LETTER FROM EUROPE: Sonntag in the Park with Chomsky
Gedmin, Jeffrey
LETTER FROM EUROPE JEFFREY GEDMIN Si III1111111101.41V Sonntag in the Park with Chomsky N OBSCURE 1984 FILM called Brother From Another Planet featured an empathetic alien from outer space who...
...And not just any Americans...
...With his typical in-your-face style, Springer built his company's high-rise office building near Check Point Charlie smack dab against the Berlin Wall...
...Good luck, beloved ally...
...Not quite...
...My Sunday ritual is to pick up a tea from Starbucks on the corner by the Gendarmenmarkt and walk a block to a corner where two friendly gentlemen sell papers...
...Daly...
...Guten Morgen, Deutschland...
...They've hijacked American foreign policy, waged global jihad—they started the Reichstag fire and caused the Tsunami—and now they are persecuting the secretary general...
...No amount of dialogue will improve the situation...
...Ah, the neocons again...
...I thought about President Bush's upcoming February trip to Europe...
...He is a Bush fan and not afraid to admit so publicly...
...It has been my refuge in what seems at times a sea of media hostility...
...GEDMIN I,' BUT TOGETHER THEY CHANGED AMERICA...
...Huh...
...So imagine my surprise, my dismay, my depression...
...LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON, MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., AND THE LAWS THAT CHANGED AMERICA NICK KOTZ Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Kotz draws on a wealth of newly available sources—from Johnson's taped conversations to FBI wiretap logs—to offer the first full account of their surprising relationship in those momentous times...
...Springer became a lonely figure, resisting political correctness even in the heyday of detente...
...Sample these gems: CHOMSKY: "Most Americans are for Kyoto, the International Criminal Court, and against the use of force...
...This particular Sunday after picking up mine I took a peek at the contents on the way back to my flat...
...But then remember, I am in Berlin, not Paris, and this is Die Welt am Sonntag, not Le Monde...
...He will go to Brussels and the elites here will swoon: Finally America is taking the EU seriously...
...There was] euphoria in the boardrooms of the big corporations the day Bush was re-elected...
...NATO is as hollowed out as Chirac's soul...
...I've long thought Americans would be shocked if they knew what our friends are saying about us...
...I am still not quite there yet...
...JIMMY CARTER "A great, serious book by one of the greatest, most serious writers of our time...
...Thank you, Die Welt am Sonntag...
...So does Ralph Nader...
...Experts are in agreement," noted Die Welt am Sonntag, "that the criticism of Annan has another motive...
...The company's current chairman Mathias Diipfner, a 44-year-old journalist-businessman, is an utter rarity here...
...Call me sensitive...
...Is it really possible, I ask myself, that some Germans feel that their fate is more closely bound to the United Nations than to the United States...
...If only Kofi Annan can survive this Wolfowitzian onslaught, though, Germany will become a member of the Security Council, American hegemony will be checked, global multilateralism and world peace will prevail...
...So I swallowed hard, turned the page, and there was a major story on the United Nations under the headline, "UN Chief Kofi Annan Fights for His Survival...
...It smacked me right between the eyes...
...tz Jeffrey Gedmin is director of the Aspen Institute Berlin...
...This visit, I gather, will convey, "Hey, Old Europe, we take you seriously...
...Axel Springer was a major Cold War figure in Germany—reliably pro-American and pro-Israeli and passionately anti-Communist...
...But seeing Chomsky in a Springer paper is akin to opening The American Spectator to find the latest essay by Seymour Hersh...
...Springer's widow, Friede, still plays a major role...
...BOB WOODWARD HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Distinguished publishing since 1832 www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com Okay, I'll calm down...
...He will travel to Mainz in Germany where his father once charmed Germans by calling for a "partnership in leadership...
...You lose your bearings...
...I've already switched from coffee to tea...
...CHOMSKY: "No...
...policy...
...Says a "German UN observer in NY"—whatever that means—"Other bills are coming due...
...foundation world that someone start up a European Media Research Institute (EMRI) that imitates MEMRI, the fine group that monitors and translates what the Middle East press is saying...
...Thanks, Mr...
...DAVID HALBERSTAM "An important examination of a critical moment in American history—a battle for our nation's soul...
...As an American conservative in Europe, I'm starting to feel like a brother from another planet...
...Chomsky, if you didn't know it, is the "spiritual father" of Michael Moore...
...Springer infuriated the left in the West, and Communist officials in the East, by referring to East Germany in his papers as the "DDR," the quotation marks driving home that this was the illegitimate, "so-called" German Democratic Republic...
...Maybe...
...The world famous critic of U.S...
...Of course, Chomsky enjoys far more popularity here than he does in the States...
...Die Welt am Sonntag, like the other Springer papers, has remained America-friendly since Springer's death in 1985, albeit with a bit of wobbliness now and then...
...There was good old Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguist and left-wing kook, getting gobs of space for an interview in my Die Welt am 44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR March 2005 Sonntag...
...INTERVIEWER: "That sounds good, but can you really expect this from Bush...
...Recently, I picked up Die Welt am Sonntag, the Sunday paper of the Axel Springer publishing house...
...You see this kind of silliness often...
...My friend's reaction was one of caution...
...His Failure Would Be Fatal for Germany...
...One James J. Daly of Minnesota wrote to me recently saying, "I have to say that you are wasting your time...
...I think it high time that Europe begin taking America seriously...
...Bush] wants a strong state at the disposal of a small circle of people who control all the money and the power...
...A marvelous, highly readable book, a thriller, really...
...March 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 45...
...But then there are days when I wonder when the bounty hunters will finally arrive to take me back home...
...I recently suggested to a friend in the U.S...
...the neo-conservatives are angry at Annan for his criticism of the Iraq war...
...Plunging in, I discovered that poor Kofi's troubles, it seems, are the fault of, yes, the Americans...
...measures American behavior according to its own propagated values...
...Such raw data might feed the isolationists in the U.S., he worried...
...Old Europeans are yearning to hear this...
...LETTER FROM EUROPE JEFFREY GEDMIN Si III1111111101.41V Sonntag in the Park with Chomsky N OBSCURE 1984 FILM called Brother From Another Planet featured an empathetic alien from outer space who dropped into Harlem, only to find out, surprise, surprise, that he really did not belong in NewYork.All the while alien bounty hunters came crashing through the city, trying to haul the poor fellow back to this other galaxy...
Vol. 38 • March 2005 • No. 2
