BEEN DOWN SO LONG IT STILL
LOOKS DOWN TO ME
As Jeremy
Lott, Kathy
Shaidle, Steve
Sailer and Paul
Cella have attested, I am in desperate
straits. My phone has been cut off, my Internet access
is imperilled, and I am facing eviction. I feel wretched
in once again resorting to beggary, but beggary is what
I have been reduced to. Several kind folks have already
sent me money via the PayPal button on this site, and
for this I thank them so much. I would it appreciate it
more than I could express if others would follow their
example.
For those that cannot or choose not to use PayPal, my
address is:
889 Pepin Crescent
Victoria, BC Canada
V8Z 6W3
As I have noted, I may soon lose access to the
Internet and to my primary email account at any time, so
The Ambler may go on hiatus. Notwithstanding
this, I can always be contacted at kevin_grace@hotmail.com,
so I can access email and my PayPal account, even if
only from Internet cafés.
It is now self-evident that I have neither the
external nor the internal resources required to survive
as a freelance journalist. In any event, my political
opinions have rendered me unsuitable for journalistic
employment in Canada, while I am too old and too
Canadian for American employment. I mean by the last
that in exchange for my services prospective American
employers would have to pay a premium in immigration
fees and relocation costs. Not a large premium, as
I’ve had a TN visa in the past, and my belongings are
few; but most right-wing organizations work on tiny
margins.
So, short of a miracle, journalism will no longer be
my vocation. Insofar as I am able, however, I will keep The
Ambler alive. I’m seeking non-journalistic
employment, and I have a line on a job, but I may not
last that long. So I’m again standing before you with
my hand out.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.38 p.m., October 22,
2003►
THE NEOCONSERVATIVE
CRACK-UP
I continue to rabbit on about Gregg Easterbrook not
just because I think he is the victim of a grave
injustice (but see here)
but also because I think this affair has momentous
implications. If criticism of capitalism equals
anti-capitalism equals anti-Semitism (Virginia
Postrel), and criticism of America equals
anti-Americanism equals anti-Semitism (Jamie
Glazov), then capitalism equals the Jews
and America equals the Jews. That such formulations
constitute a grave danger to America and to the Jews
should be self-evident. As I said yesterday, Mahathir
Mohamad must be praising Allah for blessing him from
Paradise.
Now, in an infallible pronouncement from
neoconservative Pope David I, we are informed that any
Jew who protests Easterbrook’s sacking is indifferent
to genocide! Here is what Frum had
to say on National Review Online
yesterday:
Five million Israeli
Jews—and many more Jews worldwide in countries from
Iran to Argenina [sic]—are threatened with mass
murder. There is something more than a little fishy
about the way that journalists who show virtually zero
interest in the fate of these endangered people have
pounced on the Easterbrook story.
And there is something even
fishier about the way that online journalists who have
inveighed against "American Likudniks" and
"neoconservatives" in a way that seems almost
calculated to fuel anti-Jewish fantasies—yes, this
means you Eric Alterman, and you Mickey Kaus, and you
too Josh Marshall—have suddenly deputized themselves
to serve as censors of offensive anti-Jewish speech.
Mike Eisner doesn’t need your help, boys. Nobody in
the American media is going to hurl offensive untruths
and hysterical calmunies [sic] at him without
thinking twice about it. The same is not true, alas, of
Paul Wolfowitz.
Marshall has responded:
I must tell you that I am
growing more than a little weary of the Jewlier than
thou comments emanating from some of my co-religionists
on the other side of the aisle. (Similar aspersions from
non-Jews are no great shakes either. But those guys are
just practicing unwitting self-parody.) I would ask Frum
to note any specific quotes or any general arguments
from my writing which provide any basis for these
claims. Needless to say, I think there are none.
I think I could say, with
far more merit, that those who make these charges are
exploiting and trivializing the issue of anti-Semitism
by using it as a tool to blunt criticism of their
foreign policy views and the foreign policy pursued by
this administration. One does not have to agree with the
policies of Ariel Sharon’s government to be a Jew in
good standing or an even an Israeli for that matter…
So, David, with all due
respect, I have to say: put up or shut up.
Today, Pope David has amended
his papal bull. He has issued an
"Easterbrook":
One clarification from
yesterday though, this the [sic] product of human error.
In my post about the Easterbrook flap, I described three
writers who had weighed in on the case--Eric Alterman,
Mickey Kaus, and Josh Marshall—as would-be
"censors" of anti-Semitic speech. Some readers
have pointed out that all three more or less took
Easterbrook's side, and that of course is correct.
The problem is that I was
expressing myself over-correctly. When I said they were
acting as would-be censors, I didn't mean that they were
demanding that Easterbrook's words be banned, but that
they were asserting (as censors do) a claim to adjudicate
whether his words were acceptble [sic] or not. And my
point was that these three individuals were not
well-qualified for this role....
To those readers whom I
confused: My apologies.
Perhaps Pope David needs an editor too.
Neoconservative theology had heretofore posited that:
1. There is no such thing
as "neoconservatism," only
"conservatism." (Irving Kristol, the "godfather"
of the movement, disagrees,
but he is obviously a schismatic.)
2. Neoconservatism, which
doesn’t exist, is not a Jewish movement.
3. However, non-Jews that
criticize neoconservatism, neoconservatives or
neoconservative goals are anti-Semitic.
I would have thought this syllogism tautological, or
simply nonsensical, but I lack the analytical power of
Doctor Subtilis, Pope David I.
What’s new in Frum’s papal bull is the assertion
that any Jew who criticizes neoconservatism,
neoconservatives or neoconservative goals is a
self-hating Jew. Of course this is the same man who,
while still a Canadian, dared to declare
that Tom Fleming, Sam Francis, Pat Buchanan, et al.,
were bad Americans. So I would say I was shocked by
Frum’s hubris, except that nothing Pope David says
shocks me anymore.
Until today, I had thought the Easterbrook affair an
unmitigated disaster in its implications for free
speech, America and the Jews. But I am now convinced
that the contradictions in the Church of Neoconservatism
have been so accentuated that its cathedrals will soon
be reduced to bare, ruined choirs. And that is good
news.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.05 p.m., October 22,
2003►
BOYCOTT DISNEY
Steve Sailer comments on the Gregg Easterbrook
affair:
Obviously, censorship of
independent thinkers is getting out of hand in the U.S.
when a well-connected liberal/centrist like Easterbrook,
who writes self-defensive cover-your-ass politically
correct silliness about genuinely controversial topics
(such as his ignoble recent attack on Rush
Limbaugh for supposedly being the first
to inject tensions over race into football coverage),
can be broken on the wheel like this over an
out-of-context fragment of a sentence. What hope is
there for completely honest writers to achieve wide
audiences if an Easterbrook is persecuted?
Clearly, it's time to tell
Michael Powell at the FCC that too much financial
control over free expression is concentrated in too few
hands. Let's break up the Disney goliath.
I’m not holding my breath. Hollywood has the U.S.
Congress in its pocket, as demonstrated by the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, the Sonny
Bono Copyright Extension Act and the
(still in committee) Consumer
Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act.
So what is to be done? A cat may choose to not
look at a king, even King Rat. Boycott Disney. (You will
find a comprehensive list of Disney properties here.)
In the last few years, I’ve spent more time than I
care to admit at espn.com. Much as I will miss the
incomparable stats and Rob Neyer’s baseball wisdom,
this site will have to get along without any further
patronage from me.
Boycott Disney!
Several Jewish bloggers, such as Noah
Millman, have condemned Gregg
Easterbrook's trial
by ordeal, but the damage has already
been done. This affair has been a boon to anti-Semites
worldwide, and Mahathir
Mohamad can hardly believe his good
fortune. Jew-hatred in the West is a more subtle
business; its most dangerous expression will be
indirect. Israel will suffer for Disney’s sin.
Most of those that support Palestinian statehood are
sentimental liberals—on the Right
as well as the Left—cheering for the
"underdog." But there are many that support
the Palestinians because they desire them to push the
Israelis into the sea. They cloak their hatred with the
good but misguided intentions of the sentimental because
they know that support for the Palestinian cause is not,
ipso facto, evidence of anti-Semitism. And their
number is growing. Yasser Arafat has reason to be
grateful to Abraham Foxman and The Walt Disney Company.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.13 a.m., October 21,
2003►
NO NAMES, NO PACK-DRILL
In re Gregg
Easterbrook, can we not agree there are
certain subjects of which it is not permissible to
speak? Then at least we would be spared tortuous
"defences" of the man that somehow manage to
avoid consideration of what he actually wrote. (Here
and here.)
According to Abraham
Foxman, national director of the
Anti-Defamation League,
There is no excuse for
bringing religion into a discussion about greed and the
film industry. Greed is a human frailty. Money is not
only colourless, it is faithless.
Either Foxman is right, or he is wrong. If he is
right—and those that participated in the Two Minute
Hate directed against Easterbrook certainly believe he
is—then ESPN/Disney did nothing wrong in firing him.
Perhaps we can also agree that coming directly after
the Rush Limbaugh witch trial, the public burning of
Easterbrook demonstrates that "free speech" is
moribund. I can already hear the libertarians howling:
"Gregg Easterbrook has the right to say what he
believes, and his employer has the right to no longer
employ him as a result." I would have thought those
that claim to believe in liberty would oppose a society
where only the independently wealthy can afford free
speech, but libertarians of the Virginia Postrel ilk are
too busy prostrating themselves before the Golden Calf
to notice the fear that drapes America like a pall.
Postrel is the author of a book called The Future
and its Enemies. Her title is fatuous, of course, as
the future has no enemies—it being unknowable, even to
Virginia Postrel. But the following
gives a taste of the future she would have for us:
Easterbrook's easy recourse
to hoary anti-Semitic rhetoric comes from his hatred of
certain commercial products, not (as far as I can tell)
from a hatred of Jews. Indeed, the "WTF? WTF?
WTeffingF?" reaction stems, in part, from the fact
that nobody expects such rhetoric from a respectable
goo-goo like Easterbrook. That he slips into
anti-Semitic rhetoric to attack certain movies and the
people who make them just makes his self-righteous
hatred more obnoxious. Of course, the slope from hating
commerce to hating (or killing) Jews is one of history's
most slippery.
So Easterbrook’s criticism of certain aspects of
quasi-monopoly capitalism equals "hating
commerce"—which practically outfits him in an SS
uniform. How very interesting that to Postrel
Easterbrook’s mortal sin is not his putative hatred of
Jews but rather his blasphemy against her jealous god,
Capitalism.
It is generally believed that Easterbrook was fired
not for his putatively anti-Semitic speculation on the
moral responsibilities of Jewish movie executives but
rather for his attack on the Disney movie Kill Bill.
If this is true, then a precedent has been
established—it is a sacking offence for any freelance
journalist to criticize any product owned by any
of the conglomerates for which he may write. As the
number of media conglomerates continues to dwindle, one
would expect those that claim to believe in liberty
would seek to bust the media trusts. So why does it seem
that "movement conservatives" dream of a
future in which Rupert Murdoch buys the New York
Times and National Public Radio (for starters) and
puts an end to their carping?
Virginia Postrel doesn’t believe Gregg Easterbrook
is an anti-Semite. Neither does anyone else, except for
Abraham Foxman. Which puts paid to Colby
Cosh:
Anti-Semitism is no longer
remotely acceptable in polite North American society,
and is a capital offence for someone who has a media
career. And this is as it should be. But…we don't have
a litmus test for Jew-hatred or a useful concept of due
process that is applicable to inquiries into it.
Sure we do. If Abraham Foxman judges one an
anti-Semite, that is all the due process required to
hand out death sentences.
Jonah
Goldberg is alarmed by this development:
If the ADL did anything to
foment a climate at ESPN or Disney which resulted in
th[e] decision [to fire Easterbrook], he [Foxman]
should apologize to Easterbrook. Indeed, creating a
climate where offending Jews automatically results in
your termination will do far more to hurt Jews in this
country than anything which might have resulted from
Easterbrook's original comments.
So Foxman has gone too far, has he, Goldberg?
How so? Funny, I don’t recall anything from you other
than praise for America’s other Torquemadas—Norman
Podhoretz and your "invaluable colleague and
friend" David Frum. By the way, are you the same
Jonah Goldberg who saw fit to attack
Chris Matthews, Pat Buchanan and Robert Novak with these
charming words?
I'm having fun at the
expense of people who think they are being incredibly
brave and manly for daring to tell the world that Jewish
conservatives share a position with other conservatives.
But they don't say Jewish conservatives are in favour of
war, they say "the Jews" are in favour of war.
They loudly invoke the hook-nosed roll call of Wolfowitz,
Perle, Abrams, and—before he joined National Review—David
Frum, but then they mumble and whisper through the
roster of the Jews' Gentile bosses: Rumsfeld, Powell,
Ashcroft, Card, Cheney, and, let's not forget, George W.
Bush, scion of the famously less-than-philo-Semitic Bush
clan.
"Hook-nosed," eh Goldberg? If you had a
conscience, you’d choke on your own hypocrisy.
But Goldberg is surely correct that the Easterbrook auto-da-fé
will incite real anti-Semitism, which is devoutly
to be resisted. Joshua
Micah Marshall unwittingly suggests how.
After attacking Easterbrook for "the same old game
of taking Jews to task for failings that all sorts of
people share," Marshall lays down the law:
Jews have some license to
engage in intra-communal polemic along these lines, just
as blacks do within their own community. Gentiles don't.
I could remind Marshall that "gentile"
means "heathen," a rather insensitive word
given the circumstances, but I take his point. So long
as all extra-communal polemic is forbidden, this is a
deal I can live with. Gentiles will no longer comment on
Jewish affairs, and Jews will no longer comment on
gentile affairs. So I can take it that Jews will now
cease instructing Mel Gibson how to make movies and John
Paul II how to run the Roman Catholic Church? Excellent.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.49 a.m., October 20,
2003►
CLOSURE
It is one of the great commonplaces of Tom Wolfe that
you will come across the middle-aged "fat
factory" who "used to play a little
ball." Even as his arteries are so clogged a pin
wouldn’t find breathing space, he still styles himself
an athlete. Well, I used to play a little ball—two
years of Little League, to be precise—but an athlete I
never pretended to be. I was a pathetic ballplayer, so
bad they made me a pitcher, despite my utter lack of
upper body strength.
This was galling in the extreme, as my personal
consciousness began about the time I aspired to be
Mickey Mantle. (My Yankees fandom starts here.) The
spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. Watching the
first game of the Yankees-Marlin World Series tonight, I
was reminded of my greatest athletic humiliation.
Game: I can’t remember. Score: ditto. All I can
recall was that I was leading off third base when I got
picked off. My best friend, a heavy hitter, was at the
plate, but he never had a chance, as I was the last out.
I never heard the end of it.
That was over 35 years ago, you understand, but ever
since then, in all the thousands of baseball games
I’ve seen since then, I’d never seen anyone else
picked off at third base. And it haunted me. Until
tonight, that is. Watching Nick Johnson crawling on this
belly trying to get back to the bag—man, he must have
been as surprised as I was. And I couldn’t have looked
any more ridiculous than he did. Hey, maybe there is
something to that eternal recurrence jazz, after all.
Notes for a Larry King column:
Joe Buck and Tim McCarver: the best announcing combo
ever? I think so. Hey, what happened to Bret Boone? Do
you miss him? I sure don’t. Three men in the booth is
one too many.
Did you catch where Buck told McCarver, "Turn
your cell phone off"? No doubt about who’s in
charge there, is there?
Is Robin Williams the unfunniest man alive or what?
"Eight games"! Oh Lordy! And who’s that guy
to the left of him? Why, that’s Billy Crystal, isn’t
it? Why don’t you ask him a question, eh Jack? Word is
that Billy knows something about baseball. And the
Yankees too. Oh, I forgot, you’re only as big as your
latest hit. So why are you talking to Robin Williams
then? Too bad we couldn’t see you yanking your crotch,
you schmuck. Prediction: in 2005, when Robin
premieres, we’ll all be saying, "Jeez, I thought Whoopi
was bad."
Steve Martinovich: this one’s for you. We like
the Fox Sports graphic
of who’s on base. After a couple of drinks, it’s not
so easy to remember. And we also appreciate seeing that
the pitcher’s just thrown a 95 MPH fastball—most of
us have never clocked that fast on the freeway,
dude.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.49 p.m., October 18,
2003►
THIS IS THE LAST WORD FROM
ME
On the Yankees-Red Sox. A friend of this space
writes,
I'm afraid you may indeed
be overselling the Yankees. Can't a guy just root for
the underdog because he's tired of seeing the same team
win?…I am certainly not a part of that Red Sox-despondency
onanism, but I still preferred them to the egregious
Yankees.
Nothing wrong with a little variety. Nothing at all.
Except that the Angels won in 2002, and the Diamondbacks
won in 2001, the latter after blows that would have
broken a lesser team.
I actually believe the Red Sox will lift the
"curse" soon enough. They have the
second-biggest payroll in baseball, and in Theo Epstein
they have a clever general manager who will replace
Grady Little with someone much less stupid. Besides, Big
Stein is overdue for a meltdown. Of course the Blue Jays
have a clever GM too, in J.P. Ricciardi, and although
their payroll is half that of the Sox, they are already
only another good arm away from challenging both them
and the Yankees…
You know, every time I think I’ve been too hard on
the Red Sox fans, I come across something like this,
from this morning’s Boston Herald, "Red
Sox leave Hub heartbroken: Fans quiet at Fenway after
defeat":
Lifelong Red Sox fan Rich
Busch, 30, of Lexington took the long view.
"It gives the Sox
character if they lose all the time,'' he said before
game's end. "If they win the World Series, we're
going to cheer for a day, and then what? All of our
history is gone.''
Talk about "dependency onanism"! The way
fools like Rich Busch carry on, you’d think they were
talking about Barry Goldwater in ’64 or George
McGovern in ’72. I have nothing but admiration for
those that stick to their principles. But professional
sports are not about principles; they’re about
winning! Ask Joe Torre:
Roger Clemens is always
easy to take out. He knew as well as anyone that he
didn't have his best stuff. There is no time for
sentiment when you're trying to win a ballgame.
To which Jim Caple responds:
That's why the
@&^@#%!!! Yankees are going to the World Series
again and Boston fans will spend this winter and the
next winter and the next winter and probably every other
winter of their lives moaning about the Curse of the
Dumbo, Grady Little, their soon-to-be ex-manager of the
Red Sox.
But if Joe Torre had been managing the Sox, the Red
Sox "Nation" wouldn’t have its precious
"history" to keep it warm at night. This
isn’t fandom; this is psychosis.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.53 p.m., October 17,
2003►
SOX LOSE! SOX LOSE! SOX
LOSE!
No curse,
just a better manager. Grady Little kept Pedro Martinez
in too long: a mistake Joe Torre would not have made.
What makes a winner? Talent, of course, but that’s
not enough. Boston had as much talent as the Yankees,
maybe more. Winners never quit—because they expect to
win. That’s why Torre put Mariano Rivera in with the
game tied and kept him in for three long innings—he
had faith in his players. Grady Little
didn’t—that’s why he kept Scott Williamson in the
bullpen. As good as Tim Wakefield had been in the
series, a knuckleballer is not a closer. An 11-inning
Game Seven, and your best reliever doesn’t see action?
What are you saving him for? No curse, just a better
manager.
What a series! I had a bad feeling about Game Seven.
The Yankees should have finished off the Sox in Game
Six; Clemens was due for a poor outing; and Martinez was
due for a great one. But this was no pitcher’s duel.
What a cast of characters! Mike Mussina, winless in the
post-season, comes in to mop up for Clemens in the 3rd.
Runners on first and third with no outs; he gets the job
done—and then pitches two more scoreless innings.
Jason Giambi, dropped to seventh in the order, comes
through with two home runs. Aaron Boone, previously
hopeless at the plate, is dropped from the line-up. His
replacement, Enrique Wilson, makes a horrible throw from
third base and costs the Yankees a run—a run that
almost costs them the game. Wilson’s pulled in the 8th
for Ruben Sierra, who walks. Sierra’s pulled for a
pinch runner—Aaron Boone, who’s stranded on second
with the game tied 5-5. Boone finally comes to the plate
in the bottom of the 11th; he sees one
pitch—and you know what happened next.
This was a game I could barely stand to watch. The
Yankees never seemed in it, and the anticipation of the
imminent gloating of the Red Sox "Nation" was
making me ill. But the good guys won. Baseball is just a
game, but there is nothing cute about those
that call the Yankees the "Evil Empire." The
Red Sox are not a mom-and-pop franchise, and the Yankees
win fair and square. There really is something malignant
in those that persist in cheering for persistent losers
and think themselves better men for it. The cult of the
underdog is one of the curses of liberalism: the
ideology of Western
suicide, as James Burnham taught us. I
don’t want to oversell this, but the continuing
success of the Yankees is one sign that the quest for
excellence is not yet dead in the West.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.32 p.m., October 16,
2003►
