Correspondence
Correspondence - Some Have It To live in Los Angeles, work in the movie business, and read Ben Stein on both, is to be compelled to believe in parallel universes. Stein writes so well, is so widely...
...Am I suggesting that Stein makes it up...
...While the authors do not advocate scrapping all precision guided munitions, Mr...
...Certainly not...
...But we wonder Wistfully, we wonder whether Stein is the David O. Selznick of that other, better place...
...I hasten to say we don't doubt the credit—not in a time when a friendly hairdresser is as likely to be credited as not...
...Indeed, virtually everything van den Haag has to say that is plausible is contained in the volume itself...
...So did my review...
...Or TAS, apparently...
...When something works, don't fool with it...
...David's difficulty in meeting cute girls...
...More specifically, its advocates must demonstrate how a maneuver approach would better meet some specific military challenges: winning the war in Vietnam (my example), or defending Western Europe...
...Perhaps because a review like this should have been returned by the editors for rewriting...
...We have spent lots of time wondering where the "doorway" might be...
...After all, if nations had developed weapons solely on the basis of track record, we would still be throwing stones...
...The authors of only three of the essays are mentioned...
...All right, it seems an awful lot more like the forties than the eighties, so what...
...Nor does a guide to Transylvania or Washington have to be original and profound to be interesting...
...This time he's given us what could be called "Gentlewoman's Agreement" ("The Bad Girls of Gamma Nu," TAS, October 1986), an updating of the picture that once starred Gregory Peck and detailed the "hidden" anti-Semitism of the grey-flannel, country-club world as revealed to an innocent, high-principled eastern Wasp who disguises himself as one of them...
...What is even more amazing is that van den Haag makes Berger's and Buchanan's conclusions his own but without the element of "interesting...
...Probably it's not in Los Angeles at all...
...It's a natural Movie of the Week—CBS would do it sort of highminded, NBC would want to push the personal tragedy a little more—you know, maybe somebody could commit suicide...
...But the reader is given the impression that the ideas expressed in the review are absent from the volume...
...Come on, now—are you going to tell me there's no anti-Semitism at USC...
...I agree with Mr Den Uyl about Eysenck's essay...
...Well then...
...Many do not, and the reformers have done their country a service in forcing the military to acknowledge this...
...What a gift he must have...
...The more difficult issue is whether, and how far, we should pursue the military possibilities opened up by the computer revolution...
...They are all so willing, so fey, so wonderfully vulnerable, so—so naive and knowing...
...My friends, many of whom are producers of movies and TV shows, don't seem to know...
...What other impression could there be when a reviewer presents the ideas as his own insights...
...Some reformers, Steven Canby for one, have attempted such explanations...
...It is incorrect to state, for example, that they are opposed to precision guided munitions (PGMs...
...There is, after all, an uncanny resemblance between Stein's Hollywood and that undying pre-WWII dream of "The Coast" which was born in New York and tlourishes even today in print...
...Den Uyl's idea, an essay may be "interesting" without being "original or profound...
...As one of the authors in the volume, I am naturally interested in seeing it promoted...
...As for the scurrilous claim that I make Berger's and Buchanan's conclusions my own without proper credit, after rereading I am not at all sure to what conclusions Mr...
...However, contrary to Mr...
...I am sorry that he does not appreciate what was meant as a kindness...
...Here "track record" is of only limited use...
...It's the world we all know—but it's absolutely unfamiliar...
...Maneuver warfare," because it is a "style" of warfare rather than a doctrine, is difficult to reduce to words...
...Den Uyl's contribution was not to mention it, since it does not contain anything not obvious...
...Berger's and Buchanan's are...
...Yet my disappointment has little to do with the fact that the book was not favorably reviewed, but rather with the fact that it was not reviewed at all...
...People who live in the Hollywood in which my friends and I live and work have long ago bought that vision—and those of us who write know that it's the only vision that sells...
...The people I know never even meet those girls...
...Sincerely, with awe and envy, —Saul David Van Nuys, California Ben Stein replies: I sympathize with Mr...
...Their criterion for favoring or not favoring a weapon is not its cost or complexity but rather its track record...
...And only in the case of the Eysenck essay does the reader get the slightest inkling of what the essay contains...
...Men," in their own words, "are still smarter than machines...
...This lack of vocabulary presents a number of problems to writers such as Mr...
...By confining the action, of course, you bring the budget down and by changing all the personnel to nubile young women—hey, you don't have to hit me over the head, fellas...
...What is more difficult to excuse in Miss McConnell's review is her misrepresentation of many of the opinions expressed by Senator Hart and Mr...
...Then again, maybe I'm wrong to beUeve that book reviews should deal with the book one is asked to review...
...Maneuvers At a time when most military men are woefully ignorant of the rudiments of the art of war, Mary C.N...
...McConnell replies: I almost hate to reply when Mr Gudmundsson has so eloquently confirmed my statement that military reformers "actively resist" answering the question "what does maneuver warfare mean in practice...
...Even here van den Haag misreads the thesis: Eysenck does not exactly argue that there is no evidence of risk from smoking, but rather that the methodology used in gathering that evidence is seriously flawed...
...Or, if your plane is higher, Ben Stein...
...That some of the contributors agree with me is as unsurprising as it is gratifying...
...As to the Buchanan and Berger essays which are deemed "interesting" but not "original or profound," the reader is given no idea about what could be interesting about essays that are neither original nor profound...
...Finally, a question...
...Even my friends who can afford the restaurants Ben writes about, the clothing stores he seems to frequent—they read Stein with awe and envy...
...The Great Captains who practiced it never managed to distill its essence into a set of rules...
...They respect, for example, the effectiveness of the $100,000 Exocet while denigrating the $4,000 Dragon...
...Had I abstracted each essay my review would have been as boring and chaotic as the volume itself...
...Perhaps if he were less sarcastic and suspicious he would have better luck...
...Messrs...
...It's surely a parallel universe—just like in the sci-fi yarns...
...Stein's credits now have expanded to comprise "writer, producer, and movie actor...
...military's new doctrine...
...Why complain to the Spectator and not van den Haag himself...
...It is no accident that the names used by historians to describe particular instances of "maneuver warfare'^-^'blitzkrieg," "infiltration tactics," and "von Hutier tactics'—were coined by journalists...
...Answers will be kept confidential...
...Unfortunately, it does not make Smoking and Society less dull...
...More likely the way into Stein's universe is in Washington or New York...
...Stein writes so well, is so widely published, and (apparently) widely believed that it's a bewildering and humbling experience to spend days and nights in the world he describes so vividly without ever recognizing the wonderfully exotic people and folkways his readers love...
...You know what Sam Briskin used to say—^'don't improve it into a flop...
...Otherwise, it's what used to be called "a haircut" on the old Laura Z. Hobson novel and the 20th Century Fox movie...
...Douglas J. Den Uyl Louisville, Kentucky Ernest van den Haag replies: A review should not be an abstract but a critical appraisal...
...Gudmundsson would surely agree that they are generally skeptical of the expensive, "smart" new weapons technologies...
...We're all agreed on that and, what's more, we're all agreed that Stein's universe is more fun than ours...
...Surely Immanuel Kant was original and profound but his expositors (or his selfpopularizations) need not be, while yet interesting...
...But put into words it must be, if maneuver warfare is to become the U.S...
...Reviewing disparate essays on civil liberties, medical evidence, taxes, "Psychological Determinants of Smoking Behavior," "A Sociological View of the Anti-Smoking Phenomenon," or "The Economic Contribution of the Tobacco Industry," one does best to discuss the general ideas which can be extracted or are relevant...
...McConnell may be forgiven for the difficulty she experienced in trying to understand "maneuver warfare'' (Review of Gary Hart and William S. Lind's America Can Win, TAS, October 1986...
...In the same vein, Hart and Lind are not advocates of "low tech" warfare...
...It is of course difficult for anyone—whether seasoned military man or lady writer—to understand a concept that cannot be put into words...
...So with some others...
...If you don't believe me, ask Jackie Collins...
...Again, they oppose some technologies and support others...
...But ABC—hey, turn it loose in that Sorority House with all those Phi Beta Cupcakes...
...This time the action is confined to the sorority women of u s e and the high-minded Wasp is (natch) a high-spirited young woman...
...Lind whose attempts to explain "maneuver warfare" are limited by the inherent clumsiness of language...
...The reader of this review learns nothing about what is contained in the book...
...Hart and Lind do not...
...It's a vision so potent, such a mixture of the contemptible and the irresistible that it continues to pour off the presses and into the magazines and best-seller lists...
...But the issue, as I tried to point out in my review, is not just whether today's smart weapons perform as hoped...
...Stein's world is full of absolutely marvelous young women, ripe and wilUng as those individually wrapped fruits in the N. Beverly Drive window of Jurgensen's...
...Bruce I. Gudmundsson Medford, Massachusetts Mary C.N...
...The writer is selfevident, the acting credit comes from a bit in a recent Kid Hit, but what's the producing credit for...
...Den Uyl refers since I did not discuss the topics Berger and Buchanan discuss...
...Anyway the best I could do with Mr...
...Smoking and Reviewing I was disappointed in Ernest van den Haag's review of Smoking and Society (TAS, October 1986...
...Neither the German Army of the first half of this century nor the Israeli Self-Defense Force of the past forty years, both of which institutions fostered a disproportionate number of leaders who practiced "maneuver warfare," ever came up with a name for "maneuver warfare" or for any of its subsets...
...Lind...
...I suspect I was asked to review it because my interest and record were known...
...Rather, they support the use of some PGMs while rejecting the employment of others...
...And they all just open like flowers to Ben Stein...
...At any rate, my views on smoking and minorities were on record long before I set eyes on the compilation I reviewed...
Vol. 19 • December 1986 • No. 12
