The Scoop - http://www.bobharris.com/ New subscribers: thanks for joining. Yes, the column is free, and you’re encouraged to forward it to friends. That’s how our readership grows. Gratuitous plug: Steal This Book And Get Life Without Parole is now available. You’ll get the best price by ordering directly from http://www.commoncouragepress.com/steal.html. Our long national weird-attachment-to-email nightmare is over. The only people receiving attachments now should be users of AOL, which apparently converts longer articles directly into attachments -- one of many inconveniences AOL software provides. Thanks! bh THE SCOOP for September 27, 1999 ___________________________ Pat Buchanan, Steven Seagal, and Sylvester Stallone: Why, Of The Three, Pat Is By Far The Scariest © 1999 Bob Harris http://www.bobharris.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * = italics In his new book, *A Republic, Not An Empire,* Pat Buchanan says that Britain and France were wrong to go to war with Germany in 1939. He also says that Hitler was not a threat to the United States. This is news? Pat Buchanan says a lot of things. All of this is on the record: Pat has called Holocaust survivors' memories "group fantasies of martyrdom." Pat calls the U.S. Congress "Israeli-occupied territory," complaining that foreign policy is dominated by Jews. Pat complained recently that there are too many Jews and Asians at Ivy League schools. Pat wrote the section of Ronald Reagan's speech at Bitburg, the cemetery in which Nazi SS troops were buried, calling the Nazi soldiers "victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." Pat has written, along with those who deny the Holocaust ever happened, that carbon monoxide from diesel engines could not have killed 850,000 Jews at Treblinka. Pat has called for closing the Justice Department office that prosecutes Nazi war criminals. Pat says Hitler himself was "an individual of great courage" and "extraordinary gifts," even "a soldier's soldier," in spite of his genocidal habits. Pat thinks illegal immigrants ought to be deported… except for John Demjanjuk, the accused Nazi guard who admittedly entered America illegally in 1952. Pat has also argued against the deportation of Estonian war criminal Karl Linnas and for restoring the U.S. citizenship of Nazi scientist Arthur Rudolph. In his autobiography, among Pat's heroes are the "soldier-patriots" Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet. Franco was the dictator of Spain. Pinochet was the dictator of Chile. Both overthrew democracies and suppressed dissent with violence, using anti-communism as a rationale. On the subject of democracy itself, Pat says that "like all idolatries, democratism substitutes a false god for the real, a love of process for a love of country" and that "if the people are corrupt, the more democracy, the worse the government." Pat once said that sanctions against South Africa were "destroying the [region's] one working economy… because it doesn't adopt an idiotic 'One man, one vote' regimen." Regarding apartheid, Pat even questioned that "white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this." Pat called Dr. Martin Luther King "one of the most divisive men in contemporary history." He also wrote a memo to Nixon saying that integration would result in "perpetual friction, as the incapable are placed consciously by government side by side with the capable." On homosexuality, Pat has written "its rise almost always is accompanied, as in the [pre-Hitler] Weimar Republic, with a decay of society." Pat has also written that "homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide" and that "AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature." See? Pat Buchanan says a lot of things. Pat even told CNN last week that "there's not a trace of bigotry in my heart." The people who know Pat best think otherwise. William Buckley, Pat's longtime friend and mentor, once wrote a 20,000-word essay concluding it was "impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge" of anti-Semitism. William Safire, a colleague of Pat's from both the Nixon White House and a lifetime of punditry, has essentially concurred. Alan Keyes has angrily confronted Buchanan staffers for appealing to racism. William Bennett has described Pat's politics as "flirting with fascism." And now Sen. John McCain concludes that Pat Buchanan's views are somewhat outside the mainstream. This is news? What should be news is how few other mainstream figures are willing to do the same. (Much of the above is collected from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting's large compendium of Pat Buchanan's scary whoppers at http://www.fair.org/current/buchanan-bigot.html.) ___________________________ As regular readers know, I live in West Hollywood and on the fringe of bigtime show business. Which is a lot like living next door to Disneyland, although the garishly-costumed characters in my neighborhood have much bigger heads, often made of far cheaper plastic. Last Thursday, I was invited to a classic star-studded shindig at Spago on the Sunset Strip. Spago is the exclusive joint where Wolfgang Puck popularized such "California Cuisine" menu items as Grilled Rare Tuna With Wasabi Potato Puree, Plum Wine Black Pepper Glaze, And Crisp Shallots or Porcini-Crusted Sweetbreads With Spring Onion Relish And Roasted Bell Pepper Coulis which, when said to you by an impatient waiter who would rather be fawning over the ICM agent by the window, often decodes in my brain into something like Sour Milk Watusi With Open Chord Tuning, Spring Oiled Herb Tarleck, And Smashing Pumpkin Album or Sandblasted Donald Duck With Mint Orange Julius And Lemon Baked Gene Shalit. Of course, celebrities love to pretend they can actually perceive all these flavors -- as if playing the wacky role of Binky on "Who's Got A Shovel?" endows one with the palate of Lucullus -- so they come here in such droves that Spago's phone number isn't even in the Pacific Bell listings. Celebrities also have the pockets to pay for all this: a nightly dinner for two here costs about as much per year as the house I grew up in cost… ever. All of which explains why whenever I visit Spago, I usually dine on the Veggie Sandwich From Subway, Two Blocks Up The Street. But on this night, the Something-Encrusted Whatnot was free and all-you-can-parse, as were the stars in attendance. Steven Seagal was there, blithely staring into the distance like a man who has attained either great spiritual enlightenment or bad acid. (Incidentally, Seagal hasn't made a movie in two years; supposedly true Lamahood doesn't include kicking people in the head so much. Maybe so, but if dude puts on much more weight, he'll have to build his next storyline around Sumo.) I was told Sylvester Stallone showed up as well, remaining for a matter of seconds before retreating. I have no idea why he left. I like to think he was afraid of getting into a slapfight with Seagal. Or maybe he suddenly had a breakthrough in scripting the next Rocky movie, possibly by remembering which number comes after five. Anyway… the occasion for all this hoohah? Las Vegas is trying to lure the film industry away from L.A., in part by offering lower production expenses and substantial tax advantages. It's the same general economic thinking that caused Fox, not unlike numerous other American corporations, to move a substantial portion of production ("Titanic" being the most well-known example) south of the border. (What a deeply ironic film "Titanic" was: a portrayal of the silliness of excess and inhumanity of social inequity, shot on a notoriously unlimited budget in Mexico.) To the extent Las Vegas' plan is successful, the economy of Los Angeles, where almost everyone in attendance lives, will be negatively impacted. No big deal for the Seagals and Stallones of the world, but for everyone else at the hoedown, not such a hot idea. This setting of communities in competition with each other for corporate favor, and the "race to the bottom" for working people thus entailed, is a familiar story. Not that anyone noticed. Most of the deep political thinking in the room was along the lines of: Party at Spago! Wheee! People danced on the Titanic, too. ___________________________ PS: Walking home from Spago, I passed within five feet of two raccoons having sex in somebody's front yard. Noticing me, both raccoons froze immediately, with a guilty look on their faces, as if saying to themselves: "Busted!" The expressions on their faces made me laugh out loud. I apologized for interrupting their evening and continued on. The raccoons went back to their previous activitiy. This was way more entertaining than anything the professional showbiz people did all night long. ___________________________ Bob Harris is a stand-up comedian, political writer, and syndicated radio humorist. His new book, Steal This Book And Get Life Without Parole, is now available from http://www.commoncouragepress.com. To receive a free email subscription to The Scoop, just send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________ Bob’s Big Plug-O-Rama™ (updated 9/27/99): Steal This Book And Get Life Without Parole is available in many bookstores and can be ordered directly from http://www.commoncouragepress.com/steal.html at 25% off the retail price. The book includes cartoons by Tom Tomorrow and a foreword by Paul Krassner, who edited Lenny Bruce’s autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. I’m doing readings at bookstores around the country during my fall college tour. So far, the book has already received hugely kind praise from Michael Moore, Jim Hightower, Jeff Cohen, and lots of other cool people. This is way exciting. Even cooler, I was honored to contribute the narration to the 6-hour unabridged book-on-tape version of Noam Chomsky’s book on the Balkan War, The New Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo. This, too, is best obtained directly from Common Courage. Http://www.bobharris.com now includes streaming stand-up comedy clips, radio commentaries, and lots of other stuff like early writing samples from National Lampoon, my first published cartoons, and other such whatnot. Syndication of "This Is Bob Harris," the daily radio feature, is rolling along: over 75 stations and counting. Call your favorite station and ask for the feature. They pay attention, honest. The radio stuff is now also rebroadcast up to four times a day in over 140 countries by Armed Forces Radio. You can also hear an audio version of my commentaries at Soapbox, http://www.webactive.com/webactive/soapbox/monday.html. Some past columns are reprinted in the current print editions of Z magazine and the Funny Times. The email version of this column now has subscribers in 44 countries. Finally, Mother Jones online (http://www.motherjones.com) now carries The Scoop almost every week. I am honored to be associated with these people. They’re keen. ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MSN Messenger Service lets you stay in touch instantly with your family & friends - Visit http://messenger.msn.com
