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...
...She said it would be tasteless...
...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...
...This is not France...
...He said that he was a personal friend of Kim I1 Sung, his personal supplier he called him...
...So, if Hillsdale is devoted to perpetuating Mises' voluntarist philosophy, Hillsdale must go...
...PROSECUTOR: Indeed...
...The prosecution would have been thorough and meticulous...
...OFFALS: We could always return to what the President of the Republic had to say about equipoise...
...I want you to look at the film of these interviews, for I need your opinions on further editing...
...It captures the essence of contemporary moral equidistance and quasidimensionality...
...GISCARD: And what if we had turned Daoud over to the Israelis or the Germans...
...OFFALS: Yet, this is being likened to the Dreyfus affair...
...Since Mises' logic is irrefutable, socialists of all breeds have hated him as Christians hate the Anti-Christ...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: Well then I take back what I said about Dreyfus...
...OFFALS: Thank you for your time, Monsieur le President...
...There would have been no plea bargaining...
...PROSECUTOR: I apologize for the poor quality of my French...
...Do you see what I mean...
...OFFALS: You are aware of the controversy, Monsieur le President, no doubt...
...PROSECUTOR: There are always these rumors...
...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...
...And did we not fulfill that responsibility in Lebanon...
...Ah, Marcel, I knew we could leave it to you...
...George Roche's Board of Trustees, unlike other boards we could mention, has passed an astounding miracle...
...The metaphysics of criminality is still, for us Germans, an endearing subject, a subject tinged with sentiment and nostalgia...
...Ah, Marcel, a brilliant vignette...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: My pleasure...
...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...
...Indeed, it cannot be otherwise...
...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...
...I do not mean to belittle Mr...
...Let's face it...
...I myself do not create the intensity, I merely film it...
...Philosophers would flock to the trial...
...John Nollson The Sorrow, the Pity, the Injustice o/Justice A preview ofMarcel Offals' next film...
...But here in Germany, it's not so simple...
...Perhaps we should change the subject...
...Says George Roche, there shal be no Alma Martyrs as long as the Hillsdale trustees remain in fighting--and money-raising--trim...
...PROSECUTOR: Both our countries have been members of the European Common Market for almost twenty years, so I can be absolutely honest with you...
...OFFALS: No, I don't...
...GISCARD: There is no controversy, Monsieur le Director...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator March 1977 21...
...France does not quibble over the price of oil...
...There are only degrees of misunderstanding an unfamiliarity with the underlying clarity...
...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...
...Anyway, you already know this...
...Over the price ofoil, never...
...These days, when it comes to crime, we can't even compete with these low-grade Arabian amateurs...
...PROSECUTOR: Absolutely...
...Here, look at the film of the interview with the President of the Republic...
...GISCARD: Always a pleasure, Marcel, always a pleasure...
...You see, that lies within the purview of the foreign ministry, not the justice ministry...
...My friend, you do me too much honor...
...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...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: But of course...
...OFFALS: And he said...
...It is, as I say, a question of unambiguous equipoise...
...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...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: He was very upset...
...GISCARD: Certainly not...
...Do you think so...
...They wish to hurx a Bedouh, in the tnvalJdes...
...one cannot quarrel with a great scholar...
...So, you can begin with my interview of the arresting officer...
...It is only jurisprudence that is involved here, not politics...
...sales of popcorn, and all that...
...OFFALS: It is said that you released Daoud just to get cheap oil from the Arabs...
...You were the one who sought the extradition of Daoud...
...To sustain such cinematic intensity for more than four hours, Mort Dieu, what an achievement...
...Now, in most countries, the important thing about the trial is whether you are guilty or innocent...
...OFFALS: Yes...
...Now, let me once again return to this point concerning controversy...
...And this, of course, is wholly unacceptable...
...we are no longer the world power we once were...
...A rare honor you have given me, Marcel...
...OFFALS: So you are disappointed...
...OFFALS: We neither admit or deny nor affirm nor reject, Monsieur le President...
...Hmm, yes, well...
...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...
...Daoud but, in his work, I see no coherent theme, no underlying vision, no organizational innovation, and certainly no efficiency...
...OFFALS: So you are resigned...
...OFFALS: Absolutely...
...What then...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: But then I remembered something about the way Palestinians seem to be in need of a shave...
...Now, there's one other I want you to see this morning...
...GISCARD: France is always true to her just and humane tradition...
...We filmed the fellow who would have been the German prosecutor had Daoud been extradited to Bavaria...
...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...
...There's no jail in France big enough to hold me," he said menacingly...
...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...
...My wife made precisely this point last evening at dinner...
...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...
...It raises cindma veritd to new heights, new heights, Marcel...
...OFFALS: He was right of course...
...It is not merely that there is equidistance...
...You see these regulations...
...A dictatorship dedicated to "planning" would have no data on which to plan...
...Over the supply ofoil, perhaps...
...Here, you look at this handbook of organization of the Bundesrepublik government, and also the regulations that accompany it...
...Eight will be juvenile, four mature, and four senile...
...OFFALS: You deny that you are relieved that you will not have to proceed with the trial...
...We have a favorable balance of trade and a strong currency...
...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...
...Only the principles of Staatsger~chtigkeitwissenshaft can be applied here, as our oath requires...
...France, true to her tradition, can do nothing to promote bad taste...
...OFFALS: Some of my best friends too...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: I am not paid to make politkal decisions, monsieur...
...OFFALS: You are morally equidistant...
...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...
...two will be intelligent, ten mediocre, and four stupid...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: So I walked up ~o him and said, "vous 6tes Daoud...
...Daouct in Jerusalem, can you visualize it...
...Besides, we have a historic responsibility for the protection of Catholic communities in the Arab world...
...It is undignified for a nuclear power with its own force de frappe to quibble over the price of oil...
...OFFALS: We can always use subtitles...
...GISCARD: If not wrong, at least equidistant...
...My wife raised this exact point...
...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...
...Now, tell me, is this going to be part of a film...
...Califano, happens to be vindictive...
...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...
...OEFALS: Yes...
...PROSECUTOR: Absolutely...
...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...
...Your reasoning is entirely too teutonic and metaphysical...
...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...
...OFFALS: We would not insist that the oil be cheap...
...It's simply not mv business...
...More important, there is equipoise, unambiguous equipoise...
...But when the whole world is Communist, the dictators will choke on strawberries while the proletariat scratches in the black market for potatoes...
...Hence, we wished to prosecute Daoud to discover whether he was guilty of something we hadn't thought of...
...Nein, nein, it would have been quite impossible...
...What a sense of the moral dilemmas of the age...
...OFFALS: There is certainly equidistance here, moral equidistance...
...I t ' s just like you left-wing film directors to stir up trouble where none exists...
...Even you left-wing film directors will admit as much...
...He said his arrest was an outrage...
...But that is beside the point...
...So what is the comparison...
...OFFALS: It would certainly be wrong to export it...
...Another brilliant vignette, Marcel, truly brilliant...
...GISCARD: France would not betray her history merely to gain cheap oil...
...Magnificent, Marcel, and how fitting that we conclude our morning's viewing with a word of praise for our President...
...You see, I have many friends who are Jewish...
...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...
...I am a genius after all...
...Not easy at all...
...Nein, Non...
...Besides, I work for a state government so that has nothing to do with me...
...OFFALS: But the prosecution would have been vigorous if he had been put on trial...
...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...
...that is of course their business, the busines-~ of tim politicians and the diplomats...
...GISCARD: Any comparison between our treatment of Jews on the one hand and Muslims on the other is bound to be superficial...
...Your excellent films exhibit a profound understanding of this very point...
...It so happens that Hillsdale is the repository of the late Ludwig von Mises' personal library of some 5,000 volumes...
...ARRESTING OFFICER: But of course...
...You cannot give credence to rumors...
...Moreover, we have always been on the side of the Jews since the end of the war, everyone knows this...
...Well, thank you for your help...
...Naturally, it wasn't easy to recognize Daoud in the crowd...
...Well, mort ami, what did you expect...
...We are not under the.thumb of the Arabs...
...You can depend on it...
...Beautiful symmetry, Marcel, beautiful symmetry...
...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...
...These films of mine...
...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...
...A media circus, a telecommunications hippodrome...
...PROSECUTOR: Seek...
Vol. 10 • March 1977 • No. 6
