Category: Old Dish

This time, it was Iran. The same debate really. Is Tehran a regime in transition with an inevitable shift toward democracy? Is it better for the West to take a hard line with the military-Islamic regime in order to encourage a change for the better – or should we ply them with trade, diplomacy, and oh-so-sophisticated engagement? I mentioned Rafsanjani’s recent public statement that he wanted to nuke Israel. “Oh,” my friends replied. “He is just a silly person. It is all for domestic consumption. You should take a more sophisticated approach.” I asked about the nominated British ambassador, rejected by Tehran because he is allegedly a spy, and a Jew. They didn’t have a particularly good answer for that, except to argue that Iran is now a unique state, in their opinion. It is a state with two equivalent regimes. We have to be careful, sophisticated (that word again) or it could all go horribly wrong. What about Iranian disruption in Afghanistan? Inevitable border dispute. That boat-load of arms to the PLO? Why not? The Iranians do not regard Hizbollah or Hamas as terrorist organizations but as national liberators. And so the argument came back to Israel, where one found almost zero support for any of the Jewish state’s actions. I recount this not because I agree with it,. but because it was a direct interaction with a worldview that is powerful and prevalent in the most pro-American European country. My friends are also no radicals and they are all in the top 1 percent educational bracket. Many are right-of-center. One demanded any evidence that George W. Bush wasn’t a moron. Now do you see the problem?

The other fundamental difference, it seems to me, is that the Europeans do not get what September 11 did to America. They don’t understand how the violation of two hundred years of mainland security altered something deep in the American psyche, traumatized and enraged us at a level the Europeans haven’t even vaguely felt. They don’t get that gaping wound in downtown Manhattan, although they’ve all seen it dozens of times. Or they do get it, but are terrified by this hegemon, enraged and righteous, executing its will across the planet. I think we have to make allowances for them in this, as they must for us. Some difference of view is not just healthy, it’s inevitable. I don’t think Americans got what Londoners went through in 1940 during the blitz, and the profound changes in the national psyche it wrought. Ditto the English toward Americans today. And the truth is, this is perfectly understandable. You simply can’t fully get something that traumatic unless you experience it directly – as a threat to oneself. Hence the difference in resolve and seriousness between America and the allies as this war continues. What to do about this? Americans need to explain their feelings more to a culture over here that saw September 11 as a media extravaganza that has now ceded to the next story. We have to try and explain the depth of the anger and the fact that fear of another attack – anywhere – is absolutely real. Perhaps it wil take an unthinkable terrorist atrocity in a European city for this psychological gap to narrow. I just hope we can get there without such a calamity. And if necessary, of course, America may have to simply go it alone.

How easy. How dumb.

George Orwell once wrote a lovely little piece called, if memory serves, “In Defence of English Cooking.” It was all about the joys of dishes like steak and kidney pudding and the immortal “spotted dick” (a sweet desert made out of animal fat and raisins). Honestly, no joking, all irony aside, seriously, I kid you not, I love both those dishes. One of the things I’ve never left behind after eighteen years in America is a hankering for British food. Yesterday, my mother made me roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. For lunch today in Soho, I had a big helping of baked beans on fried bread with two bangers (English sausages), followed by hot apple crumble and custard (the kind you can pour). Delicious. The enormous weight in one’s stomach one feels after such a meal can now be ameliorated by a Starbucks latte. The only thing I can’t quite get used to again is hot tea (with milk) served with the main course. That and warm, ice-free coca cola. But give me a week and my tastes will likely be as reconstituted as my accent.

I’ll be in London all this week, so don’t worry that I’ve started to post items at even odder times than usual. As I write, I’m looking out at a vista of small, brown-brick houses covered in a light but persistent drizzle. Maybe it’s going away from a country and returning every now and again that helps confirm the deeper truth of certain cultural stereotypes. But some things never seem to change. The papers are full of complaints about everything, from the health service to the trains, the British team just got knocked out of the Davis Cup, and the royal family is plastered all over the media. One thing is striking though. From the frivolity of the television to the general triviality of public life here (they’re excited about a Warhol and a Mario Testino exhibit), there is a completely different feel here than the one in the United States. The deep cultural shift of September 11 hasn’t impacted in anything like the same way. The culture still seems jammed with the idiocy of celebrity, sex-scandals, petty politics and irony, irony, irony. Tina, get back here. They’d still love you.

Then there’s the death of Princess Margaret. Now here’s a classic litmus test of whether Britain has changed. Margaret was perhaps the least popular (and it’s a close contest) among her generation of royals. The reaction to her demise after decades of heavy drinking and sixty cigarettes a day has therefore been somewhat mixed. I get the feeling that the death of Diana exhausted any possibility of English emotion about their monarchy for at least another decade, which is why enthusiasm for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee seems so tepid. But Margaret would be a hard case in any circumstances. She was only loved by a coterie of silly upper-crust homosexuals who saw her as some campy icon of monarchy-gone-bad. One more representative tabloid recently described her thus: “She’s spoilt and ill-mannered and over the years has drunk enough whiskey to open a distillery.” Others weren’t as kind. Writing in today’s Telegraph, Kenneth Rose captured the odd mixture of intimacy and hauteur that typified Margaret. Her habit of demanding that friends or colleagues suddenly shift from treating her like a normal person to treating her like royalty was particularly obnoxious:

“Hopping back on her twig,” they called it. She came to insist that her private secretary should be a peer: first the 14th Lord Napier, then the Second Viscount Ullsworth, who had succeeded to the peerage of his great-grandfather, the ennobled Speaker Lowther. Both served her well, sometimes in difficult circumstances.

I love that English under-statement, “difficult circumstances.” I think it means she could be a complete pill.

Still, the Brits are still the best at anecdotes. I love this one from Rose’s piece again:

A Labour peer, having endured an evening of ostracism [at a Royal bash with Margaret] remarked to the host: “I am not a republican, but I don’t seem to have much luck with the Royal family. I once had quite a struggle helping the king on with his overcoat until I realized he was trying to take it off.”

Then there’s that wonderful English habit of using the impersonal pronoun “one.” From the Times this morning, here’s a classic piece of self-puffery from William Rees-Mogg, former editor of the Times of London:

In 1967 Roy Thomson bought the Times and created Times Newspapers. He later made a fortune in North Sea oil. I have always had very fond memories of him, for his good nature and generosity. In any case, one feels grateful to a man who buys the Times and makes one editor.

GREAT INSULTS: “I know your name, but I can’t recall your face.” – Oscar Wilde.

RUBIN SUCK-UP WATCH: “Mr. Rubin calmly ate a bowl of plain blueberries during a long breakfast interview in his red-and- beige office. Among fly-fishing trophies and official photos, Mr. Rubin hung an engraved chart of all the Treasury secretaries he had reproduced from the original at the Treasury Department. Wearing his customary charcoal suit and white shirt, he is youthfully trim but gives little evidence of overt vanity. Mr. Rubin – who carries the title at Citigroup of chairman of the executive committee – masks an overpowering intellect behind verbal modesty, hedging his views with a courtier’s self-effacement (“Maybe I’m wrong,” and “this is just my opinion, for what it is worth,” or “this could be a bad idea”) in a way that disarms bosses and opponents.” – New York Times today.

Terrific piece in the Washington Post yesterday that confirms my suspicions of Enron’s motives in setting up its “advisory board” for pundits and policy-makers. Even ” some Enron officials privately suggested [paying pundits] did not pass the smell test.” Paul Krugman wasn’t the only liberal for rent. They approached James Carville (who turned them down) and a man called Paul Portney, of the liberal environmental group, Resources for the Future. Here’s a key passage:

Paul Portney, president of Resources for the Future, said he attended five council sessions. Also participating, he said, was the foundation’s vice chairman, Robert Grady, a senior aide to the first President Bush and a drafter of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. In June 2001, Grady wrote a column for Time magazine that endorsed the trading of greenhouse gas emissions rights, a business from which Enron hoped to profit. Grady did not respond to requests for an interview. Enron gave Resources for the Future annual gifts of up to $45,000, and Lay’s family foundation pledged $2 million to endow a research chair. Portney called the stipend granted to advisers a “dream,” but said the money did not influence his views — or his foundation’s decision in April 2000 to name Lay to its governing board. “I am pretty cantankerous; I say what I want,” Portney said. The advisory panel fed Lay’s ego and was “consistent with the idea that you buy your way to success,” said a former Enron political operative. “It was clumsy and the joke was these people took the money and ran. They accomplished little.”

Took the money and ran, eh? And that’s the assessment from Enron itself. Bill Kristol’s still spinning, though. He boasts that, for his $100,000 +, he actually told Lay that John McCain could beat Bush. I wonder if he also told Lay about his own beliefs in campaign finance reform. It turns out Kristol opposes corporate bribes for corrupt politicians, but not for journalists. The hacks, it seems, are beyond reproach.

HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE CHEAP JEW?: “The last time Andrew S. Fastow got in a public brawl about money, it was with a cab driver and concerned a 70-cent tip. The cabbie got so upset he punched Fastow in the face… The picture that emerges is of a greedy, self-dealing executive whom others dare not cross. Friends say they find that image impossible to reconcile with the synagogue-going, happily married, stand-up guy they know.” – Los Angeles Times, February 7. (Update: after a couple of querying emails, I hope it’s clear that I meant this item to be a criticism of such a clumsy if probably unconscious recitation of an anti-Semitic trope.)

Poor new British Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith. He’s been judged too lifeless even for a Madame Tussaud’s wax figure. “Frankly, there are better ways we can spend that sort of money,” a spokeswoman for the museum told the Times of London. “We want figures who will inspire strong emotions and provoke strong reactions. In our view Mr Duncan Smith, who most people have never even heard of, is unlikely to achieve either of those feats. Ever. He is hardly in the news, nobody ever talks about him, and the people who do know who he is do not seem to care less about him either way.” As for my friend William Hague, the former leader, they’ve melted his body down but kept the head. What an honor.