Two individuals can be regarded as contrasting illustrations of the good and the bad of human beings. At the top is the exotic Black Venus, Josephine Baker, the American-born French entertainer who won the hearts of Paris and then became a French resistance fighter. At the bottom is Walter Duranty, one of Stalin’s useful idiots, who was the greatest journalist liar of his generation, the model of journalistic mendacity. On Baker’s birthday, June 3, a petition was signed by thousands of French citizens for her to be buried in the Pantheon in Paris, an honor reserved for the most distinguished...