Presswatch / Old Fools
Barnes, Fred
Five years later, the Iron Curtain fell. Willkie's claptrap sold a million copies. On Dewey's right stood the socalled isolationists. So-called, because before the war, they were Anglophobes more...
...Twenty Mile House got its name from the distance up Cherry Creek where the stream flowed into the Platte River...
...3µ•01111.17 %%.R 11: 111E I FA Li'.R" .A"LM 1:' ENTS V•,~ I U.,..•%e.v,t...
...Not surprisingly, the thrust of the Times article and its documentation of a Ik11JxIL...
...A poker game ending with an upturned table and blazing sixguns...
...So it usually ignores them...
...Let us not presume, however, that customers would simply order whiskey the way today's sophisticates call for white wine...
...Reagan thus was willing to endorse that tax increase...
...The incentive of humiliating the President, of proving him wrong, often serves to spur reporters...
...He supported, in the dawn of the Cold War, the Marshall Plan and aid to Chiang Kai-shek, and had averagethat is, sub-Willkieite, though still inflated-hopes for the UN...
...It was their friendship with Kosinski that prompted the "apologia" for him, one that "mystified outsiders and shocked [the Times's] own newsroom, "Newsweek said...
...Basically, they must throw false arguments at the Old Fool...
...rru warrl anLktrrr bLI.lk...
...And Reagan was the loser in this, since his evidence was not conclusive in the minds of reporters...
...Guests might intimidate the Irishman, but not his wife...
...1.: r%mD Jr1,..•, :•1 Elm IN-Fu, 11rr,r~: rir W+,9 Las ".'_ IM ramp...
...The piano plays on...
...FT Ir.1...I.a..s ..J...•rr..:•.•.,~ %L,A.arl.t.~rul.y',Y..J.r„ Iwi W Llr.'i Ir.1-Jn ;.h11-,, p.1,, 1-FA-FA h 5 I -• •r, -d FL.4 ',- •= L}JII:J• .k'..1...
...Well, it was like that, sometimes...
...Noel tells a story about a place called Twenty Mile House...
...He has also sparred with the leftist literary set in New York City, denouncing the attitude of "criminal chic" that made writer-murderer Jack Abbott a hero and criticizing the American Writers Congress, a creation of the Nation magazine...
...Chief Justice...
...1 I'P...
...The saloons, as Noel discusses at length, filled numerous sociological needs within the frontier town...
...The site of Denver was originally the home of a continually drunk mountain man called William McGaa, but other, more enterprising settlers chose to dismiss him and his territorial claims on both Denver and Auraria...
...JEFF ERSON AN I k 11 IN I 1_11 I` ++X•1•lume % I1.1F i1.`: 1 • I': .' } 110+ %.11 ']VY,1J.'rIIn11 } 0 I4FrWfh-q-MIIf1+w5Vrtr1JF yrrd• -1•+c,•11.7r,c+rllir1w % •rrrol rr rd)i Ih6i, r 1-1~ 5 W11IJcyfs•5 I%kh%hrr'+ TncL' 3b3.46 !: JIri Arr 0 WV Sc 4r ~-e...
...1i J. I f -yau %hca .1 rec .iy ma untamed K%LA be ubo }you had ku thin hen days 1L} Lkciik_ xnu rm}• rctursl iI arld pay rw hing '•c Kvarar11tc p« I3 V. smear campaign against Kosinski was scarcely mentioned by News week...
...Kosinski "is an intellectual, a creative person, under ideological attack," Corry wrote...
...1ir tah,d nw F's„i6Yr_ L'klr-nl6i ,'1 $Ln...
...Etixr) f'xur Lerteka (131iIn, t r SL`irl, Surd will rceivle our I?erlei Jud r LI Iad rrpl~ L:J.d...
...The Times piece, written by John Corry, put the Village Voice attack in context...
...Publishing people were amazed by the length and prominence of the Corry piece, by its meticulous detail about minor arguments between Polish officials and emigre figures concerning Kosinski's life and work -and by the fact that it seemed to be trying to suggest that the charges in the Voice were part of a recognized Communist smear campaign," Publishers Weekly said in an editorial...
...Nixon gave the Checkers speech, and saved his political life...
...After the law was passed, Mr...
...On several occasions-and most extensively in his nationally televised press conference last November 12he has charged that Soviet agents have been active in stirring up the nuclear freeze movement...
...If }•,7u want the IWnoes` CJxrkr, do a Pi hIryt...
...Hey, it said, there's a history here...
...One is that busing of schoolchildren for purposes of racial integration is unpopular, even among blacks, and counterproductive, promoting more separation of white and black students in public schools...
...Several entrepreneurs saw more opportunity in opening saloons than in building another ferry-raft...
...r 1 I •-- - . ] may return the L%uki within Illrit wrrk' al xtnlr tapcn" arl,1 ITr rruthllrkg...
...Returning to the tactics of McCarthyism," said Morton Halperin, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Center for National Security Studies...
...The most dramatic revelation, however, concerns those White House aides who, one by one, as the economic news worsened, began to fear that the tax-cut program would not work-and...
...In March 1971, rebellious Cabinet members planned to approach Dewey to sell him (and through him, Nixon) on the idea of replacing Haldeman with Melvin Laird...
...by Fred Barnes 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1983 liar, and a hypocrite who uses a ghostwriter to help him put together his novels...
...The mere voicing of the word "McCarthyism" appears to have shut off debate and put the accuser in the dock...
...They are still at it, according to Time...
...But that does not excuse the failure of the mainstream press-the big newspapers, the newsmagazines, the TV networks-to look into the charge...
...Connoisseurs-they were: men who had developed refined tastes for particular liquors, men who preferred to order by name: Red Dynamite, Dust-Cutter, Blue Ruin, Popskull, Coffin Varnish, Red Dog, Apache Tears, White Mare's Milk, Bumblebee, Widowmaker, Panther Piss...
...The White House has changed Reagan less than any other occupant in recent memory," *The City and the Saloon: Denver, 1858-1916...
...The morning after, she asked if Harry would come to New York, or should she go to Washington...
...a:,•rr •-r rn •1 J" i rk { o N In,r Mcfn6crS I'r,LT: F.•11rgkrr•rup,~,Fr 1...
...Robert Taft, the leader of the Old Right, opposed NATO and postwar aid to Great Britain, and wanted a twenty percent ceiling on the proportion of American troops that could be stationed abroad...
...Not the Village Voice or Polish propagandists...
...perish the thought...
...it ended Stassen's presidential hopes, which were then serious (a third difference between that era and this), and guaranteed Dewey's nomination...
...Si L fi4i 11 _. i¢rr1AadIMr:4J.d'Aw%M Arr .I.!6...
...AL] 00 purcha%c5 art at lux rnsmhtr: prr.r...
...The charge was simply not taken seriously enough to warrant an investigation...
...Last June, the Village Voice clobbered Kosinski in an article suggesting his novels had been virtually written for him by editors and that the CIA "apparently played a clandestine role" in the publishing of two of his early books...
...5.•.r .. r1 J) %, M16 ilk 94 #ill TW rIu#L LK wLt.ry}r, 1 Wt...
...The result: "Publishers who specialize in books critical of the social and political status quo are beginning to worry...
...there is a backdrop...
...Or 1 µd1 huk 1".ir ft 4v ~CkK imw"'kL'h3n II It 5M r4 o, )ear% I "wN CNIr1J11Fg, Mly•:J1r>L•rJ u&re-el .liemher',h Ip li carne Itahlr arLyl Ime uhercallrr...
...Have KGB agents been active in the United States in the freeze movement or is that a canard...
...Ilnly rf a ge ! hate reoeirej year L;Krks..4 pcAia a-iial• pidi.in;: (cc i5 adLkd lo cadi sh]pcwnr...
...said Time in its December 13 cover story...
...not less...
...Last November 7, the Times ran in its Sunday Arts and Leisure section an extraordinarily long (6,500 words) and well-researched article on Jerzy Kosinski, the Polish emigre novelist...
...w• IhI1 _' I ~,- . ..r...
...The shaken advisers decided on a different strategy for this year's budget go-around: they would lay out the figures on expected spending and revenues in all their starkness, add much economic advice about the dire consequences of huge deficits, and report numerous warnings from Reagan's own Republican followers about the rebellious mood in Congress," Time wrote in its story on Reagan's decision-making...
...In fact, he might turn out to be embarrassed, politically at least, by his accusation, should a rigorous inquiry into the freeze movement prove the charge of Communist influence to be false, misleading, or overstated...
...Reagan doesn't necessarily stand When sweet smiling Ike was ready to pitch Nixon overboard because of a trumped-up scandal, Dewey urged him to go on television...
...But never about things like Communist influence...
...Secretary of State...
...The ideology was born in Eastern Europe, and so were the most damaging rumors...
...This first problem leads to the second, namely that the charge of Communist involvement goes largely unexamined...
...Rather, Newsweek jumped in with a heated attack on two honchos at the Times, executive editor A.M...
...Picture the long ma- prospectors, mountain men, and hogany bar, backed by a mustachioed other such itinerants looking for some bartender, platoons of whiskey bot tles, and a resplendent mirror...
...But before they could meet with him, he was found in a hotel room, dead of a heart attack: fully dressed, bags packed, hat resting neatly on his suitcases: the last time he would fail to affect us...
...Corry provided impressive documentation, notably implicating a Polish official named Wieslaw Gornicki, who once posed as a newsman with liberal leanings...
...The ful Truman was waving the front page headlined "Dewey Defeats Truman...
...After the war, the same people developed a lively interest in Communist subversion, without, for the most part, a corresponding understanding of global strategy...
...Do they have any influence...
...Dowd...
...The first were no more than tents or wagons stationed r camaraderie, a warm, dry room, and perhaps advice about the road ahead...
...a flash of petticoats, and Mrs...
...The Dewey-Stassen debate took place during the Oregon primary in 1948...
...p by George Ertel across the Platte...
...This was the burden of a long, somewhat breathless article in the New York Times Magazine on October 24...
...Iii IIm • 11r,Larp...
...But there is a "danger," Time said, in this kind of decision-making...
...But not this time...
...McCarthyism," charged the Village Voice in its editorial response...
...The problem here is twofold...
...Lw rri nlk+7$IL,fmie, IbttiyrllblyIFxi49r...
...Rosenthal and deputy managing editor Arthur Gelb...
...For half a year, Thomas Edmund Dewey had been rated a sure thing for the highest post of all...
...They have been around for 17 years, only now they have grown more insistent...
...darted into the bar with a feminine screech and set her ten commandments in his face, dragging her nails down each cheek...
...These charges against Kosinski didn't just materialize spontaneously...
...Like many powerful editors at other papers, Gelb and Rosenthal sometimes encourage pieces about their friends...
...At first Auraria grew faster than Denver...
...M. 5 , {JWama'S+1 •Fls'~' T111: HIISrrxaV ai)()x 1.1.L•h#, L . N 4O {i11EYiL+r} h lLll~ ~}D, ii LioPit, t_ I f`In c11n I Ii:, r • ,1 I I Irl r,c11.1 :1 J,•1 o :d rrrs Lhc Nx...
...Occasionally a Cowboys and cardsharks, stagecoach farmer would open his home as a drivers and dance-hall girls, sheriffs roadhouse to accommodate pioneers, and outlaws...
...Naturally, any outrage over ideological warfare against Kosinski didn't...
...Western saloons originally sprang up along established trails, often where routes crossed each other or intersected rivers...
...Budget Director David Stockman was "but one among many...
...He opposed in public debate the resolution, "Shall the Communist party be outlawed in the United States...
...dL}I Iri`1-"-].__J 7.., 1 rl ,. • 7!230 %J„ rIJiI,rr~tJ.rf..rr~ry T,aS.J.Lt M rI .Swnrci f1...
...Harold Stassen took the affirmative, seconded by Joseph McCarthy...
...failed to alert the President," he wrote...
...r6r1 •.II...
...Harbor about America's entry into the war...
...pcALiW-rrd-patkirq...
...In 1859 thousands of people made the passage, and a significant bottleneck developed...
...Under this, Reagan is portrayed as an unadaptable, out-of-touch, hopelessly ideological fellow who is impeding his crack, pragmatic staff from doing what's right for America...
...Kosinski, of course, is something of an anti-Communist...
...In the organization of some of the big demonstrations, the one in New York, and so forth, there is no question about foreign agents that were sent to help instigate 'and help create and keep such a movement going...
...Perhaps there is little to it...
...Then, the matter was dropped, except for a few columns that ridiculed Reagan for citing a Reader's Digest piece...
...a campaign in which the writer has been pilloried as a CIA agent, a plagiarist, a near-congenital...
...Reagan's men set about a series of sometimes desperate efforts to undo what had been done...
...He has spoken on Voice of America, identified himself ideologically with the Solidarity movement in Poland, and consorted with neoconservatives...
...The gist was that Kosinski was the victim of a 17-year smear campaign engineered by Poland's Communist government...
...But not always...
...L ti- !aF M .: L. Icr~51u„- --7rtiirpra:ISr 1IrL6&.;.*,VHrkLrl, 51....J1.1.,r 1-v N " bra ~:rrlhc i. iry,kw'1...
...In 1859 they thought only about pouring whiskey...
...Gornicki, now an official in Poland's military government, spearheaded the ideological warfare against Kosinski, Corry suggested...
...Too bad Reagan's staff wasn't elected President...
...first is that the President alone seems to have been put on trial, forced to buttress his charge with irrefutable evidence or fall guilty of McCarthyism...
...But they would not urge the President to do or not to do anything...
...At that junction lay Denver on one bank and its rival Auraria on the other...
...But the Kosinski piece provided the most dramatic evidence to date of their willingness to use the power of the Times to reward friends and punish enemies...
...1 .tl:rf7 .SL•41r1 TI#1i 01ti' i' 1. OF TFIh UNION r1 4.11UII H...
...When they did look abroad, it was exclusively to the Far East...
...President Reagan is among the latest to encounter this phenomenon...
...When at last the protege reached the office the older man had missed, he offered his patron a variety of high posts-ambassador...
...f If...
...I'llhh+hL•r'• N Ins' S-214% ill, L.,rr1 1-or f On...
...So-called, because before the war, they were Anglophobes more than anything else (Colonel McCormick's Chicago Tribune accused Dewey of making "the pilgrimage to Downing Street by way of Wall Street...
...The President often gets a slightly skewed view of the world from his advisers, who present to him not the arguments they really believe but those that can be fitted into Reagan's cosmology...
...Like Reagan, the Times was put in the dock...
...The White House was half-heartedly pushed to provide documentation for Reagan's accusation, which it did by pointing to articles from The American Spectator, Commentary, and Reader's Digest, along with some State Department Reports...
...along the roadside...
...J net.L py...
...The response from the freeze partisans was predictable...
...Old Towse, as the mountain men called their wheat-based Taos Lightning, was the first whiskey to reach Auraria in commercial quantity, having been THE C RTr1T 'i ME'RICAN SA 1 x3N SF'91kS DIONYSIAN DENVER Frontier saloons of the Old West...
...One anecdote of that famous upset has escaped Smith's care, so I pass it along...
...Or is the nuclear freeze campaign the grass roots movement most reporters seem to think it is...
...The Times, of course, has as much right as any publication to defend Kosinski, but the enormous size and defensive tone of the piece seemed strangely out of proportion to its subject...
...Indeed, the superficial evidence is far more compelling about a Communist role in the peace movement in Europe than in America...
...Another is that the demise of authoritarian, anti-Communist regimes in the Third World usually produces repression instead of liberation, as in China, Vietnam, Iran, and Nicaragua...
...M. 1...
...JI wL]I he 5rnt aulornatia...
...He hedged no more than any other pol before Pearl OLD FOOLS There are some ideas that the mainstream press just can't digest...
...Hey, there's a context here, it said...
...Six months later, a glee ers...
...He played his last important political role in 1952, helping Eisenhower beat his old rival Taft,, and pushing a young and coming senator, Richard Nixon, for the second slot...
...LIL 11•:•:, • Lk1i M(X,K_ (-.Y 1 ~% A.L1..R1 i ::1 ..•H ' II-.'4 Ic,rw,-td...
...e+iddroc 11 rncr.lcm 1 .-n' 1 L.r i;Wr`rl4 - TY..'.zrcrw&r 5...
...Nearly everybodynot Reagan, though-knew better, they told Steven Weisman, the New York Times White House correspondent...
...The Time story, billed as "How Reagan Decides," detailed the extremes to which White House aides are forced to go in order to sway the President...
...George Ertel is a market analyst in Chicago...
...h1 rc u1<nIIn% I Iai.c cnlcrtJ 1--dl- X111 R3Ii xl &1 Lht &Wcd prxc 41r4 m) aJwr %k iaw 44 71- bw rrEinbiprs prke, p1 Lo...
...And Dewey...
...He urged a stronger Navy, for which Roosevelt mocked him...
...Given all the misgivings in Washington about the program championed by the Old Fool in 1981 for a deep tax cut coupled with a boost in military spending, how could it have been passed...
...As Thomas J. Noel describes in a masterful study of Denver's early years,* there was more to saloons than macho thrills...
...Men decked out in ten-gallon hats, red bandanas, and boots with tinkling spurs, throwing down shots of rotgut, picking up fancy ladies...
...When a ruffian known as Tiger Bill became obstreperous, `there came...
...It's been published by some of your fraternity...
...And nobody in the mainstream press followed up the Times article with an examination of whether Kosinski was the victim of an ideological smear...
...Certainly the recent experience of the New York Times will not encourage any reporter interested in examining a matter of alleged Communist involvement or influence...
...Their hope was that Reagan would see the necessity for military spending cuts or tax increases and bring those subjects up himself...
...Have Communistfront groups infiltrated the movement...
...r. }I5 'J5 LIIj+Y LJI- PWhM or 0 rir,•i rla/ T1r Ly,r 1-V* - -10i1r,Im&• . fl...
...If Dewey had shown a little of his wife's spunk-or his own: in private, he called Earl Warren, his running mate, a "big dumb Swede"-he would have won going away...
...hIF%eiIqM% .,l'~ JJ••11 I I PrLrll Nome .#Ildreik Apt r I Coy THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1983 hn-t m d. M In I, t ada {~ 11 rLihe I 23 such straws in the wind as its concentration on terrorism as a Communist monopoly and its highly equivocal attitude toward the nuclear freeze movement...
...One of the most favored characterizations of Reagan these days is the President as Old Fool...
...The strategy, so far, has failed resoundingly...
...The Times "seems to be growing increasingly conservative in tone," the editorial said, "as indicated by Drink deeply from the wellspring of history...
...All in all, a fair collection of positions...
...aW 4 r 1aRr-4 id •patikFnk Ic' 1% adjcd Iii all...
...Irish Nelson Dowd tended bar, and his family cooked meals...
...i!ate±H,',I rd Rt„7 C Flk lrit W-Je.IM . , Volumes 1'u'lwher', Prior 5,M %k1 }J , rl hlr fbrJL• 51 11L...
...Then, we wouldn't have all this trouble with the Old Fool and his insistence on getting in the way...
...it asked...
...There is no question but that the Soviet Union saw an advantage in a peace movement around the idea of a nuclear freeze...
...not everything one might have wished, but better than we actually got...
...Or they are afraid to tell him their real views at all...
...Why should he stoop...
...Save Up To $183 On One Of These Fine Collections A rare opportunity to enrich your library with one of these enduring works, at a fraction of its usual cost with your trial membership...
...In short, the piece was "embarrassing" to the Times...
...In vain...
...kJ rr.Jr.r, nur, '[• 51IIJ•• A LL151fty, alwi IF7i, nice w,<7 eiL1.1 11, rA#k-% fLr ie bdlnpt eh3L 15 K AK lively is1J',ilu• *ho- New in i13 loth }wr, Lae Club prordn rls rrlfmhers wirh the fiuetil bcrks LIf 1L'.1LYY mJ world alfalrk-3]way3 a1 sub L11LIII'- np We II 5trrd r1.µ arty Llrt.11 ib eAignIh13lnr'a pllaumd-31 a• (fnµ la1N'S of Lheir u5ur1 Lxil-WiLlh y,Wf Lir3L-ekL.tuin cuhc 15-• mcmkr3 &KI t (any L'uk IL%Icij at slg.hll L Nkulber7...
...Travelers from the east had no trouble fording Cherry Creek to pass from Denver into Auraria, but getting out of Auraria meant ferrying 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1983...
...For instance, Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis was credited with adroit use of "the Reagan argument" by calling the 5-cent hike in the gasoline tax a "user fee...
...On election eve, Frances Dewey' told her husband how much she looked forward to sleeping with the President...
...Owosso couldn't keep him, but it kept him from the White House...
...The outrage over the Times piece even reached Publishers Weekly...
...1~••.IiII.1:: F 1{5•r iii', LEE' A !'fl' 11;• IN {:0.st.sI.A"Li II -,r.J•L11 .. . A • . I . 1 Wr4 .5.1'8...
...University of Nebraska Press, $16.50...
...Fl B4!NES10 J7nrCmhsnllipacouunLxd:beL' Tled for-pDLLc.a -h1Lh your F'u hr' -dl be tharlgril al thr 3uµ meesil'eW price...
...Still another is that Communists might be hyperactive and sometimes effective in the United States in promoting their interests and discrediting their enemies...
...But exaggerated notions of dignity paralyzed him, and he fell back on bromides...
...Despite all the documentation in the Times piece, guess who was put on trial as a result of the article...
...A% •..-a..J,L...
...Some went along with Reagan out of loyalty, some hoped for a compromise along the way, some were merely meek, Weisman wrote...
...Unfortunately, the reaction of the press was no less predictable...
...So Auraria entertained the travelers, and Denver served primarily as a corral for their livestock...
...El to gain by a press probe into these questions...
...There is plenty of evidence," he told report Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the Baltimore Sun...
...These guys are trying to get the country out of the economic mess, and Reagan just won't play along...
Vol. 16 • February 1983 • No. 2
