Oh, crap! Am I like that?

Many years ago, Christopher Hitchens was inexplicably invited to debate Charelton Heston on Nightline about "Operation Desert Storm", the first U.S. war with Iraq launched by George Bush, Sr.

Hitchens decided his course of attack. He wouldn't argue about what Heston thought; he would focus on what Heston knew.

He asked Heston to name the countries bordering Iraq. Heston named several countries including the Soviet Union, causing Hitchens to exclaim, "You think it's Iran, don't you!"

Anyone can work up an opinion but no one should care what it is unless you actually know something about it.

So anyway, I came across a guy's website. I had googled Wanda Coleman, a writer I met a couple of times. I came across the website which was a collection of "essays" by some guy. They were attacks on poets he didn't like. The essays weren't scholarly, but he thought they were. He attacked political opinions he didn't share as "political correctness", made mostly personal attacks on poets and their admirers. He offered no insight into their work or what he thought was wrong with it.

The internet is full of people like that.

Mr Cranky

Someone calling himself "Mr Cranky" ran a website where posted nothing but negative reviews. Some of them pretty funny. Everything he reviewed got a bad review.

But here's the thing---

A director told about an encounter he had with Pauline Kael. He had let Kael hang around while he made a movie, let her see how it was done. And she wrote an article attacking him.

He asked Kael what she was doing. She said she was trying to guide his career, telling him what she thought he should be doing.

He told Kael that she was trying to have the pleasure creativity without taking any of the risks.

Mr Cranky took this one step further. He was trying to have the joy of being a movie critic without the risk of making a bad judgment. All his reviews were bad--that was his whole routine--so he never had to state what he liked and what he disliked.

Real critics all write reviews that prove to be embarrassingly wrong. Roger Ebert attacked the soundtrack to The Graduate as "instantly forgettable" and for years he's had to defend his positive review of Cop and a Half.

TRUE critics

Maybe that's the test. You're not a true critic unless you can be embarrassed by your gross misjudgment.

That would exclude someone like Michael Medved. Some rich right-winger put up the money for him to host Sneak Previews, the movie review show on PBS. A show of the same name was originally hosted by Siskel & Ebert before they moved on to commercial television.

Medved's reviewed everything according to how closely they conformed to his right-wing ideology. Thus, Chuck Norris's Invasion, U.S.A., terrible even by Chuck Norris standards, got a rave review while he took part in demonstrations that were sometimes openly anti-Semitic against The Last Temptation of Christ.

Medved wanted more G-rated family films, but attacked Benji The Hunted because Benji stays in the woods to save some orphaned baby animals rather than running home to his master. Benji was disobedient!

Elie Wiesel and the "obscene" play

Racist right-wing zionist threatens grovelling playwright

Roger Corman used to cast movies by going through lists of Screen Actors Guild members, looking for names he recognized but who hadn't worked in a while. This how he happened give work to aging stars like Boris Karloff and others. Seems like a good idea. Larry Cohen was asked how he got Broderick Crawford to star in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, and he explained that there aren't that many leading roles for older actors. Write decent roles for older stars and you can get who you like.

There was a playwright in Hudson New York who tried something like this. Wrote a play for a couple of geezers. It might have worked if not for one thing...

The play was an imagined meeting between Elie Wiesel and Bernard Madoff, written by Deborah Margolin.

According to an article in The New York Times:

The Wiesel character in the earlier script was no passing contrivance. Ms. Margolin said she had seen the character as an ideal dramatic device, a name that would instantly connote moral authority. The central scene of the original play was an imagined conversation in which Wiesel pleaded with Madoff to invest his money. It also included a sexually tinged memory of Wiesel’s time in a concentration camp, as well as readings from the Talmud and meditations on repentance.

Wiesel spent much of the play cajoling and counseling Madoff, building up to a climactic moment in which the treacherous investor considered confessing his deceit to his wise and kindly companion.

Where did they get the idea that Wiesel was wise or kindly? He always seemed like a jerk to me.

Apparently Wiesel had been taking in contributions for something he modestly dubbed The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Donors probably thought the money would be used for the good of all mankind (except Palestinians), but Wiesel put it all in the stock market. He handed it all to Madoff until Madoff was thrown in prison.

Over the years, the wise, kindly Elie Wiesel refused to take part in a conference on genocide because it included mention of the Armenian genocide; he attacked Simon Wiesenthal because Wiesenthal called for the recognition of non-Jewish holocaust victims such as Gypsies and homosexuals; when asked to comment, he expressed no sympathy for the 2,000 or so Palestinians slaughtered in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, said that he felt "sad for Israel, not against it," and said that no one should comment on it or criticize Israel for carrying out the massacre.

In the late '40s, Wiesel was a member of the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group that helped carry out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. He wants to criminalize Holocaust denial, but he denies the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, denies the Armenian Genocide, and wants the world to ignore the Nazi genocide against Gypsies, homosexuals and others.

Wiesel called for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and is now calling for war on Iran. He continues to defend and support any mass murder of Palestinians.

But Wiesel is as angry as a Transylvanian can be about Bernard Madoff. Wiesel thinks Madoff should be forced to spend 24 hours a day looking at pictures of the millionaires he defrauded. He thinks Madoff would be tortured with guilt.

And now we have this idiot playwright who thinks that sticking Wiesel in a play gave it instant moral authority.

The woman has no right to be so stupid. She teaches at Yale, for God's sake.

She sent a copy of the play to Wiesel. The wise, kindly Wiesel wrote back that the play was "obscene" and threatened to sue her.

Margolin quickly rewrote it. Wrote out Wiesel and replaced him with a fictional geezer poet.

It didn't seem to change her opinion of Wiesel. She told the guy at the New York Times, “I didn’t set out to be on the wrong side of anybody, let alone someone I admire."

If she wants to admire him, okay. She can if she wants. But don't be an idiot about it.