Editorial / The Marion Stonehead Redeemed
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDIT0RIAL- "THE MARION STONEHEAD REDEEMED" I wonder whose idea it was to send Mr. Muhammad All, Esq., as presidential envoy to explain American foreign policy to African heads of state....
...Twas a botch...
...institutions (who use these articles as press releases, if I'm not mistaken...
...This has not been noticed because conservative opinion has been effectively labelled as "ideology," whereas left-wing opinion now marches about the land in the guise of reasonableness, status quo, and conventional wisdom...
...Yet when the administration began congratulating itself on this botch ("The impact he's having is tremendous," said Hodding Carter IIl), the thing took on an even more pernicious dimension...
...Here is Carterism with its grinning face...
...That is why the Soviet Empire, for all its horrors, strikes me as being basically in better health than the West...
...The Soviet-dominated lands have indeed been laid low by the invading microbial armies, but somehow the disease never quite "took," by some miracle...
...Our President, the one who was once given to saying " I f I ever lie to you, don't vote for me," could serve the commonweal well by asking his aides to stop lying about this ignominious pratfall...
...Well, whose masterpiece was this...
...Come on boys, break from your meditations on ways to reassure the Soviets of our peaceful intentions...
...The stringers perked up...
...And, remembering Ali's eccentricities, it was reckless...
...The story has been chastely banished from the headlines, but we scholars must not flinch from such episodes...
...Would .Joe Frazier ever have writhed so pathetically...
...Once again he was The Greatest, and off the entourage went to the Dark Continent...
...The nation's sports fans will be grateful...
...Imagine, there he was in Africa, Howard Cosell's legendary heavyweight champion of the world--an agglutination of Plato, Hercules, and St...
...We, on the other hand, have only just begun to feel" the first flush of fever...
...As a result, they are now "inoculated" against its further ravages...
...W e l l , I won't go on about this right now...
...How about dismissing some of those who made such a hash of it in years past...
...Somewhere in the wilds of Ohio the descendants of Warren Gamaliel Harding rejoice...
...So now they (I sense) are on the road back to health...
...He is described sometimes as a "dissident Soviet writer," although he might object to that use of "Soviet...
...This disease, called egalitarianism (a virulent strain of the more general disorder, socialism) is currently galloping across the American continent, north and south, at a fearful speed...
...Then came the news that All was to be made a diplomatist...
...Was it the work of Part Derian, Richard Holbrooke, C. William Maynes, or Richard Moose...
...To solemnly assert things that are not true, i.e., that the All mission was successful and intelligent, is to further degrade many a citizen's understanding 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1980 of international relations and of those who practice international relations...
...How will Secretary Vance ~ver explain that one to the Politburo...
...How about lavender uniforms for the 82nd Airborne...
...What could a man who failed his military intelligence test say to this graduate of Edinburgh University...
...dent for National Security Affairs by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...By contrast the Eastern Europeans have already been exposed to the germ and either resisted it or caught a mild case of the illness...
...I know all about your incomparable understanding of and respect fi)r the Third World, but what did you expect President Nyerere to say when Ambassador All ropea-doped into his office...
...As I came in, Navrozov was telling a story about an airliner that THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1980 5...
...But no, this is the administration that has unveiled such inimitable bladder scenes as Dr...
...Andrew Young, B.D., Midge Costanza, Ham,Jody, Billy--halt...
...the room begins to spin...
...Why send a retired boxer to Africa...
...If the idea did not have the authentic savor of our President's populist whoop whoop, I would have laid the ensuing opera bouffe to the mischievous designs of Donald Segretti or the Bulgarian secret police...
...No President in history has been so closely associated with a barrel full of monkeys...
...I find myself much in agreement with such Slavs and Russian emigr6s as I occasionally meet...
...Suddenly it was 1971 again...
...Last summer he dismissed his four most competent cabinet members to demonstrate a new seriousness in his domestic policy...
...in a word, ailing, like the Ayatollah...
...And a final point...
...So I was pleased to be able to hear him speak at a recent conference held in Washington by Accuracy In Media...
...t Our foreign service officers try to stifle him, but he gibbers on...
...At any rate, I am sure that Lev Navrozov won't object if I describe him as a Caucasian, since he came to the U.S...
...I n a democratic society much of what the average citizen knows about government comes from examples set by his elected officials...
...Hey, we could commission Salvador Dali...
...Could we turn the dishes of our early warning radar system into solar collectors...
...Our government actually sent a plane to snatch Ambassador All up from a remote sparring session somewhere in metropolitan Madras, where some disappointed stringers for Westerr news services were stuck with him: he aging gracelessly, they praying for a newsworthy moment...
...Possibly there was a drunk loose late at night in the State Department's operations center...
...several years ago from Russia (perhaps somewhere near the Caucasus Mountains...
...He must be the only writer in America capable of writing about such topics as SALT verification and CIA estimates of Soviet military strength in such a way as to be not only readable but actually funny...
...Far from moving to the right, America has been moving steadily to the left for the past ten years at least...
...He is also the author of The Education of Lev Navrozov, a book I have not so much as glimpsed in any bookstore, new or secondhand...
...There is no chance he will go home early, and he has already called President Brezhnev one of the "two baddest white men in the world...
...I'll sa,r a fuller discussion of the subject for the future...
...Let the others avert their eyes...
...All are Assistant Secretaries of State, and all are capable of such marvels...
...This month I wanted to say something about my favorite Slavs (come to think of it, I'm not sure that is the right word, and now I worry that I might be hauled up before some Ethnic Tribunal...
...It is perfectly true that the rapid onset of the egalitarian illness has by Tom B e t h e l l summoned forth from the body politic a number of antibodies, but it would be a great mistake to interpret the appearance of antibodies as a sign of national health...
...Perchance, Ham's bartender had a hand in it...
...The champion perked up...
...The thing was a piece of populist cleverness, until sometime on February 3 when word began to spread through the Carter White House: Our 250-pound Richelieu has run amuck at the Dar es Salaam airport, and there is nothing we can do about i t - - Not Even An Entebbe-Style Raid...
...Of course not, but then Joe Frazier was always a man of dignity...
...David Aaron, Special Advisor to the Secretary of State Marshall Shulman, or Director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff W. Anthony Lake...
...Think of what the Carter White House pulled this time...
...E D I T 0 R I A L THE MARION STONEHEAD REDEEMED I wonder whose idea it was to send Mr...
...Theresa of the Little Flower--and what happens to him...
...In the 1960s and 1970s this always put him at a PR disadvantage when he confronted All...
...What I want to know is which of you beauties decided to send Ambassador All to visit the presidential palaces of Africa...
...He is rendered schizo when interviewed at the Dares Salaam airport by a handful of Tanzanian Dan Rathers...
...Of course All will always have a very special meaning for you children of the 1960s, but Woodstock, Simon and Garfunkel, Peter Max, and strobe lights do not have the same resonance in Africa and other foreign lands...
...Meanwhile, it occurs to me that Ben Wattenberg and others roosting comfortably at centrist think tanks could do us all a great favor by stanching the flow of those articles and commentaries which, by saying that America is "moving to the right," play into the hands of the National Education Association, Ralph Nader, Americans for Democratic Action, and other left-wing Tom Betbell is The American Spectat o r ' s Washington columnist and Washington editor o f Harper's...
...I'm afraid the problem is that our local flora are "coming down with something...
...We shall ponder the travesty and be improved by it...
...A retired pugilist with a penchant for hallucinating in public--make him our Clark Clifford for Africa...
...We sent high-level presidential advisors to India and Pakistan...
...Peter Bourne, Bert Lance, the Hon...
...They are a reaction to illness...
...They often have quite original minds and, needless to say, are a refreshing contrast to our own wilted weeds, homegrown at St...
...It was patronizing to send Muhammad All to Africa...
...The Marion stonehead is redeemed...
...Let's replace the stars on our bombers with flowers...
...C A P I T 0 L I D E A S THE SOVIET SPHERE OF INFLUENZA An unexpected bonus deriving from the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, not to mention the oppression of the Russians themselves, has been the westward migration of s6me of the residents of these count r i e s - t h o s e who were f o r t u n a t e enough to escape--and a cbrresponding shot in the arm for intelligent opinion here...
...Grottlesex...
...How about Deputy Assistant to the Presi...
...They try to assist him with the questions, but he grows irritable...
...But I have much enjoyed several of Navrozov's articles in magazines such as Commentary...
...Is it not about time for him to dismiss the aforementioned Machiavellis...
...Now he implies there is a new seriousness in his foreign policy...
Vol. 13 • April 1980 • No. 4
