Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE For Starters The March 1983 issue was absolutely great. If you've ever published anything better than Tom Bethell's "Badlands Bolshevism," I can't remember it. --John M....
...Regardless of who iS correct on this, the fact that it is being debated in the first place is significant...
...For one thing, people are hung~ 'r for saints...
...The problem...
...Loyal husband...
...Never mind that other countries' interests may not always be identical to those of Israel...
...Or can it...
...Please limit your comments to 200 words, and include full name, address, and telephone number...
...I would venture that both sides failed to address some very crucial issues...
...In London...
...No more cheap shots like this one, OK...
...At long last, Vietnam mediazation is dissolving...
...and the schools extol the virtues of democracy without mention of the principles of the Republic that made this nation great...
...Among kids who grew up on Archie Bunker this idea is vet3' easy to sell...
...Otherwise the credibility of the entire publication is lost...
...That would have The American Spectator welcomes correspondence from its readers...
...El CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 2) only out of ignorance...
...Lesher, in Media Unbound, agrees...
...the Israelis are always right, as Ribbentrop t h o u g h t Hitler to be, and anyone who dares to criticize them must be anti-Semitic...
...Further, the British government is infested with homosexuals and/or fellow t r a v e l e r s , and the Arabs are to be discounted because their leaders traffic with "blonde hookers...
...What are we to make of a writer who decries queers and prostitutes...
...People want to or fawning praise...
...publicmmostly by blaming the media for its coverage of the cleahup...
...When indeed...
...The character therefore is not finally believable...
...The prominence of the Dartmouth Review and the individuals who produ~ it has served to help dispel these images...
...There, your European correspondent, Taki, rationalizes I s r a e l ' s "clean-up in Lebanon" with such proud cliches as, "the Arabs are like the Germans used to be: either at your feet or at your throat...
...Like all such polemicists Taki invokes "the truth" about Palestine...
...Braestrup, for one, dismisses the notion that ideology was the root of the Norman Podhoretz, in Why We Were l;n Vietnam, says that "Tet provided the occasion for a growing disenchantment with the war [among reporters] to express itself...
...Nowhere does anyone suggest that Gandhi's fasting for peace might have a whisper of egomania to make our points...
...For an example of the groundwork for this image the movie Animal House will suffice...
...In the end, nonviolent resistance will work against an oppressor who still has a conscience...
...My most fervent congratulations both to you and to him...
...Couldn't he have just said, "I read the book and I told you what to expect four years ago...
...Attenborough has provided them with proof that it can be done...
...John M. Ekeberg Santa Rosa, California Richard G r e n i e r ' s "The G r e a t e s t Peace Movement of Them All" (TAS, March 1983) seems to me one of the most well-researched, stongly reasoned, skillfully written, powerfully disturbing, and plain damn important essays you have ever published...
...So why are crowds flocking to see it...
...But this is the century of final solutions...
...conditions in America are selfevident...
...Surely this is not what his contact, the Israeli publicist David Garth, had in mind...
...It is not earned...
...From that point on, she's just part of the chorus...
...Skutch Westport, Connecticut Lewis H. Lapham's piece on the Carter memoirs was i n t e r e s t i n g for the first couple of paragraphs but it does seem a shame to waste the author's obvious talent on such an unworthy subject...
...Lindberg's points are well taken . . . . . We have in fact attained ameasure of glamour by our individualism, a commodity of value in today's mediadrunk socie~ . . . . --Do~ H. Clark Staff Writer The Shadow Santa Clara University attached to it...
...They e frightened, as they ought to be, of what the world is becoming...
...An editor who knowingly allows publication of a "review" written by someone who has not read the book is worse...
...D THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1983 7...
...the Jewish community is at full strength . . . . . . . the power of France's Jewish community...
...I hope and believe this superlative and compelling piece will have an enduring impact on the sorry history of our time . . . . --Calder Willingham New Hampton, New Hampshire Cheap Shot "I couldn't force myself to read the text...
...I suggest that the subject deserved no more than a couple of sentences among the gems on page 47...
...he writes...
...In short, Gandhi's selflessness, his essential goodness, More Mart.hal is presumed by the filmmakers...
...The author's point is as simple as he is...
...It is not o~en~perhaps not at all--that one comes across a movie reviewer with a sens'e of observation matched only by irony: "When are men going to denounce all those truckstop waitresses who Call them 'Sugarpie...
...Jack-Angell Park Ridge, Illinois Dismay in Santa Clara As a member of a small band of campus conservatives about to produce a newsletter, it is with some measure of dismay that I have followed the exchange over the last few issues between Tod Lindberg and the Dartmouth Review et al...
...Nowhere does anyone persuasively argue that nonviolence might be immoral...
...It is his job, especially in a publication attempting some semblance of intelligence and scholarship, to ensure honesty and accuracy...
...Why the disto~ion...
...and with proper education anyone with a glimmer of intelligence will convert...
...Prude...
...Obviously the genesis of this transformation involves a number of less than desirable factors, thus many of Mr...
...Instead, the wife, who is portrayed as casteconscious and shallow, sees the e~or of her ways after a stern lecture and allows herself to be absorbed into Gandhi's plans...
...Whatever the ideology of most repo~ers may be," Lesher says, "distortions result from the nature of journalism, not ~om the nature of journalists...
...Joseph Arbadji believe that nonviolence can change Northvale, New Jersey the world, and Mr...
...Yet our greatest enemies are the webs of distortion woven around young c o n s e r v a t i v e s . Campus liberals invest a great deal of energy in the myth that people are conservative (continued on page 37) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1983 Gandhi's motives and goals...
...Gandhi was an extraordinary man who accomplished great things, and it's been quite a while since we've been allowed unadulterated hero worship in a film...
...In covering the Vietnamese war, "correspondents were almost compelled to become partisans, and most became pa~isans for Hanoi, or, at least, against Saigon and Washallies, not the Vietcong...
...Don Juan...
...There is no discussion of Liberty...
...the truth was othe~ise, Braestrup says...
...Maybe those stories about Greece, where men are men and sheep are nervous, have some basis in fact...
...As their legend spreads, the young conservative of today becomes more appealing...
...In short, we are working in a vacuum of ignorance...
...E.L...
...My philosophy and/or politics aside, a reviewer who has not read the work to be reviewed is dishonest in the extreme: dishonest to his editor, his readers, the author and himself...
...rhy such poor reporting...
...And, as history is re-written in a paragraph, Taki places the onus of the 1948 displacement of two million Palestinians from their homeland not on the Israelis who occupied it (nor nations of the West who made it possible) but on surrounding Arab states who, he says, were provided terrorists from the "dreadful camps" to which the refugees fled, and who " s t i n t " on compassion for these people, but "not on guns or blonde hookers...
...the massacre ington," he wrote...
...committed under the influence of a brain fever or perhaps one ouzo too many, should have been deposited in either the circular file or the nearest convenience...
...Those countries are in thrall to Arab oil and money (though curiously not to Jewish gold...
...Moreover, the film's appearance coSanta Clara, Caiifo~ia As with almost all of her reviews, Ma~ha Bayles's trenchant analysis of Tootsie (TAS, March 1983) did not fail alternately to charm, edify, and delight...
...The heralded pacification program had been wiped out by the Tet offensive, the press determined...
...In any event, were my surname Theodoracopulos, I ' d hesitate to accuse even English public school alumni of buggery . . . . --Robert Thomas Bloomfield, New Jersey It is sad that I, a U.S...
...But Garth is cited as explaining away the 1946 Begin-directed bombing of Jerusalem's King David Hotel on the wholly unproven assurance that Begin's people called before they came...
...Like many, I've often wondered how'Gandhi would have fared had he taken on Stalin or Hitler, ~ I'm sure he has an answer for that somewhere in his writings, but the truth is that the British, no matter how brutal they were, were finally constrained by their own moral premises, Other regimes do not share this attention to detaii...
...saved several hours of his time and three or four pages of your splendid publication...
...How refreshing it is to find sober analysis of cultural trends that does incides with a wave of pacifist ~ not fall into the equally odious sentiment in the West unequalled e~remes of facile self-righteousness since the 1930s...
...Those eight words cast a grey pall over both Lewis H. Lapham and The American Spectator (TAS, March 1983...
...For his part, of 3,000 by the Vietcong at Hue was largely overlooked: The press dwelled on the siege of the Marine base at: Khe Sanh as another Dienbienphu, Braestrup writes, though that analogy was false...
...It wasn't very long ago, remember, that the subjects under discussion were such things as whether the press had sufficiently scrutinized Henry Kissinger for possible war crimes...
...Elegant disagrees...
...Garth, out of New York, has been a political consultant to Menachem Begin, and was recently retained by the Anti-Defamation League to soften the blow of Israel's clean-up in Lebanon on the U.S...
...Why, for e x p r e s s i n g o u t r a g e at I s r a e l ' s clean-up in Lebanon Margaret Thatcher's British government is denounced as anti-Semitic...
...Garth is a pro, and Taki does not tell us that Mr...
...conservative, should read the new year's prime piece of race-baiting in the March issue of your magazine...
...And from an editor who sprinkles his own writings with phrases lifted from HLM one expects the Sage's honesty, if not his erudition and understanding...
...What did Garth tell Taki about the Begin lynchings of British sergeants and the senseless massacre of the Arab village of Deir Yassin...
...Even as they described the flaws and problems of the allies, the newsmen in Saigon and Washington by and large failed to examine the Noah Vietnamese and Vietcong with the same critical eye...
...We are colorful mavericks, standing firmly on our principles, turning to wicked humor and outrageous antics PRESSWATCH (continued from page 25) Systematically, repo~ers overrated the battle prowess of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese and discounted the ability of the South Vietnamese army, Braestrup says...
...Also, we are unfairly sad~ed with a disto~ed image of the Nixon youth of i968: stiff, shallow, boring and one-dimensional...
...Newton Carson City, Nevada New Enemies of Taki The visceral sneer which appeared on page 16 of your March issue (Taki's " P o l i t i q u e I n t e r n a t i o n a l e : What Price Oil...
...The current generation of college students has grown up in an era that has totally suppressed the conservative case...
...I find simple 'ideological' explanations of media flaws gravely insufficient, pa~icularly as applied to Tet coverage...
...But if any is there it is burned to a crisp in the fire of the author's hatred for the Arabs...
...Who caused most of the civilian deaths...
Vol. 16 • May 1983 • No. 5
