Category Archives: The Zeitgeist

The Lapdogs & The Elites

Media, Neoconservatism, Politics, The Zeitgeist

In “America’s Open House,” I said about Tamar Jacoby (among other things) that she “squints at flesh-and-blood Americans; to her, America is a mere proposition, nothing but an idea.” I then demolished her assertion that [cop killer] Quintero’s illegality was irrelevant to his crime. You can read the one-liner that did her in.

Paul Gottfried, a brilliant scholar, once an active participant in American political discourse, wrote to warn me that, “After this insensitive invective against… TJ you’ll no longer be invited to neocon cocktail parties.”

Of course he was pocking fun at my popularity among the official thinking class. However, I missed the subtlety. Despair over politics and culture in this country occasionally (not often) takes a toll on my sense of humor.

The occasion was as good as any to ask him if the burlesque that is American politics doesn’t cause him to despair. Here we are, years after the fact, and the “elites” are only now discussing Iraq as a not-so-swell idea vis-a -vis terrorism, and the Bush administration as the less-than heavenly outfit Fox News said it was. Meantime, the prevalence in national discourse (conducted on cable) of “good looking” illiterates grows (and the book deals these incompetents get), while the demand for truly bright, principled, interesting people diminishes. Does this not cause him to despair?

I received this wise reply: “At my age I have ceased to despair but simply try to keep going. The liberal-neocon media won’t ask our opinions because we’ve been branded extremists, at least by the standards of permissible, sensitive views. All of this belongs to an historical process that neither you nor I can influence any more. Whatever the elites do or do not do is perfectly OK with the PEOPLE, as long as they get social programs, consumer goods, and instruction about what they should believe.”

Malibu Mel

Anti-Semitism, Hollywood, The Zeitgeist

Mainstream media only recognizes a narrowly defined spectrum of opinion: Republican and Democratic. The one they consider Right; the other, Left.

Both generally support gratuitous, unconstitutional wars, for ostensibly charitable reasons. Each is more likely to support such adventures if their guy is strafing the lucky recipients of the gift of democracy. To wit, Democrats cheered a “preemptive attack” on Slobodan Milosevic; Republicans rubber-stamped sundering Saddam.

Thus when the topic of Gibson’s anti-war-in-Iraq comments came up, commentators on Fox and elsewhere on the blogosphere (which seems as one-dimensional, in many ways) wondered if the immensely wealthy Gibson was not pandering to “Hollywood elites.” (As if he needs to.)

Gibson is probably a paleo-conservative. As far as I know, he’s always been against this war (it fits with his view about “dem Jews”). More material, why would anything he says matter?

Thomas Fleming’s comments on Malibu Mel are the best I’ve seen so far:

I find the whole Mel Gibson saga depressing, because it reminds me of the grotesque stupidity of American Catholic conservatives, who insist on putting their faith in actors like Ronald Reagan and Mel Gibson. Have they ever read an interview with Gibson? He cannot frame a three-word sentence that does not sound like it comes from the mouth of Malibu Barbie…men who spend their adult lives making movies are, to put it as nicely as I can, unreliable as guides to living…

Why does anyone care what an actor thinks about, whether it is the life of Christ or Jewish influence on history? And why, by the love of all that is holy, would anyone with even the brain of Rush Limbaugh, give two seconds to a Christophobic charlatan like Abe Foxman?…
If you really wish to study the Life of Christ, read the Gospels. If you like C.S. Lewis or Tolkien, read their books and do not waste time on the slick and manipulative films made out of them. Christian lovers of Peter Jackson’s version of Lord of the Rings will be pleased to know that he is contributing a large chunk of their ticket money to promote leftist, anti-Christian moral causes. As the most notorious ‘anti-Semite’ in history once observed, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’

“Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish“—that too is good stuff (if I say so myself).

Oriana Fallaci, RIP

Islam, Religion, The Zeitgeist

Oriana Fallaci has died after a brave battle with cancer…and Islam. This is what I wrote some months back about Fallaci on Barely a Blog:

“Here’s an interview with Oriana Fallaci in The New Yorker that doesn’t do her justice. Fallaci is unique in the annals of journalism. No superlative can properly describe the kind of irreverent grilling she subjected her interviewees to. The clubby, tête-à -têtes journalists conduct with their overlords are a disgrace—they’ll never come close to Fallaci’s skin-them-alive inquisitions.
Omitted from this interview is how Fallaci began her exchange with Qaddafi. It approximates the following paraphrase: ‘So your manifesto is so small and insignificant it fits in my powder puff. Why should anyone take you seriously…?’
When I attended journalism school, my teachers held her up as the iconic role model to emulate (of course, this would be unheard of in the left-liberal, groupthink dominated journalism schools of today). Thus one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received was Reginald Firehammer.s. In ‘The Passion of Principles,’ his review of my book for the Randian Free Radical, he likened my passion to Fallaci.s. The passion, perhaps, but never the courage, the life-force, or the capacity for adventure.
The New Yorker.s Margaret Talbot depicts Fallaci as pathologically anti-authoritarian. Is there any other way to be? Talbot, moreover, likes Fallaci’s classically liberal feminism, but flagrantly frames her crusade against Islam as a function of waning faculties. Yes, Fallaci is out of place in youth-worshipping America, where the lukewarm nonchalance of a Wonkette and her ‘Whatever’ Generation is considered the ideal intellectual and existential temperament.
It would, however, be a grave mistake not to heed Fallaci.s warnings. This [was] an immensely cultured woman, steeped in the past. She [understood] history and the forces that shape it. More material, she lived it.”

Following Christian Amanpour to… Mecca

Islam, Media, Terrorism, The Zeitgeist

In the CNN documentary, “In the Footsteps of Bin Laden,” also the topic of my latest column, the following exchange takes place between Christian Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, and Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit:

As is apparent from my column, Amanpour and her collaborators depict the September-11 attack as a deviation from Mohammad’s modus operandi. Not surprisingly, she hasn’t been challenged, so far. Here goes:

SCHEUER: I think part of the reason that there hasn’t been an attack since 9/11 is he [bin Laden] was criticized among his peers for the attack of 9/11.

AMANPOUR: Criticized by fellow extremists for not following, as they see it, the guidance of the holy prophet Mohamed for attacking an enemy.

SCHEUER: So he’s spent the last four years very much addressing those issues with his audience. From the Muslim perspective, the prophet always demanded that before you attack someone you warn them and you offer them a chance to convert to Islam.

AMANPOUR: And that’s exactly what bin Laden later did.

Amanpour and Scheuer are suggesting that bin Laden is in hot water with his oh-so high-minded followers for not expressly warning Americans of the impending attack and offering a way out: conversion. What addled minds. What apologetics. What dissembling.

As scholar of Jihad Andrew Bostom reminds me, bin Laden issued his “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” in 1996! Here it is. Scheuer, who helped create the CIA’s bin Laden unit that very year (1996), ought to know bin Laden has been at war with the US since then, at least. As far as Islamic jurisprudence goes, bin Laden has gone by the book. So what on earth are Sheuer and Amanpour yammering on about?

According to Bostom, “the call to Islam was only required of infidels who could not possibly have known of the ‘great faith.’ This was already stated by the scholar Mawardi, who died in 1058—he emphasized that., yes, this formality should be undertaken, but he also added that most of the inhabited world surely knew of Islam by then!!

All the more so now.

The Scheuer-Amanpour exchange is fundamentally misleading, in particular, as the documentary is, in general.