PARODY
THE NATION “Increasingly Irrelevant for Over 130 Years” MEMO From: Victor Navasky To: Katrina vanden Heuvel Re: Next Year’s Cruise Katrina, As we’ve discussed, the Sidney Blumenthal vs....
...It transpires that when Trotsky split with Lenin, the Bolsheviks reorganized their spring Volga River cruise, “Proletarian Paradise ’23,” by having the Leninists sleep in the staterooms and the Trotskyites sleep in the library...
...The Power Cruise (Blumenthal) James Carville “People Who Disagree With Me Suck” Alexander Cockburn “British Journalistic Ethics” Susan Faludi “Feminism...
...The Blumenthal cruise will be for leftists willing to betray their left-wing principles in order to be close to power...
...Those who would sell their souls for power will go with Sidney...
...The Hitchens cruise will be for those willing to betray their friends for the sake of intellectual vanity and attention...
...It turns out that our contributors divide pretty easily into these two groups...
...This means we will have to divide up our speakers...
...Christopher Hitchens feud has wrecked our plans for the Nation magazine’s annual cruise...
...Blumenthal insisted they share any of the suite’s dry-cleaning bills, and as you know Hitchens is ideologically opposed to laundry...
...They even had a badminton tournament, which ironically enough was ultimately won by the Mensheviks...
...Those who would sell their souls for fame will go with Chris...
...On the other hand, when the Lovestonites split with the Schachtmanites, they organized two separate cruises, one of which crossed the Bering Straits from right to left, and the other from left to right, each cursing the other as they passed...
...Jimmy Carter’s efforts to persuade the two to make up and share a stateroom have broken down...
...Accordingly, I have gone back to research how our foremothers and forefathers in the workers’ movement handled past feuds in making their leisure/fund-raising plans...
...Never Mind” Toni Morrison “Bob Barr is White” The Fame Cruise (Hitchens) Molly Ivins “The Wit and Wisdom of Florence King” Gore Vidal “Hitchens’s Jewish Ancestry” Michael Moore “Let’s Talk About Me” Alec Baldwin “De Profundis...
...So here is my suggested speakers’ list for each cruise, with some possible topics...
...Given the bad blood involved, and in order to maximize our profits, I have decided the Nation will sponsor two cruises this year, one for the Blumenthalians and the other for the Hitchensians...
Vol. 4 • February 1999 • No. 22
