Federal Judiciary

The Obamites v. Arizona, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

About a month ago, the United States, in the person of assistant secretary of state Michael Posner, expressed guilt to the People?s Republic of China over Arizona?s new immigration law. Now the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has informed Arizona of the administration?s intention to sue the state while speaking to Ecuadorian television.

I knew that I wouldn?t like the Obama administration and its policies. I am a Reagan Republican. But I didn?t know the administration would be so disgusting. Honestly.

Whose good opinion would the administration prefer? The U.N.?s or Arizonans?? Le Monde?s or Arizonans?? Rafael Correa?s or Arizonans?? These are pretty disturbing questions, as I see it.

I don?t like to write about people after they die, when I have little or nothing good to say about them. But I have an excuse for writing about José Saramago, the late Portuguese novelist: I?ve been meaning to write about him for weeks -- since late April, when I read an article about him in the Financial Times. I wanted to say something about the arrival of blogging: blogging as a literary form. Here was a Nobel laureate -- a Nobel laureate in literature -- doing a blog. I quote the article:

Encouraged by his wife, [Saramago] kept a web-log from September 2008 until August 2009. This space on ?the infinite page of the internet? gave the prolific author yet another medium to air his views on subjects ranging from the minutiae of translation to the author?s misadventures in car repairs. A reluctant blogger at first, he discovered the web could be ?that place where I can most express myself according to my desires?.

Very interesting. Speaking of the way Saramago expressed himself . . . I wanted to say something about how the Left talks. (Saramago was a Communist.) They specialize in dehumanizing invective, always have. Here is Saramago on Silvio Berlusconi: ?this thing, this disease, this virus that threatens moral death to the land of Verdi.? Talk of this nature is a warning to everyone: The speaker is capable of just about anything, will justify just about anything -- which, of course, Saramago did.

And I?ll say something nice, or semi-nice. I always quote this. In March 2003, the Castro dictatorship cracked down on dissidents, sweeping up 75 of them. This is known in Cuba, and its diaspora, as the ?Black Spring.? Saramago said, ?This is my limit. . . . Cuba has lost my trust; it has damaged my hopes; it has defrauded my illusions.? The Cuban revolution triumphed in 1959, and has been totalitarian and murderous from the beginning. Forty-four years is rather a long time to maintain illusions. But some will not let them go still . . .

Couple of days ago, I was in a flower shop, and the owner is Israeli, I think. There was a customer who had on the counter a Hebrew newspaper. On the front page was a big, big picture of Elton John. He had performed in Israel. And the two men were saying, ?Good for him.? (Yes, I guess the owner is Israeli.)

Has it come to that? Has Israel been so demonized in the world -- so delegitimized by Islamists and their left-wing allies -- that a concert by a foreigner in Israel is a big deal? Is an act of courage, cause for gratitude on the part of the locals? Has it really come to that? Is Israel now apartheid South Africa? That is moral perversion of so high a degree, it is dizzying.

And people like Jimmy Carter -- author of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid -- are responsible.

Through the eight years of George W. Bush, I heard something constantly: ?He scares me.? Liberals said, every two seconds, ?He scares me.? I think there was a bumper sticker that simply said, ?I?m scared.? Big nation of fraidy-cats, we were. The Left had peddled the notion that Bush was destroying our Constitution and our civil liberties; a lot of people bought.

You know what? I now hear a lot of conservatives say about Obama, ?He scares me.? They say it with a kind of disbelief, some embarrassment. Will there be a bumper sticker? I doubt it. The Left really does bumper stickers, with prolificacy, alacrity, and glee.

A friend of mine who works in the auto industry sent me an ad for BMW -- used BMWs, specifically. It?s a print ad. A little girl is lying down with her mouth parted, looking sexually at the camera. The text says, ?You know you?re not the first. But do you really care?? My friend said, ?How old is this girl? Eleven? Twelve?? Kiddie porn in advertising -- and elsewhere in life -- is by now an old story. It has become part of the furniture. I even see it in concert and opera programs here in New York.

But it is still alarming. And my friend -- a father of three, not that it should matter -- was alarmed. As well as revolted.

A quick musical note: I was in a store (not the flower shop). All of a sudden, I hear Rachmaninoff?s C-minor piano concerto -- but I was not hearing a recording of that concerto. I was hearing ?All by Myself,? the old pop song. The Rachmaninoff in it was clear as day. Kind of interesting. You know the song ?Never Gonna Fall in Love Again?? Slow movement of Rachmaninoff?s Symphony in E minor.

And Google knows everything. Come to find out -- maybe you knew this -- both songs are by Eric Carmen. Rachmaninoff is a wonderful composer to borrow from. But you would think that someone named Carmen would borrow from Bizet (as plenty of songwriters have, believe me).

A second musical note? This will double as a language note. I was in some other store -- you must think I do nothing but shop -- and heard kind of a techno song: a remake of ?If I Were a Rich Man,? from Fiddler on the Roof. Only the woman -- or the robot or whatever -- was singing/speaking ?If I Was a Rich Man.? No subjunctive.

Of course, they don?t use that subjunctive in Britain either, so far as I?m aware. I wish I was there, cocking my ear to the streets, to prove it!

Was with a gaggle of Europeans at dinner not long ago. They were saying, with authoritative confidence, that Berlin was the best place in all of Europe now. (None of these people was German.) But the best place for the young: only the young. How they arrived at this, I?m not sure, but they said it like it was a matter of fact. And the best place for the old? They all agreed, quickly: Paris.

Can?t really tell you what this means, but I thought it possibly interesting enough to pass along . . .

At home in New York, I went by a synagogue the other day. It advertised itself as ?forward-thinking.? Kind of a shudder-making phrase, sometimes. I thought a competitor synagogue should counter-advertise: ?Backward-thinking!?

Saw a heartbreaking sign. A new Subway had opened (part of the chain of sandwich shops -- I?m not talking an underground). It was on a side street, just off a main avenue. The sign had an arrow and said, ?25 meters.? Meters! In America! Blech!

Saw Jackie Mason on the street. (Not that street. Not the Subway street.) Also saw pictures of Paul McCartney recently -- when he was badmouthing George W. Bush at the Obama White House. Okay, my question: Who looks worse, with a lot of ?work?? Men or women? They both look like hell. But I say men. Blech!

P.S. Mason is funnier than McCartney.

Also on the street, saw an ad for condoms (I believe) -- or an admonition to wear condoms or something. The sign said, ?Birth Control: Take Control.? Once upon a time, didn?t ?control,? or ?self-control,? mean . . . you know? When was that, 1622?

So, I noticed that the block where ABC News sits is named ?Peter Jennings Way.? Okay, fine. We used to vote at the same polling station: I figured we canceled each other out. How about the block where National Review sits, or, even better, the block where National Review sat for decades, before moving (a little bit away)? Couldn?t that be named ?William F. Buckley Jr. Way?? Hmmm?

Overheard a funny conversation on the street. One workman was saying to another, ?Mrs. Smith [let?s say] died last week.? The other workman misheard his friend: ?Mrs. Jones?? ?No,? said the first workman, ?she should have died.?

I don?t know, just amused me.

Throw a little language at you -- some golf lingo. Tiger Woods was saying that Dustin Johnson, with whom he played at Pebble Beach last week, was long. Really long. How long? ?Stupid long.?

I liked this, too: In his Spectator column the other week, Charles Moore disparaged the phrase, ?Don?t let anyone tell you that . . .? During the campaign, politicians in Britain were using it. Nick Clegg was a particular offender. Moore wrote, ?This [the phrase] is usually followed by something that no one was ever very likely to tell you eg ?the British people aren?t equal to the challenge?.?

That is so true. Remember what William Safire once said, years ago? Nixon liked to say, ?Some people have counseled that we take the easy way.? Safire said, ?I wonder whether someone, in a meeting, should actually counsel taking the easy way. That way, the president could honestly say, ?Some . . .??

Speaking of The Spectator, Anthony Daniels had a piece in it sometime in April -- here -- and I marked a passage in it for you: ?I was astonished at the picture of Nottingham Market Square in the 1740s: a grand, elegant and even magnificent urban space. How did they do it without town planners? Go to Nottingham now and it is like having your retinas scoured by wire wool.?

A simile that arrests you, no?

I have a million more items for you, ladies and gentlemen, but this column has been dribs-and-drabs-ish enough as it is. Let me give you one more -- a striking name, a beautiful name, sent by a reader who said that it belongs to a man at Washington State University: Forgivemore Magunda. Ahhh -- a name, not just of beauty, but of remonstration and uplift!

See you.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on June 21, 2010 (boomark / email).