGM musical-comedy also an immense hit. It produced music by André Previn), a screen production unit headed by Ar- one standard, “Just in Time,” musical about three veterans of thur Freed. They spent the next a swinging ballad whose under- World War II who cannot come few years writing screenplays for lying optimism, expressed with to terms with postwar America. such lightweight musical confec- sweet, simple verbal economy, Except for On the Town, it was the tions as Good News (1947) and is a quintessential expression of only Hollywood musical for which The Barkleys of Broadway (1949). the songwriters’ philosophy: “For they wrote both screenplay and They also adapted On the Town for love came just in time / You found lyrics. It’s Always Fair Weather, the screen (1949) in a version co- me just in time / And changed my like such later collaborations with directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley lonely life / That lovely day.” Styne as Subways Are for Sleep- Donen from which most of Ber- With the success of Wonderful ing (1961) and Hallelujah, Baby! nstein’s score and virtually all of Town and Bells Are Ringing, Com- (1967), showed that Comden and Robbins’s choreography were cut den and Green established the Green were out of touch with the at the insistence of Louis B. Mayer, career pattern that they would fol- changes in the tone of American who hated the original show. low for the rest of their lives. Com- culture that would soon inspire Not until 1952 did Comden and den described it as follows in the Stephen Sondheim to write mu- Green hit the target squarely by script for A Party with Betty Com- sicals directly reflective of those writing an original screenplay for den and Adolph Green: “Basically, same changes. Singin’ in the Rain, whose score we are writers of musical com- Time was not quite up for the consisted of older songs by Freed edies for the stage and the screen. partners, who collaborated with and Nacio Herb Brown. Singin’ in Sometimes we write the book and Cy Coleman on two more Broad- the Rain is now widely regarded the lyrics, and sometimes just way musicals, On the Twentieth as the best original musical ever the book or just the lyrics, and Century (1978) and The Will Rog- made in Hollywood, and it estab- sometimes we write screenplay ers Follies, that were both com- lished Comden and Green as ma- and lyrics, and sometimes just the mercial hits. But neither show jor forces in the film industry—but screenplay or the lyrics, and some- has had a successful revival life, only on that industry’s terms. Hol- times we perform.” in part because their scores were lywood wanted them as screen- By then, though, their limita- in large part lackluster pastiches writers, not songwriters, so their tions had become clearer. Unlike of old-fashioned musical styles. work on The Band Wagon (1953) Richard Rodgers and Oscar Ham- Indeed, none of the musicals on drew on the songs of Howard Di- merstein II, whose musicals were which Comden and Green worked etz and Arthur Schwartz. deliberately wide-ranging in setting save for Peter Pan (1954), to which In order to pursue the other and subject matter, Comden and they contributed “additional lyr- side of their art, songwriting, they Green were primarily interested ics,” is now professionally staged had to go back to Broadway. They in writing about New York City with any regularity. Perhaps most were called in at the last minute and the entertainment industry, surprising of all, it is only in the to write lyrics for Bernstein’s no doubt because they knew about present century that On the Town replacement score to Wonderful little else and had no particular and Wonderful Town, their best Town, a 1953 musical version of desire to explore other aspects of stage musicals, have had success-

60 Culture & Civilization : September 2019 ful Broadway revivals—a tribute beings continue to fall in and out teeth, and a scraggly beard, he was to the beautifully balanced ele- of love. To hear Tony Bennett and a psychopathic serial killer avant ments of the original productions, Bill Evans turn “Some Other Time” la lettre. By his own account, before in which frivolity and feeling were into a rueful tale of missed chances he landed in New York, he freeboo- held in exact counterpoise. (“This day was just a token / Too ted around the world’s sea lanes Doubtless Betty Comden and many words are still unspoken”) is in the decades leading to the Civil Adolph Green will be remembered to know that the output of the lon- War and left a bloody wake. Hicks, longest for their work on Singin’ gest-lived writing team in the his- writes Cohen, “is the closest thing in the Rain and The Band Wagon. tory of American theater was more the New York underworld has to But even if none of their Broadway than just a barrel of laughs—and a Cain, the first killer and the first shows holds the stage, I am certain that the alchemy that made their banished man, carrying that dread that the best of their songs will con- partnership so happily durable will mark: MURDER.” tinue to be sung so long as human ever remain a joyous mystery. q That aria is characteristic of Cohen’s febrile approach to Hicks’s story, but it’s such a good yarn that even his wilder cadenzas can’t curdle the narrative. It begins in March 1860, when Hicks signs Aaargh on using the nom de mer William Johnson as first mate on the A.E. The Last Pirate of New York: crack-murder epidemic, New York Johnson. It was a midsized oyster A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the has been one endless film noir. But sloop that would sail down to Vir- Birth of a Gangster Nation who knew there were pirates, too? ginia, fetch a load of oysters paid By Rich Cohen “An 1850 police report estimat- for in gold and silver by its young Spiegel & Grau, 256 pages ed the presence of between four captain, and then return quickly hundred and five hundred pirates to New York with its perishable Reviewed by Edward Kosner in New York City,” writes Rich Co- cargo for sale at the Fulton Fish hen, the author of Tough Jews and Market. Hicks had chosen the sloop HE FIRST KNOWN other true-crime sagas, in his new because he knew that the captain, crime in what is now book. “To the police, a pirate was George Burr, had the money in gold New York City oc- any criminal who made his living and silver—more than $5,000 to- curred in the 1620s, on the water, attacking and rob- day—in a sack stowed aboard and when the Lenape In- bing ships beyond the jurisdiction that there would be only two other T dians scammed their new Dutch of the landlocked coppers....Most young crewmen to deal with. friends by selling them Manahat- river pirates were boys, twelve He wasted no time. Around mid- tan island twice. Ever since, the city to eighteen years old, divided night, a few hours after the sloop has been a bubbly cauldron of vice, among a dozen or so outfits. The sailed, he hid an axe from the pilot mayhem, and chicanery. From the Slaughter Housers worked out house at his side and approached crooked coppers of the mid-19th of Slaughter House Point; the 23-year-old Oliver Watts at the century and their adversaries, the Patsy Conroys worshipped their helm. Distracting him with a ques- Dead Rabbits, Plug-Uglies, and martyred founder; the Short Tails tion about the Jersey shore—“Is that Hudson Dusters, through the reign were known for their favorite kind Barnagat Light?”—Hicks whacked of the Jewish Kosher Nostra mob- of coat.” They competed with the him twice in the back of the neck sters such as “Lepke” Buchalter Swamp Angels, the Border Gang, with the axe. Oliver’s younger broth- and “Bugsy” Siegel, the bloody rule the Buckoos, and the Daybreak er, Smith, heard the commotion and of the Italian hoods, the Russian Boys, who struck at dawn then peered out of the cabin door. Hicks mafia in Brighton Beach, and the escaped into the sewers. asked him the same question—then Albert Hicks, the protagonist of decapitated him with a single blow, Edward Kosner is the author Cohen’s tangy new book, The Last his head rolling down the deck. of It’s News to Me, a memoir of his Pirate of New York, was no water- Then Hicks climbed down to the career as the editor of Newsweek, borne juvenile delinquent. Remark- captain’s cabin. Burr was sitting in New York, Esquire, and the New ably handsome and sturdy, with his bed, Smith’s severed head rest- York Daily News. piercing black eyes, gleaming white ing at his feet. “What’s happening?”

Commentary 61 asked the captain. “I think I see Bar- then—the O.J. of its era, especially hanged—turned out to be a pica- nagat Light,” replied Hicks. They because a New York Times report- resque masterpiece. A recalcitrant grappled until Hicks got leeway to er, Elias Smith, was embedded, as boy, he’d run away from his home swing the axe again, nearly slicing we say today, with the cops and on a Rhode Island farm at 15 and Burr’s skull in two like a cantaloupe. aided the capture. The evidence had essentially been a criminal Back on deck, Oliver Watts, amaz- against Hicks was overwhelm- ever since. First jailed for steal- ingly still alive, lunged for Hicks, ing—he was caught with the coin ing luggage at a train station, he who threw him over the side. Watts converted to cash, the captain’s escaped so often that he wound up grabbed the rail and hung on—until watch, and a daguerreotype of the spending a year in solitary confine- Hicks chopped his fingers off and beloved of one of the Watts broth- ment. Released, he signed on a he fell into the sea. Then Hicks ers. Eerily serene, he denied any whaling ship, the first of dozens of dumped the other two bodies. knowledge of the crime. He was journeys that took him around the The decks and Burr’s cabin locked up in Cell Number 8 on the world, stoking mutinies and mur- were awash in blood. Hicks tried Murderers’ Corridor in the brand- dering officers. With an equally to clean some of it up. He found new municipal jail called The bloodthirsty confederate, he ma- the captain’s money and took his Tombs, where the well-connected rauded on land, too, in the tropical watch and a few other things. He and the curious were allowed to Edens of Hawaii and Tahiti, during turned the sloop back toward New peer at him through the bars as he the gold rush at Sutter’s Mill in York and burned three holes in the awaited trial. Northern California, in Mazatlan, deck to try to sink it. But in the inky The trial was held in federal Rio de Janiero, Montevideo, and night, his boat collided with an- court because the killing took place Buenos Aires. They hit Liverpool other, losing its bowsprit and part in the Atlantic. It was a sensation, and New Orleans, too. Later, he of a mast. While the captain of the too, remarkably formal and consci- commandeered his own pirate other vessel tried to figure out what entiously conducted. There were ship, buccaneering from Gibraltar was going on, Hicks grabbed his no bodies of the victims, so the to the Dardanelles. loot, jumped into the A.E Johnson’s prosecution could not charge Hicks He stole uncounted treasure yawl—its rowboat—and headed for with murder. Instead, the U.S. at- and spent it all. Had he killed 20 Staten Island three miles away. The torney chose piracy, which conve- men, 30, 50? Hicks couldn’t be ghost ship was eventually towed niently carried the death penalty. sure, but he knew why he did what back to the city, the nightmarish Hicks sat placidly next to his lawyer he did. It was all revenge—he had scene of the crime scrutinized by while the prosecution called 27 been driven to the dark side by the police, and the manhunt for the witnesses. The defense called only the way the world had tormented murderous pirate was on. two. The jury took seven minutes to him as a youth. There had actually The pursuit was textbook pro- convict him, and he was promptly been five on board the A.E. John- cedural, circa 1860. No DNA tests, sentenced to be hanged on Bedloe’s son that fateful night. “The devil fingerprints, suspect photos, com- Island in the harbor, later the site of was the fifth personage,” he said. puter databases—just shoe leather the Statue of Liberty. “He possessed me and urged me and good luck. Hicks was certain That turned out not to be the on to do it.” he would never be caught or tried climax of the story. Hicks finally real- Cohen seems compelled to in- because he’d deep-sixed the bodies of ized he was doomed and his serenity vest Hicks with the kind of cultural his victims. He moved about, buying melted. He became the protégé of a and historic resonance he doesn’t rounds of drinks in every dive, carry- Jesuit priest celebrated for minister- deserve. “He was the soul of Amer- ing his loot over his shoulder in a big ing to the damned. He submitted ica, courageous yet grotesque,” Co- duffel or hiring an urchin to heft it. himself to have his head examined hen writes. “Because Albert Hicks Detectives found enough witnesses by a leading phrenological charla- was a key figure, transitional, to establish that Hicks was the killer tan. He cut a deal with P.T. Barnum to hinge—he belongs with Captain and to trace his escape route, eventu- have a life mask cast for a wax figure Kidd and John Gotti, the last pi- ally by way of trains and ferries to to be displayed at Barnum’s museum rate...but also the first gangster... Providence, R.I., where he holed up right after his execution. And, to pro- the danger and excitement of the in a rooming house with his myopic vide for his wife and son, he decided city in the shape of a human being.” wife and baby son. to confess for a tell-all book. As Freud never said, “Sometimes a The story was a broadsheet Hicks’s life story—at least the cigar is just a cigar.” And sometimes sensation—there were no tabloids book published on the day he was a good yarn is just a good yarn.q

62 Culture & Civilization : September 2019 HOLLYWOOD COMMENTARY continued from page 64 with precocious teen ally creative and brilliant television, of course, but it’s kids in overfurnished living rooms. And that’s also also turned off a lot of people. when the median age of a detective on a cop show Which means there are lots and lots of eyeballs in went from 56 to 19. A lot of us remember that as the Red America desperate for something to watch. The first time we noticed that everyone on television was television industry, which has spent the past 25 younger than we were. years ignoring huge portions of the American audi- It was a dark time. The good news is, it’s about to ence thanks to the advertising marketplace, is about be over. to discover that there are millions of churchgoing As subscription services like Netflix and Hulu— people with $11 burning a hole in the pockets of their and the soon-to-debut Disney+ and plus-sized pants. Time to load HBO Max, as well as a half-dozen up the production schedule with others—start to get bigger, the brain The television industry, some patriotic, Christian, sexu- trusts who run Hollywood will sud- which has spent the past ally modest fare! An underserved denly rethink the whole eyeball audience is an audience ready to thing. By eliminating advertising 25 years ignoring huge subscribe. Over the next few years, from its business model, a subscrip- portions of the American the phrase “I can’t go to New York tion service charges for the enter- with your show on the schedule” tainment product itself. Depending audience thanks to the will be replaced by “I can’t go to on your plan, Netflix charges about advertising marketplace, is Oklahoma City with your show on $11 a month. Disney+, the new ser- about to discover that there the schedule.” vice from Disney, plans to launch in What’s coming is the End of the November at about $6 a month, go- are millions of churchgoing Tyranny of Demographics. All eye- ing to about $11 if you add Hulu and people with $11 burning a balls will once again be the same. ESPN to the mix. For a while, anyway. It doesn’t matter at all if the $11 hole in the pockets of their The problem is: Hollywood al- comes from a wrinkled, decrepit plus-sized pants. ways needs more money. The fea- pair of eyeballs with the Angel of ture-film business model is a mix Death knocking at the door, or from of ticket sales (a huge portion of gender-fluid hipster eyeballs in skinny jeans making which goes to the theater owners), ancillary markets latte art. Eleven bones is 11 bones. (toys, games), and the lifetime value of the movie in In the same way, it doesn’t matter at all anymore the library. The television business model is a mix of if the $11 is coming from a sophisticated media con- advertising, subscriptions, and reruns. sumer in a plugged-in elite enclave or from a poorly The key is the word “mix.” The subscription model dressed rube heading to a mega-church off the inter- of the streaming services is clean and efficient, but state. Eleven clams is 11 clams. Red States and Blue there’s only one source of revenue. What’s the lifetime States use identical Green Money. value of a Netflix series? Where does Hulu wring more The problem, as my network executive friend might cash from its past series? Which is just a fancy way of have put it, is this: The sophisticated media consumer asking the essential question for every business every- in the Blue Zone is already the target of every major where: How do we get more money? media company in the business. That consumer is al- What Hollywood will rediscover, eventually, is ready bombarded with messages to subscribe to Hulu advertising. What will emerge is what looks like the and HBO and Netflix and Disney+ and Amazon Prime television business of the 1980s—a blend of pay-TV with and Apple Television. He/him or she/her has been tar- no commercials and television with commercials and a geted with shows that push traditional boundaries of monthly fee to enjoy both. It will feel new and old at the language, sexual acts on screen, religious sensibilities, same time, which is really what Hollywood is all about. even basic patriotism. The result has been a lot of re- And we’ll be back to eyeballs. q

Commentary 63 HOLLYWOOD COMMENTARY The Bluest Eyeball

ROB LONG

HE PROBLEM,” a network president said skewing audience. Although our show had a lot of to me when he was explaining why he was eyeballs, they were of the wrong kind, the kind with ‘Tabout to cancel my show, “is this: I can’t go maybe a cataract. The network president was trying to to New York with your show on the schedule.” paint a picture to the ad buyers of a network that was In the television business, “going to New York” is getting younger and hipper, and having our show on shorthand for appearing at sales presentations in New the schedule was ruining the vibe. “The combined ages York in early May. At the “upfronts,” as they’re called, of your two stars,” he said, “is greater than all of the television networks have traditionally unveiled their Friends put together.” Which wasn’t strictly true, but autumn schedules for hundreds of advertising execu- was, as they say in advertising, true enough. tives—people tasked with buying commercial time for When the television industry began, all eyeballs their clients—amid a lot of optimistic hoopla and were equal, and what you wanted was a lot of them fanfare and tent-revival-style enthusiasm. The goal is staring at your show. Eventually, as audience research to entice advertisers to pay cash for commercial spots and marketing science became more sophisticated, up front, before the shows have actually premiered, at eyeballs became divided into a lot of different sorts— which point the (few) hits and the (mostly) bombs are young eyeballs, urban eyeballs, 18–35 eyeballs, 25–54 apparent. eyeballs, female eyeballs, male-skewing eyeballs, you The trick is to promise enough success to get the get the picture. Advertisers paid more for some eye- money up front, but not too much to get into trouble balls and less for others, and the programming deci- later when it all turns out to have been lies. This is also sions of each network reflected the complicated mar- the trick to most of life, when you think about it. ketplace of who wanted to sell what to whom. The network president who was about to cancel For instance, when I was developing a series in the my show couldn’t go in front of the advertising com- early 1990s, I was told that the show’s cast was too munity in New York with my show on the schedule young! Imagine! What I needed to do, I was informed, because my show was guilty of a capital crime in the was put a middle-aged woman somewhere in the en- broadcast television business. We had a lot of 50- and semble—they were the key decisionmakers in every 60-year-olds tuning in each week. “You skew old,” is household, they chose what products the household how the chief programmer put it to me, in a tone so would buy, and they decided which shows the house- disgusted and repelled that I instinctively checked the hold was going to watch. Barely two years later— soles of my shoes for dog poop—and advertisers didn’t roughly around the time NBC premiered Friends—the want that. eyeballs of middle-aged women were tossed aside. Ad- What they wanted then were shows about young vertisers wanted newer, less sunken eyeballs. people, preferably single and promiscuous, living in That’s roughly when television comedies started urban locations, acting out the fantasy of their young- to be about young, sexy people being young and sexy in the city in young, sexy apartments instead of about Rob Long has been the executive producer of six TV middle-aged people being middle-aged in the suburbs series. continued on page 63

64 Culture & Civilization : September 2019 YOU DESERVE TO KNOW THE TRUTH... What Is “Palestinian Territory”? Mainstream media often refer to “Palestinian territory,” yet there is no such legal entity. This land—Judea-Samaria—is disputed and awaits a peace agreement. The phrase “occupied Palestinian territory,” implies east of the Jordan River was ceded to the Arabs and illegal Israeli control over the ancient Jewish heartland. later became Jordan. In fact, Israel’s presence in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) These dispositions of land were accepted by nearly all is rooted in Biblical history, population realities, agree- nations and generally by the native authorities of these ments with the Palestinians and international law. territories. As such, their borders have been accepted What are the facts? as international law. While five Arab armies attacked Israel’s Mandatory rights in 1948, Israel repulsed them Israel’s administration of Judea-Samaria, far from being in its War of Independence. Israel took full control of illegal, has a powerful basis. In fact, Israel is in full com- the Mandatory territory during its Six-Day War against pliance with international law: It is not occupying others’ invading Arab armies in 1967. land, its settlements are lawful, and Palestinians have no There is no legal prohibition against Israeli settlements documented legal claim to this territory. Israel’s authority in Judea-Samaria. While the U.N. has issued many in Judea-Samaria is based on four unassailable grounds: resolutions contradicting the Mandate for Palestine— 1) past Jewish presence; 2) current Jewish presence; 3) opposing Israeli settlements in Judea-Samaria—the international mandates; and 4) international U.N. cannot create international law. conventions. While sovereignty over these Israeli presence 4. Israel complies with the 4th territories is disputed, this will ideally be Geneva Convention. The 4th Geneva resolved through negotiations between Israel in Biblical lands Convention holds that no conquering and the Palestinians. is based in state can forcibly move its population 1) Jews have a 3,000-year history in the into the conquered state. While some Biblical homeland. The Bible provides international law. argue that this convention makes Israeli strong documentation of a Jewish presence, settlements illegal, this falls apart under including the Jewish Kingdom of David in 1000 BCE. scrutiny. First, Israel has never forcibly moved Israelis Biblical archeology confirms that Jews have lived in the into Judea-Samaria—the lands it conquered during the cities of Hebron, Shiloh, Jericho, Bethlehem and Jerusalem 1967 War, in which it defeated attacking Arab armies. in the heart of Judea-Samaria continuously for some 3,000 All immigration to this area by Jews was voluntarily years, except during Jordan’s illegal occupation, 1948-1967, initiated by individuals. Second, Judea-Samaria was not when Jews were ethnically cleansed. a state when Israel conquered it—rather it was occupied 2) Jews are the majority population in 60% of by Jordan, whose sovereignty over this land was generally Judea-Samaria. Around 600 CE, Arabs invaded and not accepted by the world community. Even more colonized what was then called Palestine. While today important, following the Six-Day War, Jordan gave up all Arabs are the majority population in about 40% of claims to Judea-Samaria. Thus, Israel fully complies with Judea-Samaria, Israeli Jews are the majority in some 60% the 4th Geneva Convention, and its settlements are legal. of this territory—the so-called Area C, designated by the Attempts to resolve questions of sovereignty in Judea- Oslo II Accords, These Accords, agreed to by Israel and Samara with loaded terms like “illegal occupation” or the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1993-95, give “Palestinian lands” are disingenuous. Israeli presence in Israel full control over administration and security in this Biblical lands is based firmly in history and international region. No Palestinians have been forcibly removed from law. “Ownership” in these territories must be resolved Area C, and land on which Israelis live there does not between the parties—though to date, the Palestinians have violate private Palestinian land rights. rejected all offers of land for peace. 3) Israel has sovereign rights in Judea-Samaria This message has been published and paid for by by international law. About 500 years ago—between 1512-1520—the Middle East was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans ruled this huge territory until World War I (1918), when they were Facts and Logic About the Middle East defeated by the Allies. Allies Britain and France helped P.O. Box 3460, Berkeley, CA 94703 create new Middle East nation-states through a series James Sinkinson, President of “mandates,” which were approved by the League of Gerardo Joffe (z"l), Founder Nations, pre-cursor of today’s United Nations. In 1922, FLAME is a tax-exempt, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Its purpose the Mandate for Palestine gave Jews rights to immigrate, is the research and publication of facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the settle and buy land for a national home between the United States, Israel and other allies in the region. You tax-deductible Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Land to the contributions are welcome. To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org INTRODUCED AND HONORED BY