Now that the GAC (Great American Creep) John Edwards has done his version of the “limited hangout” on ABC, we can immediately access what we have learned so far, who the big losers are:
1. The MSM. When it comes to the news, the National Enquirer (and various blogs) are vastly superior to the Mainstream Media and functionally more honest. The New York Times is no longer where you go for the news… but we knew that. I predict the Times and others will not examine their own values and ideology after this because they have too much vested in their world view. They fear personality disintegration.
2. The far (but very bourgeois) left. Moveon.org, the Daily Kos and the gang that thought Edwards was the bees’ knees when he was spouting his banal pseudo-populist rhetoric about the “two Americas” ought to look inside themselves and consider what kind of man they were believing and idolizing. They ought to examine the role of highflown rhetoric in general. Will they? I doubt it. But they should.
As for Edwards himself, he is one of the more contemptible politicians to come along in some time (and that’s saying something). There is no reason to believe anything he has said. That he claims not to be the father of the child without taking a paternity test is laughable.
I woke up this morning in Southern California to news of the Russian invasion of Georgia and the sounds of El Pito began to ring in my ears. (If you like Afro-Cuban music, play it. It’s great.) It also threw me back to the late Eighties, “glasnost days,” when I did go to Tblisi, Georgia as a stop on a cultural exchange with a group of American screenwriters visiting the then Soviet Union. I remember four things:
1. The beauty of the city - it was the one stop on our tour where most of the city had not been despoiled by the monstrosity of Soviet architecture, although, ironically, Stalin was a Georgian, his presence always ineffably in the air. Tblisi still looked almost Mediterranean.
2. The food - it was the best we ate anywhere. Even the wine was good.
3. The oldest of our group of traveling screenwriters - Julius Epstein - being introduced on stage to an audience of local film buffs and getting the biggest round of applause because he had written the only movie they had then heard of among our group of younger writers - Casablanca. (Others had written films like Indiana Jones, then unknown to them.)
4. Me, grandstanding and getting an equal round of applause plus a bouquet of roses from a local beauty, when I turned to that same audience and said that when I came back to their wonderful city “I hope I will be returning to a free and independent Georgia!”
Although it has for some time been a division of German media giant Bertelsmann, Random House has been one of the distinguished names in American publishing since the halcyon days of Bennett Cerf. So it is particularly repugnant to see the company knuckling under to essentially the same reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-free speech forces that repressed the Danish cartoons. As we learned in the Wall Street Journal today, the company has decided not to publish Sherry Jones’ historical novel “The Jewel of Medina” about Mohammed’s child bride Aisha. The book was part of a $100,000 two-book contract with the author.
Shame on Random House! This act of abject cowardice and de facto censorship is one of the most disgraceful incidents I can think of in the history of American publishing. As Asra Q. Nomani writes in the WSJ: Random House feared the book would become a new “Satanic Verses,” the Salman Rushdie novel of 1988 that led to death threats, riots and the murder of the book’s Japanese translator, among other horrors. In an interview about Ms. Jones’s novel, Thomas Perry, deputy publisher at Random House Publishing Group, said that it “disturbs us that we feel we cannot publish it right now.” He said that after sending out advance copies of the novel, the company received “from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.”
The “credible” source was one Denise Spellberg, a University of Texas academic who, on receipt of Jones’ galleys, started tattling like a six-year old to Muslims Spellberg felt would be angry with the work. Perry and his cronies simply caved in. That the publishers reference the “Satanic Verses” in their defence is yet more despicable. In the early 1990s, when I was president of West Coast Branch of PEN, we did everything in our power to defend Rushdie against the attempts to suppress his freedom of speech. Random House does nothing for its own authors. The natural conclusion of their behavior in this instance is that nothing critical of Islam could ever be written.
PEN and the Authors’ Guild should launch an investigation into this situation and if the allegations are true, should urge a boycott of Random House until it changes its policy. If I were Jones, I would sue the publishing house for all they’re worth.
[Full disclosure: I had three novels published by a division of Random House in the 1980s - Villard Books. At that point, I was very satisfied with the publisher and could not imagine them rejecting a manuscript for the reasons they are now. It’s a different world.]
UPDATE: Some commenters have pointed out that Random House’s behavior is not strictly speaking censorship because the company is not an organ of the state. They are correct. But I submit that that a publishing house the size of Random House has a certain level of public trust. And I would imagine they would agree. One of the key measures of public trust in the United States is the protection of free speech. Yes, as one commenter stated, this is cowardice but not censorship, but it is a form of cowardice with immense social ramifications about which we should all be concerned.
After one look at this webcam, who would want to play an outdoor game of hoops in Beijing? And the Redeem Team, which has been looking so good, stumbled and almost fell yesterday against Australia. Let’s hope there’s no embarrassment.
The cache location of the original censored Wikipedia page on the John Edwards love child scandal - and the internal Wikipedia debate over it - has been made known to Pajamas Media. Reading it is an interesting experience because, in the light of information we have since gleaned, the initial Wikipedia entry scarcely seems excessive. Indeed it seems measured. Its censoring by Wikipedia is an example of purely reactionary behavior by a supposedly progressive online encyclopedia. And, of course, as we have learned, Wikipedia is not alone in its censorship.
Which returns us to the original question: Is John Edwards’ private misbehavior news? Well, to begin with, it’s not private. This is a man who has made a political career of what a great husband and father he is, not to mention being a public moralizer about American values and our mistreatment of the poor.
But, you say, he has already lost his campaign for the presidency. So what? Leaving aside whatever chance he may have had for the vice-presidency or other important position in an Obama administration, the reaction to Edwards’ behavior by most of our mainstream media is a remarkable example of that media’s own mendacity and self-censorship. Like the child at the Passover Seder, they wit not to know - especially anything that might disrupt their world view. In actuality, Edwards provides a fascinating test case in that eternal condundrum about the interrelationship of public and private lives. That separation is not nearly as simple as our media would like us to believe. Few of us, very much including this blogger, have lived perfect lives. Most of us have told our lies of greater or lesser degree. But, like it or not, those private lies do reflect out on our public character and, directly and indirectly, influence our ability to tell the truth on public matters. In courts of law, juries are often insturcted that a liar in one area is not to be trusted in others. That is for a good reason.  As the French idiom goes, mentir est honteux. Lying is shameful. It is also destructive to the public good. I never believed a word John Edwards was saying and now I know why.
It doesn’t take Rasmussen to tell us that a high percentage of the pronouncements of politicians are projections. Call the other guy what you fear you are. Recently, Obama has called McCain “cynical.”
“In no way do I think John McCain’s campaign was racist. I think they are cynical,” Obama said. “Their team is good at creating distractions and engaging in negative attacks.”
Hmm… but the same AP article where I found this quote had the following but two paragraphs higher …
Obama may have given McCain more fodder [for his cynicism, evidently] in recent days by announcing a readiness to compromise with Republicans on offshore oil drilling — which he had opposed — and apparently rejecting McCain’s challenge to join him in a series of town hall meetings.
Rejecting a challenge to join McCain in town hall meetings? That means not wanting to confront the people or his opponent about the issues in a spontaneous manner. That sounds pretty cynical, non? [Or chicken.-ed. That’s what people call me. No, that’s a chicken hawk. Oh, right.]
UPDATE: I have been pretty busy all day - back in LA - and somehow missed this (Obama’s rock-star lavish campaign jet). I am stunned at how unsophisticated Obama really is. Does he think that the American public is impressed with a 46-year old with little or no experience, acting like le roi soleil in a campaign plane that already dwarfs Air Force One? It’s as if his people were secretly working for the McCain Campaign, setting them up with one opportunity after the other. All the McCain folks have to do now is make an ad showing shots of McCain carrying own luggage, as he did last summer, juxtaposed with this cushy nonsense. Global warming,my fat hen! Is Obama the new John Edwards… not for his personal behavior (Michelle would brain him upside the head), but for his tone deaf entitlement?
A brilliant, strange man and one of the few writers who changed history. Who can forget One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago?
The fuddy-duddy New York Times - trapped from time immemorial in the navel-gazing Zabar’s Zeitgeist - continues to attack John McCain. Could there be better luck for the candidate?
