HIGH SPIRITS: British Mean Streaks
Aitken, Jonathan
HIGH SPIRITS Jonathan Aitken British Mean Streaks EMONIZATION IS AN UNPLEASANT blood sport, especially when its quarries are people you admire. I have been getting upset in London this summer...
...According to Prescott, their discussions centered on cowboys and William Wilberforce...
...A few months ago Prescott arrived to Anschutz's ranch in Colorado, staying there for a weekend of all-American hospitality...
...1 made a mistake in my previous column about Philip Anschutz when I described him as "a reclusive billionaire...
...The latter ecclesiastical activity allegedly makes Anschutz (hold the front page...
...Prescott is a dinosaur from the Jurassic Park of Britain's organized labor unions, a sort of George Meany figure but without old George's looks and charm...
...Anschutz--but at a price...
...However, my grumble about these productions is that theyboth demonize the 37th president for a lot of vices that, as his biographer, I know were not true of him...
...vice presidents used to be in the days when John Nance Garner declared that office to be "not worth a pitcher of warm spit...
...Answer: He had a walk-on part in a British political soap opera known as the John Prescott scandal...
...Alas, it is no use patiently explaining to liberal journalists or to the liberal bien-pensants of the arts world that iconic right-of-center figures of their time like Richard Nixon and Philip Anschutz have more than a few redeeming features...
...Jonathan Aitken, The American Spectator~ High Spirits columnist, is most recently author of Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed (Doubleday...
...The targets for this opprobrium are Philip Anschutz and Richard Nixon...
...Anschutz's companies called AEG was 60 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTE~BER 2006 JONATHAN AITKEN thinking of investing $600 million in "The Dome" but the returns weren't all that mouth-watering, apparently...
...Prescott is deputy prime minister to Tony Blair, yet has no discernible effect or influence on government policy...
...It is unfair to have a go at Nixon on either of these fronts, but this is what is being done at the English National Opera company, which has brought back a summer series of John Adams's Nixon in China, and at the Donmar Theatre Company, which has launched a new play, Frost and Nixon, that its producers hope will transfer to Broadway later this year...
...Both the opera and the play have many fine artistic qualities, particularly Frank Langella's masterly performance as Nixon at the Donmar...
...Anschutz and Nixon deserve more thoughtful treatment, in print and on stage...
...For there's not a scrap of evidence that Anschutz ever asked Prescott for a casino license...
...a HYPOCRITE because evangelicals should not be asking, let alone "bribing," deputy prime ministers for casino licenses...
...So what has Mr...
...So someone had the bright idea of asking John Prescott's department whether a casino license could be included in the price tag...
...Having seen the rushes of Amazing Grace, I confidently predict another box office success for Mr...
...However, since any friend of Mr...
...O F COURSE, none of this has anything to do with the blameless Mr...
...SEPTEMBER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 61...
...This is a white elephant of government misplanning that might just as well be called Britain's Teapot Dome since it looks like an upturned teapot and pours out nothing but scandals, similar to President Warren Harding's Teapot Dome unpleasantness...
...His billions maybe safe, but his reclusiveness has been blown to smithereens by the great British media whose intrepid reporters have been swirling around him like piranha fish scenting blood...
...It will be screened early next year, with worldwide premieres timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the passing of the Abolition Act...
...Alas, it is no use patiently explaining to liberal journalists or to the liberal bien-pensants of the arts world that iconic right-of-center figures of their time like Richard Nixon and Philip Anschutz have more than a few redeeming features...
...Naturally, Prescott is getting demonized too for failing to declare this "very lavish gift" in the register of Members of Parliament's interests, but that's about all the great Prescott-Anschutz scandal amounts to...
...What dirt...
...Not anymore he ain't...
...In reality, this idea was not at all bright because as everyone east of Colorado knows, neither John Prescott nor his department has a say in allocating Britain's casino licenses...
...As for the so-called "bribe" in this story, this turns out to be a pair of cowboy boots and a Stetson, which were probably handed over to Prescott simply to bring him up to scratch for the dress code at home on the range on the Anschutz ranch...
...I last wrote about Philip Anschutz in this column six months ago, praising him for backing Narnia--the movie of C.S...
...His next production is Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade...
...In fact, the asking was done not by any Anschutz company but by an unconnected casino operator-which leaves Phil Anschutz looking whiter than white...
...Yet their two cases are worth examining because they raise such head-scratching issues of faith, hypocrisy, and judgmentalism by the liberal media...
...One of his closest friends, Bob Beltz, describes Anschutz as "a religious moderate," a spiritual stance British reporters should pray includes the gift of forgiveness...
...otherwise they'll get sued...
...Two other shows that are running and running in London involve that well-known American demon Richard Nixon...
...Well, according to the gospel of the piranha fish, he's a friend of George W. Bush and an evangelical Christian...
...He was no saint, but two episodes in his life in which it would be hard to call him a sinner were going to China and giving an uncharacteristically candid post-resignation TV interview to David Frost...
...For starters, as your "High Spirits" columnist made clear some time ago, he is not an evangelical...
...In mybook, that's a curious mixture of homage and hypocrisy-using Rochefoucauld's deftnlhon, Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue...
...Anschutz done to get the piranhas so excited...
...One way Blair keeps Prescott busy is to send him traveling...
...His earlier books include Nixon: A Life...
...To put it mildly, there are a few weaknesses in this demonization of Philip Anschutz...
...The liberal mindset is determined to paint its villains in monochrome black...
...The causes of the hostility towards them are different in nature, time, and place...
...Only in hypocritical Britain could this show run and run...
...He is a purely titular figure like U.S...
...One of Mr...
...That should have been the end of the story but for the fact that Prescott is currently sinking into the quicksands of several other scandals...
...I have been getting upset in London this summer because two American heroes of mine have between them been vilified in a L1 soap opera, a scandal, a real opera, a play, and End of hostile media coverage...
...Anschutz...
...He did briefly attend an evangelical church in Colorado some two decades ago, but he hasn't been back there for years...
...The juiciest of these is that he was caught in flagrante with his nubile diary s e c r e t a r y - t h e British Monica Lewinsky, according to the headlines-who has now sold the gory details of the 67-year-old deputy prime minister's sexual prowess to the tabloids...
...Anschutz could easily have lost his shirt on this $ 50 million venture, but bucking Hollywood's anti- God trend he made yet another fortune and is re-investing his well-gotten gains in more "family-values" movies...
...According to the British piranha fish, what Anschutz really had in mind was getting a casino license for a property complex he is developing in East London known as "The Dome...
...Prescott's is currently an enemy of the liberal media, many thousands of column inches have been devoted to dishing the dirt on Anschutz...
...Lewis's epic children's book with a Christian message...
Vol. 39 • September 2006 • No. 7
