MARCH 5, 2018 $5.99

CHICAGO, THEN AND NOW by JOSEPH EPSTEIN

WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM Contents March 5, 2018 • Volume 23, Number 25

2 The Scrapbook Duchumps for Duchamp, a new reason to visit Scotland & more 5 Casual Joseph Bottum brings grim tidings 6 Editorial Rage and Misery 9 Comment The Crusader goes to his reward by Matt Labash The Angela Davis papers: why would anyone want them? by Philip Terzian Look who’s stupid now by Fred Barnes 5 Articles

14 An Evangelical Saint by Barton Swaim Billy Graham, 1918-2018

15 The Monster Next Door by Ethan Epstein Serial killers and school shooters

18 How to Dig Up Dirt from the Russians by Eric Felten The Clinton professionals versus the Trump amateurs

20 Can California Lurch Leftward? by Tony Mecia 14 The Resistance targets seven seats in the Central Valley and Los Angeles suburbs

22 Will There Always Be an Italy? by Christopher Caldwell The question hanging over voters’ heads Features

25 Chicago, Then and Now by Joseph Epstein It is the best of times, it is the worst of times

32 The Mystery Martyr by Emanuele Ottolenghi Who was Hezbollah’s Samer Atoui, and why was he mourned around the world? 15 Books & Arts

38 The Man Who Lost the Movies by Carl Rollyson William Fox was a motion-picture pioneer. Why is he all but unknown today?

41 Olympic Surprises by Tom Perrotta Shaun White’s comeback, Mikaela Shiffrin’s nerves, and more from the Winter Games

43 Turmoil and Travel by Danny Heitman Chateaubriand’s memoirs wittily recall the figures and crises of his day

45 Novel Critic by Malcolm Forbes What J. M. Coetzee sees when he turns his eyes to others’ work

47 Marvel Does Bond by John Podhoretz With Black Panther, an old Hollywood formula gets a dash of superhero

41 48 Parody Jared loses his privileges COVER: HAROLD BEACH / CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM / GETTY THE SCRAPBOOK Readymade Duchumps y acclamation the Art Institute whether “art” even exists at all. It is B of Chicago is already one of a rabbit hole from which art critics— the great museums of the world, but and artists, for that matter—have not earlier this month it laid hands on a escaped for decades. work that its director called a “trans- You can never tell with ­Duchamp, formative acquisition.” The work is who was (let us say) a very unusual by the absurdist painter-provocateur- man, but it seems likely his ready- conman Marcel Duchamp (1887- mades contained a healthy dose 1968). The New York Times puts the of satire, a way of sending up the price tag at $12 million, maybe more. stuffed-shirt curators, critics, and gal- That’s a lot of transformation. lery owners of his own day. One of The museum’s deputy director Duchamp’s friends summed up the could scarcely contain her excitement. master’s thinking like this: “When The work, she said, is a “crux” in the [he] discovered the ready-mades [he] history of modernism. “It’s a pivotal sought to discourage aesthetics. . . . point, it’s a rupture . . . it’s an icon.” [He] threw the bottle-rack and the It’s a bottle rack is what it is, a homey urinal into their faces as a challenge appliance used by the French to dry and now they admire them for their bottles after cleaning. Not so long aesthetic beauty.” ago you could find one in any Pari- There is a word for a person who sian department store. Indeed, that’s falls for stunts like this: chump. where Duchamp, in 1914, found the In Chicago we could call them objet d’art titled “Bottle Rack,” which ‘Bottle Rack’ ­Duchumps. No arts administrator is, as we’ve explained, a bottle rack. A today wants to be thought of as a $12 million bottle rack. ventilator, a dog comb, and—most stuffed shirt, of course. If anything, Duchamp called such mass-man- sublime, most famous of all!—a uri- since Duchamp’s time, the compe- ufactured household objects “ready- nal, which he titled “Fountain.” By tition is to see who can most thor- mades.” He plucked the readymades presenting readymades as art, say oughly lay waste to what remains of from their everyday uses, put his sig- art critics and historians, Duchamp definable artistic standards. It cost nature to them, and displayed them subverted the very notion of “art,” them $12 million, but the ­Duchumps as works of art. His other readymades thereby raising in the minds of deep at the Art Institute have won this include a snow shovel, a chimney thinkers the pointless question of race hands down. ♦

Visit Scotland, but the results can’t be reliably veri- countless road signs and T-shirts and fied. We think, for example, of the bumper stickers since 1969—has ever It’s Dementia-Friendly television ads for American states as persuaded a single lover to vacation he Scrapbook takes a fairly vacation spots: Minnesota might be a in Virginia instead of, say, Maine or T dim view of the field known as terrific place for a vacation, the Poconos? “economic development.” We’re not but has anyone ever taken The logic of government opposed to governments facilitating the family there as a result tourism branding has now economic growth when they can, but of the “Only in Minne- been taken to a new level there are very few things government sota” TV ads? The phrase in Scotland. You wouldn’t can do, proactively, to spur economic “Virginia is for lovers” think Scotland—the home activity—though we can think of is catchy, for sure, and of golf and single-malt many, many things government can the The Scrapbook can whisky, the land of Highland refrain from doing to achieve that goal. say with some authority clans and ancient castles and Among the most risible efforts in that Virginia is a very Edinburgh’s Royal Mile— this field are attempts to “brand” states nice place for lovers, needed much help in or other localities. Millions of dollars but we wonder if the the way of tourism every year (so we would guess) are state’s famous tourism advertising. But

spent on these branding campaigns, slogan—displayed on politicians and BOTTOM HAND: BIGSTOCK

2 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 bureaucrats can always find a reason to spend money that doesn’t belong to them on dubious projects whose suc- cess can’t be corroborated. Just so, a Tory member of the Scottish Parliament recently pro- posed giving some tourist attrac- tions “dementia-friendly” status. “A national register of attractions” could encourage “businesses to improve their facilities, positioning Scotland on the tourism map as a dementia- friendly destination,” we learn from the Glasgow Herald. Says MSP Rachael Hamilton: “Creating a list of accredited demen- tia-friendly tourist sites would be of benefit to everyone. It would make a day out or short holiday for those living with the condition far more accessible and enjoyable, and of course would be of benefit to their carers. And it would immediately open the market to 1.7 million people in the U.K., if you consider each visi- tor with dementia would likely have a carer accompanying too.” What sort of things would make a site “dementia-friendly,” we wonder? “Dementia-friendly improvements to attractions could include quiet rooms for patients to take ‘time out’ during a visit, clearer signs for directions and advice, and changing the colour of doors to make them easier to locate.” The aim of going after dementia patients’ money strikes us as pretty instance of bureaucrats believing they He praised its rigorous academics and unseemly, but the scheme’s support- make important contributions to eco- one particular course, the decades-old ers are straightforward about it. “The nomic growth by dreaming up pre- mandatory freshman humanities class number of people whose lives are posterous publicity campaigns. But that covers ancient Greece, Rome, impacted by dementia make up a sig- this is the sort of absurdity to which and the Bible. Because nothing nificant part of the tourism market,” government-driven “economic devel- good lasts in this fallen says Jim Pearson, director of policy and opment” inevitably tends. world, Reed has now research at Alzheimer’s Scotland. “It If these official do-gooders will just announced plans makes business sense to be able to see if do their jobs—fund basic government to gut that foun- you can offer a good and positive expe- services and ensure public money dational course, rience for those visitors. Baby boomers doesn’t get wasted or stolen—we wager dubbed Humani- are the richest generation, and that’s that plenty of dementia patients will ties 110 (“Hum the group coming to the age where vacation in Scotland, and plenty of lov- 110” for short), in dementia is an increasing concern.” ers will find their way to Virginia. ♦ deference to the stu- Oh, good grief. The idea that an dent agitators known assemblage of politicos in Edinburgh as Reedies Against Racism. (It’s rac- thinks the families and caregivers of Reed College Update ist, you see, to read Aristotle.) dementia patients across Britain and few months ago in these pages, Rather than provide a coherent, the rest of Europe actually need their A our Ethan Epstein rhapsodized holistic course in the ancient Mediter- help in determining where to vaca- about his alma mater, Reed College ranean, the school announced, Hum tion is laughable—a sadly typical (“My Old School,” November 10). 110 will now be broken into “four

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 3 modules . . . each examining a separate native tongue. Perhaps that’s why this city during a significant period of his- city loves her. She hugs schoolchil- torical change.” At least one “module” dren,” Times contributor Margaret will cover a city in the Americas. As Renkl wrote. “She looks genuinely one friend of The Scrapbook, another joyful at city parades and festivals.” www.weeklystandard.com Reed alum, noted acidly, “Ikea furni- Oh, and did we mention her politics Stephen F. Hayes, Editor in Chief ture is modular. Versailles is not.” are really liberal? That’s another rea- Richard Starr, Editor Fred Barnes, Robert Messenger, Executive Editors Reed, then, is becoming more aca- son we shouldn’t get carried away. Christine Rosen, Managing Editor demically malleable, following in the The Scrapbook is trying to imagine Peter J. Boyer, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Matt Labash, tradition of other liberal arts colleges how Times editors and readers would National Correspondents that have slowly gutted their core cur- react if this were a sexual and politi- Jonathan V. Last, Digital Editor Barton Swaim, Opinion Editor ricula. A strategic merger with Brown cal role reversal: “Well, sure Donald Adam Keiper, Books & Arts Editor had not yet been announced as we Trump’s lawyer paid off a porn star Kelly Jane Torrance, Deputy Managing Editor Eric Felten, Mark Hemingway, went to press. ♦ in a way that may or may not have John McCormack, Tony Mecia, run afoul of election laws, but let’s not Philip Terzian, Michael Warren, Senior Writers David Byler, Jenna Lifhits, Alice B. Lloyd, get bogged down in details when the Staff Writers ‘Full Emotional Rachael Larimore, Online Managing Editor stock market is way up as a result Hannah Yoest, Social Media Editor Availability’ of his leadership. He’s making Ethan Epstein, Associate Editor Chris Deaton, Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editors or a few weeks now, Nash- America great again!” Priscilla M. Jensen, Assistant Editor ville mayor Megan Barry Finally, there is an unusu- Andrew Egger, Haley Byrd, Reporters F Holmes Lybrand, Fact Checker has been embroiled in quite ally overdone appeal to our Adam Rubenstein, Grant Wishard, Editorial Assistants the sex scandal. It seems common humanity by the Philip Chalk, Design Director Barbara Kyttle, Design Assistant Barry has been engaged in author, which begins to Contributing Editors an affair with the police sound less like the usual Claudia Anderson, Max Boot, Joseph Bottum, Tucker Carlson, Matthew Continetti, Jay Cost, sergeant who was the New York Times fare and Terry Eastland, Noemie Emery, Joseph Epstein, David Frum, David Gelernter, Reuel Marc Gerecht, head of her security more like a Cosmo con- Michael Goldfarb, Daniel Halper, detail. (Both are mar- fessional: “Thirty-two Mary Katharine Ham, Brit Hume, Thomas Joscelyn, Frederick W. Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, ried.) For an added layer years ago I, too, fell in Yuval Levin, Tod Lindberg, Micah Mattix, Victorino Matus, P. J. O’Rourke, of unseemliness, Barry love with a man I worked John Podhoretz, Irwin M. Stelzer, Charles J. Sykes seems to have taken a lot with. . . . I still remember William Kristol, Editor at Large of taxpayer-funded trips the way the temperature in MediaDC that included just her and that tiny grad-school office Ryan McKibben, Chairman Stephen R. Sparks, President & Chief Operating Officer her security chief. changed when he walked Jennifer Yingling, Audience Development Officer Kathy Schaffhauser, Chief Financial Officer The Barry scandal in the door, the way the David Lindsey, Chief Digital Officer hadn’t received much cov- heat radiating from him Alex Rosenwald, Director, Public Relations & Branding Mark Walters, Chief Revenue Officer erage outside of Tennessee. charged every atom in my Nicholas H. B. Swezey, Vice President, Advertising T. Barry Davis, Senior Director, Advertising (If you surmise this means body with desire, the way Jason Roberts, Digital Director, Advertising she’s not a Republican, you I thought I would not sur- Paul Plawin, National Account Director Andrew Kaumeier, Advertising Operations Manager surmise right.) That is, until vive another second if I Brooke McIngvale, Manager, Marketing Services the New York Times pub- couldn’t touch his skin,” Advertising inquiries: 202-293-4900 Subscriptions: 1-800-274-7293 lished a remarkable op-ed she writes. “We all know The Weekly Standard (ISSN 1083-3013), a division of Clarity Media Group, defending her, “Nashville’s this heat. It can reduce is published weekly (except the first week in January, fourth week in March, Mayor Has Stumbled. Who people to ashes. It can first week in July, and third week in August) at 1152 15th St., NW, Suite Megan— 200, Washington, DC 20005. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, Will Cast the First Stone?” yet another make us take incredibly DC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 421203, Palm Coast, FL 32142-1203. 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4 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 CASUAL

ghosts as pale and insubstantial, but in Grim Tidings grief—the real thing, the fierce incon- solable anguish at the death of a loved one—the dead seem more tangible than the living. The absent more mate- f you have lived almost any kind can start to seem like a series of ceno- rial than the present. In the inverted of active life, after age 50 some- taphs, the alumni magazines a set of world of sorrow, the missing person one you know dies every day. catafalques, the church bulletins an exists in sharp detail, and the ordi- Not necessarily someone you array of plaques. nary world retreats: a dull, gray tabes- Iknew well. Not necessarily a spouse, You sat next to one of those lost cence. When we mourn, the dead are a child, a parent—one of those acquaintances at a mutual friend’s not ghostly. The rest of reality is what whose death is like a part of yourself, dinner party, out in the suburbs. You comes to seem unreal. crushed and torn away. But someone talked with another at a conference, That is not quite what we feel in you knew, yes: an acquaintance, a then ran into him again, surpris- the dying-away of acquaintances. Not familiar name and face, a hand shook ingly, at the wedding of a colleague’s quite the experience of the daily news and a meeting remembered. of death. We do not mourn, in You worked with one of them the full sense of that brutal word, for a while, maybe; not friends, at the death of those we did exactly, just officemates and col- not know well. We are merely leagues, but still the kind of per- bereaved—bereft of a small por- son whose funeral you know you tion of the world as we remember should get dressed up for. Drive it. Saddened. Lessened. And the across town to attend. Another obituary pages are the measure of you knew from church, every our lessening. Sunday for years. Yet another The answer, of course, is not to from neighborhood association read the obituary pages. My father meetings. Another from your was a great believer in this solu- children’s softball league. tion. In these more recent days Even the butcher. You weren’t of email and push notices, Twit- best buddies or anything. Still, ter and Facebook, avoiding news you got along in an easy kind of proves more difficult, but you way, always smiling a greeting can probably keep yourself out of at each other, trading some quip the loop, if you try hard enough. down at the grocery store while Keep yourself in the dark. you looked at the lamb chops. Unfortunately, the fact of daily Then one day you realize that loss remains true even when we you haven’t seen the man for a don’t know it. In the highest of while, so you ask after him. What a son. You’d read something another moral senses, this may be the most vile haunting phrase English gives us: had written, seen her in the news, and portion of the human condition—that to ask after. And you learn that he’s been introduced twice—and were to live is to have to see others die. But gone. Just gone. Slipped away the surprised that she’d remembered even in a lesser sense, it’s an ugly thing. month before. your name. You had a drink with yet To age is to watch the world erode, the And then there are the older peo- another, whenever he was passing people we knew slipping away. Every ple you admired in your field: the through town. And though you didn’t day, another one. white-hairs, the established figures spend enough time together to have To dwell on the thought . . . but you felt honored to meet as you were what might honestly be called a friend- then, we don’t dwell on it, do we? We finding your way. They begin to fall ship, you took to each other. Took to can’t and still function. So we don’t, away in flurries when you reach mid- each other, another of those haunting which is undoubtedly the healthy dle age. Every week or so, another obit- English phrases. You shared a mild and wise thing to do. But I heard uary. Every month or so, another wake affinity: the fond acquaintanceship some news last night about an old to dress for. that is busy people’s simulacrum of the acquaintance. The old news, heard Mostly, however, it’s just the ordi- deeper friendship for which they lack again and again, and I feel as though nary procession: the hearses that time or proximity. my skin has worn away. besiege us, the funerals that blacken Genuine grief would turn the world

LUCIUSCOMMONS our days. The high-school newsletters inside out, if it could. We speak of Joseph Bottum

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 5 EDITORIAL Rage and Misery

n February 14, a deeply troubled young man ends. We tend to agree with them. Others may oppose new named Nikolas Cruz walked into the Marjory gun laws out of fear that the NRA will run ads against them O Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, or fund an opponent, but that is a routine part of electoral Florida. Cruz, 19, took an AR-15 rifle out of a black duf- politics. It applies to the farm lobby and the environmental fel bag and began firing at students in the hallways and in lobby and every other special interest group in Washington. classrooms. In all, he murdered 17 people and injured 14 None of these groups has an unlimited ability to “bank- others. He was arrested later that day, having briefly escaped roll” candidates. Whatever clout single-issue groups have by blending in with fleeing students. He awaits trial in the is largely a reflection of the popular support for their side. main Broward County jail. If members of Congress lis- As in similar mass shoot- ten to the gun lobby, it is ings in recent years, law because large numbers of enforcement was aware of their constituents (a) feel the danger posed by Cruz. strongly about the issue of In this case, a caller to the gun control and (b) are not tipline of the FBI’s Miami sympathetic to new regu- field office had described lation. Single-issue groups Cruz’s “gun ownership, like the NRA do not create desire to kill people, erratic supporters; they either have behavior, and disturbing them or they do not. The social media posts, as well as NRA has them. the potential of him conduct- Gun-control supporters ing a school shooting.” The A post-shooting rally at the Florida State Capitol on February 21 like to point out that a major- bureau failed to take action. ity of Americans tell pollsters The response of most Democrats and the mainstream news they favor stricter gun laws—a Quinnipiac poll conducted media, however, is not to ask how law enforcement officers just after the Parkland shooting indicates that 66 percent failed so spectacularly to intercept an obvious threat, but, of registered voters favor stricter guns laws. Such polls are with flawless predictability, to fix their attention on the one driven as often by sentiment as by fixed opinion. Telling a question that admits of no political solution and offers no pollster that, yes, you favor stricter gun laws is a way of say- hope of stopping lunatic killers like Cruz: the laws govern- ing you wish Parkland hadn’t happened. When it comes to ing gun ownership in the United States. debating specific proposals, however, the people who care The focus of left-liberal animus is, as it always is after most deeply about the issue—the people who base their votes mass shootings, the National Rifle Association. Rarely if and their financial contributions on it—want to know exactly ever have we seen so much power and influence attributed how proposed regulations will stop actual gun crimes. to a single organization. If you knew nothing about Ameri- And that’s a question gun-control proponents have can politics and read the Washington Post or the New York trouble answering. We are open to the possibility that gun Times or watched MSNBC after the Parkland tragedy, you laws need to be changed or updated from time to time. This would conclude that the NRA—or a more nebulous entity magazine favors a ban on “bump stocks,” the device that called “the gun lobby”—holds Svengali-like powers over turns semiautomatic rifles into something close to machine the nation’s political leaders. guns. But the debate over gun ownership—if debate is the The NRA and other gun-rights groups devote about as right word—generally only takes place after a psychopath much to lobbying as many other special-interest groups do. carries out his satanic dream. Rejiggering gun laws is not Members of Congress are free to ignore them, and many do. a rational way to respond to the determined deeds of mani- Most of those who cast their votes against new regulations acs. Should the state of Florida or Congress raise the age at on firearms do so for principled reasons, not financial or which you can buy certain kinds of rifles? The question crassly political ones: Many oppose new gun laws because is not an absurd one. What is absurd is the idea that this

they don’t believe these laws will accomplish their stated or similar laws would dissuade someone like Nikolas Cruz MOORE / GETTYDON JUAN

6 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 from carrying out the rampage on which he had set his than it was 40 or 50 years ago. Yet mass shootings weren’t twisted mind. anything like a routine part of the news cycle in the way Surely, though, something can be done. they have become. Why the change? Why has murdering Let us grant the ineradicable existence of America’s strangers with a gun become an attraction for a certain gun culture; millions of ordinary Americans own and kind of warped soul? enjoy guns, making comparisons to Scotland or Finland Surely part of the answer is the obsessive and emotive worse than useless. Let us grant, too, that many progres- coverage given to these incidents. The dozens of stories sives’ unstated aim—a full-on gun ban—is a political and by every major news outlet, the handwringing of edito- practical impossibility. Few Democrats will even admit rialists and commentators, the interviews with the fam- that they would prefer to get rid of the Second Amend- ily members of victims and with gun activists, the press ment, and none will propose it any time soon. conferences by law enforcement, the virtue-signaling by Let us grant all that. But we should also admit that politicians, the endless arguments between talking heads these newsmaking mass shootings are becoming more fre- on news programs, the lavish and complex infograph- quent and more disturbing. Ignoring the tendentious sta- ics splashed across the papers—the whole neurotic busi- tistics on gun violence perpetrated by the New York Times ness goes on for days and days. After Parkland, we seem and other left-liberal outlets—the Times includes every- to have introduced a new element: impassioned teenagers thing from suicides to pellet-gun “shootings” in its “gun who demand to be heeded, not because they’ve studied the violence” tolls—every right-minded American senses that problem and have ideas to contribute, but simply on the something is wrong. In October, Stephen Paddock killed grounds that the victims were teenagers and so are they. 58 in Las Vegas. A month later, Devin Patrick Kelley These episodes of rage and misery over a problem that killed 26 in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Now 17 has no near-term political solution seem almost calcu- are dead in Parkland, Florida. That another bloodbath will lated to encourage yet more sordid souls to come forward happen soon seems certain. in gruesome bids for fame. The news media may at some But the increased frequency of these diabolical acts point grow weary of giving these murderers what they itself would seem to suggest that the availability of guns crave. For now, we mourn the dead, noting only that fur- is not the reason. Americans have always had the freedom ther ire and recrimination won’t bring them back, and it to own and use firearms; it’s far harder to buy a gun now won’t keep other innocents from a similar fate. ♦

Can the Government Nationalize a Business?

THOMAS J. DONOHUE government’s unlawful takeover. dealt with now, once and for all. PRESIDENT AND CEO In June 2015, the U.S. Court of In a free enterprise system such U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE Federal Claims agreed with Starr as ours, it is troubling when the that the government overstepped government makes billions in profits Is the federal government allowed to its authority by taking 80% of the by running a previously private take over and run a private business in company. But a federal appeals court business. And this is not the first time an emergency? That is the fundamental overturned the ruling on the theory this issue has arisen. Fannie Mae and question at the heart of a case brought that AIG shareholders did not have Freddie Mac were similarly taken over, by Starr International Company against “standing” to seek a remedy for that and the government has continued the federal government. violation in court. Starr has now to claim their profits ever since. That Starr is a major shareholder of petitioned the Supreme Court to take may come to an end soon, and the insurer American International Group up the case, and the Court is scheduled Chamber stands ready to work with (AIG), which received emergency to consider that request this week. the administration and Congress to loans from the federal government The U.S. Chamber of Commerce resolve the issue. during the financial crisis of 2008. supported the federal government The question remains: How do we However, as a condition of these in extending emergency credit reconcile the rights of businesses in loans, the government demanded that in 2008 because, without swift our free enterprise economy with the it receive an almost 80% ownership government intervention, the global interests of taxpayers in stabilizing interest in AIG. The government took financial markets were in danger of businesses in a financial crisis? As control of the company and eventually shutting down. But this particular Fannie and Freddie prove, this is not pocketed nearly $23 billion in profits case raises separate and deeply a one-time dilemma unique to AIG. when it sold its 80% stake. Starr argues important questions about how far Indeed, these critical questions may come that federal law never allowed the the government can go when issuing before the Supreme Court if it chooses to government to take an ownership stake emergency loans, including whether review the Starr International case. in return for its loans and is seeking it can nationalize a business receiving to recover the illegal gain made by the such loans. These questions should be Learn more at uschamber.com/abovethefold.

8 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 COMMENT

MATT LABASH The Crusader Goes to His Reward

ust a few days before America’s brimstone-stoking hand of the saw- of the American Century. A regis- Pastor, Billy Graham, succumbed dust evangelist Mordecai Ham. He tered Democrat who in his early days J to Parkinson’s or cancer or pneu- honed his craft first as a door-to-door was called “the Antichrist” by hard- monia (when you’re 99-years-young, Fuller Brush salesman, then as a reluc- driving fundies who thought his ecu- ailments tend to arrive in multiple- tant guest-preacher who was so ner- menism was heresy, Graham coun- choice fashion), I was walking through vous his hands sweated and his knees seled, prayed, or skinny-dipped in the Washington’s new Museum of the knocked as he delivered all four of his White House pool (with Lyndon John- Bible with my family. As local muse- canned sermons in eight minutes. son—who else?) with every president ums go, the Bible museum is not a sexy Practice made perfect. He spent his from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, one, like, say, the National Museum of years at the Florida Bible Institute pad- mostly at their behest. American His­tory, which dling a canoe out to a little He brought the Good News to every- houses the artifacts our cul- one from pampered American subur- ture tends to prize more Billy Graham never banites to poverty-stricken African vil- than the inspired word of lagers. He integrated his crusades long God (Fonzie’s jacket, Sein- built waterslides before Jim Crow laws were overturned, feld’s “puffy shirt,” etc.). for Jesus. He never posted bail for Martin Luther King Jr., And yet my wife was and decried apartheid in South Africa blown back by a simple sported hipster a decade before it became a cause célè- Billy Graham exhibit, as bre. He talked J. C. with everyone from she read from a wall panel tattoo sleeves or the gangster Mickey Cohen to the self- that he had preached to slammed shots described “C-plus Christian” Johnny more people in live audi- Cash, an ardent friend of Graham’s. ences than anyone in his- with Justin Bieber Cash, who was forever warding off tory—about 215 million or oozed across the personal demons and addictions, even in 185 countries. Her awe took to singing songs like Kris Kristof- didn’t immediately regis- stage preaching the ferson’s “Why Me Lord?” at Graham’s ter. Having skipped lunch, prosperity gospel. crusades. A song of humble gratitude, I was distracted and in not lamentation, it summed up Gra- search of the museum’s Manna res- island in a Hillsborough River swamp ham’s operating ethos: Why me Lord? taurant for some fast-casual rotisserie where he preached to the alligators and / What have I ever done / To deserve even lamb. But I managed to mutter that it birds. “If they would not stop to lis- one / Of the pleasures I’ve known. was amazing he’s still with us. “He’s ten,” Graham wrote, “there was always As Cash’s son, John Carter, put it to not dead?” she asked. “He might as a congregation of cypress stumps that the singer’s biographer, Robert Hil- well be,” I replied. could neither slither nor fly away. The burn: “When my father fell short, he I meant no disrespect, nor was I loudness of my preaching was in direct could always reach out to Billy. Billy being prophetic about what would proportion to their unresponsiveness, didn’t judge my father; he was there as come just two days later. I merely so the trees got my voice at full blast.” his friend unconditionally. Billy would meant that his ilk—assuming Graham While none of the cypress stumps lift him up, support him, and say, ‘You isn’t such a singular figure that he has came to Jesus, an estimated 3.2 mil- can do this. Stand back up. You know no ilk—is no longer with us. For the lion people answered Graham’s altar who you are.’ ” “Protestant Pope,” as some called him, call during the seven decades of his After a day or so of marinating was that rarest of marquee preachers, “crusades”—a name he eventually in his obituaries, it occurred to me one who, as the book of Micah puts it, dropped so as not to repel his Islamic that the thing I appreciated most did justly and loved mercy and walked brothers. Unlike many TV-preachers- about Billy Graham was that he humbly with his God. turned-pundits, Graham favored mul- didn’t require you to think about Raised on a dairy farm, originally tiplication over division. In a 1992 cru- Billy Graham. Unlike so many self- aspiring to play professional baseball, sade in Moscow, a full quarter of the aggrandizing televangelists, Moral the rangy Tarheel with the matinee- 155,000 attendees came forward as he Majority grifters, and preachers-cum- idol looks got saved at a Charlotte tent drew the net. ward-heelers, he left no hookers or revival in his teens, at the fire-and- Graham became a veritable Zelig no-tell-motel church secretaries or

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 9 embezzled funds in his wake. Billy self. And millions got to see and hear her go-to preachers. He wasn’t in her Graham never built waterslides for the authentic article.” spiritual-growth starting lineup. Yet as Jesus. He never sported hipster tattoo Then there is my mom, who she was saying this, her throat seized sleeves so he could slam shots with holds high rank (aside from the fact up and her voice choked. She couldn’t Justin Bieber or oozed his way across that she brought me into this world), finish her thought, as if she’d realized the stage preaching the prosperity since many years ago, she led me to that the North Star had just flick- gospel or became an unrepentant par- Christ, who, despite my doubts and ered out. “What’s wrong?” I asked. I tisan peckerhead who’d rather add to lapses, I’ve generally stuck with. I assumed Billy Graham didn’t mean Trump’s flock than Christ’s. don’t remember Graham occupying a that much to her. I assumed wrong. If you were a lukewarm Christian, particular place of prominence in our “He led so many people to the lax in your duties, as I am (the Man in house. Though in the ’70s, as in so Lord,” she said. “He got the call at 16 Black isn’t the only C-plus Christian), many other households, his televised and lived to 99. And all that time, he you took solace in the fact that Billy crusades were part of the background glorified God. What a homecoming it Graham was hoeing his row, taking entertainment, like The White Shadow must have been today. What a celebra- the Great Commission more seriously or Welcome Back, Kotter. tion. To hear those words we all long than perhaps any human being ever On the day of his death, my mom to hear: ‘Well done, thou good and has. (Matthew 28:19: “Go ye there- related that Graham was never one of faithful servant.’ ” ♦ fore, and teach all nations . . . ” ) He was as reliable as the sunrise, as steady as a metronome. COMMENT ♦ PHILIP TERZIAN I never thought of Billy Graham as a meaningful minister in my life. He preached a straight salvation mes- The Angela Davis papers: sage, salvation being something of a gateway drug, getting new Christians Why would anyone want them? into the club where they can become world-weary, long-in-the-tooth believ- was struck by the convergence of phor would disappear in my life- ers, debating doctrine, hashing out two stories in a recent edition of time. Indeed, the two impressions I hermeneutics, and splitting churches I the New York Times. always took away from Communist in huffy snits—you know, the fun stuff. The first, on the front page, was an East Germany were sadness about the Billy Graham was a 101 course, not a anodyne anniversary feature: The Ber- grim, repressive regime that seemed deep-waters guy. lin Wall, which went up in 1961 and to penetrate every corner of its gray And yet when I checked in, after came down in 1989, has now (in the landscape and the evident stasis—the his death, with my spiritual lode- Times’s words) been “gone for as long as empty streets, furtive glances, shabby stars, I realized that saying you’re an it stood.” The milestone was observed architecture, even the unreconstructed evangelical Christian who doesn’t quietly in unified Germany, which has bomb damage from World War II— plug into Billy Graham is like saying been grappling these past few decades characteristic of the whole Krem- you’re a country music fan without with the problems of integrating West lin empire. (And East Germany, lest internalizing Hank Williams. Even if and East, with mixed success. we forget, was the economic “success Hank meant nothing to you, he prob- It’s an old and, from my perspective, story” of the Soviet bloc.) ably meant everything to every singer predictable story as well. For as one Which makes the second story in you respect. who first explored Erich­ Honecker’s that same Times edition either cruelly My current pastor, Robert Hahn, German Democratic Republic as a ironic or deeply obtuse: “The [Angela] who attended Graham’s School of journalist in the 1970s and revisited Davis Papers: Harvard Gets Them.” Evangelism, told me: “He was humble, several times thereafter, the fact that According to the Times account, the yet he knew who he was—and without the reunion of the impoverished East Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe apology. He wasn’t warm, he was pow- and the prosperous Federal Repub- Institute for Advanced Study—sur- erful. And because of that, he came off lic of Germany has been a long and viving remnant of Harvard’s old coor- as genuine.” arduous one—still leaving the East at dinate college for women—has pur- My former pastor, Michael Eas- a measurable disadvantage—is far less chased, for an undisclosed sum, “more ley, who went on to head the Moody surprising than the fact, still astonish- than 150 boxes of papers, photographs, Bible Institute, offered: “I’m reminded ing and exhilarating in retrospect, that pamphlets and other material” from of D. L. Moody. When a woman criti- the Soviet Union collapsed and the the archive of the veteran left-wing cized his way of doing evangelism, he Berlin Wall was reduced to rubble. radical Angela Davis, who stands (in responded, ‘I like my way of doing it Standing on either side of the the words of the library’s director, Jane better than your way of not doing it.’ famous landmark, I never imagined Kamensky) “at the intersection of . . . Graham exalted in Jesus, not him- that the Cold War’s ugliest meta- feminism, American political radical-

10 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 ism and global political radicalism.” she became a fugitive. It is perhaps a It is difficult, now as then, to According to Harvard’s Henry measure of those times that when she explain this incongruity. In the hip Louis Gates Jr., Davis is “one of the was apprehended two months later in radical circles where Davis thrived in major political theorists of the second New York and returned to California the Age of Aquarius, the Communist half of the 20th century.” With all due for trial, she became a cause célèbre on Party USA had become something of a respect to Professor Gates, who is no the left, a nationwide campus hero, joke—a downscale, arguably geriatric, slouch at salesmanship, it is probably and global celebrity. Her now-famil- collection of old labor insurgents and more accurate to describe Davis as a iar face and voluminous afro adorned would-be spymasters in threadbare political activist rather than a theo- thousands of “Free Angela” banners suits, singing “Joe Hill” and pledging rist—evidence for which is compara- and posters, and she earned the admi- strict allegiance to the Union of Soviet tively thin—and, to a larger degree, an ration of other celebrities—Yoko Ono, Socialist Republics. artifact of a passing generation of left- Noam Chomsky, Jane Fonda, even the But of course, that was not the wing radicalism. Rolling Stones. glamorous USSR of Leon Trotsky’s It is true that Davis, now 74, spent Here, however, the story takes an Bolshevik armies or John Reed and most of her career in and Reds (1981) but the squalid, puri- around the academy, where tanical, anti-Semitic, nuclear-armed she initially parlayed her It was into autocracy of Leonid Brezhnev and black nationalist creden- welcoming arms in his Kremlin council of elders. Not to tials and East German mention the careerists, party hacks, doctorate into offers from Moscow and Havana and secret policemen led by Erich Princeton­ and Swarth- Honecker, who governed the East more, settling, in 1969, at and East Berlin and German state captured so poignantly UCLA. She might well other bleak capitals in the Times’s other story. have remained in Los It was into welcoming arms in Angeles, just up Interstate of the Communist Moscow and Havana and East Berlin 5 from her mentor, the universe that Angela and other bleak capitals of the Com- German-born New Left munist universe that Davis threw philosopher Herbert Mar- Davis threw herself herself in common cause for years cuse, at UC San Diego. But for years on end. on end. And apart from a few star- the call to action, then and tling detours in subsequent decades— always, stirred her more solidarity with the Rev. Jim Jones of strongly than scholarship. interesting turn. For in June 1972, to Peoples Temple/Jonestown fame, for Her militant rhetoric had already the surprise of most Americans and in example—she has since combined her attracted the critical attention of Gov- all likelihood Davis herself, she was radical activism with an enviable suc- ernor Ronald Reagan and the Univer- acquitted on all counts by an all-white cession of faculty sinecures. sity of California regents when guns jury. No doubt she and her admirers Not surprisingly, the Times account she had registered were supplied to the were relieved by the verdict, which of Radcliffe’s newest treasure moves teenaged brother of an inmate named could easily have been deeply puni- directly from the “Free Angela” days George Jackson, who was facing trial tive. At the same time, the judicial to that contemporary “intersection of for the murder of a prison guard and martyrdom that would have guaran- feminism . . . and global political radi- much lionized by the left. teed her icon status was denied her. calism.” And apart from a photograph Seeking to free his brother, Jona- When she embarked on a worldwide of some letters of support from East than Jackson in August 1970 man- victory tour, which kept her out of the German schoolchildren, delivered aged to gain control of a courtroom in country for months on end, she disap- during her trial, Davis’s adventures San Rafael while a trial was underway. peared from the American conscious- in the German Democratic Repub- Jackson and three prisoners seized the ness, never again a household name. lic, celebrating the oppression of the judge, prosecutor, and three female There was another irony as well. victims described in that other Times jurors as hostages and briefly escaped The late 1960s and early ’70s were story, go unmentioned. from the courthouse. In an ensuing a period of left-radical rebirth in To be sure, all of this tells us gun battle, however, Jackson and two America, but while Angela Davis was more about Harvard and the New of the prisoners were killed, along with friendly to innumerable factions of the York Times than about Angela Davis. Judge Harold Haley, who was shot in New Left—from Students for a Dem- But I do hope that the Davis papers the head with a sawed-off shotgun. ocratic Society (SDS) to the Black in Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library Under California law, this ghastly Panthers—she was also a member of include her Lenin Peace Prize or, melodrama made Angela Davis vul- the Communist party and twice in with luck, the Star of People’s Friend- nerable to criminal charges of assist- subsequent years (1980, 1984) its vice- ship, bestowed upon her by Erich ing a kidnapping and homicide, and presidential nominee. Honecker­ himself. ♦

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 11 COMMENT ♦ FRED BARNES ingly so. Trump will feast on it in 2020. In negotiating with Trump on immigration, Democrats have given themselves little flexibility. An incident Look who’s stupid now reported by the Washington Post dem- onstrates this. As we all know, Trump or decades, Republicans have watching Republicans stumble on had nasty words for Third World been stuck with the epithet Obamacare. But they ignored the les- countries at a bipartisan meeting on F “the stupid party,” and they’ve son: When things go disastrously, stop immigration at the White House. And often deserved it. But there’s been a and wait for a better day. Democrats couldn’t resist leaking that switch in the Trump era. Democrats Republicans thought that day had he’d called them “s—holes.” now are the stupid party. come in 2010 with the arrival of the It was, the Post said, “an outburst They’ve adopted several of the fool- Tea Party. Its adherents flooded the that made it politically impossible hardy habits of Republicans—for primaries as candidates. Republicans for Democrats to accede to Trump’s instance, the government shutdown. won the House and should have cap- demands to terminate a diversity visa It’s an act of political masochism. His- tured the Senate—but didn’t. The rea- lottery program.” That’s affirmative tory is consistent on this. Those who son: Too many poor candidates won action for countries who send few shut Washington down fail primaries. GOP leaders immigrants here. to achieve their goals. didn’t intervene to pro- The Democratic blunder was refus- Despite this losing mote better, more experi- ing to compromise on taxes. This streak, Democrats decided enced candidates. gave Republicans a free hand to kill on a shutdown to force This year, the Resis- the individual mandate imposed by President Trump and con- tance will dominate the Obamacare, open up Arctic oil drill- gressional Republicans to Democratic primaries. The ing, and limit the deduction on state let immigrant “dreamers” average number of candi- and local taxes. Schumer could have stay in this country. The dates per primary is five. kept all three out of the tax bill. It was shutdown featured hours of With the party drifting left, fear of a backlash from the Resistance Democratic handwringing. this could mean more far- for cooperating with Trump that pre- It flopped, as every left candidates with little vented him from doing so. Republican shutdown had. chance of winning the gen- These self-imposed problems don’t Chuck Schumer, the Sen- eral election. Democrats mean a weak performance in Novem- ate Democratic leader, called are flirting with danger. ber. Democrats have structural advan- it off after a single day, But there’s more to tages. The non-White House party upon realizing its chances of succeed- Democrats’ emergence as the stupid almost invariably gains seats. That ing were zilch. Pro-shutdown Demo- party than emulating Republicans. three dozen Republican seats are open crats wanted to hang on and picketed What they’ve left undone has hurt, helps enormously. Trump will be an Schumer’s residence. especially the lack of generational albatross in some states. Schumer was wise to cut his losses. change in their leaders. They’re still Democrats envision the entire coun- He balked at doing the same in the the geezer party. try voting as Virginia did last Novem- fight against the Trump tax cut, just Representative Tim Ryan, 44, chal- ber in its governor’s race. It was a wave as Republicans had been foolish to lenged Pelosi, 77, for House minority election spurred by deep dislike of prolong the agony of trying to kill leader but lost by roughly 2-1. That Trump. But that mood is less intense Obamacare.­ In both cases, the out- represents the division between the today. And the rule of thumb is that if come was clear. geriatric caucus and the youth brigade. Republicans are less than 10 percentage But not to House minority leader And Democrats have tied them- points behind in the poll question of Nancy Pelosi, who proved in an eight- selves to two risky issues, gun control who voters favor in the midterm elec- hour speech to be a know-nothing on and immigration. Their desperation to tion, they hold onto the House. They taxes. That the tax cut would boost discover a strategy to foster gun control currently trail by six points or so. the economy and leave most Ameri- was revealed when they enlisted high- This question arises: Why didn’t cans with more money was very likely. school kids as their spokesmen post- Democrats enact immigration reform When the cuts showed up in pay- Parkland. Teenagers versus the NRA? that includes legal status for dreamers checks last month, she dismissed them The odds favor the NRA. in Obama’s first two years, when they as “crumbs.” Now they’re popular and On immigration, Democrats started had super-majorities in both houses still she won’t let go. She’s blindly loyal out behind and have made matters of Congress? Having passed Obam- to the party line she helped to create. worse in the past year by moving to acare, they figured that would be too Her party is embarrassed. what amounts to an open-borders much, too soon. That was before they Democrats surely knew better from position. That’s a loser and increas- became the stupid party. ♦

12 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 evidence of financial or other impro- prieties—but he was never credibly accused of either personal or financial misconduct. In 1994, he was discov- ered to have spoken disparagingly of Jews to Richard Nixon, but it’s clear from the transcript that his animus was against moral permissivists rather than Jews as Jews and that he was mainly guilty of trying too hard not to disagree with the president. In any case it’s difficult to call a man a racist who in the 1950s forcefully chastised Southern audiences over segregation. The Graham crusades were often Graham preaching in said to signify a national religious St. Paul, Minnesota, July 13, 1973 awakening. Millions came to hear a preacher preach a simple message: that man may be saved from his sins by confessing them to Jesus Christ, son of God, and placing faith exclu- An Evangelical Saint sively in him for eternal life. That message sounded as shocking and implausible then as it does now, yet Billy Graham, 1918-2018. people flocked to hear it. There was power in what Billy Graham said and by Barton Swaim in the way he said it, some quality of plainspoken truth that even those t the height of his influence Bible college in Florida. He practiced who disagreed with him on important in the 1960s and ’70s, Billy preaching alone in front of mirrors questions found appealing and persua- A Graham was a man about and standing atop tree stumps in the sive. It’s impossible to see photographs whom nearly every adult in America forest. Soon he was preaching in large of the massive crowds gathered to hear had an opinion. He was everywhere— churches, so captivating were his ora- Graham speak—a packed Yankee Sta- his weeklong evangelistic “crusades” tory and his message. By 1944, he had dium in 1957, more than a million on packed stadiums around the globe; his own radio program in Chicago. In an airstrip in Seoul—and conclude innumerable books and articles carried the fall of 1947, he held his first inde- that it was just some fad. his byline; his face appeared on the cov- pendent “revival”—several nights of But Graham’s singular achieve- ers of the newsweeklies. The Graham preaching meant to draw the unbeliev- ment was not in drawing people to his media empire included a magazine, a ing to Christ and Christians to greater meetings; it was in his challenge to the radio show, and a television program. faithfulness. Before one of those reviv- dominance of midcentury Protestant America’s most famous preacher als in Los Angeles in 1949, the media liberalism. After World War II, atten- died on February 21 at the age of magnate William Randolph Hearst dance in the American churches now 99. Younger Americans who don’t decreed that reporters at the Los Ange- known as “mainline”—the Presbyte- remember the crusades and his other les Examiner should “puff Graham.” rian, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, public addresses may wonder how on So began the evangelist’s rapid rise to Episcopal, Church of Christ, and Dis- earth an “evangelist”—the word itself American sainthood. ciples of Christ denominations—was sounds obsolete—could have achieved Nobody watching old clips of Gra- at its peak. But cultural prestige and such vast renown in a secularized ham would attribute his success to political influence had come at the cost country. That it isn’t quite so secular- media puffery. He was uncommonly of confessional clarity; the mainline ized as it might be is in large measure handsome, spoke with a lovely bari- denominations were (as indeed they the work of Billy Graham. tone lilt, and moved with a gentle- still are) more interested in keeping up In the late 1930s, Graham, who’d manly grace. His whole persona with the fast-evolving morality of our grown up outside Charlotte, North projected sincerity. For six decades, popular culture than in challenging Carolina, was a student at a tiny Graham lay under the scrutiny of a it. By the late 1950s, many Christians skeptical media—as early as 1957 the were realizing that there wasn’t much Barton Swaim is the opinion editor liberal Christian Century magazine point in busying oneself with church

of The Weekly Standard. hired an investigative reporter to find if it required no special belief other BETTMANN / GETTY

14 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 than a general assent that being good Graham looked like the ineffective him to embrace nuclear disarmament. is better than being bad. spiritual adviser he had in fact been. Twice he remarked, in flat contradic- Graham showed Americans that Anyone who stays in the public eye tion to everything he had taught for Christianity, if it was true at all, placed for half a century says too much. Gra- decades, that it was possible to find demands on them, and they had to ham was not a publicity hound—he eternal life without ever knowing the respond with a yes or a no. He real- turned down lucrative offers to host name of Jesus Christ. One wishes he ized that Christian belief wasn’t worth network television shows and star in could have kept the biblical proverb the trouble if it involved no risk and no movies. But a man who speaks all the more firmly in mind: “In a multitude sacrifice. Jesus’ disciples weren’t mar- time will say things in the absence of of words there wanteth not sin.” tyred for espousing some form of ele- knowledge. In 1969, he wrote a long He was not a great or even a reliable vated do-goodism; they were martyred letter to Nixon advising the president thinker, but Billy Graham was a good for believing that Jesus was the eternal on the best way to wind down the and peaceable man who used his gifts son of God and that he was raised from Vietnam War (“Use North Vietnam- to reanimate Christian belief in Amer- the dead, bodily and not spiritually or ese defectors to bomb and invade the ica at a time when it seemed in danger metaphorically, on the third day. north. . . . Let them bomb the dikes of mutating into an empty and deriv- Graham himself was never too fas- which could overnight destroy the ative moralism. Today’s media and tidious in his theological adherence. economy of North Vietnam”). After intellectual elite look back at him with Conservative evangelicals criticized a visit to the Soviet Union in 1984, he barely veiled contempt. But American him for his indistinct pronouncements claimed that Christians in Russia could society has often been shaped and bet- and for freely associating with char- worship largely as they pleased. In his tered by men who knew just one truth ismatics and Catholics and anybody 1997 autobiography, Just As I Am, he and who expressed it well. Billy Gra- else who professed belief in the bibli- remarked that seeing Auschwitz led ham was such a man. ♦ cal Jesus. But it was Graham more than almost anybody else who brought the basic doctrines of Christianity back into the homes of millions of Americans. He embodied and foreshadowed The Monster the rise of modern American evangeli- calism—its strengths and its follies. Graham and his organization valued Next Door method and numbers over depth of belief. Millions made “decisions for Christ” at Graham crusades over the decades, and today’s evangelical mega- Serial killers and school shooters. churches boast enormous congrega- by Ethan Epstein tions. But it was never obvious how all those impressive numbers translated ikolas Cruz delighted in tor- existential fear of the 1960s, ’70s, and into a more definably Christian nation turing animals. The Florida ’80s, has declined. Measuring this pre- or a more morally upright culture. N school shooter is reported cisely is difficult—there can be serial Like the younger evangelicals he to have killed frogs and squirrels, and killers operating without our knowl- led and influenced, Graham believed sicced a dog on a neighbor’s piglets. edge (if, say, authorities haven’t yet that he could change American soci- Cruz’s social media feeds were replete managed to link a series of deaths ety from the top. Hence his dabbling with images of dead and maimed crit- to one perpetrator), and where one in presidential politics and hobnob- ters, apparently hurt by his own hand. pegs murders as “serial” is inherently bing with successive occupants of the Cruz is not alone in taking per- subjective—but the numbers seem White House from Lyndon Johnson verse pleasure in harming the help- incontrovertible. One study from to George W. Bush. He always claimed less among us. Jeffrey Dahmer, David criminologists at Radford University not to be interested in elections or can- Berkowitz (known popularly as the finds an 85 percent decline in Ameri- didates, but his critics were right that Son of Sam), and Ted Bundy were all can serial killing from its peak in the there was something unseemly about prolific animal torturers. And all, of early 1980s. Instances of mass shoot- a clergyman always hanging around course, went on to long careers as serial ings, meanwhile, like the atrocity we the most powerful man in the world. murderers of their fellow humans. just witnessed in Florida, have risen His close friendships with Nixon Serial killing, that quintessen- sharply, a 2014 FBI study determined. and Bill Clinton damaged Graham’s tial American phenomenon and Determining precisely why this reputation. When these men left the happened is extremely difficult, but White House, so evidently the willing Ethan Epstein is associate editor it’s enough to raise a question: Is the victims of their own base impulses, of The Weekly Standard. personality type that 40 years ago

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 15 might have been attracted to serial the most common form of mass mur- more alarming conclusion. Research- killing now more likely to become der, according to McCrary.) ing a plethora of school shootings, a mass shooter? Had he been born All serial killers are psychopaths— Gladwell found something strange in, say, 1962 rather than 1998, would they are unable to experience empa- and frightening: A growing num- Cruz have looked to Ted Bundy, thy and indeed take pleasure in the ber of school shooters were, in many rather than, say, a Columbine killer, pain of others. This is increasingly respects, normal. They were not psy- for inspiration? considered a neurological condition, chopathic, not insane, not from abu- Probably not, criminologists say. one that appears to begin at birth. sive homes. They weren’t bullied or Mass killing and serial murder are By contrast, there are a “vari- socially isolated. So what could be “two very different phenomena,” says ety of different motivations” among driving their behavior? Harold Schechter, CUNY professor mass killers, McCrary says. Some are Gladwell likened the grow- ing plague of school shootings to how riots spread. A riot is a “case of destructive violence that involves a great number of otherwise quite nor- mal people who would not usually be disposed to violence,” he wrote. Like- wise, it might make sense to “think of [school shootings] as a slow-motion, ever-evolving riot, in which each new participant’s action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before.” What began with psychopaths like Harris now encompasses the (relatively) healthy and well-adjusted. It’s not as simple as saying that mass shooters want fame, and that therefore media outlets should refuse to publi- Accused Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz in court in Ft. Lauderdale, February 19 cize their names, as some prominent editors have pledged. Nor is every and author of the The Serial Killer indeed psychopaths: Eric Harris of case of mass killing a simple issue of Files. Serial killing is often a form of Columbine infamy displayed strong “mental health.” Rather, it seems, “lust murder,” a “sadistic sex crime” psychopathic tendencies, as Dave there is a cultural contagion at work. with the killer often achieving orgasm Cullen revealed in his 2009 book Witness the dozens of copycat threats during or after the event. Adam Lank- Columbine. And some, like Jared Lee that have been issued in the wake of ford, criminologist at the University Loughner, who shot congresswoman the Florida slaughter. Some were of Alabama, agrees: “There are often Gabby Giffords and murdered six more than threats; in several cases sadistic and sexual elements in serial others at an Arizona grocery store, are across the country, students were killing which don’t appear in mass plainly insane. found with caches of weapons. And shooting,” he says. There are no The vast majority of mass shooters, not all of those would-be perpetra- known cases of a mass killer having a however, appear to be neither. They tors are psychopaths. The frighten- sexual experience during his deed. may be “angry” or “insecure” or “jeal- ing implication is that some number Serial killers, moreover, try to ous,” McCrary says, or full of “rage,” among the “normal” are now regu- “avoid detection,” notes retired FBI as Schechter puts it. In other words, larly contemplating mass murder. profiler Gregg McCrary, whereas mass their emotions tend to be those of a And that’s why it’s telling that killers often die at the end of their acts normal human—but their reactions the 1970s and ’80s saw what Harold or, at a minimum, certainly don’t plan go to vicious, abnormal extremes. In Schechter calls a “cultural fascina- on getting away with it. Serial kill- this sense, Cruz’s history of hurting tion” with serial killing. That has now ers also typically kill strangers, while animals was in fact telling. It’s not declined, “replaced by a fixation on most “mass shooters know their vic- necessarily a predictor of serial killing mass murder,” he says. As long as that tims,” McCrary says. They might per se, but indeed, “violence against particular cultural obsession remains commit their murders at the school socially valued animals is a strong dominant, we’re likely to see more they were expelled from, the work- predictor of adult violence,” McCrary mass killers. Born that way, psycho- place that fired them, or the home of tells me. paths will always be with us. But mass the wife who kicked them out. (The A brilliant 2015 New Yorker piece killers are in many cases a product of

murder of multiple family members is by Malcolm Gladwell came to an even our society. ♦ MIKE STOCKER / GETTY

16 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 was there with her American legal team, from the firm BakerHostetler. How to Dig Up Dirt Among the Baker crew was Glenn Simpson, honcho of Fusion GPS—the same firm retained through interme- from the Russians diaries by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee to produce the anti-Trump “dossier.” Simpson and Fusion GPS had been The Clinton professionals versus working at the direction of Veselnits- the Trump amateurs. by Eric Felten kaya for two years, in an effort to dig up dirt on the Magnitsky Act’s driv- pecial counsel Robert Muel- Tower. The participants: campaign ing force, financier William Browder. ler’s February 16 indictment boss Paul Manafort, Ivanka Trump’s Except, as Simpson was quick to point S of 13 Russians and three Rus- husband Jared Kushner, Don Jr., and out when questioned on Capitol Hill, sian companies for interfering with some Russians. It is a measure of the he wasn’t hired by the Russian law- the 2016 election fits with much that Trump team’s slapdash planning that yer. He was hired, rather, by Baker- we already know. The Russians were Hostetler, which Simpson described opportunistic, stirring the pot and to House investigators as “a big Mid- turning up on both sides of the par- western Republican-oriented law firm tisan divide. This holds true not only that is one of my oldest clients.” for the frenetic and often laughable As to the prime mover, Simpson was social media efforts of the Red Troll in the dark. “We didn’t know much Army, chronicled in the indictment, about the client,” he said. Know- but also for the rather more serious ing about the client was Baker’s job: efforts of other Russians to involve “Obviously, the lawyers have respon- themselves in the campaigns of both sibility to evaluate whether the client Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. is engaged in anything improper, and The fact that accusations of col- they certainly have to determine the lusion with Russia have dogged the source of their funds.” president and not Clinton isn’t just There are notable advantages to hav- because it was Trump who won the ing a law firm act as a cutout. In this election. Nor is it just a matter of Glenn Simpson arrives on Capitol Hill, case, it provides deniability should one the mainstream media focusing on November 14, 2017. ever be asked about one’s work for the Republican sins. It reflects the strate- Russians. House investigators asked gic advantages of the Clinton team’s not only had they failed to do any due Simpson if it gave him pause that his professionalism, including the use diligence on their Russian guests, they anti-Browder oppo-work was helpful of multiple cutouts and intermediar- hadn’t even been told their names. to Vladimir Putin. Simpson’s response: ies. Trump’s improvisatory amateur- Even more amateurish was the fact that “I prepared this research in connection ism compares poorly with the Clinton senior Trump aides were taking such a with an American lawsuit for an Amer- team’s practiced tradecraft. direct meeting in the first place. ican law firm.” We know that at least some sig- The leader of the small group of Which isn’t to say that Simpson nificant Trump team-members were Russians at Trump Tower that day didn’t eventually come to know the enthusiastic about getting dirt on was lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. And Russian who was writing the checks. Hillary from Russians. Told by a Brit- instead of delivering the dirt that had Not only was he there in court with ish publicist that “the Crown pros- been promised, she wanted to talk Veselnitskaya on the day she would ecutor of Russia” could “provide the about the sanctions on Russian nation- go to Trump Tower, he was among Trump campaign with some official als implicated in human rights abuses, a group who had dinner with her in documents and information that would sanctions imposed by a U.S. law known New York the night before. And, oh incriminate Hillary,” Donald Trump Jr. as the Magnitsky Act. yes, he also happened to be at dinner infamously replied that “if it’s what It wasn’t the first time that day with Veselnitskaya the next evening at you say I love it especially later in the Veselnitskaya had tangled over the a Washington restaurant. summer.” Don Jr. proceeded to arrange Magnitsky Act. In the morning, she Someone with a suspicious mind for a June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump had been at the U.S. Court of Appeals might be inclined to look askance at for the Second Circuit for a hearing the fact that the Russian who reached Eric Felten is a senior writer involving Prevezon, a Russian-owned out to Don Jr. just happened to dine

at The Weekly Standard. real estate firm she represented. She with the man behind the dossier, / AP MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS PABLO

18 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 both before and after her meeting at dirt on Trump were multiple interven- dossier far and wide, the House inves- Trump Tower. But Simpson told the ing layers: Steele worked for Simpson tigator doubled back: “You said ‘We House Intelligence Committee that it and Fusion GPS; Fusion GPS worked had to decide how to respond.’ Who is was pure coincidence. “To be clear, I for the Democratic law firm Perkins ‘we’ in that statement?” didn’t know about this meeting before Coie; the law firm was paid by the “It’s mainly a reference to myself it happened, and I didn’t know about Democratic National Committee and and to Chris,” Simpson replied. “You it after it happened.” Hillary for America. know, it was mainly between Chris Simpson is no fool and, nudged by Just how useful it can be to have so and myself.” Note the repeated use the ranking Democrat on the commit- many intermediaries can be discerned of the word “mainly,” which means tee, Rep. Adam Schiff, he allowed that in the House question of Simpson: there might have been any number of the coincidence might raise eyebrows: “Did the DNC or the Hillary Clinton other players in on the decision. “I would certainly agree with the campaign for presidency ever direct “Anyone else?” the House lawyer observation that for these matters to Christopher Steele to discuss the con- pressed. have intersected in the way they did is, tents of his dossier with the media “You know, I am not going to get you know, remarkable.” You can judge that you’re aware of?” House counsel into client communications, but, you for yourself how persuasive Simpson asked Simpson last November. Simp- know, I was still working for a client is in his further claim that Veselnits- son responded, “I was the one that at that time.” kaya’s trip to Trump Tower “caught directed him to do that.” “Did you discuss with your client me totally by surprise, and I have spent “Did you do that of your own voli- how to respond?” Simpson’s lawyer a lot of time thinking about what it tion,” the investigator pressed, “or did jumps in: “I think that is confiden- means, if it means anything. And as you do that at the direction of a client tial.” Again, one sees here the advan- best as I can figure,” Simpson said, or another entity?” tage of campaigns’ outsourcing such “the Russians were up to a lot of stuff.” “I want to be as helpful as I can work to a law firm. without getting into client communi- In the indictment of the 13 Russian he Russians were indeed up to cations,” Simpson said. “So I guess I nationals last week, Mueller posited T a lot of stuff. And there’s every would like to say generally, I mean— that they had been pursuing “a strategic reason to believe that Russian efforts generally when reporters—when goal to sow discord in the U.S. political to enlist American collaborators we have to deal with the press, we system.” Wittingly or not, both cam- (unwitting and otherwise) extended would inform our clients that we were paigns seem to have played into their to both parties. doing—you know, in any case if you’re hands. The president’s partisans are Consider the dossier prepared for dealing with the press, it’s incumbent wrong to think that the Clinton cam- Simpson and Fusion GPS by onetime on you to, you know, make sure your paign’s solicitation of dirt from Russian British spy Christopher Steele. If the client knows that.” informants somehow absolves them of dossier is to be believed (admittedly Somewhere in that fog is an admis- blame for their own shenanigans. The a big if), Steele’s anonymous sources sion that, if not Hillary, or if not same goes for the Clinton camp, which were almost entirely Russian. “Source Hillary’s campaign, or if not the acts as if Trump’s hands being dirty A” was “a senior Russian Foreign DNC—who knows which of his cli- must prove that its own are clean. Ministry figure,” according to Steele; ents Simpson is talking about?—at The Russians may well have offered Source B, “a former top level Russian least Perkins Coie was in on the effort dirt to both campaigns. The differ- intelligence officer still active inside to brief reporters on the dossier. ence in how such entreaties played the Kremlin”; Source C, “a senior Simpson explained that he directed out could have everything to do with Russian financial official”; Source G, Steele to go to the press with the dos- the relative rigor and discipline of the “a senior Kremlin official.” In other sier because he “was angry” about competing campaigns. Trump had words, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was James Comey’s announcement in late the likes of George Papadopoulos, paying for dirt acquired from senior October, less than two weeks before a blundering neophyte who bluffed figures in Moscow. the election, that the FBI was reopen- his way onto the campaign’s foreign- Given the dossier’s impact—it ing its investigation into Hillary over policy advisory group and was soon spawned government surveillance of her emails: “We tried to decide how to drunkenly bragging in a London bar Trump associates during and after the respond to that,” Simpson told inves- that he knew Russians had Hillary’s election—why is it not a scandal that tigators, but was then quick to add: emails and had been mining them for the document appears to have been “And when I say ‘we,’ I mean like me compromising material. Hillary had prepared in—let’s go ahead and use the and my little, you know, company, and the likes of tight-lipped profession- word—collusion with Russian sources? Chris [Steele] and, you know—I didn’t als such as Simpson and the season- In no small part, this is because Clinton have any dealings with Mrs. Clinton or ing to keep layers of lawyers, with all was careful to keep her fingerprints off any of these other people.” the confidential privileges they bring, the dossier. Between the Clinton cam- After fishing for who might have between herself and anyone who paign and the Russian officials dishing given the go-ahead to spread the might be engaged in dirty tricks. ♦

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 19 alifornia’s Central Valley lies C between the Sierra Nevada Can California mountains and the Pacific. Modesto, the largest city in the 10th Congres- sional District, with a population of Lurch Leftward? 200,000, is surrounded by almond orchards and industrial buildings con- nected to farming. Historical markers downtown pay tribute to the town’s The Resistance targets seven seats in the Central most famous native son, filmmaker Valley and Los Angeles suburbs. by Tony Mecia George Lucas, and to the cruising and drag-racing scene that he depicted in Modesto, Calif. “It’s kind of amazing: Democrats his 1973 hit American Graffiti. n election night 2016, politi- control 39 of the 53 seats in Cali- While farming and food processing cal activist Jess Self wasn’t fornia, and yet, in order to take the remain the major employers, Modesto O in much of a partying mood. House back, they will probably have has changed a lot in 45 years. Latinos She’d just spent four days knocking to win even more,” says Kyle Kondik, now comprise 45 percent of the pop- on doors in neighboring Nevada. Her who analyzes congressional elections ulation. With lower housing prices, efforts helped elect a Demo- the area also attracts spill- cratic U.S. senator and rep- over from the high-priced resentative and pass two Bay Area. controversial ballot measures. Clinton won here by But Donald Trump’s vic- 3 points in 2016, which offers tory spoiled any sense of a job Democrats hope in their well done, and she skipped quest to unseat Denham. the Las Vegas celebrations. The incumbent is a con- “It was a rough night,” recalls ventional Republican, who Self, 36, a public defender in had a 16-year career in the Modesto, a city about 90 min- Air Force and then started a utes east of San Francisco. “It plastics business. He voted was one of the biggest shocks with his party to replace of my life.” Agitating against GOP incumbent Jeff Denham outside a Obamacare and to pass tax She returned home the Riverbank, California, event with the congressman, May 9, 2017 cuts—though he is softer next day and regrouped. on immigration issues than Then she started making calls. Self, for the University of Virginia’s Cen- Trump and the party hardliners. The president of the Central Valley Demo- ter for Politics. The biggest battle- Los Angeles Times says Denham “has cratic Club, helped fire up Democrats grounds are in seven districts held by had the secret sauce to keep his constit- and channel their anger into a political Republicans in the Central Valley and uents happy even as Democrats have operation. This year, they are setting the Los Angeles suburbs. By Kon- salivated to flip a district seemingly so their sights on knocking off four-term dik’s calculations, Democrats will perfect for their party.” He beat bee- Republican representative Jeff Den- have to flip five of them. keeper Michael Eggman by 3 points in ham. They’ve had record attendance It’s not an impossible task: Hillary­ 2016 and by 12 points in 2014. at their meetings, the phone banks are Clinton won all seven districts in 2016, Democrats are hoping to paint packed, and 50 to 80 volunteers knock and Republican incumbents in two Denham, 50, as a Trump enabler. on doors every Saturday to spread of them are retiring. The California Asked about his support for the presi- the word. The election isn’t for eight GOP, which once produced popular dent, Denham says he is a “very inde- months. “I have never, never seen any- governors such as Ronald Reagan and pendent thinker” who is focused on thing like this,” Self reports. Arnold Schwarzenegger, hasn’t won the district’s needs. “I’m not just going Democrats nationwide are banking a statewide race since 2006. The party to go along to get along when it hurts on such grassroots enthusiasm to win is in decline in the state, with only my district,” he says. He points to his back the House in November. To suc- 25 percent of registered voters identify- efforts to bring more water to the Cen- ceed, they need a particularly strong ing as Republican. Polls show residents tral Valley—which a news release from showing in the few parts of California view President Trump less favorably his office calls a “social justice issue”— they don’t already dominate. here than in almost any other state. Yet and his successful push to secure fund- as the race to win in Modesto shows, ing for training more local doctors. Tony Mecia is a senior writer the Democrats must overcome obsta- Denham, who speaks Span-

at The Weekly Standard. cles in California, too. ish, is already running ads on / GETTYJUSTIN SULLIVAN

20 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 Spanish-language radio stations to just here to screw up what was a good fundraising and can add to it while keep his name in front of that crucial race.” “Way to split the party and give the Democrats are spending money constituency. In 2016, internal poll- Denham another win. Good job!” “I fighting each other. He had raised ing indicated he would earn nearly am so angry that you think you can nearly $2 million through the end of half of the Latino vote, a figure far sashay in at this late date and do any- December, more than twice as much higher than for most Republicans. thing BUT throw a monkey wrench as a typical House incumbent, accord- There remains a deep well of con- into the hard grassroots labors of can- ing to the Center for Responsive Poli- servatism in the Central Valley. Ratings didates who take this seriously.” tics. Aided by an influx of cash from for the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are strong. A Lin- coln Day dinner address by Ann Coul- California Dreamin’ ter last April brought out 600 guests To win control of the House in 2018, Democrats need to pick up 24 who paid $125 and up. Business lead- seats in November. That will require a strong showing in California, ers cast blame on Sacramento Demo- where Democrats now hold nearly three-quarters of House seats. Here crats, not Washington Republicans, are the California races that Democrats believe offer the best shots: for the area’s woes. Poverty and unem- ployment are higher than national DISTRICT INCUMBENT 2016 RESULT averages, yet Democrats in charge of CA-10 Jeff Denham (R) Clinton +3 state government pile on regulations CA-21 David Valadao (R) Clinton +15 and taxes that hamper business. CA-25 Steve Knight (R) Clinton +7 “We never recovered from the recession in the valley, and the Dem- CA-39 Ed Royce* (R) Clinton +9 ocrats don’t care,” says Cecil Rus- CA-45 Mimi Walters (R) Clinton +5 sell, CEO of the Modesto Chamber CA-48 Dana Rohrabacher (R) Clinton +2 of Commerce. “Sacramento taxes the CA-49 Darrell Issa* (R) Clinton +8 hell out of you every chance they get.” * Not running (open seat) Asked if business owners support Denham, Russell pauses, cocks his head to the side, and replies, “Any of The candidates, minus Eggman, tech and finance executives, Harder us with a brain do.” held three debates across the district led Democrats with $923,000. Cox Another advantage Denham enjoys between September and January. had raised $407,000. is that Democrats have yet to settle on The Modesto Bee described the third Self, the president of the local Dem- a challenger. With so many Demo- debate, held before a sell-out crowd ocratic club, predicts Democrats will crats running, the strongest candidates of nearly 500 in the downtown Gallo set aside any differences once they could split the votes in the June 5 pri- Center for the Arts, as filled with have a nominee in June. The work mary and allow a weaker candidate “Denham venom.” Candidates voiced they are doing now—holding mock through to the general election. There support for a new federal equal-rights funeral processions in front of Den- are at least eight declared challeng- amendment, zero government limits ham’s office to protest his healthcare ers—including two nurses, a venture on abortion, and civil-rights protec- vote, knocking on doors, making capitalist, an ex-congressional aide, a tions for people who identify as trans- calls—is laying the groundwork for retired computer programmer, a for- gender—positions that might excite the fall campaign, she thinks. Her mer small-town mayor, and the owner the base but would be less popular group is trying to educate voters about of an organic nut-processing plant. with socially conservative farmwork- the Democratic vision to improve In January, Eggman, the beekeeper ers and independent voters. health care and schools and to provide who lost twice to Denham, reversed In a Democratic party caucus in affordable housing. “The partisanship a pledge not to run and announced late January, candidates Josh Harder here is toned down compared to other his candidacy, too. Democrats in the and T.J. Cox led the field. Harder, a areas,” she says. “It’s not going to help district say there are rumors that 31-year-old venture capitalist in San just to say, ‘Trump sucks.’ ” Eggman flip-flopped at the behest of Francisco, took a leave from his job Part of the challenge is appealing wealthy and powerful political action and moved back to the district just last to voters such as Cesar Lopez, 42, a committees, which were unnerved at spring to make his first run for office. Modesto plumber who was sitting the prospect of a little-known com- Cox, 53, ran for Congress in 2006 and in a rare patch of sun downtown one petitor facing off against Denham. is the founder of a community devel- recent morning. Lopez says he voted Eggman didn’t reply to a request for opment fund—and owner of the nut for a third-party candidate for presi- comment. But his entry into the race processing plant—but he moved to the dent in 2016 and is undecided on this enraged some local Democrats, who district from Fresno only last summer. year’s congressional race. He says the teed off on his Facebook page: “You’re Denham holds a big lead in plumbing business is good, and he

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 21 just put an offer on his first house. said he and his wife, Dawn, believe A few days after the discovery of He likes some things Trump is doing, the country has “gone downhill in the Mastropietro’s body, 28-year-old Luca especially after conversations with last year in a lot of ways.” They oppose Traini, whom press photos show with his father, a Trump supporter who the Republican tax cuts and efforts runes tattooed on his skull, wrapped believes the president is a “go-getter” to remove people who came to the himself (literally) in the Italian flag who “doesn’t walk away” from chal- United States illegally as children and and began shooting Africans in the lenges like North Korea. worry that Trump’s rhetoric is making center of Macerata, wounding six. “He wouldn’t hesitate to protect it acceptable “to be a bigot now.” Over the years, Western politicians his country,” Lopez says. “We’d be Leibold, who votes consistently for have perfected a playbook of calm- in danger if Hillary had to deal with Democrats, says they might see some ing clichés for moments like these. that. Not because she’s a woman, but victories this year. Jess Self, though, The Italian candidates did not follow because of her history.” is sure Democratic enthusiasm will it. Their condemnation of Traini was Down the street, Robert Leibold, deliver: “We’re going to win this seat. neither swift nor categorical. Former 66, of neighboring Tuolumne County, It’s going to happen.” ♦ prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the 81-year-old media billionaire who has dominated Italian politics since the end of the Cold War, has made a mighty comeback in this election, Will There Always even though judges have blocked him from running for the top post again. Berlusconi said that the illegal immi- Be an Italy? grants now in the country were a “social bomb” waiting to go off. Mat- teo Salvini, leader of the Lega Nord, descended from a northern separatist The question hanging over voters’ heads. party, said that “anyone who shoots by Christopher Caldwell someone is a delinquent,” but he blamed “out-of-control” immigration, which he likened to an invasion. Both men and their parties shot up in the polls. On the eve of elections, three conservative parties appeared likely to take 283 of the 630 seats in parlia- ment. The more liberal Democratic party was at 158 and falling rapidly. The anti-establishment Five Star Movement, with 152 seats, looked set to be the single largest party. A lot of Italians believe they are going to the polls to answer the ques- tion: Do you want there to be an Italy or not? In the early days of February, Istat, the national statistical office, published some population data that shocked even demographic pessi- A protest in Rome against immigration from Islamic countries, January 28, 2017 mists. In 2017, Italy had 2 percent fewer births and 5 percent more ince January, the most impor- newspapers since her body was found, deaths than the year before. Since tant person in the campaign for chopped up, rinsed with bleach, and the end of the 20th century Italy has S the Italian elections coming on packed into two wheeled suitcases, out- been producing children at rates close March 4 has been a missing person. side the city of Macerata, northeast of to the lowest ever seen in human his- Sad selfies of Pamela Mastropietro, a Rome. Four recent Nigerian migrants tory: 1.34 children per woman. It is troubled 18-year-old from Rome, have to Italy were arrested for the deed. They now entering the “low-fertility trap” appeared on the front pages of Italy’s are among the millions of newcomers that demographers have warned who have found their way north across about. The population fell by 100,000 Christopher Caldwell is a national correspondent the Mediterranean and, in just a few from the past year—a decline that is

at The Weekly Standard. years, altered the fabric of Italian life. bound to accelerate. MONTESI / CORBIS GETTY STEFANO

22 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 Migration is swelling because the Democratic party’s lead candidate, Barack Obama’s adviser Jim Mes- people across the Mediterranean can has dismissed them as “freeloaders, sina to run it. When he lost by almost sense this. Once those immigrants crooks, and freemasons.” A Berlus- 20 points, he had to resign. have arrived in sufficient numbers, coni-linked television show accused The Socialist party’s internal tra- the alarming population statistics will M5S members of parliament of irreg- vails have rendered less logical an stabilize, but this will only disguise, ularities in filing expenses and of fail- Italian system that was illogical to not alter, the underlying demographic ing, in a few cases, to honor a promise begin with. Renzi’s replacement, trend. Giorgia Meloni, whose conser- to donate part of their salaries to sup- Paolo Gentiloni, is a political wall- vative Brothers for Italy party is look- port Italian small business. The affair flower, a placeholder, an unassuming ing to form a coalition with Berlusconi has become known as Rimborsopoli, and unambitious-seeming politi- and the Lega, says she is running “in “-opoli” being an Italian particle like cian. For that reason, he has gradu- order that Italians not disappear.” ally become the most popular Italians have seen for a while politician in the country, the that there is something broken only prime minister in a quar- in their system. The Five Star ter-century whose approval rat- Movement (M5S), a mostly online ings—which now stand at the group founded by the come- astronomical, for Italy, level of dian Beppe Grillo, came within a 47 percent—have risen during hair’s breadth of winning the last his term. And although Renzi, national elections in 2013. The as the leader of the Democrats, is M5S accuses la casta—Italy’s tight- their official candidate for prime knit group of business and politi- minister, he would never have cal elites—of corruption, and has the votes to take that office back. sometimes ruled out having any- Should the elections produce no thing to do with the major parties clear winner, Gentiloni could be at all. It may have a point. Italy the first choice to head an interim is handcuffed by nearly $3 tril- or technocratic government. lion in debt, which a plummet- European pundits, journal- ing population does not improve Yawn: Gentiloni to the rescue? ists, and commentators are almost the prospects for financing. And unanimously in favor of the Euro- yet the parties persist in making the our “gate” that gets attached to the end pean Union. They have spent much most profligate electoral promises. of every political scandal. of this election season, particularly Berlusconi’s Forza Italia promises a Like the French Socialists and Ger- since the death of Pamela Mastropi- flat tax (which also would be a steep man Social Democrats who have seen etro, fretting that the Italian elections cut), while offering a guaranteed basic their votes crater in recent elections, could topple another anti-European income of $15,000 a year. This last is the Italian Democratic party is strug- domino. First the intransigence an idea that he stole from the M5S, gling to find a raison d’être. Renzi and against migration policy laid down which would at least try to finance it his colleagues suffer, as the Corriere by Poland and Hungary, then Brexit, by pushing up estate taxes. della Sera newspaper puts it, from “the now Italy, and next . . . ? M5S’s skepticism about politics fact that they only express an opinion But serious strife awaits even if as usual crosses ideologies. Many on important issues after their oppo- Italy’s government does not turn on of its voters are appalled at the way nents have done so.” Their problems the E.U. As in Germany, the public progressives in the political estab- go even deeper than that. In the early has mobilized against an unpopular lishment have permitted unbridled years of globalization, parties that in coalition government, with especial immigration. But they do not trust the industrial age had represented contempt for the touchy-feely social conservatives like Berlusconi or even workingmen were able to pump up democrats who have been steering it. It Salvini to bridle it. Whether the M5S votes by abandoning their old con- is too early to rule out a result similar would join any coalition has been the stituents for new ones. This was a to the dangerous one that Germany’s subject of much discussion. But when bonanza for a few electoral cycles, elections produced—a return to power an intransigent protest party takes a until the party’s traditional voters of the government the public repudi- quarter of the seats in a parliamentary realized they had been not just jilted ated with an even larger role for the election, a shutdown of the system is but tricked. That happened to Ital- very forces the public liked least. It’s a real threat. ian social democrats as surely as it did okay when voting produces results that This year, la casta has been fight- to American Democrats. Renzi spent are unacceptable to elites—democracy ing back, arguing that M5S is a party two years pushing a referendum to is supposed to work that way. What is as untrustworthy as the rest of them. reform the Senate and strengthen his more dangerous is when voting pro-

Former prime minister Matteo Renzi, own central government, even hiring duces results unacceptable to voters. ♦ / GETTY FEDERICO BERNINI / BLOOMBERG

24 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 State and Lake Streets, 1953 Chicago, Then and Now It is the best of times, it is the worst of times

By Joseph Epstein sides. Many of the murders were among the sorts of gangs long familiar in Chicago, which over the years has seen the he big news out of Chicago, city of my Egyptian Cobras, the Blackstone Rangers, the Disciples, birth and upbringing, is murder. Accord- and the Conservative Vice Lords, among many others. ing to a reliable website called HeyJack- According to a 2008 Department of Justice report, some- ass!, during 2017, someone in Chicago was thing like 100,000 members of up to 75 gangs were operat- shot every 2 hours and 27 minutes and ing in the city. Gang involvement in drug trafficking has Tmurdered every 12 hours and 59 minutes. There were 679 upped the stakes and intensified the violence in many of murders and 2,936 people shot in the city. This, for those the city’s black neighborhoods. who like their deviancy defined down, is an improvement Who to blame for this wretched, hideous, and genu- over 2016, when 722 people were murdered and 3,658 shot. inely barbarous situation? The city’s police, its politicians, The overwhelming preponderance of these people, victims its schools, its black leadership, contemporary black cul- and murderers both, are black, and the crimes committed ture—all have come in for their share of accusations. But chiefly in black neighborhoods on the city’s south and west then Chicago has a rich tradition of murder. As early as 1910, the city led the nation in homicides and was known Joseph Epstein is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. as the murder capital of the country. Much of the violence His The Ideal of Culture: Essays (Axios Press) and then and through the years of Prohibition was commit- Charm: The Elusive Enchantment (Taylor Trade) ted by organized crime. As late as the 1950s, when you

will both be published in 2018. told people you were from Chicago, they not uncommonly BETTMANN / GETTY

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 25 pretended to hoist a tommy gun and rat-a-tat-tatted away in The Mob today seems to have retreated to the point reference to the bloody days of Al Capone and Co. of oblivion in Chicago. Prostitution and gambling, its two Chicagoans long took a certain pride in this criminal chief sources of income, have dried up. Gambling is now tradition. Never called the Mafia, organized crime in Chi- available on the Internet, and, with the advent of the pill cago was generally referred to as the Syndicate or the Mob and the sexual revolution, nice girls have all but put prosti- or the Outfit, and sometimes just the Boys. So big was the tutes out of business. The illicit big money these days is in Syndicate presence in Chicago that at least one of the local drugs, and the trade is monopolized by drug lords working television news channels kept a special correspondent, a out of Latin America and the Chicago gangs who serve as man named John Drummond, to cover Mob news. Orga- their distributors. One is hard-pressed to name any promi- nized crime often led off a news broadcast or garnered a nent Mob members in current-day Chicago because, one front-page headline, as when Allen Dorfman, an adviser to gathers, there are none. the Teamsters’ Jimmy Hoffa and an all-around fixer, was gunned down in the parking lot of the Lincolnwood Hyatt. y the time of my birth in Chicago in 1937, “the city Mob figures—Tony “Big Tuna” Accardo, Sam Giancana, of the big shoulders,” in Carl Sandburg’s phrase, Joseph Lombardo—were celebrities, known throughout B had developed a considerable slouch. Not that there the city. A juicy bit of gossip was when Mob guys showed was ever much truth in Sandburg’s sentimental poem of up to play golf at the Tam O’Shanter Country Club. Best, 1914, but in my boyhood there was at least still a Chicago sound advice had it, to let them play through. stockyards, and on warm summer nights, with a wind blow- I myself, in the early 1970s, ran into a few of the Mob ing in from the south, even in my far north side neighbor- figures at the Riviera Club, where I sometimes played rac- hood of Rogers Park one could smell the abattoir roughly a quetball. Gus Alex, said to have been head of Mob gam- hundred blocks away. One of the standard grammar-school bling and prostitution in Chicago, was among them, and I trips, one which I am not at all sorry somehow to have remember locker-room discussions in which they expressed missed, was to the stockyards, where tons of dead animal amazement at America’s dithering in Vietnam. The strong flesh and entrails were on view and where large men stunned should never take any crap from the weak; “blow the bas- cows with sledgehammers before slaughtering them. tards to hell” was their view. The Mob influence reached Chicago was nothing if not a reality instructor. Political all the way down to high schools, where football parlay idealism never really came alive in this city. By the 1930s, cards—beat the spread on three college games and win $6 the Irish were in firm control of city hall, their machine on a $1 bet—were always available. An Italian customer of nicely lubricated by patronage, corruption, and organized my father’s told him that if he ever had a cash-flow prob- crime. Edward J. Kelly was mayor from 1933 to 1947; he lem, the Boys were ready to help out. was followed by Martin H. Kennelly and then the 21-year Jews in the chiefly Italian Mob tended to play admin- term of Richard J. Daley. With a brief pause for the negligi- istrative roles. Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, a Galician ble mayoralties of Michael Bilandic, Jane Byrne, and Har- Jew, was the Syndicate’s legal and financial adviser from old Washington, Richard M. Daley (le fils, as he was never the Capone days through the middle 1950s. Jewish bookies known), served as mayor of Chicago for 22 years, bringing were not uncommon in Chicago. My mother’s older brother, us up to the less than impressive tenure of Rahm Emanuel. “Lefty Sam” Abrams, was one. He eventually owned a few My father, with more than a light touch of irony, used to points in the Riviera in Vegas. I may best establish my uncle’s say of Chicago aldermanic elections: “Strange, a man put- social standing by mentioning that Sinatra was at his grand- ting out a quarter of a million dollars to get a job that pays daughter’s wedding. After her brother’s funeral, my mother, $20,000 a year. It doesn’t make sense.” The only person who peering into his closet, counted 27 ultrasuede jackets. mattered politically in Chicago when I was a kid was your In our neighborhood lived a man named Maury precinct captain; he might get you a parking permit or out “Potsy” Pearl, a Jewish bookie whose bodyguard drove his of jury duty or some jerseys for your kid’s baseball team. son, a friend of my younger brother’s, to school every day. A In Chicago, the game of politics was fixed, locked in. My friend of mine’s father, a borax man who had scored heav- mother, who was never guilty of reading a word about poli- ily in the aluminum-awning business, made the mistake of tics in the Chicago Daily News and later the Sun-Times— dabbling in boxers, which meant connecting to the Syndi- Colonel McCormick’s isolationist Tribune was not allowed cate, which controlled the sport, with the result that one in our apartment—dispensed with my father’s irony on the day he found himself pursued simultaneously by the FBI subject of Chicago politicians. Raising her coffee cup, little and a brute named “Milwaukee Phil” Alderisio. People in finger bent, she remarked: “They’re all thieves, you know.” the Chicago of those days took a certain pride in their often No one so far has proven her wrong. tenuous connections to the Mob. The Chicago of my boyhood was an intensely

26 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 Teenage gang members at a murder arraignment in Chicago, ca. 1957

Catholic city. Ask someone where he lived and he was growing up. So geographically stratified by ethnicity and likely to answer with the name of his parish (St. Nicholas of race was Chicago that a kid had only to tell where he lived Tolentine, St. Gregory’s). Catholic culture was everywhere than you knew his ethnic heritage, his family’s income, and in the country a hundred-fold stronger then than now, and whether the family ate in the dining room or kitchen, his the Catholic atmosphere was especially strong in Chicago father in a collar or in his undershirt. Apart from going into owing to its large populations of Irish, Italians, and Poles. the Loop to shop at Marshall Field’s or Carson Pirie Scott So Catholic did the place seem—with priests in cassock, or to Wrigley Field for a Cubs or Bears game, there was no nuns in habit everywhere part of the cityscape—that as a reason to leave the friendly confines of one’s neighborhood. young boy I took Catholicism and Christianity to be coter- The neighborhood contained everything—church or syn- minous. The Bing Crosby movies of those years—Going agogue, schools public and parochial, shops, like-minded My Way (1944), The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)—reinforced neighbors—one might possibly require. If our family this sense of Catholic omnipresence. A now-forgotten hadn’t had cousins living in the far south side neighbor- actor named Pat O’Brien made a living playing a priest in hood of Roseland, I might never have known Chicago had a the movies. How many cinematic murderers he prayed for south side until I was in my adolescence. while accompanying them on their way to the gallows or Ethnicity and race was the organizing principle behind electric chair would be difficult to calculate. Chicago neighborhoods. Greeks, Italians, Poles, Irish, In the courtyard building on Sheridan Road to the Jews all wished to live among their own, and they did so. north of ours lived the Cowling family. The father, Sam Our own neighborhood of West Rogers Park, to which we Cowling, did a regular comic bit called “Fiction and Fact moved in 1947 from Rogers Park along Lake Michigan, from Sam’s Almanac” on the then immensely popular was changing from white-collar gentile to ascending mid- national radio show called Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club. dle-class Jewish. My father bought a two-flat, and our rent- Sam’s beautiful wife was named Dale, the same name, ers, living on the second floor, were the Andersons, Mr. older moviegoers will recall, as Roy Rogers’s wife. Their and Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Anderson’s unmarried sister, boys, Sam Jr. (who was my age) and Billy, both went to St. Edna, all then in their late 50s. Mr. Anderson worked at a Jerome’s, thence to Loyola Academy, and thence to Jesuit nearby bank. Mrs. Anderson spent the day in housecoat Georgetown University, though they probably could have and curlers, dressing shortly before her husband returned gotten into Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Catholicism of home. The only words of Mrs. Anderson’s I can recall, their kind has vanished from American life. and the family lived above us for more than a decade, are: Among Chicago’s many sobriquets—Windy City, Sec- “Mr. Anderson gets a nice lunch at the bank.” What they ond City, City on the Make, City That Works—the City of thought of us invading Jews I do not know. “There goes

KIRN VINTAGE STOCK / CORBIS GETTY KIRN VINTAGE Neighborhoods had the highest truth quotient when I was the neighborhood” would not be a wild guess.

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 27 West Rogers Park was roughly 30 percent Jewish when M. Henri remarks to her lunch companion that in the old we moved in, but soon the balance shifted to well over days when Jews and blacks moved in people used to say, 60 percent. Devon (pronounced Dih-vonne) Avenue, the “There goes the neighborhood”; now, when gays move in, main shopping hub in West Rogers Park, quickly became they say, “Here comes the neighborhood.” And so it has markedly Jewish in character. Within an area of eight-or- been with Andersonville, which is filled with pleasant res- so blocks, there were three Jewish delis and three Chinese taurants and interesting shops, has a striking absence of restaurants (one, the Pekin House, had an owner who people begging on its streets, very little crime, and mod- over the years served so many Jews that he began to dress est houses and apartment buildings carefully kept up—a and look Jewish himself). The two men’s stores—Turner splendid instance of progress without disruption. Brothers and Aidem & Dess (the latter featuring color- One sees this gentrification throughout the city in such coordinated window displays)—were Jewish-owned, neighborhoods as Ravenswood (where Rahm Emanuel and so was the high-line women’s shop called Seymour lives), Roscoe Village, Lake View, Bucktown, Logan Square, Paisin, where shoppers were offered a cocktail while try- Wicker Park. Entirely new neighborhoods have been cre- ing on clothes. Later a Jewish bakery and a shop selling ated, too, such as South Loop and West Loop. South Loop K-rations (kreplach, knish, kugel, kasha) moved in. All in my youth was a skid row with a sprinkling of light very happy and heimish. industry. West Loop, another skid row, which back then had only ne of the marked changes in At six or seven years old, dreary bars and no restaurants or Chicago in recent decades I made the mistake of nightlife of any sort, is now the O has been in the character reciting to my father the center of au courant dining in Chi- of its neighborhoods. West Rogers poem that begins ‘Eeny, cago. Both South and West Loop Park, for example, has become largely are now populated chiefly by the South Asian. Today on a Saturday meeny, miny, moe.’ young. Much more than in the night Devon Avenue resembles noth- In a rare fit of fury, he past, Chicago seems a city for the ing so much as Mysore or some other gave me a strong lecture young, a place where to be in, say, provincial Indian city. Tamil is heard on the parallel pasts of one’s early 30s seems ideal. everywhere. Women walk about in persecution of blacks Hyde Park, the neighbor- saris, men in white cotton kurtas and hood of the University of Chi- trousers, young boys in cricket sweat- and Jews. cago, an enclave of intellectual ers. Sikh turbans are not uncommon. life surrounded by black neigh- Stores sell live chickens, also goat meat. Cell-phone shops borhoods on three sides, remains much the same despite a have chargers available that work in electrical outlets on the rather energetic program of interventionist urban renewal other side of the world. Sari shops are abundant. Asian veg- in the 1950s and early ’60s led by a man named Julian H. etables are on offer at the greengrocer’s, and Indian restau- Levi, which left the neighborhood’s main shopping streets rants predominate. bereft. Saul Bellow, a longtime resident of Hyde Park, once Along with the East Indians in current-day West Rogers told me that they ought to erect a statue to Julian Levi for Park live Haredi, or ultra-orthodox, Jews—chiefly farther his urban renewal efforts—and then blow it up. In my stu- west, past California Avenue. Ner Tamid, the conservative dent days at the university in the middle 1950s, Hyde Park synagogue from which I was bar-mitzvahed in 1950, is out was already a slightly dangerous neighborhood, and the of business. West Devon is now rife with orthodox syna- Midway Plaisance, a strip of land between the south end of gogues, Jewish day schools, and yeshivas. There are kosher the campus and the black neighborhood of Woodlawn, was butchers, religious bookstores, bakeries, and most of it known as Apache territory. closed on Shabbos. The sweeping changes that have done most to alter Many of the old Chicago neighborhoods have under- the human topography of Chicago have been the decline gone gentrification. A notable example on the north side of the city’s heavy industry and the increase in its black has been Andersonville. A once rather drab neighborhood and Hispanic populations. Chicago lost some 411,000 fac- of working-class Swedes and Germans, it is known today tory jobs between 1947 and 1982, or roughly 60 percent of as Mandersonville, home to older gays and lesbians—as its total. The stockyards closed, the steel mills followed, opposed to the younger Boystown, the city’s second gay stores went under, real income went down. More and more neighborhood, farther south, around Belmont and Broad- whites moved out to the suburbs, and Chicago lost its place way, a place much more go-go. Years ago I wrote a short as the nation’s second-largest city to Los Angeles. Chicago story in which a woman in the Andersonville restaurant today is roughly one-third black, one-third Hispanic, and

28 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 A march down Michigan Avenue on December 31, 2016, each cross bearing the name of someone murdered in the city that year

one-third white. The city’s working-class character is gone. building on North Avenue. (The building is now the site Not surprisingly, blacks more than any other group were of a glitzy gym in the youthful Wicker Park neighborhood.) hurt by the reduction of factory jobs. The city’s 26 black In that earlier day, whites could go into black neighbor- neighborhoods (defined by having a 75 percent or more hoods much more easily—that is to say, more securely— black population) were further affected by the destruction, than blacks could go into white ones. I was one of six through urban renewal, of two mammoth public-housing adolescent Jewish boys who one night drove into the heart complexes, the Robert Taylor Homes on the near south side of Bronzeville to sample the bordello services of Iona Satter- and Cabrini-Green on the western edge of the near north field, the ex-wife of Bob Satterfield, the heavyweight whom side. This caused many already trouble-burdened black I saw knocked out in the second round by Ezzard Charles families—fatherless, unemployed, with delinquent kids— in 1954 at Chicago Stadium. Larry Goldenberg parked his to move into already struggling black neighborhoods. father’s maroon and white Buick Roadmaster at the curb at In my youth, blacks—Negroes as they then were— 4246 South St. Lawrence in front of Iona’s apartment with- played scarcely any obvious, or perhaps I should say visible, out giving its or our safety a second thought. role in Chicago. Then as now the city was highly segre- Going into certain tough Italian or German neigh- gated, with blacks living almost exclusively in the south borhoods was much more daunting. After a game against side section of town known as Bronzeville. As a small boy, Waller High School, our mainly Jewish Senn High School the only black person I came in contact with was the sweet- basketball team was ambushed and beaten up by young natured Emma, who came to clean our apartment on Tues- Brando-ish thugs. Playing against Amundsen High School, days, and died there one day. we heard anti-Semitic chants coming from the stands. At six or seven years old, I made the mistake of recit- ing to my father the poem that begins “Eeny, meeny, miny, he Democratic machine remains in power in Chi- moe.” In a rare fit of fury, he gave me a strong lecture on the cago, though not so firmly or all-pervasively as in parallel pasts of persecution of blacks and Jews, and under- T earlier decades. Some years ago, the political scien- scored how Jews were the last people who should be preju- tist Milton Rakove pointed out the non-ideological charac- diced against blacks. A man who backed up his sentiments ter of the machine in Chicago, which was chiefly interested with his actions, my father had a black secretary and blacks in keeping its members in power, things under control, and were predominant among the eight or ten people who made the financial rewards of patronage rolling along. Keeping

SCOTT OLSON / GETTY costume jewelry in his one-floor factory in a five-story things under control, alas, has also meant keeping blacks

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 29 segregated, or so argues the historian Andrew J. Diamond because of the death by shooting of a son, or grandson, in in a recent book called Chicago on the Make. a gang killing, or of a young daughter having been hit by a Diamond’s attack on the Daleys, père et fils, is that they stray bullet. A picture of the dead boy or girl, often in high- didn’t merely ignore black neighborhoods in Chicago but school graduation cap and gown, will appear, and an uncle actively worked against their advance by keeping them or aunt or older sibling comes on to attest to the sweetness strictly segregated. The Dan Ryan Expressway, he holds, and promise of the deceased. The killers are seldom appre- was built to slow black incursion into the white neighbor- hended, for the understandable reason that neighborhood hoods of the southwest side. The campus of the University residents are terrified of retaliation if they turn them in. of Illinois at Chicago was placed where it was, on the south- Then there are the news items about carjackings, muggings western edge of the Loop instead of in Humboldt Park on the El for cell phones, stolen cars crashed into Michi- where it might have uplifted the Puerto Rican neighbor- gan Avenue shops in jewelry robberies, and groups of black hood, to keep west side blacks from moving closer into the youth storming into the Gap and other such shops to grab Loop. The Daleys did this, Diamond argues, through stra- jeans or other items. tegically planned urban-renewal projects, through captur- Diamond lays the blame for the hell that most of Chi- ing anti-poverty funds from federal programs and putting cago’s black neighborhoods have recently become on them to their own uses, and through Richard M. Daley. While mayor, their extensive efforts to build up the Diamond argues, Daley’s “pub- Loop, encourage tourism, and protect Turn on the local news, lic relations team made sure to the city’s wealthier neighborhoods: and all too many nights use every gang incident to claim Streeterville, Lincoln Park, Lake Shore one will be greeted by that gangs rather than the may- Drive. The result was blacks segregated the sight of a woman or’s policies were to blame for in hyperghettos and the hegemony the two main problems African of what Diamond calls “neoliberal- weeping because of the Americans had been complaining ism.” Neoliberalism, the great villain death by shooting of about for years: defective schools of Chicago on the Make, is defined by a son, or grandson, in and brutal cops.” Chicago police a Berkeley political scientist named a gang killing, or of a animosity toward blacks, which Wendy Brown as “a rationality extend- young daughter having included “Red Squads” used to ing a specific formulation of economic disrupt earnest efforts at commu- values, practices, and metrics to every been hit by a stray bullet. nity organization, supplies a leit- dimension of human life”—or, in other motif in Chicago on the Make. The words, as putting monied interests before human ones. author also characterizes the large number of blacks and The deterioration of most black neighborhoods in Chi- Latinos appointed to Richard M. Daley’s cabinet as, using cago is not up for argument. Ridden with crime, without Michael Katz’s phrase, “the management of marginaliza- amenities, lacking even necessities (many are “food deserts,” tion.” Diamond is no easier on Rahm Emanuel, Daley’s a term denoting the absence of supermarkets or even con- successor, calling him “Mayor 1%.” venience stores in some of them), the general desolation of A month or so ago, after a particularly brutal weekend these neighborhoods is such that, Diamond reports, “the of gang killings in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, I Mexican aversion to settling in and around black neighbor- heard a black man, an angry resident of the neighborhood, hoods—an aversion shared by Chicago’s next largest Latino shout at a television reporter, “They better get some pro- group, Puerto Ricans—was so strong that by 2000 Chicago grams down here fast.” What “programs,” I wondered, displayed the highest degree of segregation between blacks did he suppose would seriously help? In Great American and Latinos among the hundred largest cities in the United City (2012), a book about contemporary Chicago, Robert States.” The black west side, long ago the home of much of J. Sampson made the argument, based on a vast arsenal of the city’s Jewish population before its migration to the north social-science research, that troubled neighborhoods have side and thence to the plush suburbs of the North Shore, saw their greatest chance of maintaining order through com- 28 blocks all but destroyed by fire after the black riots follow- munity organization. Sampson argues, in the less-than- ing the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. These convincing language of contemporary social science, which blocks have never been rebuilt. always seems to set reality off at a comfortable distance, that If blacks once seemed all but invisible in my Chi- “whether through the enhancement of age-graded men- cago, today they are ubiquitous. Turn on the local news, torship and monitoring of adolescent activities as a form a depressing experience in itself, and all too many nights of collective efficacy, increasing organizational opportunity one will be greeted by the sight of a black woman weeping for citizen participation in decision making, or enhancing

30 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 the legitimacy of government institutions that have eroded more than continued discrimination by race, was respon- trust among those served, we need a surgical-like attention sible for the wretched conditions in which too many blacks to repairing or renewing existing structures rather than in America found themselves. In a crucial, and much exco- simply designing escape routes.” riated, sentence, Moynihan wrote: “The steady expansion To have organization one needs leadership, and part of of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady the problem in Chicago is that black leadership has been— disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past I can think of no more kindly word for it—dismal. Most generation in the United States.” black politicians and clergy appear to have been in busi- Whatever the flaws in the cultural argument—and not ness for themselves. Beginning with William Dawson, a least among them is the fear that it can lapse into racism black alderman who sold himself to the Richard J. Daley with its implication that black culture (and hence blacks machine, through the never-camera-shy Jesse Jackson and themselves) is inherently inferior—few people are likely the disappointing Senator Carol Moseley Braun to the to note any valuable advances in that culture over the past Black Panther-turned-congressman Bobby Rush, no one 60 years. Compare Nat Cole to Jay-Z, Duke Ellington to has emerged to organize and lead Chicago’s black popu- Chance the Rapper, or the brilliant essays of the young lation out of the wilderness of their increasingly crime- James Baldwin to the racial tirades of Ta-Nehisi Coates and infested neighborhoods, where drug trafficking, high the sense of the regress of black culture—from one of ele- unemployment, and disproportionate poverty rates reign gance and pride to soaking in victimization—is staggering, and seem unlikely soon to decline. saddening, depressing in the extreme. The recent black protest movements seem irrelevant in Meanwhile, political correctness makes any meaning- the face of such misery. Even Diamond is dubious about ful criticism of the new black culture from outside all but the efficacy of the Black Lives Matter movement to accom- impossible, if only by keeping the country’s best minds plish more than traffic jams and attracting television cam- from addressing the subject. Toward the close of his career eras. He mentions that a Pew Trust study found “only 15 George Kennan thought about turning his interests from percent of Hispanics and 14 percent of whites claimed to foreign policy to domestic problems but found himself strongly support” the Black Lives Matter movement. In unable to do so, he noted in his Diaries in 1975, “when 2016 and 2017, of the nearly 1,500 killings in Chicago, 22 one of the greatest of the problems is the deterioration of involved the police, the target of Black Lives Matter. Not life in the great cities and when one of the major com- many people, and no putative black leaders, meanwhile, ponents of the problem this presents is the Negro prob- have stood up to ask why, if black lives truly matter, black- lem, which is taboo.” Those black writers—Shelby Steele, on-black gang murders have been allowed to arrive at the Thomas Sowell, William Julius Wilson—who think out- horrendous level they have. side the victimhood box are repudiated for doing so. Every newly arrived immigrant group has in darker arly in Chicago on the Make, Andrew Diamond moments thought itself, however briefly, victimized, but by refers to the “culturization of politics,” which he now too many American blacks have so clung to the notion E describes as “the transfer of political acts and events that victimhood itself has become the center of their sense onto the terrain of culture, where they become disassoci- of themselves and has all but usurped any other identity. ated from questions of structure, power, and, ultimately, They have been encouraged in this victimhood script for political mobilization.” On the penultimate page of his decades and decades, first by liberals and now by progres- book, he again notes that many whites are “still invested in sives, to the point where it could be argued that the left cultural explanations of poverty in the other [that is, black] generally has contributed as heavily to the condition of Chicago.” The cultural, as opposed to the political, argu- contemporary blacks as lingering racism. In fact, encour- ment holds that while admitting the toll of racial discrimi- agement in the belief that all black problems are at root nation in the past, something has meanwhile gone deeply owing to racism is certain to keep blacks in their place, and wrong with urban black culture. might itself just be the ultimate racism. The argument is scarcely news. As long ago as 1965, Chicago is today two cities, one gentrified and grand, Daniel Patrick Moynihan published his “The Negro Fam- the other devastated and despairing, both within a single ily: The Case for National Action,” which when it first municipal boundary. The situation is intolerable. Some- appeared was greeted with derision by nearly everyone, thing has got to be done, and, complex, difficult, and ardu- black and white, on the left. In his report, Moynihan argued ous as the task is, if it is one day to get done, however great that the gap between black and other groups was widening the goodwill of many whites in the city, the black popu- owing chiefly to the breakdown of the black nuclear fam- lation of Chicago will, like every racial and ethnic group ily. Too few black fathers were on the scene and this, even before it, have to do it pretty much on its own. ♦

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 31 The Mystery Martyr Who was Hezbollah’s Samer Atoui, and why was he mourned by admirers around the world?

By Emanuele Ottolenghi wake of the Politico investigation, Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month ordered a review of decisions made Foz do Iguaçu and Ciudad del Este, by the Obama Department of Justice and established an Tri-Border Area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay interagency task force entrusted with combating Hezbol- eath came suddenly for Samer Ibrahim lah’s terror finance. Atoui, a 48-year-old native of the southern That Hezbollah has in the last decade morphed into a Lebanese village of Khiyam. On October 2, global criminal enterprise is part of the reason it is today 2017, a Syrian opposition social media Lebanon’s power-behind-the-throne. Iran founded the account posted photographs showing the Lebanese Shia militia to spread its Khomeinist ideology at Dburned-out wreckage of Atoui’s car, alongside Atoui’s pic- the height of Lebanon’s civil war. It is Tehran’s most suc- ture and that of his fellow traveler, a known Hezbollah cessful franchise and can largely sustain itself financially special force commander named Ali Al-Ashiq. Atoui was even as it expands its reach. It is spearheading the ayatol- initially identified only as Abu Ali Jawad, his nom de guerre. lahs’ military effort to save the Syrian regime of Bashar The apparent cause of death was a drone strike. al-Assad. It is fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Iran’s Atoui’s demise might have been unremarkable, given Revolutionary Guards and their Afghan, Pakistani, and the heavy fighting and mounting Hezbollah casualties in Iraqi proxies in Syria. It is helping the Islamic Republic Syria. But this death opened up surprising windows into establish, train, and mobilize likeminded militias in Iraq, the powerful ties between Hezbollah’s leadership in Leb- Yemen, and elsewhere. Hezbollah is creating a new gen- anon and the criminal enterprises in South America that eration of well-trained and battle-hardened Shia fighters generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the group each whose goal, beyond Syria, is to make Khomeinism tri- year. These networks, fed by drug money and other illicit umphant across the region. Their enemies are the same traffic, inhabit the still-underexplored intersections as always—the Sunni monarchies and the hated Zionists, between narcotrafficking and terror finance. Swashbuck- with America, the imperial power with its toxic, godless ling gangsters, Bond-movie villains, white-collar criminals, culture, lurking in the background. Hezbollah’s resilience and Lebanese merchants, whose economic success serves and accomplishments set it apart from other Islamist Hezbollah, man them across the globe. Their proceeds fund movements. It believes, and it has reason to believe, that war and ethnic cleansing in Syria and Hezbollah’s rearma- it can succeed in its vision. As journalist Thanassis Cam- ment in South Lebanon. Their trade feeds violence and banis wrote in his study of Hezbollah, A Privilege to Die, crime, flooding advanced economies with counterfeited “Hezbollah has inculcated millions . . . into its ideology medicines, illicit drugs, weapons, and dirty cash. of Islamic Resistance. The credo is catchy and thoroughly The toxic convergence between terrorism and narcotraf- thought out; and it is coupled to an unusually effective ficking suddenly came into focus in Washington when, late program of militancy and mobilization. That recipe has last year, a Politico report dropped a political bombshell by put Hezbollah in the pilot’s seat in the Middle East, steer- charging that the Obama administration put “an increas- ing the region into a thicket of wars to come.” Those wars ingly insurmountable series of roadblocks” before inves- keep coming thanks to men like Atoui and their devotion tigators from a task force named Project Cassandra. to Hezbollah’s cause. This was an ambitious effort by the Drug Enforcement Agency to combat Hezbollah drug-trafficking from he first crucial detail that Hezbollah released Latin America into the United States and Europe. In the about Atoui was his name. The opposition’s Twit- T ter post noted the circumstances of his death Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at but only used his nom de guerre; Hezbollah’s Twitter the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. announcement revealed his real name, identifying him

32 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 as Abu Ali Jawad and Samer Atoui. The latter post also Samer Atoui. Even more puzzling: Their car appeared to included two photos of his face, one smiling with sun- have been struck by either a missile or a roadside bomb a glasses, the other with slightly parted lips and a plaintive few miles from the site where the other seven fighters were gaze. These details were the key that unlocked his pres- hit by the reported drone strike. ence on social media to outside observers. Though these were two separate incidents, Hezbollah On the day of Atoui’s death, residents of Khiyam information outlets treated them as one, eulogizing its nine started posting on their Facebook accounts videos of martyrs together. To date, Hezbollah media and social plat- a procession of cars accompanying an ambulance to the forms have not revealed much about Atoui’s rank and role entrance of town. To the sound of gunfire, a coffin emerged inside the resistance. Yet the elaborate production imme- from the ambulance, draped in the yellow Hezbollah flag. diately assembled to honor his memory made it clear that Men in black escorted the coffin, surrounded by a crowd he was not a regular casualty. Though the circumstances of of mourners gathered to see a son of their village take his Atoui’s death may still be shrouded in mystery, the way in final journey. which his name emerged from the shadows reveals much In Khiyam, everyone seems to have known of Atoui’s about Hezbollah’s global footprint. prominent role inside Hezbollah. Yet to his dying day, few in the West ever heard of him. Little of his role in Hezbollah emerges from Atoui’s social media profiles, much less from the flowery pronouncements Hezbollah made to honor his death. It is doubtful anyone would have identified him as a senior Hezbollah figure had it not been for the matching information released on Twitter in the hours after his death. Atoui cultivated the unassuming public image of a man focused on the joys of family and a simple rural life. His Facebook account’s photos show a jovial-looking man, tall and handsome, slightly graying, but still in the prime of his life. Whether playing grandfather to a joyful newborn baby, Friends in high places: the late Samer Atoui (left) with Mohammad out on a fishing expedition with friends, or skillfully rid- Reza Naqdi, former head of Iran’s IRGC Basij militia ing a horse, Atoui only immortalized intimately personal moments on his social media. He occasionally appears in military fatigues, but the bonhomie exuded by his smiling hint that Atoui was a very senior Hezbollah oper- face makes it hard to tell whether he is hunting Syrian reb- ative, not just a local commander, came from a els or pheasants. In his last year, Atoui even posted numer- A notice posted the day after his death on the Face- ous photos of a rundown building that he eventually turned book account of a member of the Shia Lebanese commu- into a refurbished family home with a pool—hardly a give- nity in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. The ad summoned members away of his professional militancy. of the community to commemorate Atoui and another Had Atoui lived anywhere else in the world but South slain young Hezbollah soldier, Ibrahim Ma’an Sbeyti, on Lebanon, he could have easily been mistaken for a typical October 6 at the local Imam Khomeini mosque. Foz do family man intent on building his middle-class suburban Iguaçu lies at the confluence of the Paraná and Iguazu riv- dream. To the best of our knowledge, he was a happy man, ers, which mark the frontier area where Argentina, Brazil, devoted to his family, admired by his peers, and loved by and Paraguay meet. Better known as la triple frontera, Span- his friends. He was also a senior Hezbollah commander ish for the tri-border area, or TBA, it is a notoriously porous who met his untimely death on the front lines of the war border for all sorts of illicit traffic. It is also the home of a between the Assad regime and the Islamic State. large community of Shia Lebanese merchants, who began On the day of Atoui’s death, an unidentified drone settling there in the 1950s. Back then, the TBA was little reportedly struck Hezbollah positions in the desert of east- more than an outpost in the middle of the jungle, but the ern Syria, killing several of its fighters. Lebanese media building of the Friendship Bridge connecting Paraguay accused the United States of ordering the strike, eliciting and Brazil in 1965 and the opening, in 1984, of the Itaipu a strong denial from the Pentagon. There were suggestions Dam, a large hydroelectric project just north of Foz do of friendly fire, since Russia and Iran are the only other Iguaçu, boosted the area’s economy. Paraguay’s late dictator forces operating drones in the area. Casualties, quickly Alfredo Stroessner encouraged the Lebanese to immigrate announced on Hezbollah-affiliated social media, included to Ciudad Presidente Stroessner (later renamed Ciudad del the two senior Hezbollah commanders, Ali Al-Ashiq and Este) and turn it into a bustling commercial center.

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 33 They did. Ciudad del Este’s tax-free commercial zone Lebanese Shia diaspora. They usually occur when the fallen begins just past the Friendship Bridge. It is a maze of stores, have relatives in the community, which Atoui did in the market stalls, and elegant malls offering a mixture of duty- Brás neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil. The Brás mosque’s free-shop-priced products, unregulated currency exchange announcement named the martyr and his relations, a pater- services, cheap Chinese-made consumer goods, and a nal uncle. Yet Atoui does not appear to have family in Foz suspiciously overabundant and underpriced selection do Iguaçu. There are numerous Sbeytis and some Atouis of Western brands. Many of these products are routinely in the tri-border area, but no mention was publicly made smuggled across the river to Brazil, where the brands, both of them, and the deceased’s social media accounts do not in their counterfeit and genuine incarnations, are sold at a appear to link directly to any of them. premium. The Lebanese community is still predominant among shop owners, though in recent years Chinese mer- amer Atoui’s case was unusual, then—his death was chants have joined them in growing numbers. greeted by a tremendous outpouring of grief beyond Ciudad del Este has been a good investment for them. Sfamily circles, especially in the TBA, where Hezbol- Many live in opulent homes north of the city in the exclu- lah’s presence is closely tied to the drug trade and other sive and secluded Paraná Country Club. Some have illicit activities. His funeral, broadcast live on Facebook, acquired prized honorary consulships. The most successful elicited tearful comments from numerous Shia commu- are regularly seen in local glam- nities overseas. Viewers send- our magazines rubbing shoul- ing blessings for the soul of the ders with the country’s elites. departed included numerous Their story of success is Canadian-based members of not dissimilar to those of other Atoui’s family, villagers from communities of Lebanese expa- Khiyam, and many others in triates across the region. Much Lebanon, in addition to people like Paraguay, Brazil and Argen- from as far afield as Kuwait, the tina are home to large Arab Ivory Coast, Uppsala, Sweden, diasporas. In other parts of the and, of course, Latin America. world, their members have The videos were shared hun- by and large assimilated into dreds of times by people as far local cultures; the TBA Shia, The Friendship Bridge that connects Brazil and Paraguay and as Sydney, Australia. Someone by contrast, have remained boosted both economies, seen from above on November 16, 2017 both beloved and famous had close to their South Lebanon died. His admirers close and ancestral home, which since the 1980s has been increas- far were paying their last tribute. ingly dominated by two political and paramilitary groups: Within days of Atoui’s death, videos, photos, memo- Amal and Hezbollah. Both TBA Shia mosques are affiliated rial services, eulogies, and articles emerged to provide a with Hezbollah. The Shia school on the Brazilian side is run full account of how important Atoui was to Hezbollah. His by Hezbollah’s al-Mahdi educational movement, while Amal funeral procession summoned Hezbollah VIPs from all is responsible for the school on the Paraguayan side. Their departments of the organization, including senior members clerics and teachers are also closely linked to Hezbollah. responsible for illicit financial activities overseas. Among The TBA links to Hezbollah are not just financial. them: Hezbollah member of Lebanon’s parliament Ali When Iran ordered the bombing of Israel’s embassy in Fayyad, who represents Atoui’s district; Hezbollah’s com- Buenos Aires in 1992 and then, two years later, against mander of the Khiyam sector, Hajj Ali Hassan Zureiq, the AMIA building, the Jewish cultural center in the same whom the U.S. Department of Treasury identified, in 2010, city, Hezbollah operatives in the TBA provided criti- as the director of the Lebanon branch of the U.S.-sanc- cal logistical support. When years later one, Ali Khalil tioned Imam Khomeini Relief Committee; Hezbollah’s Merhi, was arrested, he was found hiding in Ciudad del commander of the first southern region, in which Atoui Este. When Moussa Ali Hamdan, indicted in 2009 by the was a leader, Seyed Ahmad Safieddine; and Akram Barakat, United States for providing material support to Hezbollah the deputy head of Hezbollah’s executive council. through the sale of counterfeited currency and passports, Immediately after the funeral, Atoui was eulogized by was captured in 2010, he was found in the same building the local mufti of Khiyam and Marjayoun, Abdel Hussein as Merhi’s hideout. El Abdallah, but a few days later, no less than Qassem Naim, Despite these strong links, commemorations of Hez- the deputy secretary general of Hezbollah, second only to

bollah’s fallen are infrequent though not rare among the Hassan Nasrallah, came to Khiyam to memorialize Atoui. EMANUELE OTTOLENGHI

34 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 A picture of Atoui posing next to the former commander to the TBA, including whether he was a member of Hez- of Iran’s Basij militia, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, emerged. bollah’s External Security Organization Business Affairs This was no ordinary martyr. And to one Hezbollah opera- Component (BAC), which according to the DEA is in tive based in Latin America, Atoui was first and foremost a charge of running drug trafficking and the laundering of personal friend. drug proceeds. Sobhi Mahmoud Fayad is a TBA-based Hezbollah It is definitely possible that Atoui was part of the senior member whom the U.S. Department of Treasury BAC. As shown in his entry in Paraguay’s national reg- sanctioned in 2006 for his role as “a senior TBA Hezbollah istry, Atoui was given permanent residency in Paraguay, official who served as a liaison between the Iranian embassy a world away from Khiyam, in 1993. At the time Khiyam and the Hezbollah community in the TBA” under Execu- was under Israeli occupation. Whatever his later claims to tive Order 13224, which targets global terrorism’s financial Hezbollah fame, in 1993 he cannot have been much more enablers. Treasury accused Fayad of being active in drug than a lowly fighter, promising though he might have trafficking and currency counter- been, with familial connections to feiting. The day Atoui died, Fayad guide his path in the great expanses changed his Facebook profile photo of Latin America. Fayad, on the to capture for posterity his friendship other hand, was by the mid-1990s a with Atoui. The two are pictured well-established TBA-based opera- lounging in a garden with a third tive working for the Barakat clan. friend—the TBA-based Bassam Hezbollah’s martyr’s posters Nader, whose Facebook handle is the and videos show photos of a young Farsi equivalent of “death to Amer- Atoui in uniform. One can specu- ica.” This was not a photo op, but a late at what stage in life he moved genuinely intimate moment among to the TBA and why, but clearly he close friends. wore Hezbollah’s uniform at a time Such friendships have implica- when it was fighting Israel in South tions for U.S. national security. Fayad Lebanon and then, as a young man, is the brother of Ali Fayyad, the he went to Latin America. Hezbollah MP who attended Atoui’s He was in Latin America for The wreckage in which Hezbollah operatives funeral procession. More important, Samer Atoui and Ali Al-Ashiq met their deaths years and they must have been some according to his 2006 Treasury desig- of the best of his life. A year before nation, Fayad is a close associate of members of the Bara- he met his fate, Atoui waxed lyrical about how nicely Leba- kat clan, whom Hezbollah dispatched to the TBA to build nese immigrants were treated in Brazil. Clearly, Brazil held a funding network to support the organization’s activities. a special place in his heart. Five years after he obtained his These Barakats are close relatives of Akram Barakat, a mem- permanent residency, and likely his citizenship, in Para- ber of Hezbollah’s executive council and the second in com- guay, in 1998 Atoui became a naturalized Brazilian—a sign mand at Hezbollah’s global finance department. (Barakat that he lived there for a period. also accompanied Atoui to his final resting place). At 71, Holding both passports is common among Shia Leba- Sobhi Fayad is one of the elders of the TBA Hezbollah net- nese operating in the TBA. Evidence has recently emerged work. Unimpeded by U.S. sanctions, he has continued to that Hezbollah operatives moving there rely on TBA- travel around the globe in recent years, making regular visits based Lebanese intermediaries who facilitate their immi- to Lebanon at least annually, including last October, when gration paperwork. Terror finance operatives in the BAC Atoui died. routinely seek multiple citizenships to move more easily Fayad and Nader are not the only ones in the Latin across borders. American Hezbollah network who appear to have person- So here’s what we know: Atoui was a veteran of Hez- ally known Atoui. Numerous others from the TBA, and bollah’s wars. He spent at least five years in Paraguay and linked communities in the Brazilian frontier town of Ponta Brazil—likely in the TBA—and at one point, according to Porã, from São Paulo, and from the Paraguayan capital of information available in Paraguay’s commercial registry, Asunción, took time to join in the Facebook chatter trig- he had a business there, although he later shuttered it. He gered by the announcement of Atoui’s death. was a close friend of a U.S.-sanctioned Hezbollah operative Much still needs to be clarified about Atoui’s rank and 23 years his senior, possibly a family relation but likelier a role inside Hezbollah and the extent of his connections mentor in the trade Atoui went to learn in the TBA.

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 35 It could be that Sobhi Fayad and Samer Atoui were not unusually low threshold for acquiring citizenship in both just friends but colleagues. There was, after all, a significant countries. The same State Department report observed that age gap between them. Atoui, who came to the TBA in the in Brazil, “Irregular migration, especially by aliens from early 1990s and spent enough time in the area to acquire areas with a potential nexus to terrorism, is a growing prob- two citizenships, may have met Fayad in Latin America lem, with Brazil often serving as a transit country.” Citizens rather than in Lebanon. Fayad, who back then was in his of Latin America still require a valid visa to enter the United forties and ran a racketeering operation on Hezbollah’s States—Hezbollah operatives with Brazilian passports are behalf in the TBA, could have taken this young veteran not necessarily more dangerous to the homeland. But having of Hezbollah’s battles under his wings and trained him in multiple passports facilitates the efforts of these operatives the ways of illicit finance. It is just a theory, of course, but to seamlessly move across borders in pursuit of their goals. Atoui’s publicly available information checks out. And their unfettered presence, as citizens, in countries with weak law enforcement, corrupt political elites, and rampant organized crime means their ability to conduct business and raise money for their cause is enhanced. Now that the Trump administration has turned toward a harder line on Iran and its proxies, it is possible that the State Department will exert greater pressure on South American governments. Given his rank, Atoui’s case may prove to be particularly embarrassing for both Asunción and Brasília. Yet this is not just a one-off case of benign neglect.

ecent Hezbollah terrorist plots—successful and Blood brothers: After Samer Atoui (left) died, Hezbollah official Sobhi Mahmoud Fayad (center) made this his Facebook profile picture. At right thwarted—all involved operatives with multiple is Bassam Nader, whose Facebook handle is ‘Death to America’ in Farsi. R passports. In July 2012, Hezbollah operatives suc- cessfully targeted a bus carrying Israeli tourists at an airport Atoui left Latin America at some point, and upon outside the Bulgarian seaside resort of Burgas, murdering return to Lebanon he became a heavyweight inside five Israelis and the Bulgarian bus driver. The three ter- Hezbollah. According to a local source, he had not visited rorists were Meliad Farah, Hassan el-Haji Hassan, and for more than a decade by the time he died. Yet the out- Mohamad Hassan El-Husseini, dual nationals of Lebanon pouring of genuine, intimate grief suggested many knew and, respectively, Australia, Canada, and France. A few him and interacted with him personally long after he was days before the Burgas attack, Cypriot authorities arrested supposedly gone. Hossam Yaacoub, a dual national of Lebanon and Sweden These facts expose the limits of American efforts to who was plotting to strike Israeli tourists in Cyprus. Sev- restrict Hezbollah’s access to financing, especially illicit eral weeks later, an Iranian-Canadian dual national was access. Despite being listed as a Specially Designated arrested in Bulgaria while she was scouting a Chabad cen- Global Terrorist, Fayad’s frequent travels to Lebanon ter for another possible terror attack. Another dual national reveal that neither travel bans nor asset freezes are actually of Lebanon and Canada, Hossein Bassam Abdallah, was being implemented against him. To reach Lebanon, Fayad arrested in Cyprus and sentenced to six years in prison in crossed at least two borders and transited several interna- 2015 for plotting terror attacks against Israeli targets. He tional airports. No one stopped him. was found in possession of vast quantities of explosives Countries like Brazil and Paraguay, which host Fayad when arrested. and have granted him citizenship, do not seem interested in This pattern applies to Latin America too. When Peru- acting on U.S. terror finance designations. The State Depart- vian authorities arrested Lebanese national Mohammad ment’s 2016 report on terrorism noted that “there were no Amadar in Lima in October 2014, they found explosive terrorist financing convictions or actions to freeze in 2016” devices in his apartment. His phone included evidence in Paraguay, despite the existence of legal means and capac- of scouting potential targets. Amadar, like other mem- ity to enforce them against Hezbollah operatives. Speaking bers of Hezbollah’s overseas operations, held a second to the author, a senior Paraguayan official countered that the passport, in his case from Sierra Leone, which he used government of Paraguay could only act on U.S. designations to enter the country. Although Peruvian courts have so if it received an official request from Washington. far only convicted him of immigration fraud, the U.S. The lack of interest in enforcement is aggravated by the Department of Treasury listed Amadar as a member of

36 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 Hezbollah’s External Operation Service (of which the the issue with Paraguayan authorities, who can conduct BAC is part) in 2016 and slapped sanctions on him. more rigorous inspections on their end.) Those who visit the TBA know very well that the Par- U.S. authorities can also investigate hundreds of front aguay-Brazil boundary is largely fictional. Of the numer- companies that suspect TBA businesses have established ous individuals whose business activities the United States in southern Florida. This process is likely to move more targeted with terror finance designations in 2004 and quickly once the White House finally appoints a new DEA 2006, most have residences on both sides of the border, administrator, to empower the law enforcement agency hold both citizenships, bank in both countries, and play most actively involved in the fight against Hezbollah’s drug each jurisdiction’s weaknesses to their own advantage. trafficking and money laundering rings in recent years. Unlike the United States, neither Brazil nor Para- As part of its efforts to target global terror finance, guay has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization, over a decade ago, the Bush administration went after although both have antiterrorist legislation in place which Hezbollah’s operatives in Latin America, designating a would allow them to do so. If Asunción and Brasília chose major network implicated in money laundering, counter- to designate Hezbollah, they could revoke citizenships, feiting, and drug trafficking in the TBA. In parallel, the seize assets, and preemptively detain the group’s opera- DEA launched the aforementioned Project Cassandra to tives. The United States would not be the only beneficiary systematically dismantle Hezbollah drug trafficking net- of such moves, since Hezbollah operatives were arrested works across the globe, many of which emanated from in 2014 and 2017 for scouting high-value targets in Latin Latin America. Project Cassandra initially scored some America. Clearly the region remains vulnerable to attacks, important victories but its success was short-lived. If sus- despite a long period of quiet since the 1994 bombing of tained, over time the combined onslaught of sanctions the AMIA building in Buenos Aires, which bore Hezbol- and law enforcement actions could have disrupted Hez- lah’s fingerprints. The AMIA bombing is still awaiting jus- bollah’s overseas financial flows. Instead, with the Obama tice for its victims, including the slain prosecutor, Alberto administration aggressively pursuing a nuclear deal with Nisman, who more than anyone else worked to expose the Iran, many investigations were downgraded, slowed down, Iranian-Hezbollah matrix of the attack. Yet not even Bue- put on ice, or simply nixed so as not to upset the Iranians. nos Aires has designated Hezbollah a terror entity. The complacency of local authorities who failed to follow While encouraging greater vigilance from its South through on U.S. sanctions did the rest. American partners, the United States cannot afford to turn We may never know whether Atoui was a senior opera- a blind eye to the shortcomings of its own enforcement tive for Hezbollah’s overseas illicit operations. But the echo efforts. A case in point is that of Ali Issa Chamas, a recently of his death put the spotlight on a remote area of Latin sentenced Lebanese trafficker with ties to Hezbollah who America that still plays, thanks to its porous border and was extradited to Miami from the TBA in June 2017. Pub- illicit trades, a key role in Hezbollah’s finances. On a rainy licly available documents show that Chamas had business November morning when I last visited, there was little sign ties to the United States and was getting ready to export of movement in front of the Foz do Iguaçu Imam Kho- significant quantities of cocaine for the American mar- meini mosque where congregants had gathered to com- ket. Even more concerning: In his conversations with a memorate Atoui. It was Friday, a holy day of prayers. Yet U.S.-based client, Chamas bragged about having a secure the faithful were on the other side of the river, in Paraguay, method for shipping cocaine by air cargo from the TBA readying their stores for the weekend onslaught of buyers. into the United States. Clearly, Hezbollah operatives have Business is booming, with the latest rage, satellite decod- a way to get their deadly merchandise through the front ers, selling at every electronics store in the city. On the door, if they can get drugs past U.S. airport authorities. Paraguay side, there are even billboards advertising $130 There aren’t many cargo flights connecting the TBA to decoders that will let anyone with a fast Internet connec- the United States. Most are operated either by a Miami- or tion watch Netflix and HBO without paying a subscription. a Persian Gulf-based carrier on a regular basis. The chal- Inside an electronics shop, a Paraguayan salesman lenge here is not one of catching small planes flying out of boasts that the product he is trying to sell me is the best Latin American jungles or speed boats crisscrossing the one on the market. He also swears he has the best price in Caribbean. As such, U.S. airport authorities, customs offi- the city. Neither the salesman nor his Lebanese boss sitting cials, and other law enforcement agencies can mitigate this watchfully in the back of the store appears overtly preoccu- vulnerability by systematically searching planes coming pied with the legality of the product and the loss of revenue into the United States from the TBA, as well as working inflicted on cable and satellite providers across the border. with the airlines involved to improve their own cargo con- “Will it work in the U.S.?” I ask him. He points to a screen trols. (Likewise, the State Department may want to raise broadcasting a sports event on ESPN and smiles. ♦

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 37 Books&Arts

Theda Bara (nicknamed ‘The Vamp’), one of Fox’s biggest stars, in a lavish 1917 production of Cleopatra. No known copy of the film survives. The Man Who Lost the Movies William Fox was a motion-picture pioneer. Why is he all but unknown today? by Carl Rollyson

n 1960, already a movie buff, edu- scagliola columns with Corinthian capi- cated by Bill Kennedy, the ex-film- The Man Who Made the Movies tals and beams with griffins, cartouches, actor host of CKLW’s programs The Meteoric Rise and Tragic and starbursts; then I’d ascend a stately featuring old Hollywood classics, I Fall of William Fox staircase to the mezzanine level, where by Vanda Krefft Itook the bus from my east-side Detroit I sat watching a movie bigger than Harper, 927 pp., $40 home to the Fox Theatre downtown. life itself. I vividly remember watching Victor I liked to look over the orches- Mature, all muscles, and Hedy Lamarr, Going to the Fox was a special event tra below and then sit back with the all allure, in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson no matter what was shown. It had some opulent feeling of being entertained. and Delilah (1949). 5,000 seats, and its grandeur had not sig- I might as well have been in ancient nificantly diminished since it opened in Rome—although Rome itself would Carl Rollyson is the editor of the Hollywood 1928 as the flagship theater in the Fox not have satisfied my 12-year-old’s Legends biography series from the University chain. I entered through one of 16 doors Foxite craving for the grandiosity of Press of Mississippi and the author of leading into the lobby, walked on marble the wide screen. It never occurred to

Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress. floors, looked up at ornate ceilings and me that Fox was the name of a man COURTESY OF PHILLIP DYE

38 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 who invented the experience I could aking flicks—as they would helped Fox remain in business with- not live without or that it nearly Mcome to be called because of out partners. Even better, they stood killed him when the moment of doom the flickering projection lights—at the behind him as he took on Thomas descended with the realization that he turn of the 20th century took capital, Edison, who sought to monopolize would lose everything he had put into the cooperation of friends and fam- the movie business, claiming that his making my day. ily, and a willingness to take risks way invention of the movie camera and pro- Not yet a year old, William Fox beyond what was required in the gar- jector entitled him to control the mak- (1879-1952), born Wilhelm Fuchs, ment industry, where on New York ing and distribution of motion pictures. came with his mother to the United City’s Lower East Side many of Fox’s Going up against Edison meant risking States four months after his father contemporaries began their business fights in the street with his thugs and Michael, a Hungarian Jew, landed careers. It was a good place to break legal battles with his lawyers. A fearless at Castle Garden in the port of New into the movie racket—considered Fox took on Edison and won. York and immediately Americanized low-grade entertainment—for a glove Krefft, a diligent reporter, follows the family’s last name. William Fox, salesman like Samuel Goldfish (who Fox’s murky maneuvers, patiently sift- with no memory of his native land, changed his name to Goldwyn), as ing and evaluating evidence. Some never dreamed of living anywhere readers may balk at the plethora of except America, even though his feck- detail in her magnificently researched less father often denigrated the United book, wishing instead for a 300-page States and extolled the village life he biography that briskly tells them what had left behind. Michael, a poor pro- they want to know. But in this case, vider, essentially turned over family what is at stake is our understanding of responsibilities to young William, who the intricacy of the business deals that never shirked his obligations and never made the man. If Fox had been inter- forgave his father’s derelictions. Years ested only in making money, Krefft’s later, at the height of his Hollywood book would indeed be tedious—but as reign, William Fox sent a camera crew she shows again and again, Fox loved to Hungary to film the grim conditions the movie business. He wanted his cus- of village life. He showed the foot- tomers to have a good time, and some- age to his father and family; Michael times to feel uplifted and inspired. Fox never spoke of heavenly Hungary Part of Fox’s obscurity—who knows again. At his funeral, his multimillion- anything about him compared to aire 57-year-old son spit on his casket William Fox (1879-1952) Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, and Harry and said, “You son of a bitch.” Cohn, for example?—has to do with “In many ways, the father’s failures long as you could get investors to buy his unwillingness to promote his own were father to the man,” writes Vanda the nickelodeons, essentially five-cent persona, and part is due to his desire Krefft in her monumental new biogra- peep shows, the affordable entertain- to go it alone in a maniacal quest to phy. It is a fitting beginning for the story ment for immigrants and the lower monopolize the movie industry. Until of a self-made American who believed classes. But Fox, beginning in 1904, the 1929 crash, he succeeded. As much in his own genius and took to heart his used only his own savings, his sweat- as anyone he had created movie stars, mother’s exhortation to push forward no shop earnings, amounting to less than especially his “vamp” Theda Bara, matter the obstacles and setbacks. For $2,000, to get into the movie business. the made-up name of Theodosia Burr William Fox, the movies represented He kept expanding without, for the Goodman, a Cincinnati girl given a the American promise of greatness for most part, relying on bank loans. As he fake biography as an exotic European any man willing to work hard enough later famously said, bankers lend you actress appearing in silents such as and long enough for himself and his an umbrella when the sun is shining Siren of Hell, The Devil’s Daughter, and family. Early on, Fox developed a repu- and then ask for it back when it begins Sin (all released in 1915) but also in tation as a ruthless competitor. Krefft to rain. films of literary classics such as Tol- suggests he was no more relentless than Where, then, did Fox’s money come stoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata (also 1915). other movie moguls of his generation— from? Profits from his business did That list illustrates Fox’s high and low but something, to be sure, was differ- not generate enough to underwrite his ambitions. Although Krefft dredges up ent about him. Something accounts for acquisition and building of more and accounts of these films, many of them the astounding fact that no biography more theaters and production facili- have been lost, and with them much of him, other than an as-told-to book ties. Other than loan sharks, which Fox of the legacy of Fox’s early innovative by Upton Sinclair, was ever published. apparently shunned, only Tammany efforts to transform the movies into not Something has to account for Fox’s cru- Hall politicians had the resources to just a national entertainment but an cial role, now largely forgotten, in creat- back him. Mayors, judges, and other indispensable contribution to Ameri-

COURTESY OF VANDA KREFFT COURTESY OF VANDA ing the movie industry. local officials had access to funds that can culture and identity.

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 39 lthough the Warner brothers are While Fox had his rivals, Krefft businesses. Plenty of villains appear in A credited with leading the transition realizes that her subject became para- Krefft’s account, but she never indulges from the silents to the talkies beginning noid. He saw conspiracies against him in Fox’s own habit of blaming his fail- in 1927 (hear Jolson in The Jazz Singer!), everywhere, especially among nefarious ure only on his betrayers, although he Krefft makes a powerful argument for bankers and studio heads in cahoots proved right that the hostile takeover Fox’s primacy in financing the creation with them. For Fox, the struggle to would simply raid Fox of its funds and of sound film. Whereas the Warners control his business was as melodra- virtually destroy the company that had relied on the cumbersome syncing of matic as any movie made on the Fox been his life’s work. recorded disks to film, Fox patiently lot. He lost control of the Fox theaters Fox lived another two decades after invested in integrating the soundtrack and his production company, a victim losing his movie empire. He schemed with the film threaded through a pro- of overextending himself, buying too to get it all back, and he had resources, jector. This tricky technical problem many shares of Loew’s stock on mar- keeping intact his personal wealth of took a few years to work out, but Fox gin and paying as little as 10 percent several million dollars. But he could persisted and his system prevailed. As a of the stock’s value. When brokers never content himself with an advisory reward, he expected the companies that role. In 1935, the merger of the ailing developed his patented inventions to Fox Film with Twentieth Century, a work exclusively with him, but he never small company, was conducted without obtained their agreement in writing, William Fox’s involvement, and no one relying instead on verbal assurances. It in the new combined studio wanted any- was an odd, baffling mistake for such a thing to do with the man who had made shrewd man to make, and Krefft never the movies. The new production team, quite explains his apparently naïve headed by Darryl Zanuck, restored the faith in his business associates—except studio to its glory days. Meanwhile, Fox to present Fox’s blunder as a matter of retaliated against the industry by engag- character. He liked to believe that for all ing in patent-infringement lawsuits his going it alone, he had the good faith aimed at accruing power that would and good will of those he treated fairly Most Fox films were lost in a 1937 fire, force movie corporations to license his in business. Because what he did was including Romeo and Juliet (1916, starring inventions, effectively exercising veto not just good for William Fox but also Harry Hilliard and Theda Bara) and Stolen power over film production. He paid off good for the industry, he did not expect Honor (1918, starring Virginia Pearson). corrupt judges to enforce judgments in to be met with duplicity and opposition. his favor. But in the end these crooked Fox’s failure to realize, beginning deals were exposed, and Fox spent five in 1929, even before the crash, that his and a half months in prison, convicted effort to monopolize the movie industry of perjury. for its own good was doomed is attrib- utable to his isolation. He stayed in mid the welter of financial trans- New York even when movie production A actions and movie productions, began to shift significantly to the West Krefft never loses sight of the man. For Coast. He continued to rely on family much of his life Fox remained a devout members and the Fox Film executives Orthodox Jew who believed that God he encouraged but also badgered about was on his side. He never lost his faith, budgets. His business was growing at but he abandoned the idea that his own such a rate that it attracted the machi- mission had been somehow blessed. nations of various Wall Street investors demanded payment for the full value More and more he came to rely on not especially interested in the movies of the stock, Fox incurred huge debts. his wife, even during his most fateful but eager to control the wealth Fox had Even then, the resourceful Fox almost business decisions; sometimes listen- accumulated. But Fox always thought fought his way out of trouble, find- ing to her led to disaster. He looked he could overcome opposition by build- ing short-term backers in businesses after his family but did not know how ing bigger production facilities and that he had patronized, but he never to express affection, except for lavish- acquiring a larger distribution network. recouped enough to vanquish the com- ing $100 bills on relatives who came to In the heady days leading up to the bined forces of bankers and some of his visit him. These kinds of details make crash, he had gone all out to acquire own executives who could no longer a biography and Krefft has an abun- the Loew’s theater chain, arousing the abide his dictatorial methods and were dant supply of them. anxieties of rivals like Adolph Zukor eager to cash in on the lucrative capital The biographer also proves her case. at Paramount, one of the industry’s and operating funds of the Fox theater If there is one man who made the mov- pioneers, determined to do his part in chain and production units. So they ies, it is William Fox. He knew, for

bringing down the Fox empire. outvoted him and took control of his example, that the sound system pushed BOTTOM: KREFFT COURTESY OF VANDA COURTESY OF BRUCE CALVERT; TOP:

40 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 by Warner Bros. could not prevail in unhappy and often distant relation- for a terrifying moment like a ragdoll. the marketplace. He was confident that ships with others in his industry, but His forehead was gashed, his nose was movie theater owners would invest in he could empathize with his custom- crunched, his lip was busted open, his his product, which made the golden ers, and he sought to create that thrill lungs were bruised. Blood spattered age of Hollywood sound film possible. and appetite for grandeur that could the snow. White needed 62 stitches. He knew that those movie palaces be purchased in the splendor of a Fox Such a blow could have wrecked like the Fox in Detroit required his Theatre seat. He brought the world to White’s confidence. But after a few personal attention. Fox was not emo- moviegoers, housing the dreams and weeks of recuperation he was train- tionally close with family other than aspirations that are, in the end, more ing again. And in January, he qualified his wife and daughters, and he had than money can buy. ♦ to compete at this year’s Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. After a strong start at the Olympics, B A White fell behind by a few points. In & the second round, he stumbled. Then came the third, his last run with one man to beat, Ayumu Hirano of Japan, Olympic Surprises who led White with a 95.25, a score just shy of perfect. Shaun White’s comeback, Mikaela Shiffrin’s nerves, I marvel at the way these races and more from the Winter Games. by Tom Perrotta work. Players wait at the top before they go, and once they take off, there’s no holding back. So White waited, o someone watching snow- peting and consistently medaling at the face forward and snowboard not yet boarding for the first time, X Games. He won or medaled at a long clamped, for more than a minute and it might look like a mix of string of national and international 30 seconds, which must have felt like skiing, surfing, and skate- competitions. At his first two Olym- an hour with all the pressure. And Tboarding. Some competitive snow- pics, in Turin in 2006 and Vancouver then—boom—once you start, your boarding events are races and feature in 2010, he took the gold. run will be over before you know it. obstacles or emphasize speed; others By 2014, White appeared to have White’s final run lasted just 33 seconds award higher scores for better tricks. passed his snowboarding peak. He from start to stop. They are fairly recent additions to and some childhood friends formed a White could have repeated his the Winter Olympics, some appearing band in 2012—Bad Things, in which earlier run and hoped for a higher for the first time at this year’s games. White was lead guitarist—and so he score executing the same pattern. For the halfpipe snowboarding varia- apparently didn’t keep up with his Instead, he went for something he tion, which debuted at the Olympics snowboard practicing. At the 2014 had never accomplished: a combina- in 1998, athletes start at the top of a Olympics in Sochi he finished fourth. tion of a frontside double-cork 1440 snow-covered halfpipe, 22 feet above He appeared at fewer U.S. and inter- and a cab double-cork 1440. That is to the bottom. Then off they go, for very national competitions and even sat say, White twice in a row flew up off little time. It’s not a race, but a show: out the X Games after what he called the halfpipe and spun in the air four Competitors jump, spin, float in the a “lover’s quarrel” with the organiz- times while also twice tilting upside- air, land, and do it again and again ers. Before he turned 30 in 2016, he down. To do a single double-cork until they reach the end of the pipe. had launched an annual sports and 1440 is an incredible feat; White had It’s easy to describe and exciting to music festival in California and a never before done two, even in prac- watch, but so hard to do that any of menswear line. No one would have tice. (In fact, it was while practicing the competitors can miscalculate at been surprised if he had decided to a 1440 in New Zealand that White any moment. leave competitive snowboarding and had smashed his face.) After he nailed Shaun White is a longtime hero not come back. the 1440 combination and some other of the sport, good enough and hip Yet back he came. By early 2017, he slick moves, White began to celebrate. enough to have achieved celebrity returned to the X Games—but came in When his final score—97.75—was status. He began competing in the 11th out of 12 competitors, his worst announced, he cried. “There were a X Games in 2000 at the age of 13 and halfpipe performance since his first. lot of obstacles to overcome and now won his first X Games medal, a silver, Still, he was already talking about pre- it’s all worth it,” he said. in 2002. Year after year, he kept com- paring for the 2018 Olympics. By last White is by no means perfect. October, White was training his hard- He recently settled a sexual harass- Tom Perrotta writes about sports for the est in New Zealand. But he crashed, ment lawsuit filed by a woman, Lena Wall Street Journal, FiveThirtyEight, face first, atop the halfpipe. In video Zawaideh, who played drums in and other publications. of the accident, White’s body flops his band. After his victory in South

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 41 Korea, he spoke insensitively athletes behind her will work even about the suit—he called it “gos- harder to catch up. She’ll feel pres- sip”—and simply tried to make sure and maybe even some fear. the topic go away. He later apolo- But all that is still years off; for gized for that and described him- now, there’s no young American self as a “changed person.” That’s Olympic athlete with more grace true on the snow; for the rest, time and energy. will tell. “The one thing I learned is to Some people think inexperi- give everything a shot,” Kim said. ence in sports is costly. I’m not “No regrets is the best way to go.” convinced. In some cases, inex- No regrets: Mikaela Shiffrin, perience—and the passion it cre- the best women’s skier in the ates—can be ideal. Just look at the world, knows this. She also knows phenomenal beginning by sudden- how hard it is to keep that atti- star Chloe Kim, born in California tude. Before the Olympics began, to Korean immigrants. She’s 17 Shiffrin was seen as a woman who years old, with a broad smile and a could win four gold medals in ski- snowboard she has mastered since ing events, a remarkable feat that she first hit the slopes at 4. She can would break the record of three. At speak French, Korean, and English age 22, she looked in the prime of and always seems confident. In the her career and won her first event women’s division of the halfpipe with a stellar second run. But one competition, she’s already better fine race was no guarantee about than everyone. the rest. The next day was sup- Unlike White, Kim had no wor- posed to be easy, in her best event, ries or doubts about her finish. She Top: Shaun White, with scars from his October the slalom, where competitors training accident plainly visible on his nose and lip, was so good on her first attempt quickly go back and forth as they celebrates his men’s snowboard halfpipe win. that she ended up with a 93.75, Above: Chloe Kim, age 17, during the women’s race to the bottom. But everything higher than everyone else. Relaxed snowboard halfpipe competition that she won. went wrong. and happy, she went for more, like Below: Mikaela Shiffrin on a practice run. This is where we all have to any champion would, and she suc- Bottom: Czech skier Ester Ledecka stands in remember the reality about skiing. ceeded in remarkable fashion. As stunned disbelief after she won the super-G race. It’s an intense sport, one in which the crowd watched and cheered, a single mistake can, at best, slow Kim leaped back-to-back 1080s you down or, at worst, send you (three revolutions in the air). She crashing off the course. It’s not landed with ease and immediately like a marathon or a track race, hugged Arielle Gold, the American in which falling, crashing, and who came in third, and Liu Jiayu, false starts are rare. Shiffrin has the Chinese woman who won silver. made the conventional wisdom Then came the score: 98.25. She about skiing look false over the was all but perfect. years by dominating everywhere Now’s the time, at age 17, to she competed. She even won an talk about random things in life— Olympic gold medal in the slalom which, in Kim’s case, means talk- at Sochi when she was just 18, and ing about her favorite food (churro she was the favorite to win again ice cream sandwiches). Few view- in Pyeongchang. How much the ers of the Olympics know anything favorite? Betting establishments about her and her parents, who were giving her an 80 percent stood together and watched their chance of winning, an absurdly daughter from afar. Kim looks as high number for such a wild and casual and confident as possible— unpredictable sport. something not uncommon in So what happened? First, she sports, especially when the person threw up, because of nerves, not is young and has nothing to lose. a stomach bug. She had done that That will change for her, prob- before, but this time didn’t recover. ably the next time around. Those She skied conservatively, as if

Olympics will be tougher, as the something less than her best could FOURTH: MARTIN BERNETTI SORIANO / AFP GETTY; / AFP GETTY THIRD: JAVIER SECOND: XIN LI / GETTY; / AFP GETTY; MARTIN BUREAU FIRST:

42 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 be enough. That could have been true; defensive technique can some- B A times work for someone so talented. & This was not one of those times. “Coming here and skiing the way I did, really conservative, was a Turmoil and Travel huge disappointment,” Shiffrin said. Chateaubriand’s memoirs wittily recall the “Sometimes I feel the only one who can beat myself in slalom is me. I beat figures and crises of his day. by Danny Heitman myself in the wrong way today. It’s a really big bummer.” n 1885, nearly broke from bad When Shiffrin was younger, little investments and dying of cancer, Memoirs from Beyond the Grave was asked of her, like Kim today. This Ulysses S. Grant spent his final 1768-1800 time, there were outrageous expecta- days writing the bestselling mem- by François-René de Chateau­briand translated by Alex Andriesse tions—thanks in part to commercials Ioir that gave his family financial security New York Review, 550 pp., $19.95 featuring her and footage of her child- after he was gone. The story of Grant’s hood broadcast on television showing swan song seems memorably American, her already looking like a star in wait- touched by the mythic national themes Alex Andriesse’s new rendering of ing. As much as Shiffrin has trained of boom and bust, ruin and redemption, the early chapters of the memoirs into to lose her fear, she had never been the abiding art of the deal. English is the first major take on the in an event like this year’s Olympics, But a generation before Grant’s grand material in decades. It nicely comple- with so much more on the line than authorial gesture, French aristocrat ments Robert Baldick’s 1961 transla- four years ago. Shiffrin would have François-René de Chateau­briand did tion, which has been the go-to version more chances for gold in tougher something similar with Memoirs from of Chateaubriand­ until now. Baldick’s events for her and success there— Beyond the Grave, published shortly after selected Memoirs, still in print in a Pen- after this piece was written—may his death in 1848. By 1836, Chateau­ guin edition, picks and chooses some have salvaged the games for her. No briand was deep in debt when he exe- of the best material from Chateau­ matter what, though, she won’t forget cuted what was essentially a literary briand’s entire work, which covers the about this one race and the fact that mortgage, selling the posthumous publi- years from the author’s birth through she has to wait another four years to cation rights for his memoirs to a group 1841. Andriesse translates only the first accomplish what she—and everyone of investors in exchange for a handsome part, which concludes at the dawn of else—had planned for so long. advance and generous annuity for him the 19th century, but he includes Part One of the competitions Shiffrin and, should she survive him, his wife. One in its entirety. There are four parts had to sit out because of the He had wanted to delay publication of in all, the complete work running to packed Olympics schedule was the book until 50 years after his death, more than 2,500 pages in the Pléiade the super giant slalom race—the but the terms ultimately embargoed the edition of 1947, Andriesse’s primary “super-G.” That race was won this project only as long as he was alive. source material. year by Ester Ledecka of the Czech Chateaubriand,­ who had been work- In her introduction to the new Mem- Republic. Ledecka is best known ing on his memoirs intermittently since oirs, Muhlstein offers a capsule summary as a snowboarder, and although she around 1803, had quite a life story to tell, of Chateau­briand’s life—no small feat was going to make history as the which is apparently why his publisher given its varied and complicated turns. first Olympian to compete in both was willing to fund the writer’s retire- Born in 1768 in Brittany, Chateaubriand­ snowboarding and skiing, no one ment to get the manuscript. Soldier, grew up in an old castle, which suited expected her super-G performance witness to the French Revolution, diplo- his father, an enthusiast of feudal cul- to be especially noteworthy. For her to mat, North American explorer, novelist, ture. He enlisted in the Royal Army at receive a medal at all is an upset; for Christian apologist, and poet, Chateau­ 18 and witnessed the revolution of 1789, her to take the gold came as a shock, briand was the Zelig of his day, appear- eventually seeking refuge in America to even to her. The picture of her standing ing to be everywhere at once. “Thus did avoid the postwar bloodbath. Chateau­ in her skis in disbelieving silence, Chateaubriand­ straddle not only two briand’s ostensible reason for visiting mouth open, expecting a correction centuries but also two worlds, that of the America was to discover the Northwest to the scoreboard that showed her ancien régime and that of the modern Passage, an audacious idea given his a winner, will likely be one of the era,” writes scholar Anka Muhlstein. complete lack of experience. His pri- enduring images of this year’s mary claim to fame at that point had Olympics—and is a helpful reminder Danny Heitman, a columnist for the Baton been getting a poem published. that no matter our experience and Rouge Advocate, is the author of Chateau­briand did not, alas, make expectations, there is always room for A Summer of Birds: John James a navigational breakthrough in the surprises in sports. ♦ Audubon at Oakley House. New World, although the change of

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 43 been in order. Chateau­briand’s opening disquisition on his lineage initially looks like something to skip over, recalling those tedious genealogical stretches of the Old Testament in which one genera- tion begets another. But then Chateaubriand­ subtly reveals the point of his prolixity. As his brother is citing this noble pedigree so Chateaubriand­ can be admitted into the coveted Order of Malta, he’s approved for membership just as the revolution of 1789 intensifies, with disastrous conse- quences for the family. Chateau­briand’s pacing is artfully eerie—the long recita- tion of ancestral bonds suggesting an inevitable extension of power and privilege far into the future, then that seeming certainty suddenly shattered by violence and atrocity. It’s chilling, in much the same way that Vladimir Nabo- kov’s Speak, Memory demonstrated the fragility of what was assumed to be the natural order in pre-1917 Russia. Humanity’s vulnerability to change is an underlying theme of Chateau­ briand. “The hours never suspend their flight; it is not man who stops time,” he muses, “but time that stops man.” Like many French writers—Mon­ taigne, Pas­cal, La Roche­fou­cauld— Cha­teau­briand could be brightly epi­ gram­matic, and there are verbal gems throughout,­ such as this one: “Aris­ Girodet, Portrait of Chateaubriand meditating on the ruins of Rome (ca. 1809) tocracy has three successive ages: the age of superior­ ity­ , the age of privilege, scenery gave him lots of literary mate- mentions in a chapter on his early cre- and the age of vanity. Once through with rial. Atala and René, two novellas ative life. That poetic sensibility is evi- the first, it degenerates into the second, inspired by his observations of Native dent in his memoirs, which have a lyrical and dies out in the last.” He offers this American culture, became period hits, air much in keeping with his reputation bit of advice for tolerating political dif- along with The Genius of Christianity, a as a founding father of French Romanti- ferences—even the ones that had led his defense of the faith against the attacks cism. While Baldick seemed especially countrymen to kill each other: “One has of the French Enlightenment. By 1800, keen to the rhythms of Chateaubriand’s­ to take men as they are and not always Chateau­briand was back in France, his frequently orotund style, Andriesse’s see them as they are not and as they can- fortunes rising or falling with the fickle translation is, on the whole, a bit more not be anymore.” political climate. He was loyal to the direct and intimate. Readers should dog-ear choice pas- Bourbon throne but a political liberal Andriesse’s editorial strategy—pro- sages if they want to find them again. on many levels, sometimes ostracized viding a big chunk of Chateaubriand­ This NYRB edition has no index, a curi- for his fervent defense of a free press. unabridged rather than producing rep- ous omission for an important work of “He had a vision of social transforma- resentative selections from the whole— scholarship. And it would also have ben- tion that did not entail the obliteration is probably one the author would have efited from a small chronology outlining of the past, and was proud to declare liked. Chateaubriand­ was fussy about key points in Chateaubriand’s­ life. He himself ‘Bourboniste by honor, royal- the arrangement of his work, and the did so many things—and lived so many ist by reason and republican by incli- memoirs have a sense of design even lives—that one sometimes wishes for a nation,’ ” Muhlstein notes. when they seem random and digressive. few more editorial signposts to follow “I wrote in verse for a long time There are times when one wonders the narrative. Andriesse’s footnotes—

before I wrote in prose,” Chateaubriand­ if perhaps a little snipping might have tucked unhelpfully in the back, like the ARCHIV GERSTENBERG / ULLSTEIN BILD GETTY

44 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 fine print at the bottom of a contract— are nonetheless worth consulting, espe- B A cially when they sort out conflicting & evidence on the veracity of some of Chateaubriand’s­ claims. An enduring controversy involves the memoirist’s Novel Critic account of meeting George Washing- ton in Philadelphia—an impossibility, What the innovative writer J. M. Coetzee sees when say some critics, since the president was he turns his eyes to others’ works. by Malcolm Forbes sick in bed at the time Chateau­briand supposedly shared dinner with him. Biographer George D. Painter takes a n 2003, when J. M. Coet­zee was more charitable view, arguing that the announced the recipient of that Late Essays two did meet, though on a different year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, 2006-2017 by J. M. Coetzee date. There are also serious questions the news wasn’t met with out- Viking, 297 pp., $28 about whether Chateaubriand­ visited as Iraged cries of “Who?” or “Why?” With many places in America as he claimed; nine brilliant novels under his belt, the limitations of period travel make the along with a haul of prestigious literary speed of his itinerary seem farfetched. awards—including a hitherto unprec- Andriesse cites possible cultural dis- edented two Booker Prizes—the tinctions on historical accuracy, observ- South African-born author had been a ing “that while the French are satisfied laureate-in-waiting. by a well-told tale, we Anglophones In its citation, the Swedish Acad- can’t help but fact-check.” Maybe he’s emy made mention of the “great onto something. Naturalist John James wealth of variety” in Coet­zee’s works. Audubon, a contemporary of Chateau­ Though spare, austere, and clinically J. M. Coetzee briand who was raised in France and precise, his novels are rich in moral later became a U.S. citizen, also told a complexity and ambiguity, and each self) and the metafictional trappings of few whoppers in his American travel- ruthlessly probes the human condi- his novel Slow Man (in which a novel- ogue, including a tale about hunting tion. But each does so in a different ist who had appeared as a character in with Daniel Boone, an adventure called way. Over the course of his career Coet­ a previous Coet­zee novel shows up and into question by substantial evidence to zee has channeled literary antecedents interacts, perhaps authorially, with the the contrary. (Defoe in Foe and Dostoyevsky in The other characters). On each occasion Though Chateaubriand­ might be Master of Petersburg); has tracked the Coet­zee has not so much tweaked the factually flexible, his Memoirs have a plight of individuals bowed by societal rules of writing fiction as ripped up way of gravitating toward larger truths. pressure and prejudice or broken by the rulebook to pursue his own agenda. His concerns about the challenges of political upheaval (Waiting for the Bar- The results can be challenging, even national unity in the United States seem barians, Life & Times of Michael K, Dis- maddening, but are always stimulating, prescient in light of the current fashion grace); and in more recent books has underscored with fierce intelligence in identity politics: “What connection employed allegory to explore exile and and ambition. is there between a Frenchman from displacement (The Childhood of Jesus, The Nobel committee also high- Louisiana, a Spaniard from the Floridas, The Schooldays of Jesus). lighted the “analytical brilliance” that a German from New York, and an Eng- Along the way, Coetzee­ has pushed is at work in Coetzee’s­ novels. How- lishman from New England, Virginia, the boundaries of the novelistic form. ever, it is on better display in Coetzee’s­ the Carolinas, or Georgia[?] . . . How Elizabeth Costello unfolds as a series nonfiction, specifically his literary crit- many centuries will it take to render of “lessons” (“The Novel in Africa,” icism. Two collections—Stranger Shores these elements homogeneous!” “The Lives of Animals”) while Diary and Inner Workings—gathered together These Memoirs, still speaking to new of a Bad Year comprises essays and book reviews and essays on authors audiences 170 years after his death, philosophical meditations (“On the from 1986 to 2005, showcasing the would probably surprise even Chateau­ afterlife,” “On the origins of the state”). breadth of his reading, the depth of his briand with their durability. They’re a There have been three fictionalized thought, and the range of his critical testament to his belief that in a world in memoirs (the last installment, Summer- faculties. Now comes a third volume, flux, literature is a promising constant. time, being about the late writer John Late Essays, which collects 23 literary “Achilles exists only through Homer,” Coet­zee, a fictionalized version of him- appraisals published since 2006. Some he once told his readers. “Take away the pieces are short, some are long. A few art of writing from this world, and you Malcolm Forbes is a writer and focus on living greats but most cover

AGENCE OPALE / ALAMY AGENCE OPALE will probably take away its glory.” ♦ critic in Edinburgh. famous deads. Some subjects are poets,

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 45 some are novelists; many are Euro- clumped together. That Beckett essay is frustrating is that some important Ger- pean, others are from further afield. one in a batch of four. There are also four man terms are either left untranslated Late Essays opens with Defoe—not essays on writers from Coetzee’s­ adopted (the late-18th-century artistic move- with his first novel, Robinson Crusoe, homeland: one apiece on Les Murray ment of Sturm und Drang) or rendered but his last and much less well known, and Gerald Murnane and two on Pat- incorrectly (Walser’s novel Geschwister Roxana. Coetzee­ calls Defoe “an unwit- rick White—hailed in the United States Tanner comes with no definite article; if ting, accidental pioneer of the novel of as an “antipodean William Faulkner” it had it would be die, not der). realism” and then goes on to examine and regarded by Coet­zee himself as “the These weaknesses, which presum- the book’s preoccupations with both greatest writer Australia has produced.” ably arise from the varying needs and sexual seduction and money (the lat- There is a further quartet of essays on limitations of the different audiences ter of which can be seen like a water- German-speaking authors, including for which the essays were written, for- mark throughout Defoe’s oeuvre). As Goethe and the enigmatic Swiss writer tunately are overshadowed by the col- ever—and unlike some critics—Coet­ Robert Walser. lection’s strengths. The nine essays zee is undaunted by classic texts: He that appeared in the New York Review refuses to overlook flaws or paper over ost of the essays illustrate Coet­ of Books are meatier pieces; the higher cracks with either mealy mouthed Mzee’s expertise. However, some word-counts mean more workspace, platitudes or disingenuous faint praise. illuminate certain flaws. Ten of the allowing Coetzee­ to read widely as He flags faults—Roxana suffers from essays in the collection were written as well as closely and to develop signifi- being too long and repetitive—but also introductions to classic novels translated cant arguments and tackle attendant judiciously balances the rough with into Spanish and published by a Span- issues. The longer of the two essays on the smooth by declaring that in the ish-language press. These are brief pref- Patrick White discusses the ethics of last stretch the pace is cranked up, aces within tight confines, which afford countermanding an author’s instruc- the drama is restored, and Defoe was Coet­zee little room for maneuver; all too tions and posthumously publishing “writing beyond his powers.” often he gives only bare-bones synopses, an incomplete or “unachieved” work. Ford Madox Ford is evaluated in a back-to-basics breakdowns, and opin- A substantial review of Philip Roth’s similar fashion. Coet­zee, having writ- ions posited rather than reinforced. Nemesis incorporates the Oedipus ten his university thesis on this Eng- Again and again in these essay- fable, a primer on polio, and fasci- lish “craftsman,” is well equipped introductions we witness Coetzee­ both nating etymological findings: “Nem- to judge, and he tackles Ford with selling himself short and spreading esis (the noun) exactly translates the authority. He writes off much of Ford’s himself thin. Samuel Beckett, we are Latin word indignatio, from which we output, noting how in one novel after told, “was an Irishman who during his get the English word indignation; and another “the construction is careless, early career wrote in his native English Indignation happens to be the title of the plot uninteresting, the character- but for his later and more important a book Roth published in 2008.” One ization shallow, and the prose merely work switched to French.” The Scarlet particularly satisfying essay on Irène passable”—before he turns his atten- Letter, we learn, “is not an allegory— Némirovsky leaves us wanting more tion to the book that redeemed Ford, that is to say, it is not a story whose ele- of the same—more pieces that compre- that “virtuoso exercise in novelistic ments map closely onto the elements hensively trawl a writer’s life, devot- technique,” The Good Soldier. of another story taking place in some ing equal attention to career-defining Coetzee­ studies Ford’s treatment of other, parallel realm.” A novella, we dis- books and secondary works, and more infidelity and suicide, then he brings cover, is “a work of medium length with pieces on women writers (Némirovsky in Madame Bovary to record “echoes.” a single action and a single main charac- is the sole female author here). Later, in an actual piece on Flaubert’s ter, focused on a single topic.” In his book of correspondence to his novel, Coetzee­ makes another welcome The flip-side of this oversimplifica- friend Paul Auster, Here and Now, there detour to trace parallels, this time find- tion is Coetzee’s­ tendency to supply is one letter in which Coetzee­ warns of ing it “instructive to compare Emma random German words in parenthe- the lopsided power and unfair advantage with the other great adulteress of nine- sis. It is not enough for him to say that a critic can wield over an author: teenth-century fiction, Anna Karenina.” that Kleist describes the eponymous “He becomes like the child lobbing And in one standout essay, “Eight Ways hero of his story “Michael Kohlhaas” pebbles at the gorilla in the zoo, know- of Looking at Samuel Beckett,” Coetzee­ as “terrible,” he also has to include ing he is protected by the bars.” Coet­ co-opts Melville to argue that the ques- the original “entsetzlich.” In the same zee, who has stood on both sides of the tion that lies at the heart of Moby-Dick is piece, we hear how Kleist drew up a bars, is no such critic. He doesn’t lob analogous to the question at the center “life-plan” (“Lebensplan”) to cover his pebbles, throw brickbats, or deliver of Beckett’s work—namely whether our own “education” (“Bildung”). And so low blows. His critiques are construc- lives are shaped and guided by a good it goes on, here and elsewhere. Instead tive and instructive. Above all they do or bad force or whether what we go of clarifying, Coet­zee ends up compli- what all good literary essays should do: through is “just stuff happening.” cating, overburdening his reader with They encourage us to read and reread, to Some essays with commonalities are extraneous information. Almost as appreciate anew and newly discover. ♦

46 / The Weekly Standard March 5, 2018 with stale Hollywood genres and then B A repurpose both: Ant-Man is a comic & heist picture straight out of the 1970s. The Avengers is a friendship-and-con- flict-in-combat war picture, a genre that Marvel Does Bond back to 1926’s What Price Glory. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a paranoid With Black Panther, an old Hollywood formula anti-government thriller. Spider-Man: gets a dash of superhero. by John Podhoretz Homecoming is a John Hughes high- school saga. For its part, Black Panther is a James lack Panther is the least nection to Wakanda. The smuggler’s Bond movie. T’Challa’s sister Shuri superhero-y of the Marvel motive in taking on T’Challa is both (Letitia Wright) is its Q, the person superhero movies. T’Challa personal and ideological—and for Kill- who invents all the cool gadgets. Lupita (Chadwick Boseman), its monger, extremism in pursuit of black Nyong’o is T’Challa’s highly competent Bprotagonist, gets some unearthly abili- power is no vice. I doubt that Coogler spy sidekick. They go to South Korea ties from drinking the juice to take down a South African of a plant, but I can’t tell you arms dealer (a hugely enter- what they are really, and the taining Andy Serkis) who has movie is delightfully unin- got his hands on some Wakan- terested in exploring them. dan vibranium. They encoun- What’s more important is ter a friendly CIA agent on the that T’Challa presides over model of Bond’s Felix Leiter. an African country called The good guys and bad guys Wakanda that secretly pos- have a classic Bond confron- sesses the most advanced tation in a casino and then technology in the world. A take it to the colorful streets of meteorite made of an alien Busan in a beautifully staged element called vibranium car chase. landed there in prehistoric But what gives Black times and the Wakandans T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) vs. Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) Panther its surprising reso- figured out how to use it in nance is the conflict T’Challa wondrous ways. To keep themselves and Cole had George Bernard Shaw in faces after his father’s death, when he safe from slavers and colonial pow- their thoughts as they wrote the screen- assumes the crown of Wakanda. What ers, they have made it seem as though play, but they have followed his brilliant moral compromises have his father Wakanda is one of the poorest countries example in putting the most powerful and the previous kings made by keep- in the world rather than the richest. arguments in the mouth of their most ing Wakanda hidden from the world? Wakanda is the true superhero of ethically questionable character. Could they have prevented the slave Black Panther, not T’Challa—and the Kevin Feige, the producer who trade centuries earlier? Might they have movie is really about whether its cul- supervises the Marvel empire, may used their technology to empower the tural isolationism can survive in the be the most creative motion-picture poor and oppressed in the world rather 21st century and whether it ought to. executive since Irving Thalberg—whose than protecting themselves? Boseman, This was an inspired storytelling deci- stewardship of MGM in the 1930s an actor I’ve previously found kind of sion by cowriter-director Ryan Coogler turned that studio into the dominant dull, embodies T’Challa’s dilemma with that makes Black Panther an entirely moviemaking machine of Hollywood’s a quiet grandeur that serves to anchor fresh take on the Genre That Has Golden Age before his untimely death the movie and make you overlook its Swallowed the Movies. at the age of 37. Thalberg helped define essential silliness. Even better, Coogler and his col- the storytelling tropes of the talking pic- Of course the Marvel movie has its laborator, Joe Robert Cole, have created ture and the ways in which elements as own ironclad genre rules: By the time its the best Marvel villain. He’s a mysteri- disparate as photography and costume third act rolls around, there has to be a ous smuggler called Erik Killmonger, design and music could be brought 20-minute battle scene of some kind that played by Michael B. Jordan (the star together into a seamless glossy object of is so ponderous it makes your eyes roll of Coogler’s previous hit, Creed). Kill- fantasy wish fulfillment. Feige has over- back into your head. Feige and his peo- monger turns out to have a hidden con- seen the construction of a self-contained ple must know from marketing research “universe” through 18 movies thus that the audience wants and needs this, John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, far by getting writers and directors to so who am I to object? At least this one

is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic. combine Marvel comic-book characters features some rhinoceroses. ♦ DISNEY / MARVEL STUDIOS

March 5, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 47 “Kushner Resists Losing Access as Kelly Tackles Security Clearance Issues” PARODY —New York Times headline, February 20, 2018

March 5, 2018