A Trudeaumania Postscript

Lionel Chetwynd's description last week ("Obama of the North," March 3) of the damage done to Canada by its charismatic prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1919-2000)--and of the disconcerting resemblance between the Trudeaumania of the late 1960s and today's Obamamania--jolted THE SCRAPBOOK's memory.

In the early summer of 1968, when the Liberal Trudeau defeated his Progressive Conservative opponent Robert Stanfield, American television news, ever-sensitive to style over substance, presented the Canadian election to U.S. viewers as a contest between the older, considerably more experienced and dignified--and, of course, duller--Stanfield and the younger, more stylishly telegenic Trudeau.

One scene from the evening news earned an indelible entry in THE SCRAPBOOK's mental archives: a swim-suited Trudeau bouncing on a diving board and comically flopping into a pool, to the delighted squeals of supporters, followed by a quick, content-free interview. Asked to summarize his campaign for prime minister, Trudeau, still dripping from his splash in the pool, explained that his slogan would be "HIP"--that is, "Honesty in Politics"--followed by a knowing smirk.

It has been almost exactly 40 years since that exchange took place, but THE SCRAPBOOK still shudders at the horror of the HIP Canadian prime minister hypnotizing an American TV reporter by showing off like a HIP 12-year-old boy at poolside. And as Chetwynd explained last week, the subsequent 15 HIP years of Trudeaumania were to prove disastrous for Canada and Canada's place in the world, as well as for Canada's southern neighbor.

Robert Stanfield, by the way, who was known popularly as Honest Bob, survived Trudeau by a few years, and is today remembered as "the greatest prime minister Canada never had."

Pop Quiz

Have a look at the picture here. Do you think it is (1) part of the latest missive from one of THE SCRAPBOOK's prison-inmate correspondents, further elucidating his theory on the tentacular reach of the Roths-childs into the sanctum sanctorum of the McCain campaign; (2) the remains of the classified documents from the National Archives that Sandy "Burglar" Berger stuffed into his ample trousers, took home, and later "cut into small pieces," in the words of federal investigators; or (3) the artistic stylings of Matt Gonzalez, former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Green party candidate for mayor of San Francisco in 2003, and now Ralph Nader's running-mate.

Here's a hint: THE SCRAPBOOK can barely contain its excitement over the fifth Ralph Nader presidential campaign (if he lives to 90, he can still catch up to Harold Stassen's nine). Introducing his running mate last week, Nader said of Gonzalez: "He is a beautiful writer, he's an artist, he's a man for all seasons, and he's got a great political future." That sent us to Google, where we found 25 collages that the 42-year-old politician had displayed at the Lincart gallery in San Francisco (lincart.com/artists/album03). The one shown here, which is more than representative of his -oeuvre, is titled "Kitchens & Theatres." We're still making inquiries on the Gonzalez literary front, but at this point, we're not taking Ralph Nader's word for anything. In fact, we can't say we have high hopes for either the beautiful writing or the great political future.

Cue Violins for Ruby Dee

Too bad Ruby Dee didn't win an Oscar for her supporting role in American Gangster. We were really looking forward to the variety of euphemisms the press would come up with to explain away the repellent politics of the aging Stalinist battleaxe. Newsweek, in promoting her cause, artfully referred to how "she and her husband of 57 years, the late Ossie Davis, never accepted the status quo, which is why they are revered as activists as much as thespians."

Still on our bookshelves, filed under "Red-baiting, Primary Sources," is the invaluable 1967 volume A Symposium on the USSR: The First Fifty Years, published by the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. The first essay is headlined, no joke, "To the USSR with Love on Its Fiftieth Birthday." Ossie Davis's contribution--"A Black Man's Salute"--comes next. "It is natural," he wrote, "that today black men should salute that country and that people who fifty years ago turned their backs on the past and struck out boldly to build a wholly different kind of society. Just as it is natural for us to find in the example of the Russian people enduring solace for all of our struggles ahead." You read that right. The "status quo" Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis never accepted was one that resisted the worldwide triumph of the Bolshevik revolution. Activists, indeed.

Feminism and the English Language

Responding to David Gelernter's article in last week's issue, "Feminism and the English Language," SCRAPBOOK pal and WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor Joseph Bottum writes in defense of humankind​--the word, that is, not all of humanity: David Gelernter's quixotic tilt at the abuse of our poor language is more than welcome. He's surely right that we must suffer through violation after violation of natural linguistic development, most of them the result of feminist ukases. (Though words like "synergistically" and "virtually" seem to walk the streets on their own motion, not needing feminist approval to lie down with anyone who has the cash.) Many of Gelernter's examples are telling​--and yet, one wants to say a kind word for his poor, disfavored example of "humankind." The word has a slightly different connotative flavor from "mankind," and with its Cretic meter, bam-bah-bam, "humankind" spares English poets the difficult spondaic bam-bam that makes "mankind" such a mouthful. That is probably why T. S. Eliot--no feminist, he--took to it in "Burnt Norton": Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind / Cannot bear very much reality.

Bottum, the editor of First Things, will be delivering a lecture on March 17 at Georgetown University, "Living with the Dead: Why Cities Need Cemeteries and Nations Need Memorials." Respondents include Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and Roger Kimball, editor of the New Criterion. Full details can be found at the website of the Tocqueville Forum, government.georgetown.edu/​tocquevilleforum. The SCRAPBOOK-reading portion of humankind will want to mark their calendars.