The Good Dr. K; Gunships; The Myth of Sport; The Anti-Gore

The Myth of Sport I like to think that I deplore baseball in a significant and illuminating way. But I find that most baseball haters are deplorable too. They tend to be skeptical of the masculine arts tout court. As with doctrinaire antiwar activists, their over-reasoned skeins of nitpickisms betray hysteria and alienation, and in the end convert nobody. Of course it's preposterous that the World Series contests against no other national team (who cares about Canada) yet carries the self-aggrandizing label. Absolutely it's a game largely determined by umpire decisions. The identical pitch might be called strike or ball by the same umpire in the same inning. If that's a sport then the umpires are players. Sure, the viscosity and volume of unwanted dugout spittle would do an angry llama proud.

These are reasons we have all heard before. Others have whined about the players' avarice, about drugs, gambling and the altogether unchurch-like atmosphere of the modern game. Yet the Fox camera crews in game three picked out any number of baseball mums manifestly praying for a Mets deliverance. So suburban pieties still pervade the overall mood.

No, the game's shortcomings go deeper into the originating flaws of the Northern culture?north of the Mason-Dixon, that is. Most of humankind's national sports evolved out of, indeed substituted for, warrior practices dating back to the Middle Ages. In Central Asia they still gallop around on horseback yanking a dead sheep from each other. The U.S. differs from virtually every other earthly nation in not possessing a Medieval memory, and the sports reflect that. Codes of chivalry, of knightly grace, the immemorial splendor of divergent male-female rituals, blow rootlessly away from the macadamized soil of urban American consciousness.

If this sounds like pompous balloon noise to you, it doesn't on either side of the oceans. Or down South.

Baseball's originating myths are Northern, urban and industrial. The nearest game to it in the world would be cricket. God knows that cricket has fallen from its Elysian perch in recent years, with worldwide gambling and mafia scandals from the Indian subcontinent to South Africa. Still, when I played as a boy in the 1970s, we all dressed in white and lounged about in Georgian pavilions beside perfectly tended fields. Women dressed elegantly just to come and watch. Chivalry and a refulgent summer light informed every move and gesture on and off the pitch. The very strokes we played in hitting the ball revealed the timbre of one's integrity.

Consider how the Japanese conduct themselves on horseback archery tournaments before the emperor. Or, as Taki will tell you, how amateur and early professional tennis players behaved, or misbehaved, on the circuit. Nobody required puritan private practices. But misbehavior didn't mean bad behavior a la McEnroe, or squalid addictions wedded to professional pressures a la any number of vilified contemporary sportsmen. You could go home and dress like Queen Victoria for all anyone cared. The only precondition was grand style and noble manners, the continued fight, as the novelist J.G. Ballard said about something, against "the suburbanization of the soul."

Baseball offers dire temptations to urban intellectuals. They tend to treat the game and their love of it as proof of regular-guy status, a man-of-the-people who happens to write for The New Yorker. Aristophobia in another guise. Trouble is, these same proselytizers invariably deplore the broader social conditions prevailing at the time of baseball's "golden age." There's a great deal of nasodilation about "innocence" and "simplicity," seemingly utterly dissociated from the socially uniform, pre-diversity America they otherwise deplore. There's hypocrisy in there somewhere, always the unquiet secret in the liberal soul, to misquote D.H. Lawrence.

Ultimately, the nostalgia of baseball intellectuals points to a place off the historical map, a place that didn't exist. They'd like to enlist us in celebration of their formative myths. So we have to love the culture of the industrial urban North, a zone that Kafka likened to hell in Amerika, of the proletariat, of tenement dreams, of unacknowledged black ghettoes, of Joe DiMaggio and his benign Mafia don friends who weren't benign at all. But the intellectuals won't betray to us or even to themselves the secret that the precious metal in all that alloy came from elsewhere.

The gentlemanly code instinctively practiced by the Mickey Mantles and others derived not from industrial urban culture but was built into values inherited from before and beyond, and imposed by elites who imported and copied the codes. All that is gone. Now we have to get endorphin-sogged about uniforms that look like prison costumes, athletes who would lose in the Special Olympics, stadium food to fatten and opiate the masses, superstars with gangland posses and old-time industrial labor relations between union and owners. That's the national sport? Bring back archery. It'll give us better memories.

 

Charles Glass The London Desk Gunships It's reassuring, on returning from months on the road, to come back and see Britain maintaining a role in world affairs. This isle may be a spent empire and Washington lapdog, but it can growl a bit when it wants. Where does it cast its leonine gaze this month? The Middle East. Although I've been back only 24 hours, my informants tell me that this country, which ruled Palestine from 1918 to 1948, is not standing by while Israelis and Palestinians are doing battle. Britain is already a role model. Israel, hanging gamely onto a hodgepodge of occupied territories longer than Britain governed the Palestine Mandate, is using methods the British used to crush the Arab Revolt between 1936 and 1939: demolition of houses, mass arrests, beatings, propaganda and, of course, shooting people. These days, America may take the headlines, with President Bill Clinton knocking the heads of Israelis and Palestinians who care less about his Nobel Peace Prize prospects than he does and promising to rush this year's $1.98 billion Israel aid package through Congress. But don't forget little Britain's contribution to the American-led "peace process."

Britain's gift comes in the form of spare parts to keep Israel's combat helicopters airborne. Lord knows how many choppers angry Palestinian kids have dented with their stones and slingshots. The pilots need not worry, because the extra helicopter blades, rotors and ammo are in the supply pipeline. We have all seen the television pictures of Israeli helicopter gunships doing what gunships do to Palestinian villages, but few of us are aware that Britain manufactures American Apache helicopters under license and sells extra parts to the Israelis. The 1999 export licenses that New Labor granted to British firms to sell Israel "components for combat helicopters" and other military technological wizardry are in force today. Just when they are really needed.

Amnesty International, once again the spoiler at the Anglo-American feast, has asked Britain to stop supplying helicopter parts that are used for crowd control. Kate Allen of British Amnesty was quoted in an Amnesty press release: "The UK government must respond to wide public concern at the use of attack helicopters by the Israeli security forces to commit human rights violations during the present intifada. The only safe course for our government is to suspend immediately licenses for export of any equipment from this country used to keep Israeli attack helicopters in the air." Hey, wait a minute. Stop the spares? What about stopping the supply of stones to the Palestinians?

A week after the Palestinian unrest began, the U.S. trumped Britain's spare parts supply with an agreement to sell Israel 35 Blackhawk helicopters, a deal that the Israeli daily Haaretz called "the largest purchase of military helicopters by the Israeli air force in a decade." An Amnesty statement listed some of the uses of modern helicopters: "On 12 October 2000, Israel Air Force (IAF) helicopter gunships fired anti-tank missiles on Palestinian facilities, including a radio station, in Ramallah/al-Bireh and other towns in the West Bank and Gaza City and Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. Thirty people were reportedly injured in these attacks. Later the same day, IAF helicopter gunships attacked a Palestinian facility in Jericho in the West Bank. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), this came in response to an arson attack on a synagogue located on the edge of Jericho. The IDF also stated that IAF attack helicopters opened fire in the Nablus area, Salfit, Hara al-Shaykh and Abu Sneineh. There are also reports that helicopter gunships opened fire in Jenin."

After 110 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli fire, the Palestinian former negotiator Hanan Ashrawi wrote in Beirut's Daily Star, "Israeli officials claim that they had exercised 'restraint.' Of course, they can do worse. They can commit genocide or complete the ethnic cleansing begun in 1948."

Israel is unlikely to do either. Most Israelis and much of the world would not accept mass murder or mass expulsions of Palestinians, but the Palestinians are afraid nonetheless. They have already lost more land to Israeli West Bank settlements since the 1993 Oslo accords than they did in the decade before, and they are understandably wondering how they can survive without land and without jobs when Israel closes its borders.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, a minister in the Foreign Office has urged the Palestinians to accept the Oslo Accords and the offers, whatever they may be, made recently at Camp David by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Otherwise, New Labor's Peter Hain warns, they may be offered less next time. So, get on with it, Britain. Send those helicopter spares and let the Palestinians know what you told them back in 1936, when you had real power: Do what you are told, because resistance is futile. If rebellion is futile, what is everyone worried about? And what are those helicopters doing up there?

 

Taki LE MAÎTRE The Good Dr. K I was sad to hear about Henry Kissinger's heart attack. I attended the same dinner two weeks ago and he seemed in fine form. We sailed around Manhattan while celebrating National Review's 45th anniversary, a very fine evening among some very fine people, and Dr. K took some time off to chat with the poor little Greek boy. He was amused about a piece I recently wrote in the London Spectator that began as follows: "Henry Kissinger gets on my nerves." The reason he got on my nerves was because of an obituary he wrote about my friend John Aspinall. Kissinger knew Aspinall only about three years, but in a brief piece in the Daily Telegraph caught the essence of the man far, far better than I?a friend of more than 40 years?did in a very long opus.

Dr. K was very amused because a staffer saw my piece, and without reading the rest, forwarded it to him, underlining the Kissinger gets on my nerves part. "Yet one more whiner..." wrote the staffer to the good doctor. "If he had read the piece he probably would not have sent it," quipped Kissinger.

Two nights after that I caught him on Charlie Rose, and he was brilliant. Kissinger is probably the only man on Earth who could conduct peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians and be trusted by both sides. In fact, the next president of the United States should do just that: appoint Kissinger permanent negotiator between the two sides, give him carte blanche and sit back, relax and watch a master at work.

Mind you, I don't know if Kissinger would accept, his health being what it is. But as one who sympathizes with the Palestinian cause, I cannot think of anyone who has been more fairminded than HK toward both sides. In fact, he makes the present bunch of amateurs look like the proverbial gang that couldn't shoot straight. Kissinger is not a cheerleader, like Clinton, desperate as he was during the Camp David negotiations to win the Nobel Prize, and hurrying everyone along. Knowing Clinton's style, he most likely lied to both Barak and Arafat, the trouble being that both sides knew he was lying. Albright is simply out of her depth, trying to make a name for herself by preening and scowling, depending on the occasion.

No, the good doctor knows the world, and realpolitik is his baby. He knows history the way, say, Puff Daddy knows nightclubs. "Total Israeli control of Jerusalem is not feasible," he said. These are the words of a wise man. Total Israeli control of Jerusalem will never be feasible. So why argue? The point is to make peace, not spin the situation, or use soundbites. Kissinger is not a politician on the make, or a civil servant out to make a name for himself. He called the Arab character poetic. To some it might sound obscene, but it's not. The Arabs are poetic, in the same manner the Israelis are literal.

Kissinger called for "a lower key" in the horse trading, which I find le mot juste. He understands Islam's humiliation when we go about trumpeting globalization, and he openly admits that the Israelis and Palestinians cannot live together under the current circumstances. In short, Kissinger understands that the Israelis need security, whereas the Arabs need dignity. This is most important, and something that has not crossed the minds of the clowns running the show over here. When Kissinger was running the show, he did not have the luck to deal with someone like Barak. Also, the Arabs back then knew they could get nothing like what's on offer today.

What was so uplifting about Kissinger on Charlie Rose was watching a Jew staying away from the jingoism anyone in public life in New York sees as a sine qua non?if they are to continue to enjoy a public life. For example, Jack Newfield writing in the Post about his anger over the Arab sneak attack?on Yom Kippur?in 1973. Sneak attack? What about Israel's sneak attack in 1967? One that wiped out the Egyptian air force on the ground and made Israel five times its size over six days. Are the Arabs supposed to give warning when the Israelis did not? Come off it, Jack. Wars in that part of the world are not Hollywood morality tales, but hardball, with no warnings given or asked.

Then we have the Draft Dodger calling the two commandos who drove the suicide bomb into the Cole cowards. Since when are people willing to die for their cause, no matter how wrong, considered cowards? To someone like Clinton, an unprincipled twat and liar, no cause is worth dying for, so no wonder he calls the two commandos cowards. What the Holy Land needs is more Kissingers and fewer Clintons, but pigs will fly before that happens.

What is so worrying is that Israel does not have time on its side. Islam does. It is often portrayed over here as an unbending and intolerant religion, personified by the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwas against America. But Islam is a very wise religion, a tolerant one, one that was copied by Aquinas (1225-1274) when he produced an extraordinary synthesis that nabbed all that was original and dynamic in Islamic thought, above all the debt of its philosophers to Aristotle. Islam asks the faithful to believe what most people believe already?namely, that morality is not a human construct.

Many young Palestinians whose parents were Christian are converting back to Islam, seeing it as the only dynamic and unified creed that defines them as Arabs. See what Kissinger meant by Arabs needing dignity? What the West needs is someone who understands both religion and geopolitics. That man is Kissinger, and I wish him a speedy recovery.

 

George Szamuely The Bunker The Anti-Gore It was just a matter of time before The New Republic delivered Ralph Nader the ultimate insult. He is?and we might have expected this?an anti-Semite, according to an editorial in last week's issue, appallingly scurrilous even by the magazine's abysmal standards. Nader in 1960 wrote an article for American Mercury. Apparently, this now-defunct magazine had also published anti-Semitic pieces. Given Nader's Lebanese parentage, not to mention his recent suggestion that the United States had been less than evenhanded in the Middle East ("In this conflict you cannot take sides and be an honest broker. The U.S. is taking sides"), and little more needs to be said about him. As they see the White House slowly slipping from their grasp, desperation seems to have taken hold of the toadies and flacks of the Clinton era, so they launch hysterical vituperations against Nader. Nader is "stealing" votes that rightfully belong to Al Gore. According to The New York Times, Nader's "willful prankishness" is a "disservice to the electorate," which must be denied the right to vote for whomever it wants. "He calls his wrecking-ball candidacy a matter of principle, but it looks from here like ego run amok."

Really? It is hard to think of two candidates who agree on as little as Gore and Nader. Al Gore's entire political career has been dedicated to the pursuit of repression at home and the use of force abroad. The Al Gore that Nader supporters are being instructed by Democratic Party heavyweights?Gloria Steinem, Jesse Jackson, Rob Reiner, Martin Sheen?to vote for is someone who favors the "Three Strikes You're Out" law. Gore also supports extending the death penalty to "drug kingpins, murderers of federal law enforcement officers, and nearly 60 additional kinds of violent felons." Gore would also want to pass legislation requiring criminal defendants "in drug-related crimes who are awaiting trial [to] get off drugs to stay out of jail." In other words, Gore is in favor of imprisonment before trial.

Gore has also urged a crackdown on juvenile crime. He wants to use the FBI "to break up violent teen gangs." He is in favor of laws to ensure that convicted violent juveniles are banned from owning guns for life. Gore also wants to pour more federal money into the nation's courts. He wants to continue Clinton's COPS initiative that ostensibly sought to fund 100,000 new cops nationwide. But he wants an additional 50,000. And as if that were not enough, he wants to fund the hiring of an additional 10,000 prosecutors. Gore also proposes tougher penalties for those who commit crimes in front of children. "If you commit violent crime in front of a child, you should pay an even higher price for it, more time in jail, because you have traumatized a child, because you have started a cycle of violence." Gore also wants to enact federal legislation establishing "gang-free zones." There would be curfews on specific gang members, a ban on gang-related clothing and the legal authority to break up gangs once and for all.

Gore is a fervent advocate of "hate-crimes" legislation. Gore has also proposed a Crime Victims' Bill of Rights, which includes a constitutional amendment guaranteeing such rights for crime victims as being heard in the sentencing process or being notified of a perpetrator's release. In another piece of Gore-proposed legislation, crime victims would also have the right to take time off work to attend legal proceedings.

Gore is not on record as having voiced any objections to such Clinton administration violations of civil liberties as the federal wiretapping law. Nor has Gore spoken out against the FBI's Carnivore Internet snooping system.

Al Gore loudly proclaims his opposition to racial profiling. Yet he is not averse to certain kinds of racial profiling. In 1997, as head of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, he recommended heightened scrutiny of airline passengers. The commission advocated the establishment of a nationwide computer profiling system to keep personal data on all passengers. Airlines, according to Wired, would thus be able "to compare travelers' personal data to profiles of likely terrorists." Not surprisingly, Arab-Americans have been the most vociferous in denouncing this policy, since they have been its most frequent victims.

The hero of Hollywood boasts that he intends to spend $50 billion more on defense over the next 10 years than George W. Bush. He intends to go ahead and build a national missile defense system?something, the Russians insist, that violates the 1972 ABM Treaty. Gore plans to continue maintaining sanctions on Iraq irrespective of the suffering it has caused for 10 years.

Gore is proud of having championed air strikes against the Serbs; of bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan; and of having, in December 1998, urged Clinton not to let up in his bombing of Iraq. Gore wants to expand NATO and to station U.S. troops in the Balkans indefinitely. His campaign website states that he "has fought tirelessly to strengthen Israel's defense capabilities, ensure Israel's qualitative military edge? and promote a robust and constant U.S. role in the peace process." Evidently he sees no contradiction between the two policies. Moreover, Al Gore "has long supported strengthening Israel's deterrent capability and increasing U.S.-Israel defense cooperation, including the Arrow missile defense program and the Tactical High-Energy Laser." The term "deterrent" is unambiguous?it refers to nuclear weapons.

Nader probably has more in common with George W. Bush than he does with Al Gore.