The K.F. Stone Weekly

A Memo To The Troops

TO: Democratic Candidates Across the U.S.A.

FROM: Your Humble Blogger

RE: Victory in 2006 and 2008

   With midterm elections just around the corner and the 2008 Presidential contest already looming on the horizon, it is high time to discuss in dead earnest, what we must do [and not do] if we are to reverse the trend of the past several elections.  It is an axiom of American politics that every campaign, every election is called "the most crucial" in our history, or "a fight for the soul of this great nation."  And while such verbal puffery can indeed sound dramatic, it often swallows up and obfuscates the real, compelling issues that confront us. Having said that, I do believe that the elections of 2006 and 2008 are about as critical as any we've had in the past three generations. 

   I liken the upcoming midterm and presidential election cycles to those of 1930 and '32, when American voters faced down a Republican Congress and White House, and sent them packing into the political gloaming.  After a decade of feel-good, muted Republican politics -- which led to economic disaster and political anomie -- American voters, to use the old saw, "threw the rascals out."  Voters back then understood to the very core of their collective being that the Republican Congress and Republican White House were frightfully out of touch with the lives, needs and aspirations of the common clay, and thus sent them packing.  It wasn't until after World War II that the GOP got its act back together -- and that largely due to the fear they instilled by waving the bloody shirt of the Communist Conspiracy. 

   It is obvious that once again Republicans are in trouble.  Witness the number of GOP incumbents who are running away from the Bush White House.  Witness the number of entrenched officeholders who are banking that issues like abortion, gay marriage, prayer, immigration, and stem-cell research will divert attention away from far more pressing issues like the war in Iraq, our unfathomable national debt, and the strangle-hold that oil has on our national economy and aspirations.  Witness the ratcheting up of verbal vitriol: within the past several days Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld likened those who question our war in Iraq with Nazi appeasers of an earlier generation.  What unmitigated chutzpah! 

   If Democrats are to take back Congress in 2006 and recapture the White House in 2008, certain fundamental "rules of the political road" will have to be observed:

1. Keep the message positive: Already, we are seeing Democratic candidates slinging buckets of political mud on each other.  While most campaign gurus and consultants stress going negative, the American voting public actually yearns to hear that which is both uplifting and positive.  Negativity breeds resentment, and resentment keeps people away from the polls.  When candidates continually attack one another for a vote they cast twelve years ago, or for what they did or said in college, it leaves voters with the feeling that politicians are venal, shallow and willing to do or say anything in order to get elected.  The party of Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, Roosevelt and Clinton would do well to take a page from the party of Harding, Coolidge, Nixon and Bush: thou shalt not speak negatively about another member of thine own party."
2. Hold Republican Feet to the Fire: Here is another page that can be taken out of the Republican playbook.  Democrats would be wise to ask pointed questions such as: Do you feel safer today than you did five years ago?  Are you satisfied that the massive tax cuts which the Republican Congress and Republican White House have bestowed upon the very, very wealthy are good for you, your family or our economy?  Do you think that the Republican response to Hurricane Katrina shows either compassion or political will?  Are you satisfied with the price of gas, the billions upon billions we are spending in Iraq, or the White House's response to global warming?
3. Issue a National Challenge: It seems to me that among the many, many things that have been missing from the American political scene these past many years, the issue of a "national challenge" is most glaring and obvious.  Hearkening back to John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you . . ." Democrats would do well to solidify a national message that includes an overarching challenge and a set of national goals.  Remember, Kennedy staked us to landing a man on the moon within a decade, created the Peace Corps, encouraged people to take 50-mile hikes and otherwise raised the level of enthusiasm.  For far too long, our political leaders have asked for nothing -- save our votes and our acquiescence.  I believe that one national challenge that would strike a wonderfully resounding chord is energy independence.  While President Bush will publicly state that America is "addicted to oil" at the drop of a hat, neither he, his administration nor his toadying Congress will do thing one about it.  Democrats can fill this alarming void by waging "the moral equivalent of war" on our energy dependence.  We can propose a massive technical/intellectual/scientific assault on the problem which will create new avenues of power.  From wind and geothermal to solar and -- dare we even dream? -- anti-matter, this is an issue that can easily affect everything from conflicts in the Middle East to global warming and the creation of jobs.
4. Stay on Message: Assuming that Democrats can agree upon a cogent, unified message, they must stay on point, and not be pulled hither, thither and yon by petty internecine squabbles or the base venality of political greed.
5. Start Catering to the Best, not the Worst in the American Electorate: For the past generation, Republicans have been treating the American voting public as if they were vassals of a great feudal lord.  They have run their campaigns -- and administrations -- as private fiefdoms and rarely -- if ever -- been honest with the American people.  And although we are certainly not all Rhodes Scholars or members of Mensa, it doesn't take all that much to understand that we can do one heck of a lot better . . . if we all work together.

   Let the races begin.

   And to the victors go not so much the spoils of war, but the challenges of the future . . .

The West Wing

   Those  logging on to this Blog will no doubt discover that something new has been added, thanks to the wizardry and thoughtfulness of Art ["The Dovster"]  Galietti, my good friend and personal manager: the musical theme from The West Wing.  Art and I share many passions: Torah study, Lavender Earl Grey Tea, box seats at Marlin's games, and The West Wing, to name but four.  For The Dovster and me, The West Wing  has been an unmitigated joy these past seven seasons.  Together, we have watched every one of its 151 episodes, marveled at the show's realism, and wondered why the White House isn't populated with such intelligent, articulate and sagacious folks as President Josiah Bartlet [Martin Sheen], Chief of Staff Leo McGary [the late John Spencer] or Communications Director Toby Ziegler [Richard Schiff].  Over the past seven seasons, Wednesday night has meant sharing the better portion of an hour with the people we only wish could be leading this great nation. 

   But alas, all good things must come to an end; after 7 years, and 151 episodes involving more than 1,575 actors and actresses, The West Wing has gone the way of Mash, Lou Grant, and The Paper Chase.  And despite the fact that the Bartlet Administration no longer occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it has nonetheless been honored with no less than four Emmy nominations: Best Actor [Martin Sheen], Best Actress [Allison Janney] Best Supporting Actor [Alan Alda] and Best Dramatic series.   

   What made The West Wing so special?  Well, for one, it never pandered to its audience.  The level of scripting, the flow of dialogue was, from first episode to last, intelligent, articulate and insightful.  None of the characters was stereotypic; rather, each was drawn from whole cloth -- a living, breathing human being filled with abilities and foibles, energy and angst.  And even if the geography was a bit skewed [lots of those folks actually work in the Old Executive Office Building, not the West Wing], the pace and energy were right on the mark.

    During The West Wing's long run, members of the conservative punditocracy accused the show of having a decidedly liberal [read: Clintonian] bias.  Truth to tell, The West Wing did portray a liberal Democratic administration.  Nonetheless, it never stooped to making Republicans look like robotic Neanderthals, nor shied away from the real give-and-take of what used to be called bipartisanship.  The West Wing gave America -- and indeed the world -- a glimpse of what people of high ideals, personal honor, moral integrity and human weakness can accomplish if only they realize that politics, in the words of Von Bismarck, is "the art of the possible." 

   True, the people gracing the White House in The West Wing, might well have descended from Olympus or Sinai.  Consider that President Bartlet was a Rhodes Scholar with a PhD in economics, his wife a still-practicing M.D. and his staff filled with high-minded idealists for whom tomorrow was vastly more important than today.  Each Wednesday night we saw a president who, despite being extremely decisive, was both capable and anxious to listen to the opinions and guidance of others.  Each episode involved the staff in crises both great and small, giving viewers a taste of all the ingredients that go into making up response and policy.  The writers managed to navigate deftly between the Sylla of partisan victory and the Charybdis of public weal -- something that appears to woefully lacking in the real West Wing.

    The West Wing first aired in 1999, toward the end of the Clinton/Gore years.  I found myself wishing during that first season that disagreements between Congress and the White House could be handled as adroitly in real life as they were on television.  Once the Bush/Cheney Administration took up occupancy in the real West Wing, I found myself wishing that we could once again have a president who was literate, articulate and engaged -- like Bartlet or Clinton.  Over the past year or so, the American public is beginning to catch on to the fact that George W. Bush is, regrettably, a lightweight; a president whose gaffs are embarrassing, whose policies are panderous, and whose vision is limited to that which will be best for his cronies, the so-called "haves and have-mores."

   With a few notable exceptions, American politics no longer attracts the best and brightest.  Far too often, we are saddled with men and women who get elected because they can afford to run . . . or at least know people who can make it affordable for them to run.  It now takes better than 4 years to win the presidency; four years of travel, speaking, fund-raising and trying to be all things to all people.  I sometimes wonder if all the candidates currently criss-crossing the country gathering up chits and I.O.Us. ever give thought to what will happen the day after the election.  Its a little reminiscent of the 1972 movie The Candidate, in which handsome, charismatic Bill McKay [played by  handsome, charismatic Robert Redford] spends 107 minutes running for the United States Senate.  The movie goes through the making, nurturing and growth of the candidate in very realistic detail.  Then, in the final two minutes of the film, McKay wins.  His campaign handlers burst into his hotel room and inform him that he is now Senator-elect.  In the movie's final, most telling take, Redford looks squarely into the camera, blinks and says, "Oh God . . . what do I do now?"  I wonder how far from reality Redford's comment truly is.

   I know that the Dovster and I are going to miss our Wednesday nights with the men and women of The West Wing.  Fortunately, that's why G-d invented DVDs; we can relive the excitement over and over again.  For all its intelligence, wit, charm and hopefulness, it will no doubt earn a spot in the Television Hall of Fame.

   True to its message, the last scene of the last episode ended on a note of hope.  Abby Bartlet, the First Lady, is sitting with her husband in their bedroom at the White House.

   "What are you thinking about?" Mrs. Dr. Bartlet asks.  President Bartlet smiles, looks at his wife and says,

   "Tomorrow."

    

"Qui Me Amat, Amat Et Canem Meam"

   Way back in the summer of 1969, I went up to Capitol Hill, where I had landed a job on the staff of a young United States Senator.  Upon my arrival, I was amazed to learn that the senator [who was barely 37 at the time], was the second-oldest person on staff.  Upon reflection, that struck me as being just fine; remember, these were the days when "don't trust anyone over the age of thirty" was all the vogue among the younger set.  As a staff of still wet-behind-the-ears political tyros, we were full of energy and ideas, not to mention full of ourselves and just plain full of it.

    Back in those days, the senate itself was full of historic giants such as J. William Fulbright, Everett McKinley Dirksen, Mike Mansfield, and Jacob Javits, not to mention Sam Ervin, Claiborne Pell, and Albert Gore, Sr. It  was also the home to such historic political mossbacks as John McClellan, Richard Russell, Allen Ellender, and John Stennis.  To say that I -- already an American political history  fanatic -- was in hog heaven, would be putting it mildly.

   During the time the senate was considering the nomination of Federal Appeals Court Judge G. Harold Carswell to the United States Supreme Court, one senator -- Nebraska's Roman Hruska -- made one of the bonehead statements of all time.  With Carswell being pilloried daily in the press for being, at best, a mediocre judge, Hruska decided to rise to the defense of not only the nominee, but of mediocre people everywhere: "So what if he is mediocre?" Hruska asked.  "There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises, Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there."

   When we, the young upstarts of Capitol Hill learned of Hruska's comment, we had a field day, declaring him to be an ogre, a jerk and an intellectual Lilliputian.  While we were rapt up in our put-down session, our boss, the young senator happened back into our office "bullpen" -- that's where the coffeepot and ashtrays were.  After listening to our jibes for a couple of moments, the senator chimed in, "That will be enough!  Listen up boys and girls: just because you don't agree with a man's politics doesn't give you the right to denigrate him as a human being.  Senator Hruska definitely made a stupid comment, for which he will no doubt pay.  Senator Hruska and I are on the opposite side of most issues.  Nonetheless, he's a very nice man.  Hate his politics if you will, but respect the man."  The senator then turned and left.  We sat in stony chastened silence.  Nonetheless, the senator had taught us an incredibly important lesson about politics and civility -- a lesson that we could all benefit from today . . . and tomorrow

   Tell me I'm wrong, but it strikes me that today, more than ever, there is a  shocking lack of civility in our public discourse.  Bipartisanship -- once the hallmark of all political progress -- is as much a relic as a $15.00 tank of gas. To stand on the opposite side of an issue means not just holding a different opinion or outlook; it means seeing the opposition as nothing less than a pack of craven, avaricious hounds from hell.  Criticizing George W. Bush [or his administration, or his policies] is, in conservative Republican circles, tantamount to being against God, the flag and all American history.  By the same token, supporting Bush or his administration or his policies is, in Democratic circles, tantamount to being a selfish, robotic troglodyte.  The mean-spiritedness that pervades American politics has reached epidemic proportions.  Instead of airing issues and laying out agendas that deal with the challenges besetting America, our leaders, legislators and candidates attack each other with an ad hominem vigor that makes Don Rickles look like "Mr. Nice."  Is it any wonder that the electorate is turned off, and politicians rank just beneath root canal in public popularity?

   Last week, I wrote a Blog article on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, paying particular attention to how the Bush Administration fits [or doesn't] into the global equation.  Readers will recall that I devoted a paragraph applauding the administration's support for the Jewish State: "Without question," I wrote, "the Bush Administration's staunch support for Israel is correct . . . fitting and proper."   Despite this unambiguous note of gratitude, I was taken out to the woodshed by a number of readers who claimed that I was "brain dead," and "an #@!! ingrate," and  that my opinions were "reprehensible."  One correspondent, irate that I had the temerity to criticize his Commander-in-Chief, sarcastically reminded me that "the sun will rise tomorrow without your help."   F. Scott Fitzgerald would have referred to this attack as an "objective correlative" -- defined as "too much emotion for too little cause."

   As readers well know, I am on the opposite side of the political fence from the Republicans.  I have virtually no confidence in Bush or his minions, and consider his administration to be even worse than that of Warren G. Harding -- heretofore, by consensus, voted the worst president in American history.  And yet, Its not Bush or Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Frist, Hastert or the entire NEOCON gang that I'm disparaging; its their politics and policies.

   In The Republic, Plato gave the world his theory of knowledge in the so-called "myth of the cave."  In this section, Plato distinguished between two levels of awareness: opinion and knowledge.  In the myth, there are loads of people gathered in a dark cave.  Outside, the sun is casting shadows upon the cave wall.  Most of the people inside the cave look at the shadows, and presume them to be reality.  A handful turn away from the shadows, seeking the source of light.  One actually exits the cave having discovered that the sun is real, the shadows a chimera.  The first group lives in the world of opinion; the second the realm of knowledge; the lucky one in the empyrean of absolute knowledge.

   In a sense, what passes for modern political discourse is much like Plato's myth: the overwhelming mass of Americans knows only the barbs, putdowns and "revelations."  For the masses, this is politics.  They are akin to the ancient Greeks who accepted the "shadows on the cave wall" as reality. A much smaller slice of America seeks to learn about policies, positions and proposals; they are like the insightful few who turned away from the shadows.  The one who actually finds the source of light, Plato referred as the "Philosopher King."  So far as I know, America hasn't had such an individual since Jefferson . . .

   Both parties can share blame for the dumbing down of campaigns, the utter lack of civility in American civic affairs.  There is such an overwhelming sense of insecurity amongst us that disagreement and debasement now walk hand in hand.

   Back in the late 60s and early 70s, those entering the Old Senate Office Building [OSOB] each morning, were privy to an amazing, object lesson in political civility.  For each morning, there sat Senators George Aikin [a rock-ribbed conservative Republican from Vermont] and Mike Mansfield [a very liberal Democrat from Montana] playing chess.  They did this every morning for untold years.  In their own way, they were teaching that comity and civility do not have to depend upon agreement.  As a result of their great regard and respect for one another as human beings, they were able to work together despite being on opposite sides of the political spectrum.    

   As the ancient Romans would have said, qui me amat, amat et canem meam -- roughly, "love me, love my dog."   Let us, please God, confine our arguments and disagreements to the issues, and step forth from the dank darkness of the cave into the light of a brighter, more civilized day.      

   

   

   

   

   

 

Neville Chamberlain Lives

   Back in the fall of 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, along with diplomats representing the major European powers, became a signatory to the infamous "Munich Agreement."  By terms of this pact, the major European powers gave the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Hitler's Third Reich.  As soon as he signed the pact, Chamberlain scurried back to England where, facing the press and holding aloft a piece of paper, defended the pact and proudly proclaimed that the agreement represented nothing less than "Peace for our time."  [For reasons unknown, history remembers Chamberlain's promise being "Peace in our time."] With those four words, Chamberlain sealed his fate forevermore; I doubt one person in a hundred million remembers Chamberlain for anything else. 

   Chamberlain was not the first -- nor certainly the last -- leader to make a fool of himself by misjudging and misunderstanding the current of events.  Take President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice vis-a-vis the war between Israel and Hezbollah.  Bush sees this horrendous conflict as "an opportunity;" Rice calls it "the birth pangs of a new Middle East."  Ignoring the possible eschatological underpinnings of their statements, to call the present horror either "an opportunity" or a "birth pang" shows a monstrous, stunning lack of understanding -- of the past, the present and most frighteningly, the future.

      Without question, the Bush Administration's staunch support for Israel is correct.  The record is clear: Israel was provoked into this war by Hezbollah's prolonged and protracted firing of Katyusha rockets into the country's northern sector, staging cross-border incursions, and kidnapping Israeli soldiers.  Anyone who denies these facts is an ignorant fool. And anyone who says that Israel is in the wrong should ask him or her self how America would react if attacked similarly by, say, Mexico or Canada.  So, the Bush Administration's support for Israel is both fitting and proper. 

   But that's about as far as things go.  Bush and Company have likened the Israel/Hezbollah conflict to our war in Iraq: a sovereign nation striking back at those who attacked that nation.  Close, but no cigar.  No matter how they try to spin it, the simple fact is that Iraq did not attack America on 9/11; al Qaeda did.  Al Qaeda was not then, and never has been in Iraq, the country we chose to invade as punishment.  And from statements coming out of the White House and State Department, it would seem that they really haven't got a firm grasp of the situation.  The one place where the analogy does hold water is in the nature of the combatants: on one side, a nation's military; on the other, an insurgency made up of people more than willing to die the martyr's death.

     The Arab world sees Israel being America's surrogate.  Let's forget for the moment that Hezbollah is the surrogate of Syria and Iran, and that "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." The Israel-is-a-surrogate-of-America rant, coupled with America's refusal to deal with countries it does not like, leaves us diplomatically isolated.  Even the so-called "moderate" Arab nations -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan -- have become totally estranged from US policy in the Middle East . . . whatever that policy is.  And, we have totally lost credibility with the so-called "Arab Street."  Bush is now calling for a cease-fire with a multi-national peacekeeping force being brought in to patrol the Israel-Lebanon border.  Since when did he come to recognize the United Nations?  Where has he been these past six years? The president seems to think that so long as we [whoever "we" are] can get the two sides to sit down and talk -- once Israel has inflicted the maximum amount of damage -- then things will eventually work out.  Publicly, the Bush Administration supports the Democracy of the ballot box.  It just never dawned on them that voters in Iraq [or Lebanon or Palestine] might cast their votes for parties and people we just don't like -- like Hamas and Hezbollah.

   What Bush and Company don't seem to grasp is that Hezbollah -- and its backers, Syria and Iran -- aren't terribly interested in keeping Israel from returning to Lebanon.  They are totally devoted to the utter, complete destruction of the Jewish State.  This is certainly nothing new; the first attack on Israel came in 1948, within hours of its having been proclaimed a state.  How it is that 5 or so million Jews can pose such a dire threat to a billion Moslems is beyond my comprehension, but that's the way things are.   

   The obvious chess master in this bloody mess is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man who proudly proclaims the Holocaust a myth.  By supplying Hezbollah with arms, he has turned international attention away from resolution of its nuclear issue.  Tell me: have you heard much about western resolve to get Iran to scrap its nuclear program? And, mind you, Lebanon isn't the only place where Irani surrogates are fighting.  Creating a Shia state in the South of Iraq would also go a long way toward keeping the rest of the world's eyes and ears away from Irani intentions.

   I fear that any change of heart -- or opening of mind -- that may occur within the Bush camp will be too little, too late.  They have spent the past half-decade preferring their "Axis of Evil" rhetoric to reality, fighting an unconscionable, unwinnable war in Iraq and virtually ignoring  most of the world. To get back into the diplomatic game now -- or any time in the near future -- will likely be greeted with gross skepticism.  And for good reason.

   So what to do?  As Amos of old proclaimed, "I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet."  Having admitted that, let me say that about the best we can hope for in the near future is that Israel destroy as much of Hezbollah as possible.  This will not be easy.  They are well armed, have no compunction about dying for "the cause," and  have the world press on their side.  This last matter is critical; much of the world press seems to think that the only civilian causalities that matter occur in Lebanon.  A recent pro-Israel editorial cartoon tells it all: a heavily-armed Hezbollah fighter is shooting at an equally heavily-armed Israeli.  The Israeli is standing in front of a baby carriage; the Hezbollah insurgent is standing behind one. 

   The Hezbollah shock forces are merely fighting for the next world -- their 70 virgins. The Israeli soldier is fighting for the very existence of his or her country -- a much greater motivator. 

   Assuming that the IDF does deliver a stunning body blow to Hezbollah, thereby keeping them at bay, the next step will have to be electing a new American administration that sees partners -- and not enemies -- out there in the world.  It will be a long, slow and laborious process to undo all the ill will that the Bushies have created, but, as we have been taught, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

   If Neville Chamberlain has been alive and well in the Bush White House, perhaps the next occupant will take a page from Al Jolson, who's best remembered for saying "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!"   

   

         

   

   

In Tequila Veritas . . .

   Question: what three things do Joel Silver, Rob Cohen, Eric Lerner, Keith Rubinstein, Jeremy Kagan, Daniel Melnick and Allen Shapiro have in common?

   Answer: (1) All eight are Jewish; (2) All eight have at one time produced Mel Gibson movies; (3) None has uttered a solitary peep about Gibson's recent dipsomaniacal, profanity-laced malediction against the Jews.

   Question: Who said the following?

   "[Former FED Chair] Alan Greenspan tells us what to do. Someone should take him out and hang him."

  "They claimed that there were 6.2 million [Jews] in Poland before the war, and they claimed after the war there were 200,000 -- therefore [Hitler] must have killed 6 million of them.  They simply got up and left!  They were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sidney, Australia, and Los Angeles."

   "The Jew is still actively anti-Christian.  He is, for by being a Jew, he is anti-everyone else." 

Answer: Hutton Gibson, Mel's 86-year old father.  Hauntingly, when asked to comment on these and other outrageous statements his father has made, the actor responded, "my dad has never lied to me."   

      By now, there isn't a man, woman or child from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe who doesn't know what happened out on California's Pacific Coast Highway a few nights ago; of how the obviously inebriated Gibson was pulled over by the CHP, went into an anti-Semitic rant, was taken to a local station where he proceeded to urinate on the floor, and almost tear a phone off the wall.  Of how he went on and on about Jews being responsible for all the world's wars, of how he was going to do whatever it took to "f. . . over" all the cops who were responsible for stopping him, and of the initial white-washed, sanitized report issued by the authorities.  As things stand now, Gibson has been charged with three minor offenses and at worst, could spend 6 months in country jail. 

   There are several aspects of this odious situation that leave me deeply troubled.  To wit:

      Mel Gibson

      Hollywood

      The public

      Mel Gibson: Is there any sentient being who harbors doubts that Mel Gibson is a serious, world-class bigot,  a man who is, in the words of writer Christopher Hitchens, "sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred"?  Gibson is a devotee -- not to mention the major financial backer of -- a Catholic splinter group that rejects every Papal encyclical of the last two generations and, [again in Hitchens' words] "lives off the stench of medieval anti-Semitism."  The American-born, Australian-raised actor has even gone so far as to proclaim that his wife Robyn, with whom he has seven children, is going to hell because she subscribes to the wrong Christian sect.   

   For a man who has spent the better part of the past quarter-century engaged in making motion pictures -- an industry historically suffused with Jewish men and women -- he sounds like the lead publicist for The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, history's most notorious and scurrilous anti-Semitic forgery.  Gibson has, to date, admitted a "lifelong struggle" with alcohol, checked himself into rehab, and issued two separate apologies -- the first, a blanket mea culpa that failed to address his calumnies against the Jewish people -- many of whom have made him a multi-centamillionaire.  And that brings us to

   Hollywood:  For more than ninety years, "Hollywood" -- the town of my birth -- has been synonymous with the American film industry.  That industry was created largely by men unafraid to take significant financial risks; Jewish men named Goldwyn, Meyer, Selznick, Warner, Cohen, Zukor, Fox, Laemmle, who in turn hired other Jewish men named Thalberg, Lewen, Hymanson, Wyler, Wilder, Lubitsch, Shary, Schenck, Cukor, Mankiewicz and Hecht.  Most were either upstairs in their executive offices or behind the cameras directing.  A handful found themselves before the cameras as actors and actresses.  But for this, they paid a price: Theodosia Goodman, Jacob Stein, Muni Weisenfreund, Sophia Cosow, Julius Garfinkle, Emanuel Goldenberg and Melvin Hesselberg became, respectively, Theda Bara, Ricardo Cortez, Paul Muni, Silvia Sidney, John Garfield, Edward G. Robinson, and Melvin Douglas.

   Although long known as a hotbed of leftist politics, Hollywood, to paraphrase the late Dorothy Parker, "knows only one 'ism' --  plagiarism."  During the studio era, when actors and writers were owned lock, stock and barrel by the moguls, one remained on the screen so long as their films made money.  Hollywood has had no problem employing drunks [the Barrymores, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart], addicts [Mabel Normand, Jean Eagles, Robert Downey, Jr.], bigots [Adolphe Menjou, Ward Bond, Charles Coburn, and now Mel Gibson], and those with what might be termed  "unique sexual track records" [Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Kay Francis, Delores Del Rio].  What they all had in common, was that their films made money -- lots and lots of money.  Those who for whatever public reasons found their careers come to stunning, crashing conclusions -- Clara Bow, Billy Haines and Roscoe Arbuckle, and director MIchael Cimino come to mind -- were, generally speaking, already falling out of public favor at the time of their respective demise.  In other words, the cash registers were already sounding rather tinny . . .

   So how will Hollywood respond to the Mel Gibson situation?  Will his career survive?  If there were justice in the universe, the answer would be a resounding NO!  However, Gibson is sui generis; an actor who is so rich that he no longer needs a studio in order to make a film.  And despite the fact that many of the major Hollywood studios are still headed up by Jewish people -- DreamWorks' Katzenberg and Spielberg, Warners' Barry Meyer, Universal's Ron Meyer], hardly a peep has been heard.  Even Oren Aviv [Oren Aviv for crying out loud!] the new head of Disney, is prepared to "forgive and forget" Gibson's trespasses.  How could this possibly be?  How and why would a man named Aviv [Hebrew for "spring"], overlook the Holocaust-denying bilge of a bigot like Gibson?  In two words, B-O-X  O-F-F-I-C-E.  Aviv, like every other production chief can read a profit-and-loss statement; knows that Gibson's The Passion of the Christ pulled in over $600 million bucks, and that he's represented by Ed Limato, one of the most powerful agents in town.

       "Studio executives are clearly not the bravest people in the world," says Howard Rosenman, producer of "The Family Man" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."  "They're all thinking, what happens if he comes out of this and I've said something?  He won't work with me when I need him."  So much for principles.  Well, if the Hollywood moguls are going to act like spineless jellyfish, what about the rest of us?

   The Public: In early polls, it would seem that a rather large majority of the movie-going public is not going to be put off from seeing future Mel Gibson flicks just because the actor/producer/director's words and deeds are beneath contempt.  Forgiving and forgetting would seem to be on the minds of most. I guess H. L. Mencken was correct when he wrote, "no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

   Does this mean that a majority of the American public condones anti-Semitic slurs or believes that Jews are the cause of all the world's ills?  Probably not.  What it does mean is that a great percentage of the public is horribly, terrifyingly shallow; willing to overlook and forgive in a major celebrity that for which they would shun a neighbor, politician or member of the clergy. 

   Many have suggested that Gibson should be forgiven for he was, after all, drunk on tequila, and therefore not responsible.  I'm sorry, that just doesn't cut it.  And although I know the verse about not visiting the sins of the father upon the children, I have to believe that Mel was telling the absolute truth when he declared that his father never lied to him. 

   Mel Gibson is fully deserving of our censure, disapprobation and revilement; through our words, our deeds and especially through our pocketbooks.  I don't care how many statements of regret he proffers, nor how many dialogues he has with rabbis, cantors, mohelim or synagogue presidents.  This isn't the case of a topical malady; it is completely systemic.

    In tequila veritas . . .