WHATEVER Charm?HAPPENED TO BY JOSEPH EPSTEIN OCTOBER 15, 2018 • $5.99 • WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM Contents October 15, 2018 • Volume 24, Number 6 2 The Scrapbook Throwing ice, ‘theybies,’ & more 5 Casual Michael Warren, teacher-pleaser 6 Editorials The Bad-Faith Filibuster • Rethinking Syria 8 Comment The Kafkaesque trial of Kavanaugh BY CHRISTOphER CALDWELL In defense of inarticulate rage BY BARTON SWAIM A European Union that divides the British BY PHILIP TERZIAN 5 Articles 14 A Seat Republicans Can’t Possibly Lose BY TONY MECIA In California’s 8th, both candidates are on the right. But which is Trumpier? 16 Surprisingly Competitive BY MARK HEMINGWAY Will Oregon be the next blue state with a Republican governor? 17 A Conspiracy So Vast . BY ERIC FELTEN But where’s the crime? 19 They Balked BY JOHN PSAROPOULOS The failed Macedonia referendum 6 Features 21 Life’s Little Luxury BY JOSEph EPSTEIN Charm makes the world seem a more enticing place—but it is going the way of chivalry, good manners, and unmotivated kindness 30 Battle of Birmingham BY DOMINIC GREEN Britain’s Conservative party comes together—and soon it will be coming apart Books & Arts 17 34 Flames of History BY ASHLEY MAY How safe from destructive fire are American museums? 37 All That May Become a Man BY NOAH MILLMAN The promise and pitfalls of cross-gender casting in Shakespeare 42 The First Modernist BY JAMES GARDNER Delacroix’s undeserved reputation for greatness 45 Upon This Rock BY ANDREW EGGER The prickly street preacher who helped create the Christian rock genre 46 The Veteran Pessimist BY GERARD ALEXANDER Walter Laqueur, 1921-2018 21 48 Parody Capt. Morgan accuses Kavanaugh COVER: AUDREY HEPBURN IN 1955 • ULLSTEIN BILD / GETTY THE SCRAPBOOK Ice Ice Maybe any news organizations have to drunkenness. Not that the Times left-wing and virulently pro-choice M disgraced themselves over these or anybody else cares if he drank too Emily Bazelon. Her lefty opinions last few weeks in the unlovely quest much in college, but Christine Blasey wouldn’t disqualify Bazelon from writ- for peccadillos in Brett Kava naugh’s Ford alleged that Kava naugh and a ing the piece (though one might have youth, but the New York Times has out- friend were drunk when the former thought her editors at the Times would shone the rest. A story on October 2 assign someone else to such a politi- brought us finally to the point of self- cally sensitive story), but Bazelon has parody. The lede was breathtaking in put herself on record as emphatically its silliness: “As an undergraduate stu- opposing the Kava naugh nomination. dent at Yale, Brett M. Kavanaugh was On July 9, the night President Don- involved in an altercation at a local bar ald Trump announced his choice of during which he was accused of throw- Kava naugh, she tweeted: “As a [Yale ing ice on another patron, according to Law] grad & lecturer, I strongly disas- a police report.” sociate myself from tonight’s praise of The Times found a police report of Brett Kava naugh. With respect, he’s a a barroom incident in New Haven, 5th vote for a hard-right turn on vot- which had been described by a class- ing rights and so much more that will mate, Chad Ludington, but it is not at harm the democratic process & prevent all clear from the report what Kava- a more equal society.” naugh’s role was. Based on a police assaulted her, and the picture Lud- When Bazelon posted her Times report, what’s known for sure is that ington paints of an often drunkenly story on Twitter on Monday, she Kava naugh was at a bar with friends belligerent Kava naugh would seem to prefaced it with the observation, “No in 1985 and that some kind of mayhem buttress Ford’s claim. Just so do con- report of an arrest. Could have been broke out, either because Kava naugh spiracy theorists search for data points expunged, I’m told.” We wonder how threw ice at another guy or something that confirm the truth of their cocka- Kava naugh is supposed to prove that else, and that the police were called. mamie narratives. a record of his arrest in 1985 wasn’t There was no record of any arrests. Perhaps the surest sign that we are expunged. Maybe he can work on that So he threw ice. in the realm of partisan journalistic while he proves he didn’t expose him- The point, of course, is to build hackery is that one of the two coau- self to female Yalies and take part in a the case that Kava naugh was prone thors of the Times story is the avowedly gang-rape ring. ♦ mildly amusing wisecrack from a col- Ghetto Beto lege student as morally and politically barroom tussle? Drinking beer insignificant. O’Rourke had no need A on a weeknight? That’s nothing. to apologize. How about the time the 19-year-old What he hasn’t apologized for, but wrote a theater review in which he ought to, is his frequent use of a bogus lamented the cast of “perma-smile story about a girl the U.S. government actresses whose only qualifications supposedly deported. Until recently seem to be their phenomenally large O’Rourke liked to tell the story of an breasts and tight buttocks.” What sort unnamed “Dreamer,” someone who of vile misogynistic brute would say came to the United States illegally such a thing? Get him out of here! Mistakes were made. as a child, who had recently become Oh, wait. That wasn’t Brett Kava- salutatorian of her high school. The naugh. It was Beto O’Rourke—or in Texas, issued a groveling apology: feds found out about her and, accord- rather, Robert O’Rourke, according to “I am ashamed of what I wrote and ing to O’Rourke, she was deported to the byline—writing in the Columbia I apologize. There is no excuse for her country of origin, Mexico, despite Daily Spectator, Columbia University’s making disrespectful and demeaning not knowing Spanish. student newspaper, in 1991. comments about women.” The arti- A sad story but, as a report in the Predictably Rep. O’Rourke, the cle was turned up by Politico, but all Dallas Morning News revealed, a fic- Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate fair-minded people must regard this tional one. The congressman had / O’ROURKE: SERGIO FLORES DARTS: BIGSTOCK. BELOW: GETTY; KAVANAUGH: TOP: FIGURE: BIGSTOCK / GETTY; BLOOMBERG 2 / THE WEEKLY STANDARD OCTOBER 15, 2018 relied on what he’d been told by someone else. The actual woman did speak Spanish and was not deported, and it didn’t happen recently but a decade ago. Also, she was valedicto- rian, not salutatorian, and she’s now a citizen. (Other than that, as they say, the story was accurate.) Robert/Beto is rather less inclined to say sorry for that one. His spokes- man insists that the congressman was “going off what he was told.” A Capi- tol Hill Democrat repeating uncor- roborated anecdotes? If O’Rourke wins in November, please don’t put him on the Judiciary Committee. ♦ Liberté, Égalité, Futilité rench politician Marine Le Pen F is a great fan of Vladimir Putin, a social progressive, and leader of a polit- ical party that from time to time flirts with the anti-Semitic right—she’s not a woman with whom we can ordinarily sympathize. Still, she has a talent for stirring European elites in ways that expose their intellectual shallowness and hypocrisies, and from time to time it’s hard not to take her side. Two weeks ago Le Pen was ordered by a French court to undergo psychiatric evaluation. Her offense? In December 2015, in response to the Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris that killed 130 people, she used her Twitter account to post graphic pho- tos of atrocities committed by ISIS. Le Pen was then “charged with circulating violent messages that says she won’t comply with the order, with unconventional opinions to see a can be viewed by minors,” accord- and it seems there’s little French shrink. Let’s keep this one quiet. ♦ ing to news agency France 24. courts can do to enforce it. “I’d like In France, anyone charged to see how the judge would try with a similar “crime” must and force me to do it,” she told Rockabye Theybies undergo psychiatric evalu- reporters. She’s right to refuse. s if bureaucracies weren’t com- ation. In one sense it’s Here in America, we seem to A plicated enough. The New York encouraging to know that do just fine without forcing Times reports that beginning next the French insist on impos- irresponsible politicians and year, New York City will give people ing even their dumbest impulsive social-media the option of identifying themselves laws on everyone (in zealots to take psych evals. on their birth certificates not only as Italy she could easily Not that the French want “male” or “female,” but also as “X.” have gotten a waiver), any advice from us. New Yorkers such as Charlie Arro- but that any West- More likely, the French wood (who, we are told, “uses the ern democracy would idea will travel west- pronoun ‘they’ and the courtesy title impose such a law on ward, and in a few months ‘Mx.,’ a gender-neutral alternative to anyone is chilling. we’ll be reporting that uni- Ms. and Mr.”) are evidently delighted For her part, Le Pen versities are forcing students by the change.