Capitol Ideas / Billy Bee
TomBethell
C A P I T O L I D E A S BILLY BEE By the mid 1970s, Billy Graham began to hear the murmuring of innumerable bees. "Be a better Billy," the Hive would drone in his ear. At that time Watergate...
...You can't fight reality, can you Billy...
...Actually, American power is what saves us from nuclear holocaust...
...The Hive was abuzz with excitement and a p p r e h e n s i o n , waiting to see...
...Colman McCarthy had spent five years inside another kind of cell--in a Trappist monastery in central Georgia...
...After all, in nuclear terms American defense policy has been a success...
...So don't fight us . . ." Yes, Billy thought, it was time to grow...
...Graham] often speaks of a personal 'pilgrimage' that has led him to regard the ending of the arms race as 'my number one social concern,'" wrote Kenneth Briggs of the New York Times...
...Was it their huge peace procession in New York City...
...B i l l y , " the Hive would hum, "you've been too close to Johnson, too close to Nixon...
...No, he wouldn't listen if the Reagan Administration told him not to go...
...B u t . . . somehow it hadn't quite worked out...
...I n Moscow, as everywhere else," Colman McCarthy concluded, "the pattern of Graham's career was on display: ,alking too much and thinking too little...
...Or so it seemed...
...Maybe it was true after all, as they had always said of him, that he was too respectful of the powers that be, too close to Nixon . . . Hmmmmm...
...Others are surely greatly relieved...
...They spent their days endlessly pollinating public opinion, and some of them--scout bees--kept an eye on Billy Graham...
...The peace demonstrator's goat is to strike the seemly pose, much like those Pecksniffs who flaunt bumper stickers proclaiming "Caution, I brake for small animals...
...The officials sat stolidly in their pews, heeding the advice...
...And if he was speaking the right lingo, he must be thinking the right thoughts...
...For the most part, we are dealing with a very curious mentalite when we come across the antinuke cruAdapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...He flew to Moscow and right away met for ow:r three hours with Georgi Arbatov, one of the top Soviet propagandists (sometimes seen on CBS and heard on the Voice of America...
...Same message, same language...
...The paradigmatic peace marcher seems almost to pride himself on his simplicity and his aloofness from the rest of the world...
...He had heard somehow (on the grapevine) that they might let him lead a crusade to the Soviet Union...
...He was open to new ideas (and willing to discard old ones...
...Far from it...
...Tom Wolfe's Me-maniac has entered politics...
...The usual news media dynamic of donial and confrontation (normally so helpful to the Hive) went ahead as expected, with unreliables like Dusko Doder of the lVashington Post and Serge Schmemann of the New York Times getting ample space to take issue with the hapless p r e a c h e r ' s defense o f the Soviet Union...
...A peace conference...
...Did someone say peace...
...So he is speaking on this college tour," Brucie-bee concluded, "and next month as an o b s e r v e r at a Sovietsponsored peace conference where he expects to d e l i v e r the same message...
...Well, now they were again--against the nuclear threat...
...Fifties talk...
...So Colman McCarthy came zipping out of the Hive and quilled a sharp column entitled "The Duping of Billy Graham...
...Could he really deliver the same message from the precarious but all-important Moscow platform, and so make us think even more than we were already thinking...
...He was discredited, you know--crimes in high places...
...That was dead, wasn't it...
...The meals I have had are among the finest I have ever eaten," he said...
...My, how that Billah had transcended and metamorphosed and regenerated and pupated--in a word, grown...
...You wouldn't get that in Charlotte, North Carolina...
...Wasn't t h a t a honey...
...Then he went to Moscow's only Baptist Church and reminded the congregation of KGB agents and party officials to "obey the authorities," in accordance with the Epistle to the Romans...
...There would have to be a prolonged period in a re-education camp before they would let him near its portals again...
...How do they explain the passage of another month free of nuclear holocaust, some 1,925 weeks since Nagasaki...
...But for those who actually evangelize for the antinuke crusade the passage of yet another month free of nuclear war merely heightens their tensions and convinces them that when the war of their dreams finally breaks out it will be even more devastating than anticipated...
...E D I T 0 R I A L O P O 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 0 6 0 0 0 . . . . . . . . . . 0 0 . . . . Q Q O O O 0 0 0 . . . . . . . O O O Q ~ O O O O O O ~ O g Q O . . . . . . . O 0 0 0 0 STOCKPILING FOR PEACE Another month passes, and still no nuclear war reported...
...Sure it should have been "complex" problems, not "complicated," but what a small gaffe for one who had journeyed so far in such a short period...
...What does one make of those who address an issue of the utmost importance, complexity, and danger as though the rest of the world did not exist...
...But it wasn't Billy's gullibility that bothered him either...
...Normally such taboo topics were kept out of sight by calling them "not newsworthy," but now Billy the Bad had put them near the top of the news agenda...
...Colman McCarthy of the V/as/~ington Post was sitting in the Hive quivering with indignation--and sharpening nis quill and his sting...
...So he wouldn't have to say anything about Communism...
...Brezhnev if the need or opportunity arose...
...Yes, he would be happy to meet with Mr...
...Obviously this wrong-knife-and-fork- Southern Baptist Billy didn't really know his 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1982 bees and clues after all and he would have to be watched carefully...
...Remember the unindicted co-conspirators...
...Billy's only r e g r e t was that he hadn't learned these things sooner...
...But we won't say another word about it...
...You may have been a l i t t l e tainted with the same brush, Billy...
...Billy had come near the Hive, but he had shown that he could not read or transmit correct signals...
...by Tom Bethell Graham has adopted the right approach by raising the subject of arms control in a way that prompts others to think for themselves...
...Billy, meaning nothing but good, had embarrassed the Hive...
...And so he came out into the world again--with a sharp sting in his tail...
...Any easing of the American phobia of things Russian, Marxist or Soviet is welcome," buzzed Colman the Guardian Bee...
...To get his "instructions" he needed only to pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV (where as it happened Billy Graham was catching more flak from David Brinkley's guests on ABC...
...There...
...Deterrence has worked, by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Yes, he would go to a Moscow peace conference...
...All you had to say was " . . . problems that face us all . . ." Not "very wonderful o f f i c i a l . " Gauche...
...It was the far graver sin of indiscretion...
...No more Cold War r h e t o r i c (in fact, it might even be McCarthyism to mention it...
...Not that there was any more need to overcome Communism...
...Billy was for it and opposed to nuclear weapons in every shape or form...
...Some of the antinuke brethren must have been amazed by the news...
...Of course he didn't...
...One had thought this was composed of "indigenous" parts, with no overall responsibility in Moscow, but we defer to the Post's Don Oberdorfer on...
...After all, peace depends not only upon America but also on some other countries, countries over which the peace marchers have no influence...
...He was indigenous, autonomous, and independent--like all the other bees in the Hive...
...Billy had been "snookered by the Soviets," McCarthy wrote-but it wasn't the Soviets, the dupers, who irritated him...
...Graham just couldn't leave well enough alone, embarrassingly repeating the errors of George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs, and with even less excuse after fifty years...
...With a little concerted effort, the Hive knew that there was a chance it could assimilate Billy i n t o . . , the cause--the goal on behalf of which the elements of the Hive instinctively labor...
...So now Billy Graham had grown...
...Doder teased about the cost of caviar to the average Soviet citizen, and Schmemann even had a big spread on a subject the Times has skirted like a colony of lepers: the persecution of Christianity in the Soviet Union...
...The h e a r t of Graham's message remains traditional evangelism, a call to salvation through Christ...
...McCarthy's antennae, unlike Graham's, were in perfect working order...
...Did he need instructions from Moscow...
...what the next few days would bring...
...He was prompting others to think, too...
...Grow a little...
...H a d n ' t the United States and the Soviet Union been aligned once before against a common enemy...
...Nothing could be more dangerous...
...Bill Moyers, a former preacher from the South who had likewise "made passage" to the kingdom of rich liberals in the East, must have been mighty proud of the old u n r e g e n e r a t e anti-Communist Billy...
...When informed that an American disarmament or freeze is at best irrelevant to world peace so long as people like Papa Brezhnev have their nukes, the peace marcher's response is some cacophonic indulgence along the lines of "I don't care...
...Careful there, Billy...
...this issue...
...The dunce's cap had been ceremoniously removed from Billy's head...
...The former could be dangerous...
...Ouch...
...On then to the peace conference...
...Perhaps this could be his biggest and most important ever...
...He left before taking vows...
...It was Billy Graham...
...Frankly I wish I ' d read more and spoken l e s s , " he said to a Parade magazine r e p o r t e r in 1981...
...But he is now . . . [wait for it} . . thinking and speaking out strongly about disarmament and urging the thousands who come to see him to think about it too...
...which apparently just worries our demonstrators all the more...
...Billy had learned to speak Hivetalk...
...But at the subsequent press conference he blew the whole trip in a few moments of careless talk...
...For almost four decades there has been no nuclear war...
...No one believed in it anymore...
...And that put Billy Graham back to square one...
...B i l l y had made the interior journey...
...Graham emerged from the Arbatov meeting and said to the assembled reporters: "I have met a very wonderful official here...
...First of all, he tactlessly criticized " t h e false notion that there is no religious freedom in this country . . . Saturday night I went to three Orthodox churches that were jammed to capacity...
...As a result everything had become stirred up in the wrong way...
...The latter manifestation of selfrighteousness merely amuses...
...Graham was more discreet about Boris than he had been about Georgi...
...the smoke of the smokefilled room is replaced by the fumes of herbal tea...
...Open up to new ideas...
...He could preach to the Russians at last...
...Billy was not only thinking more...
...Now he would have to make the geographical one...
...Now the Hive was in a sullen rage...
...I ' v e come to understand that there are no simplistic answers to the exceedingly complicated questions we face as a country--and as a planet...
...Were we without the power, who can say with confidence that some future domestic instability within the Soviet THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1982 5...
...Stop trying to impose your old views, legislate morality, turn the clock back...
...At that time Watergate weighed heavily on Billy's mind...
...This doubt weakened Billy--made him vulnerable to the Hive, and the worker bees knew it...
...Help us build a new society, a society of justice and peace...
...Bruce Morton, busy bee at CBS, soon picked up the Billy-signals and came chiming across the airwaves with a nice little congratulatory sendoff for the Moscow-bound preacher...
...Nonetheless, egotism appears to be the major component in this spring's movement...
...The ideology was defunct, moribund, because it couldn't adapt Tom Bethell, The American Spectat o r ' s Washington correspondent, holds the De Witt Wallace Chair in Communications at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Bad Billy...
...But Graham wasn't co.ntent with this modest contribution...
...Doubtless many believe that the procession was a powerful blow for peace, but then there are also Americanoes who believe that a horse hair kept in a jar or a dirty sock worn around the neck will prevent illness and plague...
...He added (almost superfluously): "Others believe Mr...
...It takes a rather voluminous egotist to propound an American nuclear defense policy as though the rest of the world did not matter...
...He had to blab indiscmminately about religious freedom, obedience to the state, and the caviar" [emphasis added...
...The spirit was willing, but the tongue was weak...
...Good-writer Colman McCarthy, one of the more ferocious guard-bees of the Hive, would deliver the sting...
...In the United States you have to be a millionaire to have caviar, but I have had caviar with almost every meal...
...This was followed by a meeting with Boris Ponomarev, who was recently described in the IVashington Post as "the Politburo member responsible for the world communist movement...
...sader...
...Meanwhile Colman McCarthy had firmly thrust the dunce's cap back on Billy's head--a plain language warning to any stray bees who might still be tuned in to the likes of Bruce Morton and Kenneth Briggs...
...Did he have to be told who needed stinging and when...
...Just get on the side of history...
...to change...
...Such a background of course made him a perfect candidate for the Hive--the community of apostates...
Vol. 15 • August 1982 • No. 8
