Posted on 07/06/2004 5:26:03 PM PDT by quidnunc
I can pinpoint the exact moment I knew the jig was up. It wasn't Reykjavik or the fall of the Wall. It was when Gennadi Gerasimov, spokesman for President Gorbachev, appeared on TV and, seeking to explain the Soviet Union's loosened grip on its Eastern European satellites, inaugurated an all-new Warsaw Pact: "The Brezhnev Doctrine is dead," he declared. "We now have the Sinatra Doctrine: You do it your way."
Mr. Gerasimov was on TV a lot in those days. Plausible, genial, bespoke, tanned, he looked like a White House press spokesman doing a tour of duty in the Kremlin, which was the whole idea. For the "reformers" in Moscow, reform was mostly a matter of style. If they aped the manners of the West, maybe the Politburo could retrench, hold on to what mattered, survive.
So they sent their first and last Western-style spin doctor out before the cameras to do a one-liner about Ronald Reagan's old buddy Frank that could have come straight from the Gipper himself. Dan Quayle responded by noting the continued presence of Soviet troops in Warsaw Pact countries and urged Moscow to remember the Nancy Sinatra Doctrine: "These Boots Are Made for Walking." The Reds couldn't win on this turf. To modify Mrs. Thatcher, Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without a single shot. Just rimshots.
Say what you like about Marxism-Leninism, but it was deadly earnest. In the '40s, the Kremlin issued a directive to the Communist party of Great Britain that "the lower organs of the party must make even greater efforts to penetrate the backward parts of the proletariat" — which, to British ears, sounds like a ribald music-hall joke, as Claud Cockburn (father of Alexander, for any readers of The Nation who happen to be reading this) vainly endeavored to point out to Moscow. When the Commies got around to professing — like the ladies in lonely-hearts ads — the importance of a sense of humor, they still failed to understand why they needed one.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
FMCDH(BITS)
I can pinpoint the exact moment I knew the jig was up. It wasn’t Reykjavik or the fall of the Wall. It was when Gennadi Gerasimov, spokesman for President Gorbachev, appeared on TV and, seeking to explain the Soviet Union’s loosened grip on its Eastern European satellites, inaugurated an all-new Warsaw Pact: “The Brezhnev Doctrine is dead,” he declared. “We now have the Sinatra Doctrine: you do it your way.”
Mr Gerasimov was on TV a lot in those days. Plausible, genial, bespoke, tanned, he looked like a White House press spokesman doing a tour of duty in the Kremlin, which was the whole idea. For the “reformers” in Moscow, reform was mostly a matter of style. If they aped the manners of the west, maybe the Politburo could retrench, hold on to what mattered, survive.
So they sent their first and last western-style spin-doctor out before the cameras to do a one-liner about Ronald Reagan’s old buddy Frank that could have come straight from the Gipper himself. Dan Quayle responded by noting the continued presence of Soviet troops in Warsaw Pact countries and urged Moscow to remember the Nancy Sinatra Doctrine: “These Boots Are Made For Walking”. The Reds couldn’t win on this turf. To modify Mrs Thatcher, Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without a single shot. Just rimshots.
Say what you like about Marxism-Leninism but it was deadly earnest. In the Forties, the Kremlin issued a directive to the Communist Party of Great Britain that “the lower organs of the party must make even greater efforts to penetrate the backward parts of the proletariat” – which, to British ears, sounds like a ribald music-hall joke, as Claud Cockburn (father of Alexander, for any readers of The Nation who happen to be reading this) endeavored in vain to point out to Moscow. By the time the Commies got around to professing – like the ladies in lonely-hearts ads – the importance of a sense of humor, they still failed to understand why they needed one.
There’s a Broadway musical on at the moment called Assassins, a weak little revue by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman about the men and women who’ve tried to kill American presidents, from Lincoln to Reagan. When it comes to the latter, we see John Hinckley at a carnival sideshow pumping bullet after bullet into a cardboard cutout of the President, only to have him bounce back again and again with a brand new quip, like some kind of vampiric lounge act you can’t drive a stake through – “Whoops, honey, I forgot to duck”, “I hope you fellers are Republicans”, etc. Eventually Hinckley’s all out of ammo and hurls the gun away in frustration.
I think the authors mean us to see Ronald Reagan as a cardboard quipster: there’s no there there – nothing for Hinckley to kill. In fact, you’re left with the opposite impression – that the inexhaustible supply of jokes is merely the outer projection of a tremendous underlying strength and resilience. In his big speeches, he talked about the “evil empire”. In his gags, he joked about hapless Russians waiting ten years for a plumber’s appointment. The Soviet Union was wrong because it was evil. But it would fail because it was inept and sclerotic.
In the hours after Reagan’s death, CNN was wall-to-wall with media bigfeet, none of whom voted for him and all of whom spoke of his smile and his twinkle and his “wonderful sense of humor” as if these were things apart from his political philosophy, rather than the external evidence of it. The jokes reflect a cultural confidence that seems obvious – but only with the benefit of hindsight. Younger readers may have difficulty recalling quite how gloomy the pre-Reagan era was. If you think April in Iraq was bad, the entire 1970s were one long quagmire. From far away Cambodia to just-offshore Grenada, Communism was winning and the west was in retreat. Somehow the lower organs of our nomenklatura had been penetrated by a terrible pessimism: in their guts they didn’t expect us to win.
As for Reagan, all the things the defensive chattering classes now tout as evidence of Reagan’s irresistible personal charm were assumed back then to be proof that he was a moron who’d blunder us into Armageddon. The bestselling poster of the day showed Ron and Maggie like Rhett and Scarlett in Gone With The Wind, locked in each other’s arms with a huge mushroom cloud billowing behind them: “She promised to follow him to the end of the earth. He promised to arrange it.”
Funny. But wrong. And, in the end, the best jokes have a piercing truth to them. In their death-throes, the Soviets thought they could mimic the style – the rhythm, the vernacular, the set-up, the punch – without the substance. Not for the first time, they missed the point of the joke.
Ronald Reagan was the apotheosis of happy warriors. In that spirit, of all the elegant tributes, summations of his life and reports of his passing, let me cite my very favorite – a headline from an Associated Press story two days after he died:
Government To Close In Honor Of Reagan.
Wow. That’s a much better memorial than putting him on the quarter or Mt Rushmore.
Alas, the Federal Government was merely taking a day off. But somewhere up there Ronald Reagan is enjoying the joke.
National Review, June 21st 2004
~ Mark's "Happy Warrior" column can be read every two weeks in National Review. In the current issue, don't miss Steyn on "we, the people", only in the print edition of National Review, on sale now - or save over 40% and
I was having some fun with a Liberal today and ran across exactly that problem: She couldn't tell that what I was saying was all in fun. She got quite angry and started calling me names.
I described the Green Party as the party of people who hate civilization but are too stoned to be terrorists - come to think of it, maybe I wasn't joking!.
That's very good. Is it yours?
Next time, you might suggest that they are "watermelons" - Green on the outside, Red in the middle...
"to British ears, sounds like a ribald music-hall joke, as Claud Cockburn"
Claud's name sounds like a ribald joke to my ears.
Sounds painful.
I think you've got a winning tagline there.
The most important weapon in the conservative arsenal is humor. Ronald Reagan's most effective use of it was against Jimmy Carter: "There you go again." Kill 'em with laughter. Liberals can't stand being made fun of. Yes, Reagan would have wanted the government to go on a permanent vacation but the humor in its closing in honor of him is lost on the Left. Conservatives get the punch line. Now you know why Mark Steyn makes a point about a seemingly dated subject being dead on funny after all these years. The Soviets and the post-modern Left still don't get the appeal of conservatives. Which is a good thing for us or we'd be merely a glorified debating society.
"I described the Green Party as the party of people who hate civilization but are too stoned to be terrorists - come to think of it, maybe I wasn't joking!."
Then the libertarians must be the party of people who hate government but are too stoned to be revolutionaries. Am I joking?
FMCDH(BITS)
I love it.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
They still don't expect us to win. Maintain maybe, but not win. And these are the guys that are on our side or at least they are suppose to be.
You tell them it might be a hard slog but we will win and they all but pat you on the head like you are some dimwitted but happy child. They make some condescending comments about the naivete of youth.
But it was Reagan who showed us the way. Whoever it was who said Gen-X is truly Gen-Reagan was right. This is our war. And thanks to Reagan we know that we can win, we know how to win and we know that we will win.
FMCDH(BITS)
Yes. Thank you.
Some of us in here need to remember this when we comment about Michael Moore.
Some of us in here need to remember this when we comment about Michael Moore.
Moore's talented. Is the most important weapon in the liberal arsenal the lie? Grownup liberals should be ashamed of their intellectual dishonesty in not sternly condemning F911 for its untruths. Their uncontrolled urge to power makes them look the other way while kids go in droves to see it.
Ping, forgot to cc.
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