THE CASE OF ALGER HISS-ZZZzzzzz
Steinfels, Peter
It was perhaps inevitable, the final step in the regression of American politics to the 1950s: The political journals are again battling over Alger Hiss. Professor Weinstein, in...
...I think the reason is the decline in reading scores...
...Navasky has committed an "egregious" misrepresentation of Perjury, which presents much collateral evidence of Chambers's and Peters's activities...
...Elsewhere, such lights as Garry Wills, Irving Howe, andJohnKennethGalbraithsay Amen to Professor Weinstein's conclusion, but other critics are circling tenaciously, nipping a bit of flesh here and there, looking for a chance to expose the innards...
...More boring even than Patty Hearst, though probably not quite as boring as the Cyprus Question, which is my absolute yardstick in these matters...
...Suspicion has it that Mr...
...Look at it this way...
...the other, symbolic...
...All the political journals are fighting for a shrinking readership...
...Or was it Bigfoot?A lot of symbolism was pumped into the Hiss case...
...AlistairCooke, withone of thosehalf-tntthson which careers are built, referred to the Hiss case as a "generation on trial...
...Who would challenge this theory...
...Navasky, who once edited a humor magazine, smiles a lot...
...If either of them had been less political, they probably would have grown up to be devotees of the Bermuda Triangle or laetrile...
...Hiss represented the "best people," the Ivy League "crowd with pin-stripes and pinko sympathies...
...Whetherthe correspondent himself smiles a lot is not known...
...The landscape is getting cluttered with phony Woodstocktypewriters,Washingtonspy rings,missingWarDepartment cables, hollowed-out pumpkins, and all the paraphernalia so beloved to Hiss-Chambers aficionados...
...The only problem mightbeconvincingreadersthat Richard Nixon never trul~ existed...
...After all, Chambers is dead (if there was a "Chambers"), and Hiss (if there w~s a "Hiss") will, as always, keep quiet...
...Hiss represented the victim of anti-Communlst hysteria, of HUAC andMcCarthyism...
...Meanwhile, The Nation has routed a correspondent to Budapest to investigatefirsthandJoszefPeters's manner of smiling...
...But then again, judging by the recent memoirs published under "Nixon's" name, we might even get away with that...
...Her twin sister spent an equal amount of time proving that Roosevelt purposely provoked Pearl Harbor...
...Navasky, a smart man, has ~decided that The Nation could win over New Republic readers who are restless with The New Republic's effort to win over Commentary readers who are restless with Commentary's effort to win over National Review readers who, thanks to liberal permissiveness and McGuffey's textbooks,aretheonlygrowing source of literates...
...The full possibilities of this squabble are yet to be realized...
...Professor Weinstein says Mr...
...Navasky is the new editor...
...I once had a friend who spent alot of time figuring out why Alger Hiss was innocent...
...I think all these people shouldmate, mixing both their genes and their theories: was that Whittaker Chambers on the grassy knoll in Dallas...
...Why today's furor...
...There are two sources for this fascination with the Hiss case...
...Hiss represented the New Deal...
...The real truth, if you don't mind my saying so, is that it's boring...
...One is genetic...
...The professor replies, blow for blow, in The New Republic, whose editorsalsolectureMr.Navasky sternly for the "intellectual spuriousness" of his criticism...
...Hiss represented the highbrow versus plain God-fearing folks--like Richard Nixon...
...Professor Weinstein, in nearly 700pagesofPerjury:theHissChambers Case, says that Hiss did it...
...How, I ask myself, can Commonweal get in on the act...
...Maybe it's only my rationalization for laziness, but there is something about the accretion of detail in the Hiss case---or the Kennedy assassination, or Howard Hughes's link to Watergate--thatpersuades methe pointhasbeenmissed.Didthe Hisses' pediatrician spot Chambers leaving their home one dark and stormy night in 19377 Did so-and-so's ex-wife confirm that so-and-so did such-and-such, and was she just saying it out of spite...
...Look for it in The New Republic.THE CASE OF ALGER HISS-ZZZZzzzz PETER STEINFELS What is the real truth about the Hiss case...
...The balloon of symbolism has collapsed, leaving one man and a minor episode of espionage...
...The correspondent reports that Peters smiles a lot...
...Navasky takes the professor severely to task in The Nation, of which Mr...
...Navasky, for example, protests that ProfessorWeinsteinreadsunfounded significance into the way Hungarian CommunistJoszefPeterssmiled while denying to Weinstein various espionageactivitiesinWashington during the Thirties...
...defense-Eyes Glaze Over...
...Thus the important thing "was not Peters's smile alone, but rather his smile combined with his self-conscious and obvious lies...
...The Point, I feel confident, has long since slipped out of town, perhaps to join Joszef Peters in Budapest, smiling...
...By now, most of the gas has been discharged...
...Against such details I empl~oy what news editors know as the basic E.(3.O...
...Is that clear...
...Since I have no difficulty in imagining that' Hiss is guilty but considerable difficulty in imagining that he exists, perhaps this is the right tack: Commonweal could expose the entire Hiss case as a hoax, made up out of whole cloth by the Harvard Lampoon(remember Navasky's shady background in humor magazines) and then gone wildly out of control...
Vol. 105 • May 1978 • No. 11
