Bernard-Henri Lévy writes another groaner of a column (yes, I know that's not really news)

French philosopher and chronic gadfly Bernard-Henri Lévy goes full-on Edmund Burke in Emmanuel Macron and the Post-Revolutionary Idea Project Syndicate 07/14/2017. And thereby providing yet another example documenting Glenn Greenwald's characterization of him as "France’s most celebrated (and easily the world’s most overrated) public intellectual." (France Arrests A Comedian for His Facebook Comments, Showing the Sham of the West's "Free Speech" Celebration The Intercept 01/14/2015)

"It all began with the French Revolution," BHL grumps. And he's relieved to think the whole nightmare that the French Revolution started is coming to an end. Yeah, before those dang hippies in the French Revolution started stirring things up, we had a perfectly good feudal system where the grown-ups were in charge and everything worked just fine, thank you very much! Good grief, this is Pat Robertson with a slightly more sophisticated vocabulary. (In the Christian Right construct of history advocated by Robertson, the reign of the Mean Libruls began with the Bavarian Illuminati stirring up the French Revolution.

According to BHL, the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia proved conclusively, "Revolution, it had now become clear, was not just difficult or elusive or impossible; it was downright detestable." The end of history, we might say.

And he writes:

But it was in Cambodia’s faraway killing fields of 40 years ago that revolutionary reason and imagination were smashed to bits and neutralized. And it was the prolonged shock, the slow explosion and the blast effect that accompanied it, the systematic invalidation of the divisions, disputes, and, ultimately, designations that made up the “French exception” that Macron’s triumphs have brought to an end.

Please read the whole column, because I know it must sound like I'm quoting the great philosopher out of context somehow.

And that's partially true. I left out the mind-bending twist in which the evil French Revolution and Pol Pot created ideology left and right, and because of Pol Pot, Emmanuel Macron was elected President of France this year and we've finally achieved the End of Ideology and the End of History. Somewhere in here, in think, the neoliberal ideal of There Is No Alternative (TINA) is buried. That is, no dispute about the sanctity of Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning economic dogma is legitimate. But the argument is so strange, it's hard to tell.

As it turns out, I've been re-reading Tom Paine's The Age of Reason (1793-95). Paine was an active participant in the American Revolution, which was consciously admired by the French revolutionaries. BHL must consider the american Revolution to be just some isolated squabble in the colonial backwaters.

Paine went on to participate in the French Revolution, even being elected as a member of the National Convention (Convention Nationale) that governed 1792-1795. He was arrested in 1793, and served a half year or so in prison. This was during the Terror under Robespierre. So, as Paine describes, the risk that he might have been executed was not negligible. After Robespierre fell in July 1794, Paine was released from prison and reinstated in the Convention.

Paine explained that he accepted the reinstatement "to shew [sic] I could bear an injury without permitting it to injure my principles or my disposition. It is not because right principles have been violated that they are to be abandoned."

Paine wasn't looking for the End of Ideology.

To sum up, good ole Bernard-Henri Lévy, the world's most overrated public intellectual, is sounding like he's only a cocktail or two away from John McCain levels of incoherence. (The THING? Why didn't you ask about the THING?!) BHL says Emmanuel Macron got elected President of France this year because of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia of 1975-79. And Macron's election finally puts an end to the French Revolution and now we can finally have the End of Ideology and the End of History and go back to the glorious 17th century and the Peace of Westphalia and stuff. He's not only gone full-on Edmund Burke, he's on the verge of babbling about the Illuminati and Freemasons.

Bernard-Henri Lévy [groan] and Russia

Bernard-Henri Lévy, "France's most celebrated (and easily the world’s most overrated) public intellectual" (Glenn Greenwald), is sharing his wisdom with us once again in The New Moscowteers Huffington Post 10/28/2015.

I've really got to get moving on setting up that "Bernard-Henri Lévy, please just shut the f**k up" Facebook page!

Bernard-Henri Lévy combines David "Bobo" Brooks' shallowness with Maureen Dowd's clueless and and the chronic warmongering whining of a Commentary columnist. "Across Europe, apologists for Russia and Russian policy have coalesced into what amounts to a fifth column."

Oh, yeah, BHL, the Putinists are going to be marching on Berlin, Paris and Rome any day now!

This is a column characteristic of BHL's chronic warmongering. It also provides a useful example of something Max Horkheimer wrote in his Eclipse of Reason (1947), when he was describing the way words in advanced societies operating on instrumental logic acquire a new kind of magic function:

At the same time, language takes its revenge, as it were, by reverting to its magic stage. As in the days of magic, each word is regarded as a dangerous force that might destroy society and for which the speaker must
be held responsible. Correspondingly, the pursuit of truth, under social control, is curtailed. The difference between thinking and acting is held void. Thus every thought is regarded as an act; every reflection is a thesis, and every thesis is a watchword. Everyone is called on the carpet for what he says or does not say. [my emphasis]

In desribing how to detect the sinister members of his imagined "Party of Putin," BHL writes, "They are, for starters, those who, regardless of party, have had nothing critical to say about the full state reception that Russian President Vladimir Putin just staged at the Kremlin for that multi-recidivist enemy of the West, and more importantly, butcher of his own people, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad."

Most people, most of the days of most of their lives, don't make a habit of denouncing state receptions among leaders of foreign countries. Most such receptions occur, as a matter of fact, to the blissful disregard of even those who may have heard about them. And those who do pay some attention to them, and who are not war-worshipers like neocons and their "humanitarian intervention" counterparts, are probably aware that state visits are routine parts of international diplomacy. And in the case of heads of state involved in a horrible civil conflict, sane citizens might hope one of those international diplomatic social events would lead to a peaceful settlement of a horrible civil war.

Not BHL, who considers a visit by Assad to Putin in Moscow self-evidently evil, and he wants to call on the carpet anyone who is not actively expressing support for that dubious opinion. And he starts in with this without wasting time or space to even briefly state why citizens of Europe should consider the visit such a hideous thing.

Of course, BHL is just following standard neocon practice of recycling Cold War anti-Communist propaganda in the context of anti-Islamism and anti-Russian positions. Despite some expressions of admiration for Putin's brand of Christian-tinted authoritarianism from some rightwing European groups, there is no "Party of Putin" in the EU outside the imagination of BHL and like minded propagandists. (Probably someone has identified some tiny sect or other there overtly calls itself Putinist in Romania or Hungary or somewhere.)

At least in the days of the Soviet Union, there were Communist Parties outside the Warsaw Pact who professed to view the Soviet Communist Party as a leading model to some degree or other. BHL is just blowing smoke here.

Obviously, Russia has foreign policy positions that trouble Western leaders. They also have a large nuclear arsenal that any responsible Western leader will always take full account. There are differences of opinion on policy approaches toward Russia, whether it's in Ukraine or Georgia or the Middle East.

This is where it would be conventionally appropriate to say that such differences in opinion are legitimate. But the real point is the BHL is trying to de-legitimize anything but the warmongering perspective. And, like the hardline Cold Warriors of not so long ago, BHL brushes off the notion that Russia's leadership may see anything important in foreign policy other than being the enemy of the West:

Yet the Party of Putin prefers not to see how seemingly discrete events are components of a Kremlin strategy of revenge, humiliation and, at the very least, destabilization aimed at Europe. But you need to be almost willfully blind to miss this big picture, because Putin's tactics -- to pounce on the slightest breach or sign of weakness in Europe in order to sow division -- have been remarkably consistent.

In the real world, Russia has taken a stand against NATO and EU expansion in Georgia and Ukraine. Whether or not that is legitimate or illegitimate in varying degrees, it takes some propagandist imagination to see in that the present-day equivalent of the 1950s maps showing the Red Menace spreading ominously across Europe with melodramatic music in the background.

If we were to summarize BHL's column in a blogosphere short version, it would be: "Anybody who isn't hysterical like me over Russia is a Putin-loving poo-poo head."

BHL, please just STFU.

Bernard-Henri Lévy pronounces on something again [loud groans]

I always leap with joy at the latest column by Bernard-Henri Lévy (NOT).

But it does give me another opportunity to quote the definitive description of him, from Glenn Greenwald: "France’s most celebrated (and easily the world’s most overrated) public intellectual, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy." (France Arrests A Comedian for His Facebook Comments, Showing the Sham of the West's "Free Speech" Celebration The Intercept 01/14/2015)

BHL is now writing on Russia's European Game in Syria Huffington Post 10/14/2015.

BHL says what's happening in Syria is all Obama's fault. Because he wasn't macho enough. Or something. In BHL's words:

There has not been a good solution since that black Wednesday in August 2013, when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's war machine, by using chemical weapons, crossed the "red line" that US President Barack Obama had warned would trigger an American military response. The moderate opposition still stood, and the Islamic State had not yet emerged from the shadows. Yet, in a shocking last-minute about-face, Obama declined to intervene.

I still should start a Facebook group called "Bernard-Henri Lévy, please just shut the **** up."

The definitive definition of Bernard-Henri Lévy!

From Glenn Greenwald: "France’s most celebrated (and easily the world’s most overrated) public intellectual, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy." (France Arrests A Comedian for His Facebook Comments, Showing the Sham of the West's "Free Speech" Celebration The Intercept 01/14/2015)

Being "pro-American" by being pro-torture

I'm seeing an ugly trend among European commentators taking a "pro-American" position on the CIA torture report.

What better example of obnoxious trends could we hope for than an installment from alleged philosopher and professional twit Bernard-Henri Lévy? In Thank You, America Huffington Post 12/19/2014, the always-irritating Frenchman writes:

The good news ... is that this same democracy [the USA] has once again demonstrated its extraordinary vitality, its capacity to pull itself together, to confront its crimes, and, in criticizing itself, to rediscover its founding values. Oh, one can expound on the puritanism of an America obsessed with any stain that might tarnish its pastoral vision of itself (Philip Roth). Hard heads can always be found to mock the nostalgia for innocence that is so characteristic of this country (Tocqueville) and whose consequences are often ridiculous or absurd. Be that as it may, there was something beautiful in the spectacle offered to the world by Senator Dianne Feinstein as she read, in a voice full of with emotion, the summary of 500 pages that are so damning for her country. President Obama struck the right tone in the difficult task of upholding his responsibilities as commander in chief, charged with safeguarding the security of his fellow citizens, while ceding no ground on the principles that make up the nation's credo -- principles that are, in the last analysis, America's best weapon against barbarism. The Republicans, for their part, found a voice worthy of their party's great historical consciences in the person of Senator John McCain, who thundered, from the high ground of his own experience as a prisoner of war and victim of torture, that torture is not only sordid but ineffective. America is never so great as in such moments of crisis, doubt, and upset. It is never so strong as when it indulges its taste for the truth. As a citizen of a country that had to confront a similar situation during and after its war in Algeria, a country that spent not years but decades dismantling an official lie and acknowledging the extent of the crimes committed in France's name, I can only salute, with deep humility, the example given here. [my emphasis]

Did President Obama say he was going to prosecute the torture perpetrators? Well, no.

Did the bold Maverick McCain demand that government prosecute the torture perpetrators? During the Cheney-Bush Administration, did he demand impeachment proceedings against officials implicated in the torture crimes? Well, no. And, no.

The torture report shows how wonderful America is? "The good news, by contrast, is that this same democracy has once again demonstrated its extraordinary vitality, its capacity to pull itself together, to confront its crimes, and, in criticizing itself, to rediscover its founding values." Except that most of the torture perpetrators are not being prosecuted under Obama's "look forward, not backward" excuse. There have been a few prosecutions of lower-level perps like some of the Abu Ghuraib prison guards. Allen West, now a rightwing hero, also was disciplined over a torture incident in Iraq. But publishing part of an investigative report on horrible crimes that the government has no intention to prosecute isn't really a very impressive way to demonstrate a democracy's "extraordinary vitality." Did I mention that Bernard-Henri Lévy is a professional twit?

When it comes to being a twit, Bernard-Henri Lévy is hard to top. But Josef Joffe gushes over the virtue of America as evidenced by publishing the torture report while holding the torture perpetrators harmless in the same vein in Der Teufelspakt Die Zeit 17.12.2014.

Georg Hoffmann-Ostenhof makes his own contribution to this reprehensible brand of "pro-Americanism" in Der Fluch der Folter Profil 13.12.2014. He cheefully labels critics of American torture crimes "die notorischen Feinde Amerikas, die rechten und linken Anti-Liberalen aller Länder, die islamischen Fundis und die heimlichen und unheimlichen Putin-Anhänger" ("the notorious enemies of America, the right and left anti-liberals of all countries, the Islamist fundamentalists and secret and open Putin sympathizers").

Oh, just bite me, Herr Georg. (Oder, lech mich doch, auf Deutsch.) The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, the Soviet Union has long since disappeared. I know those Cold War clichees are hard to get over, especially since you're obviously so fond of them. But it's time to try to get your head within at least 10 years or so of the present.

So Bernard-Henri Lévy and all the rest of the "pro-American" commentators who surely know very well they are supporting torture with this kind of commentary, despite any of their disclaimers to the contrary, are only being "pro-American" if being pro-torture is also being pro-American, then this counts as pro-American.

Otherwise, it's just more support for immunity for torture perpetrators.

It's defending -torture, in other words. And it's disgusting.

Really, people? Bernard-Henri Lévy, Josef Joffe, Georg Hoffmann-Ostenhof? Your so intent on showing how "pro-American" you are that you will in practice defend even torture if practiced by Americans? The whole lot of you should be ashamed of yourselves.

At least you can take comfort in one thing: Dick Cheney agrees with you that to be pro-American is to be pro-torture. If you enjoy the company of war criminals and people who give no perceptible evidence of possessing a conscience, you're where you want to be.

That extradition case, the ick factor and the "culture war"

I've pretty much tried to ignore the Roman Polanski extradition case. But it seems to be well on the way to becoming an international "culture war" issue. I hate these kinds of issues for two main reasons. One is that the "ick" factor of an fortysomething adult accused of having sex with a 13-year-old is high no matter what, whether it's in Hollywood or Afghanistan. The other is that probably no one but a legal specialist in this particular area of law actually has a good and reasonably objective opinion on what should actually be done or is customarily done in these kinds of cases.

But it's already become a symbolic issue, I'll state my own position, such as it is, up front. Really more of an understanding of the facts than a "position". It makes good sense to me that the Los Angeles District Attorney would seek extradition. The State of California has a real interest in seeing its judicial processes upheld. But it appears likely that no additional penalties will be because of some combination of the victim's wishes, the time since the crime, and serious concerns about improper conduct by the judge in the original case.

And, this being the real world, French and Polish concerns about their citizen Polanski's expedition shouldn't be dismissed out of hand out of anti-European sentiment or even genuine concern over the nature of the crime. An apparently unintentional AP leak has suggested that the Switzerland is cooperating in the extradition request due to political efforts related to defusing conflicts over criminal misconduct by the Swiss bank UBS rather than to the merits of the case. And Americans need to remember that it's not 2000 any more. The US is a country that tortures people and refuses to prosecute known torturers. Even if there is no particular concern that Polanski would be tortured, it is a serious concern that casts a shadow over all extradition cases involving the US. (This report, French government drops support for director Roman Polanski as he faces extradition to the U.S. over child sex charge by Peter Allen Daily Telegraph 10/01/09, says that the French government is now taking the position that Polanski should be freed from Swiss jail while extradition is pending but that it is not opposing the extradition.)

The "culture war" aspect comes out in this piece by Doreen Carvajal and Michael Cieply, France Divided Over Polanski Case International Herald Tribune/New York Times 09/30/09. In fact, it was skimming the first few paragraphs of this article that made me think it might be worth knowing a bit more about the case, because it's become an issue because the French government has publicly defended Sarkozy's case against extradition to California.

Apparently in France as in the US, politicians not surprisingly think that the safer position is not to side with people in Polanski's current situation. I can't say the Carvajal/Cieply article was necessarily enlightening on the case. But they note in the third paragraph opposition to the conservative-led government's defense of Polanski from both the Greens and the "extreme right" party of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Given it's the New York Times, the writers and/or editors probably think that the xenophobia Le Pen party is their "this-side-says, the-other-side-says" style of reporting on what the Green leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit says. In the fifth paragraph, they at least get around to telling us that Polanski is a citizen of France and Poland, so the French government would have some reason to take some public position on the case.

Dany Cohn-Bendit was the most famous leader and symbol of the famous/(infamous) May-June 1968 uprising by students and workers in France. Carvajal and Cieply say he "criticized Sarkozy administration officials for leaping too quickly to Mr. Polanski’s side despite the serious nature of his crime". It's probably a good thing that the Times article didn't go into it. And maybe not a good thing that I'm mentioning it. But Cohn-Bendit does have a special reason to look like his siding against Polanski in this situation.

Several years ago, the German journalist Bettina Röhl dug up an embarrassing quote from Cohn-Bendit. As I explained at some length in an earlier post, Bettina Röhl harshes on former "68er" activists with a zeal that outruns the case she tries to make against them. She has her own family demons to deal with: her mother was Ulrike Meinhof of the "Baader-Meinhof Gang", her father Klause Rainer Röhl is a former flaming leftwinger turned flaming rightwinger and both parents were secret members of the East-German-directed underground Communist Party in West Germany. But she's a good researcher. And she turned up an interview with Cohn-Bendit that he had given years ago when he worked as a teacher in school with young children which seemed to suggest that he had engaged in inappropriate play with young children in that capacity.

Cohn-Bendit denied ever having done such a thing. And he said the quote was a poor attempt at humor, and a very inappropriate one. But from what I've seen of the case, there was never any reason to question his version. There were no such complaints at the time and no collaboration of such a thing from parents or students. I would say it was questionable ethics on Röhl's part to publish that information without any substantial collaboration. But, according to what Digby calls the Cokie Roberts Rule, the information was "out there" - it had been published in a small-circulation but public magazine before - and therefore it was fair game to report.

Still, it's a reminder of how sloppy reporting can damage people unfairly. The one time I saw the late great Molly Ivins speak live, back in the mid-1990s as the current plunge of press quality into the bottomless abyss was still in its early years, she was talking about factors in how reporting had deteriorated and become more irresponsible. And one example she gave was that it had for a long time been the practice of most papers not to publish the name of someone who had been accused but not convicted of molesting children. Because even if the charge was totally false and the accused unquestionably exonerated, the stigma was such that it could damage the accused permanently.

So I decided I would see what I could find that had been factually reported on the Polanski case before I tried to wade through the "cultural war" accusations.

Dismissal denied in Polanski child-sex case by Harriet Ryan 02/18/09. This is an interesting piece because it is recent but still months before the high-profile controversy of the past couple of weeks. This was an piece about a legal effort by Polanski to have the original case thrown out:

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza told a packed courtroom that he found the core argument in Polanski's request for a dismissal of charges -- allegations of unethical and, in some instances, illegal conduct by a prosecutor and a judge three decades ago -- to be credible.

"There was substantial, it seems to me, misconduct that occurred during the pendency of this case," Espinoza said.

But, the judge said, Polanski's fugitive status left him no choice but to deny the request. ...

In 1997, a prosecutor and a defense attorney worked out a plan for the director to surrender, be arrested at the airport, brought to court, sentenced and immediately released. The agreement fell apart with Polanski's side saying he objected to television coverage in court. ...

The victim, Samantha Geimer, settled a civil suit against Polanski and publicly forgave him. She has asked that the case be dismissed. Her attorney on Tuesday argued to Espinoza that she could make the motion to dismiss the charges if Polanski's fugitive status prevented the judge from doing so, but Espinoza said in a written ruling that there was no "legal justification" to support that argument. [my emphasis]

Samantha Geimer, Polanski's victim, doesn't back prison time for the director Los Angeles Times Online by Shelby Grad 09/27/09

Judge the Movie, Not the Man by Samantha Geimer Los Angeles Times 02/2303. In this op-ed, the victim describes clearly what occurred as non-consensual sex, i.e., rape. She also says, "He should have received a sentence of time served 25 years ago, just as we all agreed."

Roman Polanski arrest: Hollywood unties in his defence The Guardian Online 09/28/09. This article refers to the victim as "the girl whom Polanski raped at the age of 13", but includes what appears to be an editorial note appended at the end saying, "Some commentators have simply used the term 'rape' in relation to Roman Polanski's 1977 conviction. The offence he pleaded guilty to is often described as 'statutory rape' but more precisely as 'unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor'." This article also discusses the AP leak connected the Swiss action to concerns over banking controversies.

Prosecuting Polanski Los Angeles Times editorial 09/29/09:

Finally, in a caricature of European cosmopolitanism, France's culture minister fumed that the harrying of such a cultural icon revealed the face of "a scary America."

Some of these arguments are more persuasive than others. For example, Polanski may have a due-process claim based on improper behavior by the judge in his case. By contrast, he shouldn't be left alone because of tragedies in his life or his status as a legendary director. Nor is it relevant that his victim seeks no further punishment for him. Prosecutions are brought in the name of the state, not the victim.

Plausible or preposterous, these arguments are eclipsed by a simple fact: Polanski fled the country.

The one part of that quote with which I would disagree is the sneer at the French culture minister, an implicitly at the French Foreign Minister who made an even stronger statement about his concerns over the extradition, as "a caricature of European cosmopolitanism." And while it's true that the state prosecutes on its own behalf and not in the name of the victim - an important legal reality that some of the rhetoric around "victim's rights" over the years has tended to obscure - it's unlikely in practice that in the event the original charges were thrown out that the DA would attempt to reprosecute the case with a victim unwilling to proceed on a now decades-old charge.

So, we have a case in which the accused accepted a plea bargain and served the agreed sentence, where there is substantial reason to believe there was prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, in which the Los Angeles prosecutor had agree in 1997 to another deal in which the accused would have appeared in court and then gone free, and in which the victim actually agrees that the original charges should be dropped.

The "ick factor" notwithstanding, this doesn't seem like a very good case to make another totem in the "culture war". And while it may be a reminder that the criminal justice system in the US generally thirty years ago tended to treat perpetrators in such cases too leniently, it seems unlikely that this 32-year-old case is likely to produce a very satisfactory outcome for anyone if it's retried. And the prospects seem good that the the original charges will be dropped, for better or for worse.

A number of prominent Hollywood movie-industry figures have publicly come to Polanski's defense over the extradition. So far as I've seen from the news reports, they haven't made a terribly strong case. At the least, they would have presented a more sympathetic case if they had focused more narrowly on due process and official misconduct in the original trial.

At least some of those who are treating it as a straight-forward outrage that anyone would express reservations about official conduct of the case also seem to be more concerned about immunizing themselves from conservative culture-war attacks than sorting out the issues raised by the case. But so long as they are doing it, it's worth flagging that a number of liberals have take a hardline anti-Polanski position in the case:

Katha Pollitt, Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends The Nation Online 10/01/09: "The widespread support for Polanski shows the liberal cultural elite at its preening, fatuous worst. ... No wonder Middle America hates them." Seeing as how even TV news has morphed into infotainment, I'm not convinced that "Middle America" hates Hollywood stars and directors.

Glenn Greenwald gets into the act with Post editors should read their own columnists Salon 10/01/09. He seems to be genuinely disgusted at Polanski's defenders. But his main point is that the Washington Post's editorial position attacking Polanski's defenders is in pathetic contrast to its staunch opposition to prosecution of Bush officials for official crimes that include offenses regarded by the law as even more serious than the crime to which Polanski pleaded guilty.

Glenn criticizes three particularly fatuous defenses of Polanski:

The Outrageous Arrest of Roman Polanski by Anne Applebaum Washington Post Online 09/27/09. Applebaum is married to the Polish Foreign Minister, who in his official capacity has expressed concern about Polanski's extradition, a fact she didn't bother to disclose in this piece.

Let Polanski Go -- But First Let Me At Him by Richard Cohen Washington Post Online 09/28/09

Artist Rally Behind Polanski by Bernard-Henri Lévy Huffington Post 09/28/09. Whatever side of the "culture war" Levy is on, I'm pretty sure it's not the same as mine.

For other developments:

The Smoking Gun site has the transcript of the victim's grand jury testimony from 1977 (if you're thinking about reading it at work, remember that it involves descriptions that screening software could flag as pornographic).

Polanski's Lost Alibi by Marcia Clark The Daily Beast 09/30/09

Reminder: Roman Polanski raped a child by Kate Harding 09/28/09.

In Roman Polanski case, is it Hollywood vs. Middle America? by John Horn and Tina Daunt Los Angeles Times 10/01/09

There are lots of polemics about this at the Huffington Post, including:

Why Arrest Roman Polanski Now? by Robert Harris New York Times 09/29/09

Why Robert Harris' NY Times Pro-Polanski Op-Ed Is an Offensive, Self-Serving Disgrace by Andy Ostroy 09/30/09

Wonder Why Middle America Doesn't Trust Hollywood Liberals? Three Words: Weinstein and Polanski by Keli Goff 09/30/09

Tags: bernard-henri lévy, culture war, roman polanski

French intellectual encounters odd creatures, mistakes them for American liberals

I'm not so familiar with Bernard-Henri Lévy's work. But I did see this article of his for the 02/27/06 issue of The Nation (accessed 02/10/06): A Letter to the American Left.

The piece strikes me as one of those purer-than-thou statements that show up at times in The Nation and elsewhere in which the readers are expected to regard "whiny" as "deep". And, like others of its genre, this one left me thinking, "What the heck is he talking about?"

For instance, take the following items in which he catalogues his dismay at the American "left", by which he seems to mean pretty much anyone opposed to the Halliburton Republicans. When he looks at the anti-Bush opposition, all he sees is "a desert of sorts, a deafening silence, a cosmic ideological void". A cosmic ideological void. Wow. Like Huck Finn marveling at Tom Sawyer's latest creative explanation for something, I'd have to say I have no idea what he means but, boy, does it sound grand!

His catalogue of depressing specimens includes:

The 60-year-old "young" Democrats who have desperately clung to the old formulas of the Kennedy era

That would be the people who are worried about the "missile gap", enforcing Brown vs. Board of Education in the Deep South universities and trying to keep Soviet nuclear missiles out of Cuba? Yeah, there are lots of those running around.

the folks of MoveOn.org who have been so great at enlisting people in the electoral lists, at protesting against the war in Iraq and, finally, at helping to revitalize politics but whom I heard in Berkeley, like Puritans of a new sort, treating the lapses of a libertine President as quasi-equivalent to the neo-McCarthyism of his fiercest political rivals

Now, I live near Berkeley and I know there are a seemingly infinite variety of political opinions to be found there. But did I just dream this, or didn't MoveOn.org originally start by organizing public opposition to, uh, Bill Clinton's impeachment? You know, as in, "it's time to move on"? Somehow I doubt that MoveOn.org activists regard Bill Clinton as "quasi-equivalent" to Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich and Kenn Starr. That sounds a bit far-fetched, even for Berkeley!

the anti-Republican strategists confessing they had never set foot in one of those neo-evangelical mega-churches that are the ultimate (and most Machiavellian) laboratories of the "enemy," staring in disbelief when I say I've spent quite some time exploring them

I'm trying to think if any of the churches I've ever been in rates as a "mega-church". I don't think so. But who calls them "laboratories of the enemy"? And I'm just trying to picture "anti-Republican strategists" (which presumably means Democratic strategists) standing there with their mouths hanging open in amazement at hearing that Lévy had visited some of them. It doesn't sound very plausible to me. But maybe that was in Berkeley, too, where the implausible is fairly normal.

ex-candidate Kerry, whom I met in Washington a few weeks after his defeat, haggard, ghostly, faintly whispering in my ear: "If you hear anything about those 50,000 votes in Ohio, let me know"

He makes John Kerry sound like Keith Richards just before he died. (Yes, I know he has kept on playing with the Rolling Stones for the 25 or so years since his demise. More's the wonder.)

the supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton who, when I questioned them on how exactly they planned to wage the battle of ideas, casually replied they had to win the battle of money first, and who, when I persisted in asking what the money was meant for, what projects it would fuel, responded like fundraising automatons gone mad: "to raise more money"

This reminds me of those poll results where the pollster finds that 75% of the American public believes all the moon landings were faked or something like that. The first question that comes to mind is, what exactly did you ask to get responses like this? Fundraising automatons gone mad is another of those Tom Sawyer phrases. Exactly how would an "automaton" go mad, I wonder.

and then, perhaps more than anything else, when it comes to the lifeblood of the left, the writers and artists, the men and women who fashion public opinion, the intellectuals ...

Actually, I always thought that unions were the lifeblood of "the left", but, hey. Lévy was disappointed with this vaguely-defined but also impure group, as well, among whom:

... I found a curious lifelessness, a peculiar streak of timidity or irritability, when confronted with so many seething issues that in principle ought to keep them as firmly mobilized as the Iraq War or the so-called "American Empire" (the denunciation of which is, sadly, all that remains when they have nothing left to say).

This is sending me into Daily Howler mode here. Look at that sentence. What sense does it actually make? Who is he talking about, anyway? He sounds like he's describing a bunch of undergraduates stoned on downers. If you were writing a story, there's some good phrases in there that would be tempting to steal. "The haggard, ghostly man sat on the bench, seemingly staring at some dreamy image in the distance. I spoke to him but he only whispered in response. There was about him a curious lifelessness, a peculiar streak of timidity or irritability, that I thought must have come from the severe brain damage he sustained when he was confined in a room and forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh broadcasts for 48 hours straight."

So, Lévy's stoners were ghostly and lifeless, haggard and irritable. But apparently they were also "firmly mobilized" by the Iraq War and the American Empire. I'm trying to picture what "firmly mobilized" might mean. But I don't think I'll go there. But they also sadly denounce the "so-called" American Empire "when they have nothing left to say".

I get it! He stumbled into a rally of the well-known group, Zombies for Peace! When they heard the words "Iraq War", they howled in fearsome cannabilistic excitement, getting "firmly mobilized" and all. Then when Lévy asked them about Katrina and Social Security, they subsided into groaning and moaning, finally rolling their heads in despair and saying, "Emmm-pire, emm-pire-eee ..."

Did this guy actually talk to any living, breathing liberals? Heck, I know for sure there are some around in Berkeley. If he was there, he shouldn't have had to look too hard for them.

Because it sounds like his image of American liberals was derived by reading what they say about "liberals" in the Weekly Standard, WorldNetDaily, FOX News and other territories of Freeperville, where "reality-based" is a sneer.

I love this question of Lévy's, too: "Why haven't we heard from more intellectuals like Susan Sontag - or even Gore Vidal and Tony Kushner" on the torture issue?

Now, I'm not exactly sure of the answer. We don't hear much from Gore Vidal because nobody really listens to him. Tony Kushner? Beats me. Maybe he was too busy co-writing the screenplay for Munich.

In Susan Sontag's case, it may have something to do with the fact that she, uh, died in 2004. Lévy may have caught sight of her at the Zombies for Peace rally. But it's not surprising that he might have found her to be less articulate than in her alive days.

Maybe this whole Lévy article is a satire.

Tags: bernard-henri lévy