PUBLIC NUISANCES: Wolfe Man/Bradley Achievement
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. Wolfe Man WASHINGTON LL, WELL, our debonair President, George W. Bush, has let the cat out of the bag. Caution! For our...
...We have already seen Hollywood at work with its Oscars and Grammys...
...He, like Galbraith's biographer, is mystified as to why an economist of Galbraith's persuasion has not They recognize the achievements of a new political order, the libertarian conservative order that E R CENTLY THE MILWAUKEE-BASED Bradley Foundation put on an awards fete in Washington that turned out to be a stupendous evening...
...He claimed to read hundreds...
...In reviewingJohn Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics, one Will Hutton in the American Prospect, an archaeological dig of PC thought, writes: "The story of our times is the ongoing rise of American conservatism...
...are consistent with the mission statement of the foundation, including the promotion of liberal democracy, democratic capitalism, and a vigorous defense of American institutions...
...Wolfe is at the very top of the American writing heap...
...Yet, I noted a sniffiness in the major media's reportage of the event...
...It has sex...
...This historic shift has left them without a clue...
...It is an amusing book, also instructive...
...All these awards have become orgies of onanism...
...Elisabeth Bumiller, the journalist who wrote the piece, speculates that the President is reading it to gain a better understanding of his daughters, both recent college graduates with a sense of joie de vivre...
...The adherents to the PC culture are befuddled and angry...
...Frankly I am not surprised to read that GWB reads books...
...The ongoing rise of conservatism" is a con...
...They recognize the achievements of a new political order, the libertarian conservative order that is sweeping the world...
...He has recently read His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis and Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow...
...That is whythe Bradley Awards are important...
...It is a chaos of tortured, incoherent conceits...
...The awardees were indeed worthy of distinction...
...In a new biography of that giant of the Old is sweeping the world...
...What do you recall...
...Daniel Rodriguez, the "Singing Cop," sang...
...1,1 April 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 63...
...I tire thinking of it all...
...Everything he says about economics is ignored by government and by entrepreneurs...
...Yes, the thickest, most illiterate president since Ronald Reagan is a reader, admittedly a closet reader...
...If it is not beer-drenched it is at least wine-drenched...
...They go to the perpetrators of the New Order...
...Doubtless there will one day be hell to pay for the democracy arising in the Middle East...
...Hutton laments that Galbraith has no successor...
...These are very dignified and restrained books...
...Remember when Clinton boasted about reading so many books at Oxford...
...The Bushes' reluctance to boast about their civilized side is very attractive...
...The tectonic plates of history have shifted...
...Jennifer Holliday sang and danced...
...The Foundation itself gave awards, four in all, each worth $250,000, to public persons whose "achievements...
...The President has not actually placed any cats in a bag...
...According to the International Herald Tribune he reads books...
...As I say, the PC adepts of the Old Order are oblivious...
...In fact, there is no bag, only this astonishing story...
...Applying objective standards to George Will's writing, the scholarship of Robert George and Heather Mac Donald, and Ward Connerly's public service leaves each individual elevated above the rank and file...
...They will confer awards on their present paladins of virtue, Michael Moore, Dr...
...Every PC reviewer of this book agrees on that...
...What I did not know was that apparently both men have been fans of Tom Wolfe...
...Or possibly he is reading it to "journey back to his keg nights" in college, she adds...
...So if one wants to get a sense of the drift of our time forget this season's awards series, unless, of course, one is discussing the Bradley Awards...
...What they are living through is not a period of sound economic growth...
...GWB only seems to read a handful of books a year, but imagine what he is reading now...
...So is the spread of democracy and the collapse of Marxist-Leninist tyranny...
...Their other interests, being private, are easier to be reticent about...
...They will continue to whoop it up for their passing heroes...
...gained "stature" today...
...I knew the present President's father, and he too was a reader...
...Soon we shall see the Pulitzers and the National Book Awards...
...62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR April 2005 PUBLIC NUISANCE S Bradley Achievement Order, John Kenneth Galbraith, the obliviousness of the Old Order to history's latest turn is on won WASHINGTON drous display...
...It is better described as political correctness, PC...
...So maybe we should not be so surprised that the President is reading Tom Wolfe...
...Yet now the President tells Bumiller that he reads 20 or 30 pages a night...
...Whatever one calls the value system that supports these other awards, the awards themselves have become very political...
...Both read history and biography more than fiction...
...Both agree free markets and growth economics are ascendant solely because of the "power" of corporations...
...The Bible is drenched in all the racy matters that Wolfe takes up and more...
...That last fellow has to be an economic genius...
...The point seemed to be that this was all very self-congratulatory of the conservatives...
...Now that should have tipped Bumiller off that Bush has an appetite for racy stuff...
...Yet he has also divulged that he reads the Bible through from beginning to end every other year...
...I think it was 200 in a year...
...Howard Dean, and forget not the former Enron adviser, economic visionary, and scold of corporate power, Paul Krugman...
...So now we shall sit back and watch the rest of this season's awards ceremonies...
...That is a reasonable choice given that these are men of action who read for pleasure, I am sure, but also to get a sense of how their predecessors responded to the demands of politics...
...Then again Bumiller speculates he might read it "for the writing...
...My only objection to that observation would be that what passes for liberalism in America today is not very liberal...
...He does not boast of his erudition, as say Bill Clinton did...
...The thought that Galbraith is passe because Galbraith's economic and political positions failed never is even considered by reviewer or biographer...
...If one does not share the political values of their bestowers, one is not very likelyto be recognized...
...P U B L I C N U I S A N C E S R. EMMETT T Y R R E L L, J R. Wolfe Man WASHINGTON LL, WELL, our debonair President, George W. Bush, has let the cat out of the bag...
...Rather it is, as Hutton writes, "the rise of a set of economic theorems palpably false and obviously self-serving...
...Yet a day of sport with the Bushes is difficult to keep from the press, involving, as it might, a half dozen outdoor exercises in a day: fishing, tennis, golf...
...He is reading I Am Charlotte Simmons, what the Herald Tribune calls a "racy, new beer- and sex-soaked novel," by Tom Wolfe...
...The college life this novel depicts is very much like the college life I glimpse when I am on an American campus, though I believe Wolfe has gone rather easy on the profs...
...Actually he may be reading it for pleasure...
...Some would say they are laced with liberal prejudice...
...Enter that brontosaurus in the Kentucky Derby...
...Many are even more juvenile than the students...
...That shows literary taste...
...He comes from a rather private family, one that does not exploit its every personal aspect as so many politicians do...
...The family is avid for sport, as we all know...
...For our friends at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, that is just an expres sion...
...So the economic growth ushered in by Ronald Reagan's tax cuts is a fraud...
...Free markets, free minds, democracy, and at least in the case of the Bradley Awards intellectual excellence compose the New Order...
...It also has violence, and depending on the translation it can be in elegant English...
Vol. 38 • April 2005 • No. 3
