-Caveat Lector-
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Private planes, power and privilege
By Edward Said
The reflections that follow may appear at
first to be frivolous or inconsequential, but I
am convinced that something of perhaps modest
value may lurk within them. There are so many
issues of grave importance clamouring for one's
attention these days that a little detachment and
a slightly odd perspective seem warranted, if
only as a
way of re-tackling what is truly significant. Anyway: what I have
in mind here goes back to a comment made by my sister Jean, who
lives in Beirut, is a gifted writer and is married to Samir
Makdisi, who for several years was the "deputy president" of the
American University of Beirut. What this title meant in fact is
that, as a resident professor of economics at AUB, as well as a
Lebanese national, he was the local president of the place, given
that the actual president, an American living in New York, was
unable to be in Beirut at all since the US, in its infinite
wisdom and humanity, had imposed a travel ban on Americans
wishing to go to Lebanon.
It was a difficult time to run the AUB: the civil war had barely
ended, militias and enemies still confronted each other, and the
volatile situation made it quite a precarious time to be a
visible figure of authority. I recall being in Beirut in June
1997 and noting that at all official occasions my sister and her
husband were invariably to be found sitting in the front row.
With characteristic irony, Jean let pass a comment that has
stayed with me ever since, to the effect that the view from the
front row is inevitably a distorting one: not only are you seen
prominently by others, but with no obstructions between you and
the stage, for instance, you get a "better" view than anyone.
Nevertheless, there is distortion, which is what has remained in
my mind as a subject worth commenting on a little now.
Most people spend a great deal of their lives going through
experiences that are neither pleasant nor edifying but are an
inevitable part of being an ordinary citizen. We stand in line at
the grocery store; we worry about schools and paying bills; we
have to think about getting the kitchen sink or bath fixed; we
have to see doctors, lawyers, teachers and the like and we have
to wait; we spend hours on the phone clearing up a
misunderstanding about a bill or a neighbour's complaints; we
worry about the car, finding a parking place, getting it repaired
(those of us who have cars); commuting or travelling to work is a
headache, with trains and buses either full or late, the heat or
the cold making the walk unpleasant. And so on and on. This is a
catalogue familiar to any middle- or lower-middle class person.
For people even further down on the social scale, the problems
are severer and harder to solve. Putting food on the table for
your children, keeping (or finding) a job, getting together
enough money for children's shoes, or a new coat, or a trip,
paying the doctor or finding money for the price of medicine,
worrying whether you can stay in your house or flat: all the
daily cares that make poverty or the lack or privilege so trying
and diminishing an experience. If you are lucky enough to have a
job that you like, or a marriage that is happy, or children who
do well and are free of illness, you are indeed blessed, and
unusually rare. For most of us, life, as the poet puts it, is a
thoroughfare full of woe. Or as Hobbes phrased the same thought
more tersely and unmercifully: human life is nasty, brutish and
short.
Now let us jump to the front row, the life of privilege, where
your needs are always taken care of without your having to worry
about them. I have seen this wherever there is power and money
(often the same thing). Take so simple a thing as transportation.
Power endows you with no necessity at all of waiting for a taxi
in the rain, or trying to find a seat on a crowded bus: there is
always a waiting limousine and, if you are politically prominent
as leaders are, you can cut through the traffic with sirens
wailing. Weather is no problem. It is always just right, well
air-conditioned in summer, heated in winter. Phones are always
available, as are the people you call: your operator gets you
anyone you want on your private line and, better yet, you don't
ever have to answer the phone yourself. Or worry much about the
bill. Restaurants consider themselves honoured to have you, so
you always get the best table, and sometimes, you don't even pay
for it yourself. Your lodgings are assured wherever you go, as is
your food. You and your family get driven, there is never any
standing in line, and budgets in the ordinary sense mean
absolutely nothing. If you live in the White House, for instance,
or the Elysˇe Palace, everything is taken care of, from the bed
you sleep in, to the clothes you wear, to the dusting and
polishing. Note that I am not talking only about the Clintons,
Blairs and Chiracs. There are also the Milosevics, the Saddams,
plus all the retinues and hangers-on who surround them. The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Department, and others
like them have thousands of ambassadors, deputy secretaries,
consultants and the like who also have well-taken-care-of lives,
who in effect always go to the top of the line or sit in the
front seat. They can always get tickets for anything, travel in
first class (at the front of the plane, of course), are met at
the airport, go through the VIP lounge and are never questioned
by a rude or aggressive immigration or customs official. I
happened once to be on the same plane with an Arab foreign
minister whom I knew for a long time before he was foreign
minister. We had remained friends and chatted together on the
plane, which was going from one Arab capital to another. As we
were landing, he suggested that I get off with him and therefore
avoid customs and immigration: he could give me a ride in his
private limousine, he said, and spare me the discomfort (as well
as the expense) of a taxi ride. Acting out of stupid principle, I
refused his offer and spent four hours being quizzed and examined
by Arab customs and immigration officials, because despite my US
passport I was listed as being born in Jerusalem, a very
suspicious act. I regretted not taking up my friend's offer and
am now perfectly prepared for any special (in the good sense)
treatment offered me by influential friends, especially arriving
at or leaving Arab airports where the going for most people is
quite rough.
One of the reasons great privilege and power accords individuals
such insulation from ordinary cares, and allows them a front row
seat for everything, is supposedly to protect their time and
their minds in order to free them for important decisions. But is
that really true, especially in situations where transparency and
accountability cannot be maintained all the time? Even Clinton,
we now know, took advantage of his position to use the White
House for personal purposes, among other things renting out the
Lincoln Bedroom to wealthy donors. There is a great hue and cry
on now concerning Hillary Clinton's campaign for the Senate as
she travels back and forth between Washington and New York on
private planes at the taxpayer's expense. While it does seem true
that important activity shouldn't be interrupted to answer the
phone or stand in line at the grocery store, is it the case that
the front row always provides its incumbent with the best view,
or is it also true that privilege and the luxurious trappings of
power keep one from experiencing the realities of life as they
are to be lived by ordinary citizens whose existence is affected
by great leaders? And isn't it also true that VIP status becomes
an end in itself for lesser officials, for whom ambassadorial or
ministerial rank buys loyalty and uncritical going along with
decisions and practices that are otherwise shamefully wrong? How
often do we hear of officials who resign, give up their
limousines, cellular telephones and first-class tickets on a
matter of principle? And, to make the point absolutely clear,
isn't the absence in the Arab world of democratic debate about
the peace process one of the reasons that whatever decisions are
made now about peace are made only between leaders in
air-conditioned isolation from their subjects, rather than
citizens who have to live the consequences of what they agree to?
When I was in Gaza last March and watched Palestinian labourers
returning from the day's work in Israel, forced to go through
barbed wire lines like cattle, stripped of their dignity and
humanity, I wondered how our negotiators in Washington, on
private planes, or in their limousines might have acted if they
knew that they would have to go through the lines too. Certainly
they might not have accepted Israeli conditions so easily, and
certainly they would have given some thought to the unemployed
and the destitute who have had to bear the brunt of Israeli
inhumanity. But that might have entailed giving up their seat in
the front row, and not too many people have the stomach, or the
conscience, for that.
In short, while accepting the principle that leaders must make
decisions in isolation from public view and that there is no
point to making them stand in line to use the telephone, there is
some value to remembering that being in the front row does
prevent you from seeing what is happening on the sides and behind
you. Even privilege imposes limitations and distorts the view. A
certain detachment is good to have, as is the power to withdraw
somewhat from the fray as a political process is unfolding, but I
wonder whether in the absence of interruptions, or serious
criticisms that can be made and listened to, the front row seat
imposes too much deafness to the cries of the oppressed and too
little understanding of the stresses of real life. The front row
-- limousines, private planes, unlimited power and privilege --
allows leaders with no democratic constituency to forget the
past, especially its inconvenient or unpleasant aspects, and to
concentrate only on one's personal situation, which under the
circumstances is unnaturally comfortable and the preservation of
which is unnaturally enhanced. An occasional trip to the balcony
or among students who can only afford standing room prices may be
a necessary corrective to life in air-conditioned isolation,
where keeping one's place (rather than the public's welfare) can
become the main concern.
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