Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics

by Charles Krauthammer

  But? Neoconservative but thoughtful and dignified. A sighting: rare, oxymoronic, newsworthy.

  The venerable David Halberstam, writing in praise of the recently departed Ted Williams, offered yet another sighting: “He was politically conservative but in his core the most democratic of men.” Amazing.

  The most troubling paradox of all, of course, is George W. Bush. Compassionate, yet conservative? Reporters were fooled during the campaign. “Because Bush seemed personally pleasant,” explained Slate, “[they] assumed his politics lay near the political center.”

  What else could one assume? Pleasant and conservative? Ah, yes, Grampa told of seeing one such in the Everglades. But that was 1926.

  The Washington Post, July 26, 2002

  KRAUTHAMMER’S FIRST LAW

  Strange doings in Virginia. George Allen, former governor, one-term senator, son of a famous football coach and in the midst of a heated battle for reelection, has just been outed as a Jew. An odd turn of events, given that his having Jewish origins has nothing to do with anything in the campaign and that Allen himself was oblivious to the fact until his 83-year-old mother revealed to him last month the secret she had kept concealed for 60 years.

  Apart from its political irrelevance, it seems improbable in the extreme that the cowboy-boots-wearing football scion of Southern manner and speech should turn out to be, at least by origins, a son of Israel. For Allen, as he quipped to me, it’s the explanation for a lifelong affinity for Hebrew National hot dogs. For me, it is the ultimate confirmation of something I have been regaling friends with for 20 years and now, for the advancement of social science, feel compelled to publish.

  Krauthammer’s Law: Everyone is Jewish until proven otherwise. I’ve had a fairly good run with this one. First, it turns out that John Kerry—windsurfing, French-speaking, Beacon Hill aristocrat—had two Jewish grandparents. Then Hillary Clinton—methodical Methodist—unearths a Jewish stepgrandfather in time for her run as New York senator.

  A less jaunty case was that of Madeleine Albright, three of whose Czech grandparents had perished in the Holocaust and who most improbably contended that she had no idea they were Jewish. To which we can add the leading French presidential contender (Nicolas Sarkozy), a former supreme allied commander of NATO (Wesley Clark) and Russia’s leading antisemite (Vladimir Zhirinovsky). One must have a sense of humor about these things. Even Fidel Castro claims he is from a family of Marranos.

  For all its tongue-in-cheek irony, Krauthammer’s Law works because when I say “everyone,” I don’t mean everyone you know personally. Depending on the history and ethnicity of your neighborhood and social circles, there may be no one you know who is Jewish. But if “everyone” means anyone that you’ve heard of in public life, the law works for two reasons. Ever since the Jews were allowed out of the ghetto and into European society at the dawning of the Enlightenment, they have peopled the arts and sciences, politics and history in astonishing disproportion to their numbers.

  There are 13 million Jews in the world, one-fifth of 1% of the world’s population. Yet 20% of Nobel Prize winners are Jewish, a staggering hundredfold surplus of renown and genius. This is similarly true for a myriad of other “everyones”—the household names in music, literature, mathematics, physics, finance, industry, design, comedy, film and, as the doors opened, even politics.

  But it is not just Jewish excellence at work here. There is a dark side to these past centuries of Jewish emancipation and achievement—an unrelenting history of persecution. The result is the other, more somber and poignant reason for the Jewishness of public figures being discovered late and with surprise: concealment.

  Look at the Albright case. Her distinguished father was Jewish, if tenuously so, until the Nazi invasion. He fled Czechoslovakia and, shortly thereafter, converted. Over the centuries, suffering—most especially the Holocaust—has proved too much for many Jews. Many survivors simply resigned their commission.

  For some, the break was defiant and theological: A God who could permit the Holocaust—ineffable be His reasons—had so breached the Covenant that it was now forfeit. They were bound no longer to Him or His faith.

  For others, the considerations were far more secular and practical. Why subject one’s children to the fear and suffering, the stigmatization and marginalization, the prospect of being hunted until death that being Jewish had brought to an entire civilization in Europe?

  In fact, that was precisely the reason Etty Lumbroso, Allen’s mother, concealed her identity. Brought up as a Jew in French Tunisia during World War II, she saw her father, Felix, imprisoned in a concentration camp. Coming to America was her one great chance to leave that forever behind, for her and for her future children. She married George Allen Sr., apparently never telling her husband’s family, her own children or anyone else of her Jewishness.

  Such was Etty’s choice. Multiply the story in its thousand variations and you have Kerry and Clinton, Albright and Allen, a world of people with a whispered past. Allen’s mother tried desperately to bury it forever. In response to published rumors, she finally confessed the truth to him, adding heartbreakingly, “Now you don’t love me anymore”—and then swore him to secrecy.

  The Washington Post, September 25, 2006

  CHAPTER 4

  FOLLIES

  SAVE THE BORDER COLLIE

  Alas, not many British dukes are bred as closely as their poorest shepherd’s dogs. Even fewer dukes are bred for accomplishment.

  —Donald McCaig, Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men

  The dumbing of America has gone far enough. Yes, we have gotten used to falling SAT scores, coming in dead last in international math comparisons, high schoolers who cannot locate the Civil War to the nearest half-century. But we have got to draw the line somewhere. I say we draw it at dogs.

  Last month, the American Kennel Club, the politburo of American dog breeding, decided to turn the world’s smartest dog, the border collie, into a moron. Actually, it voted 11–1 to begin proceedings to turn it into a show dog, which will amount to the same thing. A dog bred for 200 years exclusively for smarts will now be bred for looks. Its tail, its coat, its ears, its bite, its size will have to be just so. That its brains will likely turn to mush is of no consequence.

  What is the border collie? A breed developed in the border country between England and Scotland for one thing only: its ability to herd sheep, though, if necessary, it can work cattle or hogs or even turkeys. (Our border collie, deprived of such gainful employment, likes to swim out to the middle of a pond and herd ducks.)

  It is a creature of uncanny intelligence and a jaw-dropping capacity to communicate with humans, able to herd 300 sheep at a time at a distance of a mile and a half from its shepherd. It is, testifies Baxter Black (NPR’s “cowboy poet, philosopher and former large-animal veterinarian”), “one of the greatest genetic creations on the face of the earth.”

  Now it faces genetic ruin. When bred for looks, great swaths of the border collie population, which comes in all shapes and sizes, will be condemned to genetic oblivion.

  It would be nice to breed for beauty and brains, but history and genetics teach that the confluence of the two is as rare in dogs as it is in humans. Inbreeding in the pursuit of man-made standards of beauty has reduced other breeds to ruin: In the 1950s, writes Mark Derr in the Atlantic Monthly, show people turned the German shepherd into a weak-hipped animal with a foul temper and bizarre downward-sloping hindquarters. The cocker spaniel lost its ability to hunt. The bulldog and the Boston terrier have been given such exaggerated heads that the females regularly need C-sections to give birth. As for the AKC’s Irish setters, says veterinarian Michael W. Fox, “they’re so dumb they get lost on the end of their leash.”

  The genetics behind such sad stories is straightforward. “In genetics, selection for one trait usually comes at the expense of another,” explains Jasper Rine, professor of genetics and former director of the Human Genome Center at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs. “The notion
that one could achieve a standard conformation for border collies and maintain their working qualities is simply foolish.” Which is why the border collie people are prepared to sue to keep the AKC’s snout from under their tent.

  Why should anyone else care? Well, a society that grieves for the accidental demise of the snail darter and the spotted owl that not one in a million Americans has ever seen should not easily acquiesce to the deliberate destruction of a unique breed of animals whose fate is so intimately entwined with man’s. “Border collies: Are they truly smarter than a chimpanzee?” asks Black. “Can they change course in mid-air, drag Nell from the tracks and locate missing microfiche? Yes. I believe they can. They are the best of the best.”

  And for those who find such fascination with dogs self-indulgent sentimentalism, who care as little for the border collie as they do for the snail darter, consider this: In a world of rising crime and falling standards, of broken cities and failing schools, the border collie is one of the few things that works. Must we ruin this too? Reduce it to imbecility in the name of prettiness?

  In the brief interval of calm between our latest capitulation to North Korea and our invasion of Haiti, it is worth pondering this small but telling domestic folly. Face it: Our kids are not going to beat the South Koreans at math for decades. But we can still produce a thinking dog. For now.

  The Washington Post, July 15, 1994

  BUSH DERANGEMENT SYNDROME

  Diane Rehm: “Why do you think he [Bush] is suppressing that [Sept. 11] report?”

  Howard Dean: “I don’t know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I’ve heard so far—which is nothing more than a theory, it can’t be proved—is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now who knows what the real situation is?”

  —The Diane Rehm Show, NPR, Dec. 1, 2003

  It has been 25 years since I discovered a psychiatric syndrome (for the record: “Secondary Mania,” Archives of General Psychiatry, November 1978), and in the interim I haven’t been looking for new ones. But it’s time to don the white coat again. A plague is abroad in the land.

  Bush Derangement Syndrome: the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency—nay—the very existence of George W. Bush. Now, I cannot testify to Howard Dean’s sanity before this campaign, but five terms as governor by a man with no visible tics and no history of involuntary confinement is pretty good evidence of a normal mental status. When he avers, however, that “the most interesting” theory as to why the president is “suppressing” the Sept. 11 report is that Bush knew about Sept. 11 in advance, it’s time to check on Thorazine supplies. When Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) first broached this idea before the 2002 primary election, it was considered so nutty it helped make her former representative McKinney. Today the Democratic presidential front-runner professes agnosticism as to whether the president of the United States was tipped off about 9/11 by the Saudis, and it goes unnoticed. The virus is spreading.

  It is, of course, epidemic in New York’s Upper West Side and the tonier parts of Los Angeles, where the very sight of the president—say, smiling while holding a tray of Thanksgiving turkey in a Baghdad mess hall—caused dozens of cases of apoplexy in otherwise healthy adults. What is worrying epidemiologists about the Dean incident, however, is that heretofore no case had been reported in Vermont or any other dairy state.

  Moreover, Dean is very smart. Until now, Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) had generally struck people with previously compromised intellectual immune systems. Hence its prevalence in Hollywood. Barbra Streisand, for example, wrote her famous September 2002 memo to Dick Gephardt warning that the president was dragging us toward war to satisfy, among the usual corporate malefactors who “clearly have much to gain if we go to war against Iraq,” the logging industry—timber being a major industry in a country that is two-thirds desert.

  It is true that BDS has struck some pretty smart guys—Bill Moyers ranting about a “right-wing wrecking crew” engaged in “a deliberate, intentional destruction of the United States way of governing” and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, whose recent book attacks the president so virulently that Krugman’s British publisher saw fit to adorn the cover with images of Vice President Cheney in a Hitler-like mustache and Bush stitched up like Frankenstein. Nonetheless, some observers took that to be satire; others wrote off Moyers and Krugman as simple aberrations, the victims of too many years of neurologically hazardous punditry.

  That’s what has researchers so alarmed about Dean. He had none of the usual risk factors: Dean has never opined for a living and has no detectable sense of humor. Even worse is the fact that he is now exhibiting symptoms of a related illness, Murdoch Derangement Syndrome (MDS), in which otherwise normal people believe that their minds are being controlled by a single, very clever Australian.

  Chris Matthews: “Would you break up Fox?”

  Howard Dean: “On ideological grounds, absolutely yes, but … I don’t want to answer whether I would break up Fox or not.… What I’m going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.”

  Some clinicians consider this delusion—that Americans can get their news from only one part of the political spectrum—the gravest of all. They report that no matter how many times sufferers in padded cells are presented with flash cards with the symbols ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times—they remain unresponsive, some in a terrifying near-catatonic torpor.

  The sad news is that there is no cure. But there is hope. There are many fine researchers seeking that cure. Your donation to the BDS Foundation, no matter how small, can help. Mailing address: Republican National Committee, Washington, D.C., Attention: psychiatric department. Just make sure your amount does not exceed $2,000 ($4,000 for a married couple).

  The Washington Post, December 5, 2003

  LIFE BY MANUAL

  My channel surfing was arrested by the news reporter at the Manhattan courthouse recounting the day’s doings at the Woody Allen–Mia Farrow custody fight. “Testimony today,” she said, “focused on Woody Allen’s lack of parenting skills.” By this she meant that on the witness stand Allen had admitted that he (1) could not name a single one of his children’s friends, (2) had never taken the children to the barber or given them a bath, (3) did not know who their dentist was, (4) had never attended a parent-teacher conference for son Satchel. In fact, the three children whose custody he seeks had never spent a night at his apartment.

  Lack of parenting skills? One might as well say that Jeffrey Dahmer lacked interpersonal skills or that Robespierre could have used some sensitivity training. The problem here is not some absence of technique. It is an absence of something far more basic: an instinct, a feeling, the normal bond that ties the average parent to his child.

  Allen’s problem is self-absorption taken, as with most everything in his life, to the point of parody. Here is the artiste so jealous of his autonomy, so disdainful of attachment, that his children may not spend the night at his apartment, though this should not prevent the court from awarding him custody.

  Of course, given the alternative, the hysterical Ms. Farrow, whose narcissism expresses itself not in detachment but in a self-indulgence that acquires children like stray pets, Allen may turn out to be the better choice. The sight of these two vying for custody of that pathetic brood makes you wonder how a society that requires licenses for drivers manages without requiring them for parents.

  The reason is that nature endows most people in all cultures with an instinctive parental feeling that translates into often clumsy, sometimes wrongheaded, but generally benign and benevolent care. The fact that the grotesque absence of these qualities in Allen could be interpreted as a lack of “parenting skills” shows how far we’ve gone in the belief in the mechanization of ordinary human feeling.

  Sexual i
ntimacy, for example. “A skill like any other,” concludes Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Richard Rhodes in his recent sexual autobiography. There are entire bookshelves of wildly successful manuals (How to Satisfy a Woman Every Time—55 weeks on the bestseller list) to show how far from alone Rhodes is in this belief.

  Self-improvement through the acquisition of skill is, of course, hardly a new American theme. First mass-marketed by Dale Carnegie, it owes its popularity to the marriage of two powerful American beliefs: human perfectibility and the power of technology.

  In the past, however, tradition and community acted as partial antidotes to this tendency. But with the modern decline of tradition and community as guides to experience, the mechanization of behavior is complete. Every human activity is now the subject of the how- to industry.

  A visit to the local bookstore shows how far things have gone. Not just parenting and loving, but everything—eating and drinking, running and sunning, living itself—is a skill to be learned and mastered. There are books, videos, multibillion-dollar industries for teaching people such exotic skills as losing weight (try eating less!) and exercise (try running around). The business succeeds because Americans have come to believe that only an expert can teach them the correct way to, say, walk, or bend their knees or think well of themselves.

  The idea that everything is a skill to be learned, like a golf swing, applies far beyond the field of family and sexual intimacy. We now have training for the proper love of strangers. Marge Schott, owner of the Cincinnati Reds and given to racist remarks, is sentenced by baseball owners to sensitivity training. This will make her nice. Five years ago, a religious student at the University of Michigan expressed the view that homosexuality is immoral. He was made to recant and ordered a dose of sensitivity training. This will make him broad-minded.