Sobran's --
The Real News of the Month
March 2000
Volume 7, No. 3
Editor: Joe Sobran
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STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT McCAIN
(page 1)
"Certainly, no one would argue with the proposition that
our armed forces exist first and foremost for the defense of
the United States and its vital interests abroad.... We
choose, as a nation, however, to intervene militarily abroad
in defense of the moral values that are at the center of our
national conscientiousness [sic] *even when vital national
interests are not necessarily at stake.* I raise this point
because it lies at the heart of this nation's approach to
Israel. The survival of Israel is one of this country's most
important moral commitments.... Like the United States, Israel
is more than a nation; it is an ideal...." (My emphasis)
Thus Senator John McCain, in a speech the media ignored,
delivered on March 14, 1999, to the National Council of Young
Israel in New York City, where he received the Defender of
Jerusalem Award. A similar pledge to a Christian group,
advocating U.S. military intervention to defend Christians
abroad "even when vital national interests are not necessarily
at stake," would have received sensational coverage; McCain
would have been accused of "pandering to the Christian Right,"
and in a particularly dangerous way.
That speech helps explain the media enthusiasm for
McCain. He has been getting sweetheart treatment, particularly
from the Zionist press and pundits: U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT,
THE WEEKLY STANDARD, NEWSWEEK, THE NEW REPUBLIC, Richard
Cohen, Charles Krauthammer, and most notably William Kristol,
who after McCain's victory over George W. Bush in the New
Hampshire primary exulted that "the conservative movement ...
is finished," and that McCain is the only Republican hope.
Let's be quite clear about this: McCain, who favored
sending ground troops to Kosovo, is willing to shed American
blood for Israel. He isn't naive: he has seen combat, with
boys' limbs scattered on the field, wounded survivors
screaming in agony. And he would welcome such carnage for
Israel's sake.
So he tells a Jewish audience, anyway. Why not tell the
rest of us? After all, if it's not just Jewish interests but
our national "moral values" that may require us to sacrifice
our sons for Israel, isn't that of some concern to other
Americans? But Mr. Straight Talk has avoided this theme when
addressing the general public.
By McCain's logic of righteous intervention, our "moral
values" -- equality before the law, for example -- could
conceivably demand that we wage war against Israel, "even when
vital national interests are not necessarily at stake." Just a
thought, though not one that will occur to McCain.
So now readers of THE WEEKLY STANDARD may appreciate why
William Kristol and David Brooks can write in awestruck tones
of McCain's appeal to the better angels of our nature: "In
speech after speech, McCain calls on his listeners to serve a
cause greater than themselves.... McCain was able to trump
[George W. Bush's] appeal to self-interest with a public-
spirited message.... McCain's campaign reminds us that
citizenship entails more than just voting, and the business of
America is more than just business. His brand of conservatism
rejects the notion that the highest end of government is to
leave us alone."
LABELS AND LIBELS
(pages 2-4)
An important libel suit is under way in London. David
Irving, the controversial British historian of World War II,
is suing an American scholar, Deborah Lipstadt of Emory
University, for calling him "one of the most dangerous
spokespersons for Holocaust denial." Since she wrote this in a
1993 book DENYING THE HOLOCAUST, Irving says, his career has
suffered badly, and he charges that this was exactly what she
intended. He compares being accused of Holocaust denial to
being called a wife-beater or a pedophile -- a defamation that
results in social and professional ostracism, not to mention
death threats.
The label became actionable when Mrs. Lipstadt's book was
published in England, where libel law places the burden of
proof on the defendant. Such invidious descriptions of public
figures may be flung freely in the United States, and she
apparently didn't stop to consider the difference between the
two countries' legal standards when the British edition of her
book went to press.
Supported by various Jewish organizations, Mrs. Lipstadt
has gathered an expensive team of lawyers and scholars,
including Anthony Julius, who served as attorney for the late
Princess Diana in her divorce. Irving, who lacks similar
support, is representing himself in court. Under British rules
of discovery, he has gained access to Mrs. Lipstadt's
correspondence with these organizations and he intends to
expose the methods by which he says Jewish groups conspire to
destroy heretics like him. Under assorted laws against "hate
speech," he has already been harassed, banned, and threatened
with arrest in several countries where "Holocaust denial" is a
crime; Germany is seeking to extradite him for criminal
prosecution during the lawsuit!
The Holocaust debate is a strange one, since the Jewish
side insists that there is no "other side" (since there is
nothing to debate about) while trying not only to ruin those
on the nonexistent other side, but to put them in jail -- over
a difference about historical fact. Forty years ago the
British historians A.J.P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper had a
famous and bitter debate over Hitler's responsibility for
World War II; but it never occurred to either man to try to
get the other fired from his academic position, let alone
thrown into prison!
Irving says he has never denied that during World War II
the Germans persecuted Jews and killed many of them. But he
has disputed many details of the standard account, including
the number of the dead and the existence of gas chambers at
Auschwitz. Whether these modifications add up to "Holocaust
denial" is one point at issue; another is whether he is
"dangerous." Dangerous to whom? More dangerous than laws
limiting the freedom of speech? More dangerous than Mrs.
Lipstadt's words about Irving himself?
In any case there is no doubt that powerful forces,
especially Jewish ones, have been out to get Irving for many
years. But until now, the combative and fearless historian,
never one to back down, has been able to do little to defend
himself.
The verdict in the trial will probably neither affirm nor
refute the occurrence of the Holocaust. The question before
the court is whether Mrs. Lipstadt deliberately damaged
Irving's career with false statements. Living as she does in a
country where libel is pretty much legal, thanks to the U.S.
Supreme Court's peculiar reading of the First Amendment, it
must come as a shock to her to find herself forced, for once,
to back up her charges.
Jewish groups are afraid that a verdict in Irving's favor
will amount to an official ruling that the Holocaust never
happened. But it need not mean that at all. It could mean no
more than that Mrs. Lipstadt committed libel by imputing
Holocaust denial -- and a "dangerous" version of it at that --
to Irving.
Irving, a nonacademic freelance historian, has written
many books on World War II, the most famous of which is
HITLER'S WAR, in which he argued that Hitler never ordered the
destruction of the Jews. The book caused an uproar beyond
academe. He has also unearthed important documents and
interviewed many of Hitler's close associates; even many
professional historians who don't share Irving's German
sympathies and his scorn for Winston Churchill agree that his
work is indispensable. Most recently the publication of his
biography of Joseph Goebbels by St. Martin's Press was
canceled under pressure from Jewish groups.
I haven't read Irving's work and would be unable to
assess it, but I have met the man himself. A couple of years
ago we had lunch in Virginia and I found him a stimulating and
captivating conversationalist. He described himself as "a
Holocaust skeptic, not a Holocaust denier," amazed at the
proliferation of Holocaust memorials in this country. We
agreed that the subject has become a topic of alarming thought
control, both of us having experienced forms of it, including
personal smears by Jewish fanatics.
I myself have been accused of Holocaust denial by a
Jewish academic in California; but the truth is that I have
never denied it, for the simple reason that I don't know
enough to have a firm opinion on the matter. I lack the
qualifications to be a Holocaust denier. I don't read German;
I don't know anything about gas chambers and Zyklon B; I
wouldn't know how to weigh the evidence. None of which
suffices to protect me from being libeled.
But I certainly do distrust those who want to punish
others for the impertinence of disagreeing; the Lipstadts
don't act as if they believe in the Holocaust themselves. If
you have a real conviction about a factual matter, why would
you want to punish a man for differing with you? If you think
his view is absurdly wrong, you're serenely content to confute
him; locking him up would add absolutely nothing to your case
and could only raise suspicions about its inherent strength.
Neither side in the heated Shakespeare authorship debate, for
example, seeks the incarceration of the other side.
And of course Irving and I aren't the only targets:
everyone is a potential target. Canada, France, Germany,
Israel, and several other countries have criminalized
Holocaust heresy. The Israeli writer Amos Elon marvels that
opinions about historical events can still be made illegal.
It's hard to believe that this sort of thing can happen in the
modern world, but it does happen. A few years ago the Israelis
even tried to block publication in the United States of a book
critical of the Mossad; and in fact a Jewish judge in New York
did order its suppression. His order was immediately reversed;
but for a few hours, a book was actually banned in this
country for offending organized Jewish interests.
Such restrictions on opinion are insults to the freedom
of a whole society. They violate not only David Irving's right
to speak, but everyone else's right to hear him and assess his
arguments for themselves. Even those who think Irving is
seriously wrong, and even dishonest, should enjoy the exercise
of grappling with his criticisms; that is how historical study
constantly progresses. In a sense, all serious history is
"revisionism," an endless process of refining knowledge.
As for views that are just bizarrely wrong, why bother
with them? If a man argues that Napoleon never existed, or
that Joe Stalin and Pol Pot were basically decent chaps,
society can afford to let him walk the streets.
In a recent article on the Irving-Lipstadt suit in THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY, D.D. Guttenplan discusses the often bitter
differences over the Holocaust among Jewish scholars, noting
that many things that "everyone knows" about the Holocaust
have been discredited -- such as the grisly fables that the
Nazis made soap and lampshades out of the remains of murdered
Jews. Yet some people have been imprisoned for denying what no
scholar now believes. The Israeli scholar Yehuda Bauer has
argued that "only" a million Jews, not four million as
officially asserted, were murdered at Auschwitz. Irving has
forced Lipstadt's expert witnesses to concede that the alleged
gas chamber at Auschwitz is not authentic, but a postwar
reconstruction.
One complication, of course, is that the standard account
of the Holocaust serves political interests. Though Israel
didn't exist until Hitler had been destroyed, it has claimed
enormous cash reparations from Germany; and it has enjoyed
great indulgence from the United States by justifying its
violence against its Arab neighbors, and its abuses of its
Arab minority, as necessary defensive measures by a people
still traumatized by persecution and threatened by
annihilation. The very term "Holocaust" became current long
after World War II -- during the late 1960s, in fact, when
Israel won the Six-Day War with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. It
was then that the Zionist lobby became one of the most
powerful forces in American politics and ethnic "Jewishness,"
as distinct from religious Judaism, became, for the first
time, openly militant in American culture, and any criticism
of Jews or Israel became "anti-Semitism." It wasn't long
before "Holocaust denial" became a capital thought-crime.
Jewish guilt-merchants have also used the Holocaust as a
stick to beat other parties with. Christianity, from the
Gospel writers to Pius XII, has been blamed for inspiring
genocide against the Jews; the Holocaust is often described as
the culmination of "2,000 years of Christian anti-Semitism."
Those who make these charges are deeply resentful when
Christians reject them. Last year's Vatican statement
exonerating Pius XII provoked further angry attacks by some
Jews. The nominal Catholic John Cornwell has found favor among
such Jews by smearing Pius as "Hitler's Pope."
On the other hand, a number of more temperate Jews have
deplored these wild indictments. Unfortunately, the incentive
system still favors the shrillest. Cornwell stands to lose
nothing by lying about Pius; if he had praised him, his book
would have been published (if at all) by some obscure Catholic
press.
The Jewish lobby (though "lobby" seems an inadequate term
for it) now inspires enormous fear because of its power to
ruin politicians, writers, and businesses. It wields such
dreaded labels as "anti-Semite" and "bigot" with abandon and
-- and here is the real point -- with impunity. This is the
background against which Mrs. Lipstadt made her charges
against Irving.
Far from being persecuted, or remotely threatened with
persecution, Jews in the modern democracies are very powerful.
That is precisely why they are feared, and why their labels
terrify. If they were really helpless victims, there would
obviously be no reason to fear them; nobody in Hitler's
Germany (or Jefferson's America, for that matter) had to fear
being called anti-Semitic. Most Jews of course take no active
part in the thought-control campaign, and many would oppose it
if they considered it seriously; but the major secular Jewish
organizations are determined to silence any public discourse
that is not to their liking, as witness the fate of people as
disparate as Irving, Louis Farrakhan, and Pat Buchanan.
The test is this. What is the penalty for making false or
reckless charges of anti-Semitism? The plain fact is that
there is no penalty at all. That is why the Irving-Lipstadt
suit is so startling. In this country we aren't used to seeing
people -- especially members of the mighty "victim" groups --
held responsible for ruining others' reputations.
If anti-Semitism is a serious matter, you might think it
would be in the interest of the Jewish lobby itself to define
the term carefully and to discourage its promiscuous use. But
neither has happened. Why not?
For the simple reason that the function of the word is
not to identify and disarm real hostility to Jews, but to
terrorize. For the purpose of creating fear, as Stalin
understood, a false charge is as good as a true one -- better,
in fact, since the power to stigmatize arbitrarily, without
well-defined rules and safeguards against abuse, is the
perfect way to intimidate the general population.
Even a false charge reinforces the power of the lobby.
After all, if people only had to beware of true accusations --
strictly defined charges in which the burden of proof was on
the accuser, who would put himself at risk by making charges
he couldn't support -- there would be little to worry about.
You don't fear being falsely accused of murder, because you
know you can defend yourself against it and see your accuser
punished. If the crime is serious, so is the false imputation
of it. That's the ordinary rule of life.
But when nobody pays a price for making false
accusations, there are going to be a lot of false accusations.
Joe McCarthy really didn't get it. When he spoke of "card-
carrying Communists," he was too specific for his own good.
His charges were too well-defined and therefore subject to
falsification. Everyone knows what a "card-carrying Communist"
is; when you use that phrase, you'd better be able to make it
stick. But nobody really knows what an "anti-Semite" is, so
the charge of anti-Semitism can't be falsified, and nobody has
to worry about being penalized for using it. It's a thoroughly
perverse incentive system, worthy of the Soviet Union.
If Deborah Lipstadt winds up paying damages to David
Irving, it will be partly because she, like Joe McCarthy, was
imprudently specific. Dangerous may be a little vague, but
"Holocaust denier" isn't. It can be proved or disproved.
A ruling in Irving's favor might even tend to confirm the
standard account of the Holocaust, if it transpires that he
agrees with its central contention in spite of his skepticism
about certain of its features. But such a ruling would
certainly show that there is still one island on earth where
you lie about people at your own peril.
CLASHING SYMBOLS
(page 5)
On Martin Luther King's birthday this year the usual
cloying commemorations, masquerading as news stories, were
capped by the report that an American Catholic bishop had
submitted King's name to the Vatican, recommending that he be
honored as a Christian martyr.
"Dr." King, whose doctoral thesis was plagiarized, was a
mixed character, admirable in some respects -- especially his
unquestionable courage -- but too seriously flawed to warrant
national (let alone religious) veneration. Far from living a
life of holiness and sanctity, he lacked the basic integrity
we expect of religious leaders. He was, for openers, a
relentless philanderer who spent the night before his death
sharing a bed with two women. He was also a believing Marxist
who hobnobbed with Communists while preaching "freedom." You
might even suspect him of hypocrisy.
Liberal opinion is indulgent toward adultery and sees
nothing wrong with associating with Communists. If King's
inner circle had been revealed to include Nazis, of course,
his name would be mud. Nazism has become a symbol of pure
evil, while Communism is treated as a noble (though ill-
starred) "dream" -- like King's. That "dream," under
inspection, always turns out to be the hope of a collectivist
society, with the annihilation of personal freedom. Other
regimes are judged by their records, Communism by its
promises.
King's birthday was marked by articles in the NEW YORK
TIMES (by Glenn C. Loury) and the WASHINGTON POST (by
Jonathan Yardley) insisting that the Confederate flag that
still flies over the capitol in South Carolina must be
officially treated as a symbol of slavery, not of Southern
valor. Both Loury and Yardley scolded John McCain, whose
ancestors fought for the Confederacy, for refusing to condemn
the flag.
"In retrospect," wrote Loury, "we can now see that those
who fought under the Confederate flag were treasonous rebels
bent on the destruction of our union. And those who hoisted
that flag over their state's capitol during the height of the
civil-rights struggle were obstructing social justice. There
was nothing honorable in any of that, and one need not be a
descendant of slaves to say so."
Yardley added: "Black South Carolinians are absolutely
right to regard the flag over the state capitol as a
calculated insult, an evocation not of Rhett Butler or of
McCain's heroic ancestors but of the slavery in which their
own ancestors were held and of the de jure discrimination that
followed in Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era." In the minds
of progressives, "reactionaries" aren't even entitled to
decide what their own symbols mean.
At the same time, Loury spoke of his "African-American
forefathers" who "were persecuted under the battle flag of the
Confederacy." The question that comes to mind is why blacks
like Loury, who damn the Old South, want to venerate Africa.
According to their own logic, they should see Africa, even
more than the Confederate flag, as a symbol of slavery.
Loury and Yardley imply that there is no controversy at
all, no room for differences of opinion, no valid perspective
but their own. The whole King cult assumes this. However
controversial he was in his own time, King is now treated as a
bland icon, a sort of dashboard figurine for liberals. "In
retrospect," as Loury says, "we" can see that there was only
one legitimate side all along, its opponents being "treasonous
rebels."
From grade school on, our teachers, scholars,
intellectuals, and journalists try to herd us into conformity
to views that don't deserve our automatic assent. Through many
channels we're besieged with the notion that all history is
the story of mankind's march toward a collectivist and
materialist society, a variant of what Herbert Butterfield
called "the whig interpretation of history," dividing the
world into progressive heroes and reactionary villains.
In my case, at least, the result has been a sneaking
curiosity about, and sympathy with, the alleged villains. When
urged to rejoice in the famous victories of the progressives,
I've always wanted to hear the losers' side of the story. It
nearly always turns out to be more interesting than the
winners' side, and it often turns out to have been right after
all.
To defeat is not to refute. A cause is not proved wrong
because it loses on the battlefield or at the ballot box. To
believe otherwise, as Chesterton says, is exactly like
believing in trial by combat as a test of truth.
One by-product of liberalism is the sort of
"conservative" who eagerly aligns himself with Abraham
Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, or "Dr." King's "dream." If
conservatism means anything, it means opposing vulgar notions
of progress. It's exemplified in a Solzhenitsyn standing
alone, against those who seem to have won overwhelmingly, to
insist that the argument isn't over yet.
SHAKESPEARE'S FOLKS
(page 6)
[This is an unabridged version; text not appearing in the
printed version appears in curly braces, thus: { text }]
A week before his death in 1547, Henry VIII -- obese,
syphilitic, demented -- groggily approved an order for the
execution of Henry Howard, the young Earl of Surrey. Henry was
too bloated to walk, or even wield a pen, so he used a stamp
that had been provided for the purpose.
Surrey was a victim of the tangled court intrigues of
Henry's reign. Not yet 30, he had been a favorite of the king.
But he had a wild streak and a hot temper and had once been
jailed for breaking church windows and pelting prostitutes
with stones in the streets of London. Henry forgave such
pranks, shaking his head affectionately at "the most foolish
proud boy that is in England."
But in late 1546 Surrey's enemies accused him of claiming
a right to the throne by virtue of his Plantagenet blood and
plotting with his father, the Duke of Norfolk, to supplant
Henry. Since it was a crime even to speculate about Henry's
death, he was charged with high treason and, on January 19,
1547, beheaded. His father was spared. It's hard to judge the
truth of the charges.
Surrey is now best remembered as a poet. With his friend
Sir Thomas Wyatt, he introduced the Petrarchan love sonnet to
England and originated the "Shakespearean" sonnet form. He
also created English blank verse in his translation of two
books of the AENEID. His influence on Shakespeare is
acknowledged.
Surrey also had a nephew by marriage, whom he didn't live
to see: Edward de Vere, later 17th Earl of Oxford, author of
the Shakespeare works, was born in 1550. Oxford grew up
venerating Surrey's memory and aspiring to emulate him as a
poet; a thousand Petrarchan sonnets ascribed to others were
actually Oxford's, as I will argue in a future book.
I have just found a new piece of evidence that Oxford was
"Shakespeare." Scholars now widely agree that the play SIR
THOMAS MORE is at least partly Shakespearean. It exists only
in a single manuscript, which was discovered in the nineteenth
century; it was never printed in its own time and may have
been banned, since it favorably portrays a Catholic martyr
beheaded by the father of Elizabeth I.
What is interesting is that Surrey is a character in the
play. Since the real Surrey was still in his teens when More
was executed in 1535, the author has taken a remarkable
liberty with the historical facts to include him in the story;
Surrey speaks the final lines of the play. Clearly Oxford was
going out of his way to honor his uncle.
Orthodox Shakespeare scholars, naturally, have failed to
notice Surrey's anachronistic presence in SIR THOMAS MORE; its
significance is lost on them, since they assume the wrong
author and are unaware of Oxford's relation to Surrey.
It's fascinating that the greatest English poet should
have been so close to such important events and personalities
in English history. But there is more.
After his father's death in 1562, Oxford was raised at
the court of Elizabeth I as a ward of William Cecil, later
Lord Burghley, whose daughter Ann Cecil he married in 1571. He
was a favorite of the queen in his youth and was rumored to
have had a flirtation with her shortly after his marriage; his
mother-in-law was infuriated, but Burghley tried to ignore it.
I am convinced that the sonnet cycle printed as EMARICDULFE in
1595 was originally addressed to Elizabeth.
Burghley, lord treasurer and spymaster, was the most
powerful man in Elizabethan England and a crucial figure in
English history. Hilaire Belloc gives him the dubious credit
of crushing the Catholic Church in England, not out of any
religious passion, but because he belonged to the class that
had enriched itself during the looting of Church properties
under Henry VIII. According to Belloc, Burghley -- and his son
Robert Cecil after him -- wanted to make sure England never
returned to the Catholic fold. They successfully worked to
make England a power independent of Europe; and in Belloc's
view the Reformation would have died out if England had
resumed Catholicism.
{ Belloc credits Burghley with "a very great political
genius" but "a despicable character -- mean, sly, avaricious,
and thoroughly false." He was "one of the greatest and
certainly one of the vilest of men that ever
lived."
England remained largely Catholic during Elizabeth's
reign, but attachment to the old religion waned and all but
flickered out after the shock of the Jesuit-driven Gunpowder
Plot in 1605. (One of those who turned Protestant at about
that time, incidentally, was John Milton, father of England's
great Puritan poet.) }
Oxford's attitude toward all this is hard to judge. He
had Catholic sympathies, drawn from both his family and his
Italian journey of 157576, but they seem to have waned; his
works reflect a broadly Catholic outlook, certainly not a
Protestant one, but this is also consistent with attachment to
the Church of England, or with no particular religious zeal.
He was often at odds with Burghley, but apparently for
personal reasons that had nothing to do with religion;
Polonius in HAMLET is clearly modeled on Burghley, even to the
detail of sending a spy to Paris to report on his wastrel
son's misconduct.
But Oxford seems not to have realized that his father-in-
law would loom large in history, any more than Burghley
realized that his son-in-law would be an immortal poet.
Boxed Copy
RIGHT AS USUAL: The House of Representatives has passed a
bill authorizing a measly $30,000 to coin a Congressional Gold
Medal in honor of New York's John Cardinal O'Connor. Only one
member dissented: Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, who calls
O'Connor "well-deserving" but deems the bill unconstitutional.
Exactly! Thank God for both men. (page 9)
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD: Are Jews smarter than gentiles?
Are you kidding? Of course they are, and Jewish intelligence
is a blessing to the whole world. If it sometimes seems
otherwise, the real problem -- the fact that has really
wrought endless havoc in this world -- is that dumb Jews are
smarter than dumb gentiles. (page 9)
BY THE WAY: McCain, who claims to be "pro-life," says he's
never voted for experimentation on aborted children. But TIME
reports that he did so three times -- in 1992, 1993, and 1997.
He says his religion is "between me and my family." So is his
voting record, I guess. (page 10)
NOTED IN PASSING: In case I haven't mentioned it before, Sir
Derek Jacobi, one of the world's greatest living Shakespearean
actors, has gone on record as a firm believer that the real
author was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. The year 2000, by
the way, marks the 450th anniversary of Oxford's birth. (page
11)
EVEN A STOPPED CLOCK IS RIGHT TWICE A DAY: Bill Clinton,
commenting on Internet vandalism, said that the Internet has
been a huge success because the government has pretty much
left it alone. He's absolutely right. I don't get it. (page
11)
NONE DARE CALL IT DUAL LOYALTY: McCain's speech (see page 1)
is an instance of a basic principle of politics: that one may
in practice assume the truth of propositions which, made
explicit, are universally denounced as "myths," "canards," and
"stereotypes" -- in this case, the notion that American Jews
put Israel's interests ahead of American interests. McCain
assumes that this is exactly what Jews do and, far from being
accused of bigotry, he has won fervent Jewish support. (page
12)
Exclusive to the electronic version:
OUR FRIEND, THE ABORTIONIST: I haven't seen the movie
version of THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, which has won seven Oscar
nominations, but I have read the execrable John Irving novel
it's based on -- a literary experience only in the sense that
a black mass is a spiritual experience: the heroes of the
absurd and ugly story are a pair of abortionists, master and
apprentice. Since Irving (who also wrote the film's
screenplay) can neither build a plot nor create a believable
character, one's interest is sustained only by his puerile
perversity.
LOVING THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Hillary Clinton, now officially
running for the U.S. Senate as "Hillary!" in New York, is off
to a rocky start. After gobbling a free breakfast in upstate
New York, Hillary! left the restaurant without tipping the
waitress -- who was, it so happens, a single mom. Maybe Al
Gore's wife should have run for that Senate seat. At least we
know she's a Tipper.
Reprinted Columns (pages 7-12)
* The Nickname Game (January 11, 200)
http//www.sobran.com/columns/000111.shtml
* The Rules of the Game (January 13, 2000)
http//www.sobran.com/columns/000113.shtml
* What About Elian? (January 18, 2000)
http//www.sobran.com/columns/000118.shtml
* Musidorus the Cannibal (January 20, 2000)
http//www.sobran.com/columns/000120.shtml
* Advancing toward Savagery (January 25, 2000)
http//www.sobran.com/columns/000125.shtml
* The Courtier Who Would Be King (February 1, 2000)
http//www.sobran.com/columns/000201.shtml
All articles are written by Joe Sobran
Copyright (c) 2000 by The Vere Company. All rights reserved.
Distributed with permission by the Griffin Internet Syndicate
(fran@griffnews.com).