Clive Davis

ON HIS TRAIL

Jesse Larner e-mails with details about the alterations he's made in his updated, about-to-be-published biography of Michael Moore:

Major changes are in the sections on Mother Jones, the section on the 2004 elections (I figured out something important about how the Republicans stole the election), and the later sections in which I examine Moore's films and try to assess Moore's place in American politics and the war on terror. I have a great interview with a left-wing Gulf War '91 vet, who now runs a project that promotes peace, security, and democracy in Iraq, on why he despises Moore and especially "F9/11" .

Can't wait to get my review copy. Something tells me that Jesse and I won't see eye-to-eye on the election, but who knows? Last time I saw him, over lunch in New York last autumn, we had an energetic argument about Bush (as usual). Yet we managed to stay friends. I've had more than enough unpleasant experiences lately to realize that's a blessing.

BEAUTY & THE BEAST

But which is which? The egregious Ann Coulter goes head-to-head with the lofty Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight. As ever, Paxo overdoes the disdain. As ever, Coulter is happy to grab any publicity that comes her way: "The more reasoned critiques, as you put it, are not the number one book in America, so I think I'm doing just fine."

[Via Biased BBC]

TELEVISION DISCOVERS YET ANOTHER LAST TABOO

The Indy's TV critic, Thomas Sutcliffe sees Channel Four allow a black conservative onto the airwaves - well, sort of:

The programme makers decided not to mention that Wilfrid Emmanuel Jones is now the Conservative candidate for Chippenham, perhaps because they didn't want one prejudice to cloud the study of another.

Very thoughtful of them. [No link to the article available yet - sorry.]

I don't know how Wilfrid feels about "compassionate conservatism" but Tim Montgomerie thinks there's still a lot the Tories could learn from their American cousins. Zero-tolerance policing is high on his list. More on that subject in the Spectator's feature devoted to American law enforcers' view of where Britain is going wrong:

The chiefs were scathing about the British government’s plan, now delayed, to cut the number of police forces. Crime prevention works best when there are lots of local, accountable police forces, free to experiment, they said. They accused the British government of micromanaging the police, arguing that different local conditions require very different responses and local commanders should be given maximum discretion.

NOT THE EVIL GENIUS AFTER ALL

Seems the conspiracy theorists may need to find a new bogeyman. I've lost count of the times Leo Strauss has been portrayed as some sort of neocon Bond villain. "Award-winning" documentary-maker Adam Curtis managed to make him a central figure of The Power of Nightmares while conveniently omitting to mention that the Chicago academic was a refugee from Nazi Germany, and thus had good reason to be worried about the fragility of liberal democracy. Now why did Curtis do that, I wonder?

The NY Times Book Review offers a more reality-based account:

"Throughout his writings," Smith concludes, "Strauss remained deeply skeptical of whether political theory had any substantive advice or direction to offer statesmen." This view was shaped by his wary observation of the systems of totalitarianism that dominated two major European nations in the 1930's, Nazism in Germany and Communism in the Soviet Union...

The other general point that Smith makes about Strauss's alleged paternity of neoconservatism is that a considerable part of his work has nothing to do with politics of any sort.

Very interesting, but I don't suppose it would make good TV. We wouldn't want a cutting-edge programme weighed down with boring old facts, would we?

Power Line isn't entirely happy with some aspects of the review, and links to more analysis from Scott Knippenberg.

PS: Knippenberg also has a good response to Anne Norton's hatchet-job, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. Clifford Orwin's review is here:

Norton's strategy for attacking Straussians isn't new; it was pioneered by European journalists. Here's how it works. Rather than take on Leo Strauss (bigger game than you can handle!), pay him some measure of lip service. You may even distinguish between his "students" (few and good) and his "disciples" (many and bad). Having thus established your fair-mindedness, you blast the "disciples" (the Straussians) for not living up to the standards of the Master.

PARALLEL UNIVERSE - 1

The US edition of Jesse Larner's book about that spinner of tall tales, Michael Moore, gets an advance plug from Publisher's Weekly:

For liberals who never liked Moore but couldn't figure out why, the book provides essential and definitive muckraking... Larner, a staunch liberal whose rage at much of the current administration's policy is palpable, also despises "political work that emphasizes emotional appeal over factual content" from either side. Moore, he argues, is similar to Anne Coulter in producing journalism of false pretext and sleight-of-montage, sabotaging his own credibility and, by proxy, that of the cause he espouses.

Hear, hear. As I've said before, I'm planning to update my Q&A with Jesse in time for the launch.

GUTTER LANGUAGE, FIFTIES-STYLE

When Cahn submitted the original lyric to Sinatra on the title track, "Come Fly With Me", one line originally went, "If you could use/ some exotic views/there's a bar in far Bombay." According to Cahn, Sinatra originally recorded it as such. Then, at the end of the date, Cahn informed Sinatra that he had additionally written a slightly racier alternative lyric. Cahn considered that text - which substituted "booze" for "views" - suitable for Las Vegas but not for a family-oriented Capitol Records release.

Will Friedwald, Sinatra! The Song Is You.

IS HE AN ITALIAN CENTRE-FORWARD?

Melanie Phillips "keeps harping on about Gramsci", complains a baffled Jackie Ashley. "She genuinely believes that a cultural malaise now infects the country's intelligentsia..."

Surely not? Now I don't agree with everything Melanie P says on gay marriage, to name one subject, and I do think her style is often strident and apocalyptic. Yet as I pointed out in a column some time ago, she has got a lot of important things right. All Must Have Prizes, for instance, struck me as a brilliant account of how we've ruined our education system. And although I haven't read her new book, Londonistan, it does seem odd that she couldn't find a publisher for it in Britain.

As for how the long march through the institutions works, Mick Hume's column in today's Times offers a small but instructive example:

No doubt this teaching pack was put together by well-intentioned educationists, despite the inaccuracies and omissions. Of course it is not "pro al-Qaeda". But nor does it appear to be pro anything else.

PS: That's scary. I just looked at Stephen Pollard's blog. He uses almost the same words about MP. Great minds, and all that...

WHO'S THE UGLIEST OF THEM ALL?

I was really hoping to go a whole two days without mentioning football. But I can't resist quoting Jim Geraghty on the attempt to weigh the noxious outpourings of Ann Coulter against the no less poisonous rants of Daily Kos:

To me, it’s like watching a match between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the World Cup tournament. You can root for the ref, or for injuries.

"NEO-CONSERVATIVES OF THE LEFT"

Etre antiaméricain, c'est être antilibéral...   Sounds almost like a French equivalent of the Euston Manifesto. The left-wing daily Libération runs a relatively even-handed piece on intellectuals and activists - including philosophers André Glucksmann and Pierre-André Targuieff - who have come together to combat anti-Americanism and radical Islam. Their group, Le Cercle d'Oratoire, takes its name from the Parisian chapel where members have met over the last three years.

They're against demonization of Israel too. Interesting quote from a Muslim member, Mohammed Abdi, general-secretary of the campaigning organisation Ni Putes Ni Soumises:

"J'ai manifesté contre la guerre en Irak, je suis propalestinien, mais je reconnais Israël et je pense qu'il faut avoir le courage de discuter avec le sionisme. Et puis, en tant que militant des banlieues, j'ai été très blessé par l'émergence de l'antisémitisme dans les quartiers."

Libé's article is firewalled, but you can read the full text on this French site. (More, in English, here.) Note that the young journalist who is a member of the group prefers to remain anonymous; unconventional opinions are no help to a career in the French media.

As for the Establishment Left, it hasn't been a good week for Libé's editor:

Serge July, 63, a Sorbonne-educated, one-time Maoist revolutionary and veteran of France's 1968 student rebellion, called journalists together at 10am after the paper's daily news conference. The editor, who older colleagues call "the father", announced that he had been asked to leave by the newspaper's major shareholder, Edouard de Rothschild, who would not pump any more money into the ailing title while July still held the reins.

Journalists... described it as the end of an era and said the future of the title needed to be secured in a slumping print market... It became the voice of its generation, but as that aged, so did its readership. Libé was accused by media analysts of failing to attract readers beyond its core market aged between 45 and 55, middle class, liberal and, for a nation that loves acronyms, "bobo" which stands for "bourgeois bohème".

MORE LOOSE TALK

I don't know if there's a country song called When You're In A Hole, You'd Better Stop Digging, but if there is, the Dixie Chicks might want to adopt it as their signature tune:

"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism," Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. "Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."

Some much-needed perspective from one of my favourite music bloggers, who's been looking back on the original fracas

It’s necessary to recall the actual context in which the fateful remark was made. This is a tall order for most of those multi-millionaire brainiacs who work in the media and do the kinds of powder-puff interviews that the Chicks have been treated to recently...

This never had anything to do with "free speech." No one in the U.S. government tried to silence the Dixie Chicks. Congress passed no law with respect to their right to make inane statements from here to eternity. Neither did any violent thugs try to chase them off of any stage. Instead, private citizens, who found their statements and attitudes to be immature, obnoxious and repulsive, chose not to spend their money on them anymore. This included private owners of country radio stations who decided that their business was altogether better off not purveying Dixie Chick product.

...As for those morons who sent death-threats and otherwise disgusting messages to the Chicks, they displayed plenty regarding their own lack of character by doing so, but they are not representative of the greater mass of ordinary people whose chief reaction to the whole controversy was to raise their eyebrows and hold their noses.