[Pokey78]

Steyn ping!

[dead]

Steyn should try to emulate me and be less well read. That way he would have only read Miller's "Death of Salesman" and could agree uncritically with all the critical acclaim.

[eureka!]

flag for later

[dead]

And there are few surer get-rich-quick schemes than a savage indictment of the cheap hucksterism at the heart of the American Dream.

Even if you’re disappointed that a Steyn article is more theater review than Eurinal bashing, that line alone is worth the price of admission.

[sd-joe]

>> "He wasn’t amiable enough to be an amiable dunce" <<

SMACK!!!!!

[TChris]

Incisive, well-written and right. As always. Go Steyn!

[texasbluebell]

Mark Steyn was on the Laura Ingraham radio show last week, which was the first time I had ever heard his voice. What a funny and sharp guy he is, even off the cuff like that.

Loved hearing his voice, which is similar to Christopher Hitchens', just not quite as deep. I knew he was a Brit, but somehow didn't expect the rather cultivated accent he has. In fact, it's a very cultivated accent, now that I think of it.

I hope she has him on again. He should go on other programs too, maybe he has and I've just missed him till now.

[Tax-chick]

But, as Noël Coward might have observed after visiting the Arthur Miller Centre for Sad Hollow Indictments, ‘Very flat, Norwich.’

BWAHAHAHAHA!

If I have to read "plays," give me Oscar Wilde.

[Rummyfan]

He wasn’t amiable enough to be an amiable dunce but he was the most useful of the useful idiots.

Another great Steyn! And I know that's redundant. Production of his plays will dwindle with time. Over-rated doesn't begin to say it!

[blanknoone]

Many people have pointed out the obvious flaw — that there were no witches, whereas there were certainly communists. For one thing, they were gobbling up a lot of real estate: they seized Poland in 1945, Bulgaria in ’46, Hungary and Romania in ’47, Czechoslavakia in ’48, China in ’49; they very nearly grabbed Greece and Italy; they were the main influence on the nationalist movements of Africa and Asia. Imagine the Massachusetts witch trials if the witches were running Virginia, New York and New Hampshire, and you might have a working allegory.

It is rare that I have anything critical to say about Steyn, but he missed the mark here. The relevant analogy is not whether there were witches in NY and communists in Romania. The relevent analogy is that there were not witches in MA, and there were Communists in Washington.

[GOPJ]

Miller "framed" the left's views/lies and dumped them on an innocent nation. The old trick is the new trick as dems dust off this ugly totalitarian tactic.

His genius was to give his fellow lefties what’s become their most cherished article of faith — that any kind of urgent national defence is, by definition, paranoid and hysterical. It was untrue in the Fifties and it’s untrue today. Indeed, the hysteria about hysteria — the ‘criminalisation’ of ‘dissent’ — is far more hysterical than the hysteria about Reds.

[goldstategop]

I must have missed it. The last great idea the Left had was in the 30s. And contrary to the lament of Arthur Miller's famous character, capitalism is alive and well. That's news to those who really need to sit up and pay attention.

Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News."

[Durus]

I always get Normal Lear and Arthur Miller confused. I have trouble keeping all of the "entertainer" commies seperated.

[Richard Kimball]

Steyn nails it again. BTTP

[Mark in the Old South]

Re: “‘The man who wrote Death of a Salesman died Thursday. And attention must be paid.’”

Excuse me, what was that you were saying, I wasn’t paying attention? You see I am a little focused on the death of a really important person. Sister Lucia de Jesus dos Santos, the child seer of Fatima. She died at the age of 97. I assure she was more valuable to humanity than any overrated play write, whose work was forced down the throats of every high school student. Does anyone like Miller’s work who isn’t trying to smooze the teacher for an “A”?

Re: “….British director David Thacker’s assessment of Miller as just below Shakespeare. ‘He is as great as any writer in the history of playwriting,’ declared Thacker.”

//Barf// Has literature in Britain really fallen that far down?!?!?! Well if that is the case we can officially declare the end of Western Civilization.

Re: “He was the ‘Moral Voice of the American Stage’ (the New York Times headline) with ‘A Morality that Stared Down Sanctimony’”

In a related obit, the “Moralist” Judas Iscariot dies after loosing a long battle with depression and suffering at the hands of an uncaring and controlling cult who drove him to despair.

Re: “‘that he could live with this unfortunate woman (Marilyn Monroe) for over four years and yet be capable of no greater insights into her character.’”

I don’t think her “character” was what was on Miller’s mind. Heah!!! Miller, eyes up about 8 inches buddy!

Re: Miller’s body of work

Has anyone seen where Reagan put that ash bin of history?

[Gritty]

Is there anybody or anything Steyn can't write intelligently about?

[Mamzelle]

bump--Susan Sontag--now Arthur Miller. Oblivion awaits.

[facedown]

bump

[beckett]

Although I mainly agree with Steyn, no difficult chore, I feel compelled to say a few words in Miller's defense. Towards the end of his life Miller repudiated socialism, although admittedly it was a soft repudiation. He said, "There is hardly a week that passes when I don't ask the unanswerable question: what am I now convinced of that will turn out to be ridiculous? And yet one can't forever stand on the shore; at some point, filled with indecision, scepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump in or concede that life is forever elsewhere." He was clearly referring to his socialist political views.

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.

[Taft in '52]

[The Crucible] was a marvellous inspiration to recast the communist ‘hysteria’ of the 1950s as the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. Many people have pointed out the obvious flaw — that there were no witches, whereas there were certainly communists.

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.