The Sorrow, the Pity, the Injustice of Justice
Nollson, John
crimination from now to doomsday if the Fleming promise holds. Nobody can prove motivation, but it is a tenable assumption that somebody in HEW may have been stung by George Roche's delightful...
...Of the Anglos, eight will necessarily be women, fourteen will be heterosexual, and two homosexual (one a lesbian), one Jewish, ten Protestant, and four Roman Catholic, and one either a Buddhist, a Mormon, or a Muslim...
...GISCARD: Certainly not...
...GISCARD: Always a pleasure, Marcel, always a pleasure...
...OFFALS: We could always return to what the President of the Republic had to say about equipoise...
...Besides, I work for a state government so that has nothing to do with me...
...PROSECUTOR: Absolutely...
...These films of mine...
...Califano, happens to be vindictive...
...It captures the essence of contemporary moral equidistance and quasidimensionality...
...GISCARD: There is no controversy, Monsieur le Director...
...So what is the comparison...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: I am not paid to make politkal decisions, monsieur...
...Over the price ofoil, never...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: He was very upset...
...There would have been no plea bargaining...
...OFFALS: So you are resigned...
...Your reasoning is entirely too teutonic and metaphysical...
...More important, there is equipoise, unambiguous equipoise...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: Frankly, m~m ami, the_-,e Semites are nothing but a 20 The Alternative: An American Spectator March 1977 source of trouble--Dreyfus, Daoud, what's the difference...
...you know how the exhibitors complain about the length, about the turnaround time, about the declining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John No//son z-~ vLvzting professor of aTa/ectics at l'[nstitut des ttautes Etudes Cin~malographiques z)e Part...
...GISCARD: France is always true to her just and humane tradition...
...Following Pierre van den Berghe's formula for a "proper sociological caucus," Hillsdale will be compelled to hire two blacks (one man, one woman), one Chicano, (or Chicana in alternate choice), one person to be Amerindian, Asian, or Eskimo, and sixteen white Anglos...
...OFFALS: But the prosecution would have been vigorous if he had been put on trial...
...Nobody can prove motivation, but it is a tenable assumption that somebody in HEW may have been stung by George Roche's delightful sarcasms, and so swore a mighty oath to get Hitlsdale College even if it involved fracturing not only the Constitution of the United States but also Webster's Collegiate Dictionary...
...OFFALS: It would certainly be wrong to export it...
...OFFALS: And he said...
...OFFALS: Yes...
...Besides, we have a historic responsibility for the protection of Catholic communities in the Arab world...
...We filmed the fellow who would have been the German prosecutor had Daoud been extradited to Bavaria...
...But that is beside the point...
...I myself do not create the intensity, I merely film it...
...Now, there's one other I want you to see this morning...
...It is not merely that there is equidistance...
...Beautiful symmetry, Marcel, beautiful symmetry...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: My pleasure...
...OFFALS: You are morally equidistant...
...Since Mises' logic is irrefutable, socialists of all breeds have hated him as Christians hate the Anti-Christ...
...OFFALS: It is said that you released Daoud just to get cheap oil from the Arabs...
...We wish to preserve our freedom of action, for if you do not act, the freedom to act becomes but a concept not an actuality, an ideal not an instantiation...
...PROSECUTOR: There are always these rumors...
...Anyway, you already know this...
...OFFALS: Yet, this is being likened to the Dreyfus affair...
...It's simply not mv business...
...OFFALS: There is certainly equidistance here, moral equidistance...
...You see, I have many friends who are Jewish...
...Naturally, I expected that we would shoot him then and there, and that the only controversy would be where to bur)' him, and that the government--in order to restore friendly relations with our Arab friends--would finalIy agree to bury him in the Invalides, next to Napoleon...
...They wish to hurx a Bedouh, in the tnvalJdes...
...Daouct in Jerusalem, can you visualize it...
...Ah, Marcel, a brilliant vignette...
...Ah, Marcel, I knew we could leave it to you...
...You see these regulations...
...PROSECUTOR: Absolutely...
...Moreover, we have always been on the side of the Jews since the end of the war, everyone knows this...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: But of course...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: But then I remembered something about the way Palestinians seem to be in need of a shave...
...Well, thank you for your help...
...Now, in most countries, the important thing about the trial is whether you are guilty or innocent...
...GISCARD: If not wrong, at least equidistant...
...What a sense of the moral dilemmas of the age...
...Yes, as soon as I read of the release of the eminent Palestinian, I immediately saw the filmed interviews unfolding before me--with Giscard, Rabin, and Ararat, with the Pope, Billy Carter, and Clay Felker...
...Mises proved fifty-odd years ago that socialism, in practice, would founder because, without a free market, it would never be able to solve its pricing problem...
...Here, look at the film of the interview with the President of the Republic...
...Another brilliant vignette, Marcel, truly brilliant...
...It so happens that Hillsdale is the repository of the late Ludwig von Mises' personal library of some 5,000 volumes...
...I am a genius after all...
...I want to repeat that, as far as France is concerned, there can be no controversy, for the direction of our policy has always been clear...
...Over the supply ofoil, perhaps...
...Not easy at all...
...Indeed, it cannot be otherwise...
...And this, of course, is wholly unacceptable...
...Daoud but, in his work, I see no coherent theme, no underlying vision, no organizational innovation, and certainly no efficiency...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: So I walked up ~o him and said, "vous 6tes Daoud...
...OFFALS: So you are disappointed...
...We have a favorable balance of trade and a strong currency...
...It is, as I say, a question of unambiguous equipoise...
...You can depend on it...
...two will be intelligent, ten mediocre, and four stupid...
...Hmm, yes, well...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator March 1977 21...
...George Roche's Board of Trustees, unlike other boards we could mention, has passed an astounding miracle...
...But to produce, direct, edit, and reduce to a mere four and a quarter hours a new film about the release of Abu Daoud, this, Marcel, is your greatest triumph...
...There's no jail in France big enough to hold me," he said menacingly...
...OFFALS: We would not insist that the oil be cheap...
...PROSECUTOR: Both our countries have been members of the European Common Market for almost twenty years, so I can be absolutely honest with you...
...These days, when it comes to crime, we can't even compete with these low-grade Arabian amateurs...
...Well, mort ami, what did you expect...
...Hence, we wished to prosecute Daoud to discover whether he was guilty of something we hadn't thought of...
...So, you can begin with my interview of the arresting officer...
...France does not quibble over the price of oil...
...My wife raised this exact point...
...He said his arrest was an outrage...
...OFFALS: We can always use subtitles...
...OFFALS: Yet there is talk that there would have been plea bargaining, that Daoud would have been allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge--negligent manslaughter, perhaps...
...GISCARD: Any comparison between our treatment of Jews on the one hand and Muslims on the other is bound to be superficial...
...Let's face it...
...PROSECUTOR: I apologize for the poor quality of my French...
...Do you think so...
...GISCARD: And what if we had turned Daoud over to the Israelis or the Germans...
...So, if Hillsdale is devoted to perpetuating Mises' voluntarist philosophy, Hillsdale must go...
...PROSECUTOR: Seek...
...The "quoal," defined by Professor Paul Seabury of the University of California as "a slow-moving quota-goal," and the "gota" (a "supple, fast-moving goal-quota"), have yet to achieve a lexicographer's blessing...
...And, to give President Roche the sinews of war necessary to send HEW packing, the trustees authorized raising a Freedom Fund of $29,000,000, dividends from which could be used to provide a scholarship for any poor student who happened to be deprived of a federal grant or loan because of his criminal choice of Hillsdale as a prospective Alma Mater...
...OEFALS: Yes...
...We do nothing but raise a lens to the reality of life, and you who are in the arena, so to speak, do the rest...
...I t ' s just like you left-wing film directors to stir up trouble where none exists...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: Well then I take back what I said about Dreyfus...
...Your excellent films exhibit a profound understanding of this very point...
...He said that he was a personal friend of Kim I1 Sung, his personal supplier he called him...
...John Nollson The Sorrow, the Pity, the Injustice o/Justice A preview ofMarcel Offals' next film...
...What then...
...Nein, nein, it would have been quite impossible...
...one cannot quarrel with a great scholar...
...But here in Germany, it's not so simple...
...OFFALS: You deny that you are relieved that you will not have to proceed with the trial...
...My wife made precisely this point last evening at dinner...
...sales of popcorn, and all that...
...Only the principles of Staatsger~chtigkeitwissenshaft can be applied here, as our oath requires...
...You cannot give credence to rumors...
...If HEW is indeed singling out George Roche for punishment for having indulged in the crime of wit, one can predict the ultimate Affirmative Action plan that will be inflicted on Hillsdate if the new HEW director, Mr...
...A media circus, a telecommunications hippodrome...
...Philosophers would flock to the trial...
...She said it would be tasteless...
...OFFALS: Absolutely...
...We are not under the.thumb of the Arabs...
...My friend, you do me too much honor...
...It is undignified for a nuclear power with its own force de frappe to quibble over the price of oil...
...To sustain such cinematic intensity for more than four hours, Mort Dieu, what an achievement...
...Says George Roche, there shal be no Alma Martyrs as long as the Hillsdale trustees remain in fighting--and money-raising--trim...
...Now, tell me, is this going to be part of a film...
...OFFALS: You are aware of the controversy, Monsieur le President, no doubt...
...You see, that lies within the purview of the foreign ministry, not the justice ministry...
...You were the one who sought the extradition of Daoud...
...OFFALS: We neither admit or deny nor affirm nor reject, Monsieur le President...
...There are only degrees of misunderstanding an unfamiliarity with the underlying clarity...
...OFFALS: Thank you for your time, Monsieur le President...
...This is not France...
...A rare honor you have given me, Marcel...
...Now, let me once again return to this point concerning controversy...
...Even you left-wing film directors will admit as much...
...Do you see what I mean...
...Here, you look at this handbook of organization of the Bundesrepublik government, and also the regulations that accompany it...
...There are other reasons than offended amourpropre for HEW, as a defender of the faith in Big Government, to try to crush little Hillsdale under Goliath's heel...
...Perhaps we should change the subject...
...The prosecution would have been thorough and meticulous...
...Any simpleton can make up a law, but it requires true ingenuity to commit a wholly new crime, one not yet encompassed in the law precisely because it has yet to be imagined...
...It is only jurisprudence that is involved here, not politics...
...So far the Moscow Communists have been able to price their wheat, steel, and vodka by noting the exchange rates that will result in practical cross-border trade...
...we are no longer the world power we once were...
...Naturally, it wasn't easy to recognize Daoud in the crowd...
...Magnificent, Marcel, and how fitting that we conclude our morning's viewing with a word of praise for our President...
...OFFALS: Some of my best friends too...
...GISCARD: France would not betray her history merely to gain cheap oil...
...that is of course their business, the busines-~ of tim politicians and the diplomats...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: You know, of course, that metropolitan France has been overrun with Arabs of every description-from the Maghreb, from the Levant, from everywhere...
...Eight will be juvenile, four mature, and four senile...
...A dictatorship dedicated to "planning" would have no data on which to plan...
...The metaphysics of criminality is still, for us Germans, an endearing subject, a subject tinged with sentiment and nostalgia...
...OFFALS: He was right of course...
...When HEW came snooping, it resolved "that Hillsdale College will hold to its traditional philosophy of equal opportunity without discrimination by reason of race, religion or sex, but such non-discrimination will be voluntary, thus preserving equality with dignity and encouraging friendship based on recognition of equal worth and mutual respect...
...I do not mean to belittle Mr...
...Nein, Non...
...It raises cindma veritd to new heights, new heights, Marcel...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: But of course...
...And did we not fulfill that responsibility in Lebanon...
...PROSECUTOR: Indeed...
...I want you to look at the film of these interviews, for I need your opinions on further editing...
...But when the whole world is Communist, the dictators will choke on strawberries while the proletariat scratches in the black market for potatoes...
...OFFALS: No, I don't...
...France, true to her tradition, can do nothing to promote bad taste...
Vol. 10 • March 1977 • No. 6
