Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Homage to Orwell In his intended introduction to Animal Farm, written in 1945 but first published last September in the London Times Literary Supplement, George Orwell...
...We have not been in Vietnam all these years to prevent a bloodbath or to get back our pilots...
...That is a big part of the North Vietnamese story????yet it cannot be the whole...
...For most of the world's peoples, democracy is not the number one objective, and some opinion makers in this country have concluded that it is not our business to be politically fastidious on their behalf...
...We knew pretty well what Ramsey Clark and Jane Fonda would say before they returned from their trips...
...That rule has been forcefully demonstrated in the controversy over the American prisoners of war held by North Vietnam and the possibility of a "bloodbath" in the South following an American withdrawal...
...In the case of North Vietnam, the job of even-handed reporting has been made exceedingly difficult by the steady rain of bombs...
...The exception seems to be when an internationally known writer is thrown in jail by Fidel Castro...
...The Nixon Doctrine A few weeks ago, when Richard Nixon attacked "the so-called opinion leaders of this country" for not supporting his bombing and mining of North Vietnam, liberals had no difficulty in discerning that the man suffers from a grievous misunderstanding of the function of a free press...
...When President Nixon told the pow families, "Your loved ones have and are paying a price for their choice, and those who deserted America will pay a price for their choice," he was pandering to their emotions and insulting their reason...
...Relations between East and West were difficult enough...
...We have been badly burned in our ventures to support (usually nonexistent) democracies, and have drawn back from such excursions...
...Unfortunately, the Administration's crooked line has been countered by disingenuous behavior from the antiwar camp...
...Anthony Lewis has managed to achieve a similar status with his protests against the war...
...Critical looks????not in pursuit of any ideology, but of understanding...
...No word of criticism was forthcoming from David Dellinger on the failure of the North Vietnamese to permit Red Cross observers to visit their prison camps...
...Richard Bar-net tells us that when he discussed the matter of reprisals with Premier Pham Van Dong of North Vietnam, the latter "stated flatly, 'There will be no reprisals.'" Barnet reminds me of those people who used to assure the world that the Russians could never persecute Jews because the Soviet Constitution forbade anti-Semitism...
...The peace partisans who were permitted by North Vietnam to bring back a few prisoners played to the hilt their role as message-bearers for North Vietnam...
...Moreover, as we edge cautiously toward better Sino-American relations, what journalist wants to get in the way...
...An inviting conclusion for Americans wearied of expensive, dangerous and unsuccessful involvements abroad...
...to swallow China's political idolatry in the interests of good will between nations...
...On the argument over the possibility of a postwar bloodbath, the large figures used so loosely by the President have been rebutted by assurances from the Left that the North Vietnamese rulers are reasonable folks who can be counted on to do their killing selectively????just officials and landowners...
...If we set aside bribes and jails, nothing is more inhibiting of candor than partisanship...
...Joseph Alsop exhausted his credit as a critic some years ago by applauding every U.S...
...Many on the Left have demonstrated over the years that they care as little for democracy as their enemies on the Right...
...The voting booth doesn't do anything for an empty stomach, and a free press may seem a luxury to parents whose children will never learn to read...
...they judge dictators by their labels...
...In addition, the hard experience of recent times has made even the democratically inclined reluctant to fuss about totalitarianism abroad...
...They are easily outraged by Brazil, and pleasantly bemused by China...
...It's the great pitfall of advocacy journalism...
...Still, is it not a bit unbecoming for Western liberals and radicals to trade away the values of freedom for the values of nationalism...
...action in Indochina...
...to acclaim among other peoples, such as the North Vietnamese, feelings of patriotism that they mock at home...
...Advocacy Journalism In such a situation, one can look for no kind word for our adversaries from the Administration and few unkind words from those opposed to its Vietnam policy????A condition that has had bad effects on working journalists...
...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Homage to Orwell In his intended introduction to Animal Farm, written in 1945 but first published last September in the London Times Literary Supplement, George Orwell described a phenomenon that may be surfacing again in our own time and country...
...As Orwell emphasized, however, inhibitions on open discussion do not come exclusively from the government...
...indeed, that was their main job...
...Still, Asian Communism has received a distinctly favorable press of late, and for reasons similar to those that gave the USSR such good reviews in Orwell's time...
...According to the President, "the leaders of the media" are supposed to grasp "the necessity to stand by the President of the United States when he makes a terribly difficult, potentially unpopular decision...
...seeing what we have inflicted on that land, they would be less than human or honest if they did not try to bring the realities of our actions home...
...Both issues are spurious...
...As Orwell sought to tell us, "The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment...
...In 1944 Animal Farm was turned down by four British publishers, and Orwell plausibly attributed the rejections to the feeling among the intelligentsia of the period that its theme was unsuitable...
...The leaders of both South and North Vietnam, not to mention Spain and East Germany, would cry a heartfelt Amen to that principle...
...Something of the spirit that resisted criticizing the Soviet Union in 1945 is in evidence among American liberals in 1972 regarding China and North Vietnam...
...Journalists, too, have consciences...
...This set of mind bespeaks a reemergence on the American Left of a willingness, an eagerness to overlook or to pardon the "excesses" of any regime that proclaims itself at once nationalist and revolutionary...
...these are the last of a long line of justifications, and their exploitation by the Administration to pardon every military action has been revolting...
...Today, the most conspicuous opponents of the war never refer to South Vietnam without underscoring the despotic qualities of the Thieu regime...
...Had Mussolini only continued to call himself a Socialist, he would have gotten a much better reception in certain circles without altering his program by a jot...
...but when they look northward, they see mainly heroism...
...Journalists go to Peking and come back agog over acupuncture, full of wonder for the delicate manners of their hosts...
...They return from Hanoi with accounts of the people's courage and steadfastness, and little else...
...most professional journalists at home, we may be grateful, are likely to prove less responsive...
...Today, only Han Suyin's gee-whiz treatment of Mao matches that era's gushings over Uncle Joe Stalin...
...Thus, the Left now is taking a kind of comfort in the recognition that the peoples of underdeveloped countries have more fundamental matters on their minds than the chance to vote for one politician or another...
...An opening to the East has been long in coming...
...They were attempting their own manipulation of people's emotions...
...Attacks on Communist dictators, after all, smack of Cold War rhetoric...
...To begin with, a little positive thinking about China is seen as an antidote to the stream of villification that has poured from the Right since the Chinese Civil War, fitting Orwell's description of conservative condemnations of the Soviets: "manifestly dishonest, out of date and actuated by sordid motives...
...Perhaps with the end of fighting in Southeast Asia, liberal observers will be able to take cool, clear looks at North Vietnam and China...
...Good guests...
...Discussions of acupuncture are fascinating and not likely to offend anybody except the local anesthesiologists' union...
...To publish a work critical of the Soviet Union could only weaken the great anti-Hitler alliance and feed the prejudices of unregenerate Rightists????or so ran the argument...
...To be sure, current reportage is not as debased as that of the days when, as Orwell recalled, "the endless executions in the purges of 1936-38 were applauded by lifelong opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicize famines in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine...
...the situation remains up in the air, and discretion is the better part of diplomacy...
...even if Animal Farm did have its undeniable points, surely it was better, in the larger scheme, to leave those points unmade...
Vol. 55 • November 1972 • No. 23
