for 29 September 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Reverso Converso I read with slight interest your latest commentary concerning questionable "biographies" (actually, the proper term is "autobiographies" when one is writing of one's own life). Considering the reality that truth and fiction seem to be morphing into one blurry entity, the real question is, when haven't autobiographers fudged a bit? Those who trumpet their own glory are seldom prone to expose parts of their lives that would somewhat tarnish their self-images to that of a lesser (read: "ordinary") person. Besides all that, people tend to be fallible whenever memory is concerned. If five different witnesses to an accident scene can have five different descriptions of the event, then why do we somehow expect those who write about their own lives to have indelible and photographic memories? Get real! Just because we live in an information age, we should not expect that the quantity of that information does not have an inverse relationship to its quality. The false sense of betrayal we have felt concerning those who include personal agendas within their life stories is just that: false. If we are to count holes in others' stories, then we will have to begin with the very first time that an influential person put chisel to stone in order to tell of his accomplishments. There is, after all, a certain luxury that comes from cynicism, and we need to tap into it before we keep fooling ourselves that what people say about themselves is the God's honest truth. Cynthia Bage <cbage2000@earthlink.net> Jerzy's rule No. 1: If you gotta chisel your own stone, you're not influential. That said, I'm sure you're right. There are degrees of deception, but few of us can resist the urge to doctor the script in retrospect. The greater sins, I think, occur when partisans of the author conveniently accept what we all know to be exaggerations, then (a) pitch a fit when somebody doubts their veracity and (b) adopt the fallback position, once somebody disproves their veracity, that we all knew that all along, silly. But without people like that, we'd be without many of our most entertaining religions. Jerzy  Contemplate a photo of Chris Hitchens from, say, 1985, and then a photo of Hitchens today. Let's face it: Not even his myriad Clinton bashing, score-settling appearances on US television during 1998 could possibly have made a significant contribution to his bar tab. And your sentence viz. Commentary/Said, "... who wants to imply that the entire Palestinian nation's claims of hardship are bogus," should be Commentary's masthead. Seriously, unless it were to say, "working to ensure US foreign policy remains subservient to Israeli interests," could it state the role of the magazine here in the '90s more clearly? (In the '80s, of course, parallel masting would have been something like, "Poddy making sure neither the US defense budget nor General Sharon drops one whit, no matter who has the ear of that senile fuck in the White House this week.") Another informative, amusing column. Thanks! Richard Piedmonte <richard.piedmonte@valent.com> You've given us another idea. Has anyone written a piece on the left's nostalgia for Reagan? People say he made politics simpler for Republicans and Reagan Democrats, but what about the many gifts he gave his enemies? Oh, for the days when one could take comfort in the fact that one's nemesis was literally a dimwitted actor! Sucksters Filler Dear Polly, From my friend ... Mr. Litchy's Top 10 Notable Quotables: 1. We're all just $1.98 worth of chemicals 2. ... and Tommy Kramer's liver. 3. Let me lie in it. 4. Yeah, poor Madonna. 5. Jacob Wetterling in trunk. 6. This is my Christmas gift to you. 7. Meet my future ex-wife. 8. Fugly Ucker. 9. Sand traps to the left of me, jokers to the right. 10. It's just natural selection. Enjoy them alone or with complete strangers! Paul Pavlak < PPavlak@EMAIL.HGA.com> Wow, that list was profoundly meaningful to me. You should find this list of my own private jokes just as compelling. 1. Have another popover, froggy. 2. See, maybe you want the toy just because you saw it on TV. 3. It's got a lot of brains to stick in there. 4. Ah. Don't. Won't. Yo. Lahf. 5. Then, it gets a tasty meal! 6. Fuck off, fish. Big laughs all around! Polly You all should really compile a book of the Filler series and package said book with limited-edition action figures of the various characters. Cartoons lend themselves to action figures anyway, so no one would complain about the crappy quality of the figures themselves, and, being limited edition, people would need to buy at least four copies of the book to get the whole set of figures (assuming you made the fish, the bald guy, the glasses guy, and you). You all could make a killing. Just a thought. Best, Greg Turner <greg@wconet.com> Action figures? Inaction figures, more like. We'd all have to be sitting down, looking really irritated. Maybe each figure would come with a latte that fit right in its little plastic hand, and a cigarette or crack pipe would fit into the other hand. That way, figures with their accesories intact would be more sought-after, further bolstering that falsely high market price. We could have inaction scenes, like they do with Star Wars figures, only our scenes would be the snack machine in the office and maybe a living room setting, featuring a big couch, a TV, and stacks of crappy magazines everywhere. But, see, maybe you just want the toy because you saw it on TV. Joyfully looking forward to creating needs in very young, impressionable children, Polly Reverso Converso Dear Sir, "(Christopher Hitchens defends Said's saying that he spent the 'formative' part of his youth, however brief, in Palestine as 'a matter for him ... to decide' — curious generosity from a man who's underwritten a substantial part of his bar tab these last few years attacking just such slippery locutions by the POTUS.)" I wouldn't be tossing around your weird corollary of the "those in glass houses" admonishment if I were you — that is, someone writing for Suck. Plus, I don't think Said's so-called slippery locutions measure up to those of our prayer- breakfast–attending Liar in Chief. (Thirdly, much of Suck reads as if the writers ritualistically head to the corner tavern on pay day. Those in glass houses....) In a Sept. 27th Nation column discussing Israel's torture ban, Alexander Cockburn writes: "At the Israeli Justice Department the official in charge of matters affecting Palestinians, and thus a man well trained as an apologist for Israeli security forces, was an American émigré called Justus Reid Weiner. Weiner, now a 'scholar in residence' at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, financed by Michael Milken and his family, is the author of a grotesque attack on Edward Said in the latest issue of Commentary. Although The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal gave much space to Weiner's slurs, neither would print Said's rebuttal. The Israeli daily, Ha'Aretz, did so on 8 September. That same day the Palestine Center for Human Rights in Gaza issued a statement on the Supreme Court's ruling, concluding with its 'appreciation of the work of Israeli human rights organizations on this issue.' Would that American Jewish groups could have merited such gratitude. Instead of which we find the Zionist Organization of America waving Weiner's attack and demanding that Said be evicted from his presidency of the Modern Language Association!" Peter Kilander <peterk@enteract.com> You're not British, are you? If you were, I'd think you'd see the "bar tab" line is hardly an insult but a compliment. Hitch, I'm sure, could drink any of us under the table and remain twice as clever as any of us were before we started. As to your first point, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. At Suck, we defend no one's slippery locutions but our own. Jerzy Most excellent wit and most finely researched. I leave you with only one additional transcultural member: the late "Jose Jimenez," of blessed memory. Did I ever mention I used to live in Chappaqua? My ex-wife still owns the house. Nice enough place if you don't mind being run over by the Volvos. Alan S. Kornheiser <ASKornheiser@prodigy.net> Isn't it sad that a former chief executive ends up living in the house Clinton will, though? (Assuming Hillary doesn't lose the election, in which case I suppose they'll have a place lined up in Oak Park, Ilinois, by December 2000.) Not that there's anything wrong with the area, but aren't former world leaders supposed to retire to estates and compounds? There must be mid-level bozos at Bear Stearns with houses in Westchester that put his to shame. I wonder why they didn't just say screw it and get a loft in Tribeca. Chappaqua's not going to cut any ice upstate anyway, they'd get a decent place for US$1.7 mil, and they'd have much better restaurants at least. Jerzy Dear Jerzy (if that's your name), Going to great lengths to verify if Said spent his childhood in Jerusalem or not by your Jewish crony just shows the kind of hatred and the desperation your propaganda doctors have reached. If we can't debunk somebody's ideas and arguments, why not go the sure way, with personal attacks that only serve to ridicule regardless of how valid their point is. It's quite a shame Suck would publish such a story, but then again, Jews must always stand united, or they might get discovered for what they really did — a very bad thing indeed. So, keep lying around till everybody gets sick of your falsehoods and madness. Yours, Nathan Bradley UCB Cultural Studies, PhD Dr. Bradley, We suspect you've fantasized for years about giving that "If that is your real name" line to some Hebe trying to pass among decent folks. Come to think of it, you probably call up radio shows and do it all the time. But frankly, we're not convinced that figuring out "Jerzy Seinfeld" is an alias requires a PhD from Berkeley. Thus we were not surprised when Berkeley informed us it has never awarded a degree to any Nathan Bradley, and in fact doesn't even have a department called Cultural Studies. Thus we can only conclude your name is some kind of alias for Nathan Berkowitz. Sucksters Dear Concerned Editors, Thank you for a bit of truth concerning claims of Palestinian outings, or the enormus exaggerations of displaced persons from Israel in 1948. In 1960, I spent about 10 months in Israel working on Kibbutz Schuchot in Emek Bet Shan and went on many trips on foot or by bus or jeep around the country. I had taken geology in college, and could not see where anyone had lived in most of the country for at least 100 years and probably much longer, judging by the weathering of the land, except where they were still living. The Israeli government knows that about 30,000 Palestinians actually left Israel from the Carmel area when the Mufti ordered them to leave. In Jerusalem, there was a trading around of population due to the division. The actual count of Palestinians living in Israel before the War in 1948 was approximately 150,000 people, and about 600,000 Jews. The great exaggeration of the ones that left were due to counting the armies of five countries (about 1 million) that were called by the Mufti to fight the Jews, and then recalled. They were the ones who fled. Most of the Palestinians who were in Israel stayed there. The population of the Jews grew 10 times to 5 million now, and the population of the Palestinians also grew 10 times to approximately 1 million now. One may say that there have been new Jews coming to Israel but, believe me, there have been new Palestinians too. Just last year I visited Israel, and toured all over (this time by car) and noticed many new "Beduwin" campers setting up residence by sneaking in as Israel has always allowed them to come in. They live in little makeshift camps before moving to the city. All the land in the Western Bank is too much land for the needs of the Palestinians who are there. For three days I filmed on video a recently turned-over city, Kiryat Joseph, and noticed that no one lived there. All the lights went on at exactly the same time, one car drove through, and no one walked around. The question I would ask is, where are the Palestinians going to get any population to live on the West Bank besides the few old sheep farmers that live there now? Do they really think that their young people are going to leave Tel Aviv where they can get jobs, to go sheep farm on the West Bank? Thank you for letting me say all this. Marcy Sterns <marcy@sd.znet.com> This must be why Moshe Dayan told the newspaper Ha'Aretz in 1969, "We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here ... [long litany of the original Arabic names of various towns, including Dayan's own hometown]. There is not one place in this country that did not have a former Arab population." So while your long-after- the-fact fantasy is amusing, we'll take the general's word for it. Yr pal, Ibn Hmar |
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