Posted on 02/17/2005 7:50:53 AM PST by Pokey78
He went to British schools.
Canadians who don't go to British schools don't have British accents.
Steyn nails it again. BTTP
I think it is a glorification of post-War (WW2) Existentialism. It is rampant in 'modern' music, too, and movies. "Life is the pits; it is hollow, without meaning, without form and shape." And then they go about debunking heroes, sacrifices, anything that smacks of rising to the highest potential of the human condition. Popularly known as 'I may as well go eat worms.'
Did you miss this line?
That explains it, I didn't think our neighbors to the north spoke like that!
He does seem to have an "Oxbridge" accent, very similar to Hitchens'.
Not at all...it is what I object to. The point was never what is going on elsewhere (witches in NY, Commies in Europe) the point was what WAS going on 'here' witches in MA and Commies in our government.
Is there anybody or anything Steyn can't write intelligently about?
Nope.
bump--Susan Sontag--now Arthur Miller. Oblivion awaits.
bump
Miller also visited Cuba only a year or so ago and wrote, in The New York Times, a scathing critique of Castro, with whom he and his group met for hours. He called Castro a long-winded bore trapped in the fantasies of the past, or words to that effect.
Miller's politics changed over time, and he should be accorded some credit for that.
The Dustin Hoffman performance in that play (as televised) was nothing short of brilliant. But that says much more about the actor than the play. I really don't know why more people know about Mark Steyn. He's like the H.L. Mencken of the 21st century.
Sort of like the credit a killer gets for not killing???
It is a shame that some people get stuck on a point and can't see beyond it. Here's the deal. There were no witches in MA nor ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD! There were no witches in the MA government - from the town level to the colony level! There were and still are communists not only in the world but within our own country. That is what Steyn is refering to - it does not matter the communists were in the United States or overseas or everywhere. The fact is they existed and people in power knew so. The other fact is that witches did not exist anywhere so ignorant people were chasing their own demons.
I hope Mark Steyn isn't regularly reading the comments about his work on FR; his head will swell so big that his accent will come out with an echo!
Equating the Salem witch trials with congressional hearings into Soviet espionage is ridiculous. For one thing, witnesses before congressional committees have even more rights than do those in a court of law, in that they may invoke the fifth amendment (against self-incrimination) for each question they are asked. The Salem witch trials took place before there even was a fifth amendment, as Giles Corey, one of the defendants, found out--he was killed for refusing to testify.
Although there were no witches at Salem, Miller--and those who characterized the hunt for Russian spies, propagandists, and saboteurs as "witch hunts"--may have inadvertently made a point that witches and Communists do, indeed, have something in common: witches try to manipulate supernatural and cosmic forces (casting spells, turning people into frogs, etc.), whereas Communists claim to be manipulating social and historical forces to bring on the dictatorship of the proletariat, the withering away of the state, a classless society in which the New Soviet Man flourishes, etc.
Let me ask you this...why did Miller write the Crucible? Was it to announce that there were no Commies in Europe? Or was it to alienate those pursuing the very real communists in Washington?
it does not matter the communists were in the United States or overseas or everywhere.
I would argue that it does matter. Very much. As a matter of fact, I think I could even make a point about people not seeing the point.
In March 1949, New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel played host to one of the strangest gatherings in American history. Less than four years after Allied troops had liberated Hitler's concentration camps, 800 prominent literary and artistic figures congregated in the Waldorf to call for peace at any price with Stalin, whose own gulag had just been restocked with victims of his latest purge. Americans, including Lillian Hellman, Aaron Copland, Arthur Miller, and a young Norman Mailer, joined with European and Soviet delegates to repudiate "US warmongering." Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich told the delegates that "a small clique of hatemongers" was preparing a global conflagration; he urged progressive artists to struggle against the new "Fascists'' who were seeking world domination. American panelists echoed the Russian composer's fear of a new conflict. Playwright Clifford Odets denounced the ``enemies of Man'' and claimed the United States had been agitated into ``a state of holy terror'' by fraudulent reports of Soviet aggression; composer Copland declared "the present policies of the American Government will lead inevitably into a third world war."
The Waldorf conference marked another step in the Communist Information Bureau's (Cominform) campaign to shape Western opinion. A series of Soviet-sponsored cultural conferences beginning in September 1948 called for world peace and denounced the policies of the Truman administration. The conference at the Waldorf-Astoria, however, was the first to convene in a Western country and, not coincidentally, was also the first to meet organized and articulate opposition.
The Cominform could hardly have picked a riskier place than New York City to stage a Stalinist peace conference. New York's large ethnic neighborhoods were filled with refugees from Communism, and its campuses and numerous cultural and political journals employed hundreds of politically left-leaning men and women who had fought in the ideological struggles over Stalinism that divided American labor unions, college faculties, and cultural organizations before World War II.
Stealing the Show
A handful of liberal and socialist writers, led by philosophy professor Sydney Hook, saw their chance to steal a little of the publicity expected for the Waldorf peace conference. A fierce ex-Communist himself, Hook was then teaching at New York University and editing a socialist magazine called The New Leader. Ten years earlier he and his mentor John Dewey had founded a controversial group called the Committee for Cultural Freedom, which attacked both Communism and Nazism. He now organized a similar committee to harass the peace conference in the Waldorf-Astoria.
To people like my 85 year old father (whose father lost everything in the Depression), "Death of a Salesmen" speaks to him like no other play. It is an extremely hard-hitting piece of theatre.
The Crucible will last long after people have forgotten about "McCarthyism." Why? 'Cause it's a crackling good play about a very interesting time in our history.
No sense of humor? Read or see "The Price." Or think back on Miller's talk show appearances when he was always good for a funny anecdote.
One aside, as an essayist he was horrible. Not an original thought in his head, apparently. Sent me scurrying back to Gore Vidal.
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