Speaking in Code
The next time somebody suggests that America's schoolchildren should be reading a daily newspaper to learn about the world-you know, newspapers as an educational resource, and so on-THE SCRAPBOOK recommends that you tell him about Lewis Diuguid. He's a columnist for the Kansas City Star.
And he's very angry about John McCain and Sarah Palin because, as he writes, "the 'socialist' label that [McCain and Palin] are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama has actually long and very ugly historical roots. J. Edgar Hoover . . . used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality."
No, he didn't. Of socialists, J. Edgar Hoover "used the term liberally" to describe American leftists of all races, creeds, sexes, and national origins-especially those, otherwise known as Communists, who exalted the Soviet Union at the expense of their own country.
"McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black," claims Diuguid. No, they haven't. "Socialist" was never a code word for "black" in America, since the overwhelming number of socialists in the United States were (and are) white folks. And when Lewis Diuguid writes that the word socialist "set whites apart from those deemed un-American and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare," he is not only incoherent but astonishingly ill-informed: To accuse someone of being a socialist is to criticize him for his political convictions, not their race.
Indeed, not only is Lewis Diuguid ignorant; he is dishonest as well. For when called upon to provide examples of African Americans J. Edgar Hoover accused of being socialists, he cites W.E.B. Dubois-who not only was a self-proclaimed socialist but a member of the Communist party as well!-and Paul Robeson, whom Diuguid describes this way: "A famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice."
That is a little like saying that Osama bin Laden is a famous writer, broadcaster, and political activist who is involved in national and international movements for self-improvement and religious justice. Take note, readers of Lewis Diuguid's Kansas City Star: Paul Robeson (1898-1976) was a famous singer, actor, and political activist who was also a dedicated, lifelong Stalinist who defended every Soviet outrage from mass starvation to the Moscow Trials to the invasion of Finland and the suppression of democratic revolts in East Berlin and Hungary.
It would have been an act of kindness-not to say an understatement-to refer to Paul Robeson as a "socialist."
Spinning Hearts and Minds
Say what you will about President Bush reading "The Pet Goat" to a group of youngsters. At least he did not take advantage of his captive audience to throw in a reference to annoying liberals like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The activist son of the late Democratic icon, on the other hand, recently gave a reading of his latest book on Civil War hero and former slave Robert Smalls.
According to the Washington Post, Kennedy asked the group of students if they knew what party Abraham Lincoln had belonged to. They correctly answered Republican. At which point the author could not resist to add, "You're right. That's when the Republicans used to be the good guys."
One of the chaperones was not amused, saying, "I'm tired of people making these blanket generalizations. . . . How do you know how a child processes that?" But RFK Jr. defended his remark "since those children struck me as exceptionally bright and capable of making their own political determination" and would not be swayed by the pronouncements of a Kennedy. The students, by the way, are in the fourth grade.
Sentences We Didn't Finish
"In the 1980s I envied my conservative friends who drew the curtain of the voting booth over an epiphany, whereas I groaned beneath my philosophical complexity when I voted for Reagan; and when I voted for Clinton a decade later, it was not without an exertion of casuistry about the distinction between supportable and admirable. I have not yet been asked for my vote by a candidate who represents the entirety of my convictions. I am not dismayed by this. Politics should not . . ." (Leon Wieseltier, New Republic, November 5).
Eat, Pray, Whine
Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, had a memorable essay in Time magazine the other week. In it, Gilbert goes on at length about how she can't get over the fact-we are not kidding about this-that her dad will vote for John McCain on November 4. Here's Gilbert:
So why can't I leave it alone? I've become obsessed with my father's vote, losing sleep over it, worrying about it so much that you'd swear this entire election hinged on one man's choice. . . . I struggle because I'm trying to reconcile this man's wisdom against his sometimes mystifying decisions. Good Lord, how much simpler it is to dismiss your political foes when you don't know them personally! Knowing my father as I do, I'm forced to acknowledge that his political views come to him from an honest and thoughtful place, as do all of his most cherished beliefs. My dad, after all, is not a sucker or a scoundrel or a zealot, but a deeply principled individual. Yet he's gone and raised himself a deeply principled daughter who happens to see the world very differently. And this frightens me.
The best part comes when Gilbert unintentionally likens herself to a guard at a Maoist reeducation camp: "I sometimes long to call my dad and beg him or scold him or force him to accept my worldview. It would certainly make me feel more comfortable if he surrendered."
Sure it would. Meanwhile, though: Why don't you leave the poor man alone?
You've Got to Be Kidding
Hard-hitting political analysis from the "preeminent intellectual newspaper in English":
"The problem was not Obama; the problem was that at the instant when Hillary Clinton at last conceded, the nature of the campaign changed. It was, I considered (perhaps under the influence of the kind smile and exhortatory squeeze on the arm bestowed on me by Jimmy Carter, president of my darkest adolescence, as he passed me in the doorway of a LoDo Mexican restaurant), like the change that might occur between the first and second volumes of some spectacular science fiction fantasy epic.
"At the end of the first volume, after bitter struggle, Obama had claimed the presumptive nomination. We Fremen had done the impossible, against Sardaukar and imperial shock troops alike. We had brought water to Arrakis. Now the gathered tribes of the Democratic Party-hacks, Teamsters, hat ladies, New Mexicans, residents of those states most nearly resembling Canada, Jews of South Florida, dreadlocks, crewcuts, elderlies and goths, a cowboy or two, sons and daughters of interned Japanese-Americans-had assembled on the plains of Denver to attempt to vanquish old Saruman McCain" (Michael Chabon, "Obama & the Conquest of Denver," the New York Review of Books, October 9, 2008).
Bank on It
The chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Sheila Bair, is a highly dedicated public servant who, in addition to recently saving the banking system, is also a published children's author. Her book, Rock, Brock, and the Savings Shock, illustrated by Barry Gott, came out in 2006, and-we are pleased to report-it is utterly charming. It tells the story of twins named Rock and Brock and the lesson in compound interest taught to them by their grandfather. "Rock was a nearly perfect guy," Bair writes, "but here's the thing: he loved to buy." Brock, however, "lived like a slob, but saved his money by the gob."
One day the twins' grandpa proposes a savings plan: "For ten straight weeks each Saturday," Gramps says, "I'll give you each one dollar's pay / to mow my lawn and wash my car. These simple chores will get you far / because I'll do a little trick: each buck you save, I'll match it quick!"
Gramps hands out the money, and the twins are off to the races. Brock saves his dollar, but "Rock's mind was stuck / on what he could buy with his crisp new buck." Rock splurges. Each week he spends his dollar on things like "a moose head for his wall," "green hair goo," "wax fangs tasting like peppermint," "broccoli-flavored chewing gum," and a "giant wind-up tsetse fly" (see above).
Brock, meanwhile, continues to save. After 10 weeks, Bair goes on, "Poor Rock was doomed. He had no cash; Brock's had ballooned! With matching dollars, at the end, Brock had five hundred twelve to spend!" He uses the money to buy gifts for his family and open a joint savings account with his brother. The moral of the story is clear. Thrift, and brotherhood, win in the end, while spending all one's money leads to no money at all, or worse. It's a lesson so simple that just about every American alive seems to have forgotten it.
Now all we need is for someone to send 535 copies of Rock, Brock, and the Savings Shock to all the Rocks of Capitol Hill.
Félicitations
Of special interest to THE SCRAPBOOK's Francophone readers: With great admiration we note the arrival (in French bookstores, pending an English translation) of our contributor Michel Gurfinkiel's powerful book on the Holocaust, Un devoir de mémoire. Drawing courageously on personal memories of the Shoah and summarizing reflections on how the war against the Jews has been discussed and remembered, Gurfinkiel reaches the conclusion that there is scarcely a greater imperative than to do the necessary "homework" ( devoir in French means that as well as "duty") to enable each generation to understand what happened.
A photograph of a smiling child, murdered at age nine, the older brother Michel never knew, stood on his tailor father's work-table for decades, as it now stands on the writer son's. This picture, at once intensely private and yet world-historical, inspired the book: a response to a thoughtful, but controversial, suggestion by President Nicolas Sarkozy on how to fit the Holocaust into the curriculum of French schools. Why not, suggested Sarkozy, have every sixth-grader "adopt" a lost French Jewish child and, in finding out the child's fate, learn history while developing a moral conscience?
In terse, exact prose and with muted passion, Gurfinkiel narrates the story of parents who survived deportation to the camps and years of hiding with the help of "righteous gentiles" in France. Finding murdered spouses and lost families-and each other-in the debris of their martyred community, they chose life, as commanded by Scripture, and began anew. More accurately: They continued, which is what their son enjoins his readers, Jews and Gentiles alike, to do.
Hu Dunnit
A tip of THE SCRAPBOOK's homburg to Chinese democracy activist Hu Jia, who was awarded the EU Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought last week. The 35-year-old Hu has championed the cause of human rights in China, paying particular attention to those Chinese suffering from HIV/AIDS. According to the European Parliament's citation, the Sakharov Prize is awarded to those "individuals or organizations who have made an important contribution to the fight for human rights or democracy." Past recipients include Nelson Mandela and Aung Sang Suu Kyi.
Hu was unable to accept the award, of course. He remains imprisoned in Beijing, serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence for publicly criticizing the ruling Chinese Communist party.