1975, Ben...
In a recent
City Journal piece, neocon Benjamin Plotinsky tries desperately to shoehorn exoteric Christianity into the endlessly-mutating narratives of modern sci-fi, along with some incredibly archaic Reagan-era political meanderings. It's all very tired, shallow and outmoded, unless you believe that
Enterprise (which limped along for five low-rated seasons) was superior to
Next Generation (which set syndicated ratings records and spawned four feature films).
But it does show that the old establishment is paying attention, finally, even if the Plotinsky's of the world are too locked into their outmoded, dualistic philosophies to ever understand where this is all going. By the way,
City Journal is the official house organ of William Casey's Manhattan Institute, those wonderful folks who helped bring you the Iraq War.
.
1975, Ben...
6 comments:
Hmmm I think Bill Casey may've croaked before the Manhattan Institute got cranked up, I dunno... but at any rate Henry Kissinger and Hip-Conservative old New Journalist Tom Wolfe are some main members. Wolfe gave at speech under the aegis of Vartan Gregorian at Brown in Providence in '94-- during the early research for A MAN IN FULL, originally set in NYC not Atlanta, Tom decided that "There are 50,000 artists running around south of 14th Street on food stamps and rent-control, promoting Socialism"... The MI got lackey Giuliani to make it a priority, overturning decades of policy, to evict as many Artists In Residence as possible and got a landlord I'll call 'Steve Crowbar' to buy up hundreds of buildings all along Bleecker St. and down into Chinatown... including my apartment on Leroy Street in the West Village! A Cultural-CounterRevolution from which I'm only now beginning to recover...
Oy, Wolfe. Can't wait for his skeletons to come roaring out of the closet once he ascends to that great big Antebellum plantation in the sky...
Hey, Mr. Knowles. Notice the book that won the Pulitzer for poetry this year? http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/pleased-by-his-pulitzer-surprised-by-poetry/?hp
Wolfe has been after artists for years, most in notably his excoriation of Leonard Bernstein and others in the maestro's (ahem) New York (ahem) circle almost 40 years ago. An interesting read, but Wolfe was obviously out for blood.
I also wouldn't be surprised if Wolfe was a spook sent to infiltrate the party. In fact, as I've had time, I've been working sporadically on an X-Files fanfiction backstory for Mr. X, with one chapter devoted to "that party at Lenny's." In it, Wolfe frantically jots down notes of Bernstein's conversation with an undercover Mr. X. (Perhaps Wolfe "didn't get the memo?")
Jason
Send me that story when you're done, Jason.
I actually have a few chapters in the can for my Mr. X story. I hope to put up more as I get to them.
Jason
Post a Comment