The Talkies/Little Dumdum Girl

...It appeared m the wake of the Israeh war m Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatda massacres, when most of the clwhzed world allowed its moral sense to atrophy and joined the braying of those hoping for Israel's destruction--although m the West the war, and all those massacres, and all we hope was less for polmcal destrucuon want ~s a country where we can hang than spmtual destrucuon, a fervent our hat, and do we begrudge the a fact of life, and even something of a free country On the other, the PLO had somehow become a romantic lndesire that Israel be rended by the self- Israehs their country, of course we hating pressures that its fellow don't democracies underwent m the 1960s stttuuon, the httle guy batthng the kflhng the Palestmmn, covering powers-that-be, the underdog And flus named Charhe, whose resemblance to Charhe's body m bloqd, and m some was especially true after the PLO way "kdlmg" her soul--how exactly is fighters left Ben.ut with their trois benever clear, since blood can be washed tween their legs The Israehs succeedoff m a bathtub and the man kdled ed m destroying the PLO as a potent before her eyes is responsible for the pohtlcal/mdttary force, and that made it all the more romantic The Ltttle Mossad She Is conwnced that the dark, brooding stranger she calls despicable murder of a family with a Joseph who is courting her from afar httle boy at the opening of the novel, Drummer Girl was the epitaph on the is a PLO operative, and falls in love not to menUon all sorts of terrorist PLO tombstone They gave it their best with hun In fact, he is a Mossad agent acts Oh, that complex Middle East) shot A temble beauty was born named Gadl Becker, and by Everybody there is right, nobody is withholding sex from her he wins her wrong, and one man's terronst is completely another's freedom fighter We all know Joseph and his Mossad confreres, in- the drill cluding the spectacularly creepy Colo- Mr le CarrY, who is not exactly a nel Kurtz (as m Joseph Conrad's cor- Conrad, or even a John Buchan, mrupted ~mpermhst Mtstah Kurtz, he vents ch~iracters who he there on the dead), keep her awake for days, break shouting, blustering, and gesucula- he creates m the minds of his followers pie want to make tt m America just as the ~dea that he ~s the equal of h~s tmg wildly Falwell ~s "cool" with a he has, but simply that he ~s the emsoftness and humor rare m those forum m worldhness and sophtsuca- bodiment of fundamentahsm's unexcircles He exploits television m a uon Falwell never ceases to play up h~s pressed desire to be on the reside, not way few other preachers do He has own celebrity D'Souza calls htm a the outside The rehg~ous right's long used ~t as ~t ~s used by the mmnstream "shameless namedropper" who, to h~s exde &dn't just make them angry at the medm, so that he doesn't just get congregation, will boast of h~s close rest of America in the manner that V~slbfl~ty out of h~s TV appearances, friendship with Menachem Begin or D'Souza and some of today's popuhsts he gets the glamour and prestige of that he has the ear of the President...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 about Israel and the PLO garnered an down her defenses, and offer her the expression--unleavened bread The unprecedented amount of medm atten- greatest "acting" job she has ever had plot is, to put it as mildly as an tion for what was basically a potboder She IS to convmce the PLO that she Is ulcerate's droner, lmplauslble~ But this of a spy novel In fact, The Ltttle on their side, while helping the Israehs was all to the good, m the eyes of ~ts Drummer Gwl is easily the least com- to move m on and capture the eluswe celebrators For The Little Drummer pelhng and most self-indulgent of le PLO leader Carr~s often engaging and moving studies of espionage...

...He would have us beheve- Sometimes, being associated w~th b~g-ume ts aware that what fundamentalists ad- they're just hke the chdd with h~s nose TV mire m htm ~s that he has made ~t in pressed up against the window Th~s ~s the assocmuon that FalweU the other America He ~s the man who Sometimes, as Falwell makes clear, when fundamentahsts t~re of their endless wars and then" forced exclusion, they really don't want to fight the estabhshment, they want to join ~t [] works at Ume and Ume again And on brings the world to fundamentahsts the countless occasions that he speaks He ~s the httle bit of secular they will at Harvard and Yale, to the T~mes and let creep into their hves the Post, and on the major networks, This doesn't mean that Falwell's peoTHE TALKIES by John Podho~tz G~ri was really a good introduction for First from the Israehs, and then from the llhterate masses, of those ~ssues the Palestmmns, Charlle receives bor- about the Middle East we all really needed to know about, especially with ing, endless lectures on Senntm history From the Israehs she hears of the the Israehs committing all kinds of Holocaust, and never again, and we Holocausts of their own over there will do what we must to save our coun- In fact, The Little Drummer Gtrl was try, and those lousy Arabs From the so dehnously recewed because ~t Palestmmns she hears of all that suf- brflhantly captured the romantic amfering, and the camps, and the 1948 bivalence so many progresstve Westerners were feehng about the Middle East On the one hand, Israel was Eventually the Israehs succeed m page hke--you should excuse the Two years later the movie is before us, and It is a stiff, despite d~rector George Roy Hill's best efforts Hill may be Hollywood's best hack, so his faalure to make le Carr~'s plot come ahve on the screen ~s tesumony 39 to ~ts deadening preposterousness Nonetheless, what is most interesting about The Ltttle Drummer Gtri ~s how m~ted m the past ~t really ~s In 1984, the idea that the real problem in the Middle East has somehow to do with the d~splacement of the Palestunan Arabs--a self-d~splacement, by the way--m 1948 seems laughable One of out o f drapers try to play power games the few gifts the Israeh action m with one another It is a breeding Mossad agent, never...

...barely suppressed anU-Semmsm, and whose open admiration for Cathohc socml conservattsm has inaugurated a new ecumemsm in both churches The fact ~s that the pohtmal world has changed Falwell His worldhness does matter, ~t ~s at the very center of h~s message and appeal As with so many other modern evangelists, the television ministry ts the basts of h~s popularity Yet he alone g~ves ~t a secular twist H~s contemporaries on telev~smn are "hot" m the sense that TV performers, m the McLuhanesque parlance, are never meant to be m LITTLE DUMDUM GIRL I t usually takes between stx and e~ght months to produce a book from an author's manuscript, what w~th the e(htor's pen, the typesetter's hes, and the binder's delays It takes at least e~ghteen months, and usually much longer, for a movie based on such a book to htt the theaters, what with the screenwriter's compressions, the moneymen's anxmties, the star's drug habit, and the fights between producnon company and distributor...

...If the supposedly bnlhant PLO Lebanon has given the world ~s the sight o f a M~ddle East stripped of the distraction of the PLO...

...Putting aside the puzzhng task of figuring out exactly what is meant by "machismo piety," I allude to one other pecuharity Mr Grenier's opening paragraph, which depicts me peddling "the inside word" to New York editors that "Mondale and Hart are dead ducks " This is, as your readers should know, a canard I found the rest of Mr Grenier's piece, by turn, amusing, fiCtlVe, insightful, and perverse I conclude that Mr GrenIer has paid my book, Diaries of Mano M, Cuomo, a wonderfully backhanded comphment and presumably sold a few more copies Rwhard Gremer rephes, "fascinatmg " But I shall now go further I believe it is the best description I have ever read of what it Is hke to run for public office, in addmon to revealing a great deal about one of the most complex and compelling personahtles in American politics today Everyone interested in politics should read it As for what "machismo piety" is, the Governor must ask R Emmett Tyrrell, J r , who is more clever about this sort of thing than I I thank Mr Cuomo, in turn, for hts --Mano M Cuomo come to pass New York, New York and, operating by instruct as much as Naively, I thought I paid Governor anything else, I have chosen Governor Cuomo's book a very forehanded com- Cuomo to again make the Democratic many black families phment when I wrote that it IS party the stro'ng, national, patriotic CORRESPONDENCE ly Summtt, whwh was dtscussed by Wdham Tucker m the July tssue, I Let me share w~th you several comments John E Jacob, President of the thought our readers might be m- NaUonal Urban League, made at the opening session of the Black Family terested m Mr Wdhams's report on mspiring developments within the black Summit commumty do about our own problems ourselves further into what ~s really a major Government and private sector action is a development within Black America necessity, but so too are the services and Speofically, it ~s a growing sense of the concern black organlzauons can into" the Democratic party, even as he (substitute Boston for New York and French-Canadian for Italian and you will not be far from the mark) The Party having become what it is today, however, I am an apostate--and Governor Cuomo knows apostates are very hard people to bring back Unlike the I have no desire to prolong this corGovernor, I went to university and respondence but the reasonableness spent many years abroad, mainly in evident in your letter has encouraged France, have seen most varieties of me to share a few additional observasocialism at first hand, and decided I tions w~th you My purpose In so dodidn't hke any of them I ask the ing is to share w~th you some informaGovernor to reflect on my considered tion that m~ght encourage you to look view that our DemocraUc party is now under the control of people who, on balance, may be farther to the left than, for example, France's Socialist party responslbihty that middle-class blacks Nlet-sche predicted that dechne in and the restitutions they support are rehglous froth would bring about a vast assuming for the well-being of less forrise m secular utoplamsm and, lo, it has tunate blacks The Black Family SumSo I am not enUrely at ease even w~th mlt was a manifestation of this development since its basic thrust was President Reagan's 49-state victory to develop strategies through wluch the black community itself could help Therefore attention was directed to the reverse the deteriorating phght of formulation of community-based strategies that could be implemented at This was not a meeting to beat up on the Reagan Administration, to call force it once was, and this means more This process was enhanced by the than waving the Stars and Stripes We exchange of information on a wide for more welfare programs, or to are locked m what John F Kennedy trumpet the charge that all the prob- variety of successful programs Incalled a "long, twd~ght struggle" with cluding the Adopt-A-Family Program lems affhctmg Black America can be an unplacable adversary Wherever I go started by a physician in Los Angeles, laid at the door of racism Rather, it in Western Europe, not to menUon in which a group of black professionals was a gathering of the family, or the Poland, people assure me that if clan if you will, to discuss the things literally adopt families in trouble with America goes down, our kind of free that only it could do the purpose of helping them set their society will disappear from the face of lives m order, the Shiloh Baptist Fami- In the not too distant past, such a the earth Now we will see who is ly Life Center in Washington, D C , meeting might not have been possible perverse which serves a low income area in that Middle-Class Responsibilities But what we have seen recently is a growing awareness that we, as blacks, must accept at least some of the As James D Wdhams of the Nattonal responsiblhty for what has occurred in government aid, and the House of Umoja in Philadelphia which has established a remarkable record in Urban League and I have had further all too many of our communities and correspondence about the Black Famt- act accordingly backhanded compliment As he just might suspect, my background has much in common with his I was "born 40 the cowardice of Hussem and his fellow "moderate" Arabs, and the precariousness of Israel's socialist economy The Middle East is not a stark allegory being played out on the hot sands, whipped by the noisome sc~roccos It is a region where nation-states that, in any rational terms, are barely m kmckers lS tougher than they, and cleverer Charhe, as played by the astomshmgly aged Diane Keaton, seems to view the Middle East as a pohtical fimshmg school, where she wdl be taught not only how to act but how to be a grownup, responsible cmzen of the world An ~d~ot, maybe...

...But It was bnlhantly timed, and tuning is everything...

...a territorially ambmous and ruthless Syria, a Mushm drive to consume not only the land of the Jews but also the land of the Lebanese Chnstmns, the perfidy of Qaddafi, the msamty of the Ayatollah, ground for the bulhes on the block, and the bullies' agent, the Soviet Umon And where the only real free country m the region's h~story--and I mean history, dating back to Babel and Ur--~s treated like the kid whose parents send hun down to play on the street m kmckers and a sweater What the desperate hypocnsy of the Iraq, s, the bulhes wall not learn is that the k~d nailed hun a long tune before Backhanded Compliments As the subject of Mr Rachard Gremer's article "The Machismo P~ety of Marlo Cuomo" (TAS, November 1984), I'd like to clear up a few misunderstandrags in the piece...

...an MI6 agent, ic masterpiece of a scene maybe...

...In the fullness of Ume, between the first edmon and the fn.st-run release, what was once considered a "hot book," a book that had Hollywood's finest btddmg on tt for months before pubhcat~on, can often have descended into a peculiar, dated trrelevancy The most starthng example of th~s was Ragttme, the most trumpeted novel of the 1970s Yet ~t was such a creature In the novel a radical Brmsh actress of ~ts time, with its queasy rachcal chic posturing, that when the movie came Vanessa Redgrave, Yaslr's own Umty out five years after its mmal pubhca- M~tford, is all to the point, suffers a non, yawns were barely stlfied across "false flag" recrmtment by the Israeh the country, and $32 mdhon went sailmg down the tubes But even more lnstructwe, and dehghtful, ts the journey of The L~ttle Drummer Gwl to the s c r e e n John le Carr~s vmtous, mddly anuScmmc, wildly pro-terrorist 1982 novel John Podhoretz ~s critic-at-large and Capual LOre edttor of the Washington T~mes...

...a useful Khot, never A It is a testament to this nation's baptism m blood m the Middle East by the three Lebanese bombings that the movie seems to have drifted not into a serious depIcuon o f the IsraehPalestlman problem but rather into the fourth or fifth paragraph of an Anthony Lewis column So much so that the movie includes the following comIn order to impress upon the PLO her fidelity to their cause, Charlle makes reference to "Jew bastards " Whereupon a PLO commander (in a Moshe Dayan eyepatch) turns upon her leader (who, as portrayed by the French actor Sanu Frey, is as charming as Cary Grant, and has no whisker growth that nnght render hun physically unappeUzing to a movie audience) is really foolish enough to be taken m by her, the Mossad probably would have and sancUmomously shouts" "Never say something hke that) We are antiZionists, but we are not anti-Semitic)" Of course not [~ --RET We have to recognize that some of our problems may be self-mfhcted, that we may have allowed our just anger at what America has done to obscure our own need for self-discipline and strengthened community values In concentrating on the wrongs of discrimination and poverty we may have neglected the fact that there is a lot we can provide So from the outset it was clearly understood that the Summit was not to be a hand-wringing session focused on how bad ttungs are, but on what the black commumty could do on its own the local level city and is supported by the middleclass members of that church without THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985...