David Garrow's RISING STAR: The Making of Barack Obama is a Great Political Biography

David J. Garrow's Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama (William Morrow, 2017) is a fascinating book. Although exceedingly long, over 1000 pages of text plus hundreds of pages of footnotes, filled with numerous details of names, places and events, I never felt that the author had provided TMI (Too Much Information). After reading Rising Star, for the first time, I felt that I finally understood how and why Barack Obama became President of the United States, who he was, and why things subsequently turned out the way that they did.

Although in some respects the biography reads like a phone book, it is a fascinating phone book--full of the kind of details that had been pretty much denied to all but the closest insiders in the Obama Administration.

It seemed strange, living in Washington, that one read so little about President Obama's inner circle, while he was in power. Garrow makes clear that this was by design, that the construction and preservation of "The Narrative" by Obama and his team was of the utmost importance. The messy details of Obama's life would not help in his quest to become the first African-American President of the United States of America, and so would be replaced by a Parson Weems-like story that seemed too good to be true--because it was. This was the "fairy-tale" to which President William Jefferson Clinton referred in 2008...a dream which came true because Americans wanted to believe in the angels of  our better nature.

In the end, Rising Star is a deeply reassuring book. Running as an outsider, indeed striking many of the same themes Trump used in 2016, Barack Obama claimed to want to bring American's together, to heal divisions, to oppose tribalism and racial strife, thereby to patriotically lead the country to "a more perfect Union" because there were no "red states, or blue states" just the United States of America. He claimed to want to bring back jobs, to have been against the war in Iraq, to disarm Iran, even to support a united Jerusalem under Israeli control.

If these seem to be the road not taken in the end, other concerns dating from his first run for Illinois State Senate made their way with him to the White House--support for universal health care became law as Obamacare; drug penalties were reduced; police were reined in (Obama had received a number of speeding tickets and was particularly sensitive to the issue of "Driving While Black"); attempts at gun control were made; troops were withdrawn from Iraq; and money flowed to non-profit organizations such as the ones which launched his political career.

Most importantly, Obama's sense of destiny was clearly fulfilled in his behavior as a husband and father while serving as U.S. President. Unlike Bill Clinton, he did nothing in his marriage to publicly embarrass his wife, children, or the nation. Garrow's book makes it perfectly clear that this was in reaction to his own father's lack of personal responsibility and also to serve as a conscious role model for other African-Americans. If nothing else, one can say that President Obama succeeded as a family  man in ways that Bill Clinton could not.

Perhaps most striking is Garrow's contention that Obama chose to self-identify as Black when he could have chosen another path due to his elite status and multi-racial heritage. On one level, Garrow seems to argue that this was a matter of political calculation--concluding that had Obama married his Asian-American girlfriend, he could not have been elected President, because African-American voters would have disapproved of the marriage. Although hypothetical, thus impossible to prove or disprove, it is clear from Garrow's biography that Michelle Obama was perhaps even more popular than Barack, although he continually states that she hated politics and just wanted him to take a high-paying job. Michelle also had strong personal ties to Chicago's African-American community, and at one point Garrow says she "almost grew up in Jesse Jackson's house."

There are so many intricate details in the book that one really has to read it for oneself, but among the many explanations, the map of African-American Chicago politics is particularly compelling...especially the focus on what many felt was Obama's betrayal of Alice Palmer, a move which began Obama's rise through the ranks. Like a character in Shakespearean drama, that first act of treachery demonstrated that Obama possessed the ruthlessness and determination which would take him to the White House, leaving others in his dust.

Garrow's depiction of the world of Cong. Bobby Rush, Jesse Jackson, Cong. Jesse Jackson, Jr. Rev. Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Carol Moseley Braun, and Mayor Harold Washington, among others, is perhaps the definitive portrait of Chicago's African-American Establishment.  I had no idea that Tony Rezko was in business with Rev. Farrakhan until reading this book. All that one can say is: "So, that's how it works!"

Springfield, Illinois is in fact as dreary as Garrow says. I've been there.

Likewise, he illuminates Chicago Hyde Park progressives and a complementary universe centered around the dinner table of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, where Barack and Michelle oft supped and plotted. The Bard of Avon himself could not dream up the world of intrigue surrounding the  non-profit foundations, charities, universities involved in what come across as self-dealing schemes of personal enrichment and power concentration involving moguls, millionaires, corporations and foundations.  Particularly compelling are Garrow's discussion of Obama's partnership with Ayers in a $49 million Annenberg Foundation grant to improve education which produced no measurable results, as well as an attempted $25 million Waste Management Incorporated scheme to pave the way for a toxic waste dump that grew so complicated that it fell apart from its own intrigue. In addition, Garrow details how Obama's experience with Project VOTE informed the use of voter registration regulations as a technique to eliminate opponents such as Alice Palmer.

He puts the lie to right-wing sneers that Obama had done nothing as a community organizer that would prepare him for the Presidency. Rather, Garrow shows that Obama's experience among the non-profiteers, beginning as a PIRG organizer at the City University of New York, was central to his ability to win the White House--because the money and personnel in the world of NGOs fueled his career as much as Boss Pendergast's Kansas City Machine did Harry S. Truman's.

Which brings us to Mayor Daley. I had forgotten that Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod both worked for Mayor Daley... The Daley Machine, according to Garrow, early on feared that Obama was so formidable that he might run for Mayor. So, Daley encouraged him to run for Senate and eventually President--to get him out of town... So connected is Obama to the machine that no Illinois Republican would run against him for US Senate after Jack Ryan dropped out following release of embarrassing divorce documents. The Illinois GOP brought in Alan Keyes from out-of-state, a carpetbagger candidate who had lost twice running in Maryland. Keyes then lost a bitter and personal campaign to Obama, getting into a shouting match at an Indian-American parade ("No-Drama Obama" completely lost his cool according to Garrow), then bitterly refused to concede on election night.

In addition, Garrow's discussion of Harvard Law School is just fascinating. After reading about the Harvard Law Review, one gets the impression that there is no law at Harvard. He quotes Obama, as editor, telling his subordinates not to worry about the articles, because "nobody reads it." The internal struggles over affirmative action are shocking to read about, and one eventually comes to the conclusion that conservatives have become just another special-interest group looking for a minority set-aside on the Law Review. There is almost no discussion of legal substance, at least reported by Garrow. I almost laughed out loud at Garrow's account of Lawrence Tribe's article on the physics of law (at least I think that was his topic). The great legal minds of Harvard look like mental midgets after Garrow gets through with them. Rather than providing a legal education, Garrow's Harvard teaches mafia tactics of self-advancement. Surely there is more to it than that, but anyone wondering about the identity politics destroying universities, if not the country, today can find plenty of the same at the Harvard Law Review during Obama's tenure as editor in Garrow's account.

What's past was truly prologue...

I used to live on W. 110th Street, one block from Obama's New York City apartment on W. 109th Street, so enjoyed Garrow's description of life in the neighborhood of Columbia University. Most notable was the jet-set lifestyle Obama seemed to enjoy, flying to Hawaii, Europe, and Pakistan among other places. Garrow's point is that Obama could have continued in this vein, becoming an international type working at the UN or similar organization...but he made a choice, a choice to move to Chicago and the African-American experience.

In exchange, he gave up his girlfriends, his lifestyle, and his literary pretentions--Garrow says the young Obama said he wanted to be a "writer." The road not taken would have been a very different one, though Garrow's Obama is so driven that there can be no doubt that he would succeed at anything he tried. But to become Ta-Nahesi Coates was not Barack Obama's destiny.

Strikingly, despite a critical attitude towards Obama's ruthlessness, Garrow makes clear that Obama had a keen sense of destiny from an early age. To illustrate this, he focuses on Obama's breakup with Sheila Miyoshi Jager, his girlfriend before he married Michelle Robinson. In contrast to what he describes as an almost arranged marriage with Michelle, Garrow portrays Obama's relationship with Jager as a passionate and tempestuous romance, in defiance of both his and her families. She even followed him to Harvard Law School. But Obama chose his deeply felt destiny over the pleasures of romantic love, at least in Garrow's version, and so dropped her.

In conclusion, I was struck by some parallels to Trump. Like Trump, Obama took on the party favorite, Hillary Clinton, and won the Presidency. Like Trump, he ran as an outsider. Like Trump, he promised to change the way Washington worked. But unlike Trump, Obama received support from the Establishment at every step of the way. From the Punahou School to Columbia to Harvard to the University of Chicago to the Board of the Woods Foundation to the Illinois Senate to the US Senate to the White House, Obama played an "inside-outside" game dependent on the support of the powers-that-be. In the end, Obama is a surfer who rode the waves of history to achieve his destiny.

Rising Star makes clear that Obama never had a serious opponent in any political race until he ran for President, because he knew how to work the system to his advantage. Hillary and Obama were two Establishmentarians, one fresh-faced and the other old and tired. Youth won the day.

In fact, like his predecessor George W. Bush, Barack Obama was a Legacy admission to an Ivy League School -- he told his friends at the time he applied that he would go to Harvard Law School despite scholarship offers from Northwestern because his father went to Harvard. He was editor of the Harvard Law Review and a professor at the University of Chicago. He was a published author. He served on boards and was a member of Harvard's Suguaro Seminar (apparently some sort of domestic Son of the Trilateral Commission to develop leaders).

After reading Garrow's account, the meaning of President Obama's July 13th, 2012 campaign speech became crystal clear--he was talking about himself, and describing the arc of his career:

...look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business – you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

David J. Garrow's Rising Star tells us the names of the somebodies who made it happen for Barack Obama, how and why they did it, and what was in it for them.  So, add Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama to the list of great political biographies, alongside works like Robert Caro's The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York-- according to Garrow, one of President Obama's favorite books.

Banned in Berkeley! Free Speech After the Ann Coulter Affair

On April 27th, 2017, Ann Coulter did not give a speech at the University of California, Berkeley. Nor did she appear at a rally of her supporters at Berkeley’s Civic Center Park, despite prior statements teasingly suggesting a promise of her appearance, such as: 

“I’m not speaking. But I’m going to be near there, so I might swing by to say hello to my supporters who have flown in from all around the country...I thought I might stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment.”

However, as ABC News reported: "Coulter had publicly floated the idea of making a controversial visit to Berkeley despite the cancellation, but did not show."

Jack Kerwick, on Townhall.com publicly shared his feelings of disappointment following Coulter's disappearing act, 

For some reason (I will proffer my theory as to why this is at a later time), no one in official “conservative-dom” has devoted any coverage to what the internet now hails as “the Battle for Berkeley.”

Nor has anyone, including Ann Coulter herself, mentioned that lots of men are planning on descending upon Berkeley once again to protect her. The Oath Keepers—retired law enforcement officers and military veterans; Civil Defense Action; the Three Percenters; Bikers for Trump; and the Proud Boys—these are some of the groups that helped numerous other patriots, like the overnight internet sensation, “the Based Stickman,” rid Berkeley of “anti-fa” terrorists on April 15. They have been busy recruiting supports for Ann’s speech. One quite famous Youtube personality claimed to have offered $1,000 to each person who traveled to Berkeley to greet Ann and meet head-on the terrorists.

Then Ann cancelled.

We can't know everything that goes on behind he scenes, and there may be a better explanation, but at this point it looks like Ann lost her nerve when faced with the possibility of a Milo Yiannopoulos-style riot. 

That may have seemed like a good call, as the College Republicans and YAF had withdrawn their official invitations. However, from reading press accounts, there were clearly students interested in her message--and interested in standing up to the Antifa Bullies of Berkeley--such as Kiara Robles, a Trump-supporting victim of mob violence at Milo's event: 

The Washington Post reported:

Kiara Robles, a 26-year-old gay Trump supporter who works at a bitcoin company, said she was disappointed to be attending a rally instead of a Coulter speech.

Subsequently, one of my friends told me that he would never buy another Ann Coulter book again-- because she didn't have the guts to show up after telling TV audiences that she'd talk into a megaphone if necessary on April 27th. 

Personally, I'd buy another book if Ann provided a reasonable explanation for disappointing supporters at crunch time. 

However, until then,  I'd have to say that her non-appearance actually was a defeat for the First Amendment, for Free Speech, and for the rights of Trump-supporters, conservatives, libertarians, independents, and even the non-politically inclined.

In my opinion, the denoument of Coulter's Berkeley affair demonstrated that Republicans and Conservatives just will not stand up for their principles, when push literally comes to shove. 

Further, Coulter's public climbdown emboldened Democrats and Leftists to openly declare their opposition to Free Speech, something that I had not heard from a former Presidential candidate, DNC Chair, and State governor before--Howard Dean's declaration that:

Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.

and 

This is NOT protected speech under the first amendment. Check Chaplinsky V New Hampshire SCOTUS 1942.

Although other Democrats including President Obama and media figures paid lip service to Coulter's rights at Berkeley, once the issue was moot, in my opinion Howard Dean's remarks represent the reality--the opening of an Overton Window to the criminalization of dissent in the United States. 

College campuses can be seen as a testing ground for this policy--and a highly successful test it has been to date. The banning of Coulter, Horowitz and Milo from Berkeley represents the next stage in "repressive intolerance," to paraphrase Herbert Marcuse.

Once upon a time, the college campus was a place for the robust exploration of diverse points of view, and the Liberal Arts were designed to teach free individuals the arts of liberty. Indeed, prior to the Free Speech Movements, in order to protect democratic debate, totalitarians such as Communists were banned from campus. The unrest of the 1960s changed that, opening universities to fanatical speakers of varying stripes. The next stage systematically eliminated non-Leftist faculty members in the once Liberal Arts, using a variety of techniques, even changing the name of the field of inquiry to the more scientific-sounding "Humanities." A system of bureaucratic and ideological obstacles was established which prevented non-Leftists from entering the academy as faculty members. The official curriculum was transformed into something resembling that of a Higher Party School in the former Soviet Union, especially following Jesse Jackson's 1987 visit to Stanford to lead a crowd to chant:

"Hey, hey, ho, ho! Western culture's got to go!"

However, at least until 2017, Conservatives, Republicans, and others had been permitted to give lectures to students as visiting guest speakers. No more.

The Coulter affair, it seems to me, signals that era has ended. From now on, any non-PC speaker is at risk in an unsafe, hostile environment. Furthermore, they are not protected either by the 1st or 14th Amendment, because their views have been declared "beyond the pale."

While ordinary people still clearly support Free Speech, the weakness and irresolution of the GOP, their refusal to fight, and the abandonment of the field in Berkeley to the enemies of Civilization by all concerned.

This concerns me on a personal level, for as a UC Berkeley alumnus I studied Philosophy at a time when dissenting opinions were welcomed at Cal--John Searle and Paul Feyerabend, among others, were on the faculty and certainly did not follow the Party Line. At the time the UC Berkeley motto, "Let There Be Light," seemed a meaningful statement of the Enlightenment project of the University.

It also affects me as one who later worked for David Horowitz and with Ann Coulter when she was an aide to former Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-MI).

It is not a matter of "cowardly administrators" or "snowflakes." University administrators are objectively supporting PC campus censors, they are with them, not against them, and should not be allowed to hide behind the excuse of cowardice--they are not afraid to denounce President Trump, for example...and likewise, so-called "snowflakes" are manifestly little more than grievance collectors filing false charges to defame and intimate their non-PC victims--using campus regulations that may themselves be unconstitutional violations of the 14th and First Amendments.

As one may see from political deployment of charges of "sexual harassment" since the Clarence Thomas hearings, unless the GOP and the Trump Administration take very seriously indeed the threat to free speech and free inquiry on PC American college campuses, the time may not be far off when simply being a Republican, Libertarian--or even an Independent--becomes punishable under law as a "hate crime."

And that really would mean, "¡Adiós, America!"

Memo to Congress: Go Ahead and Kill Big Bird!

While conservative commentators such as Brent Bozell & Tim Graham , Joel Pollak and Tammy Bruce  have rallied around President Trump's call to de-fund federal cultural agencies such as PBS, NPR, and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the "organs" have predictably begun their illegal scare campaigns for funding, by threatening to "kill Big Bird".

Twenty years ago I worked on this issue for the Heritage Foundation and David Horowitz, and discovered that although PBS, NPR and the cultural agencies spent much of their time and money attacking the GOP, they were protected by Republicans from budget cuts. Indeed, after Congress "zeroed-out" funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Senate restored it in conference--despite the "Piss Christ" fiasco

Now, twenty year later, arguments made on behalf of the cultural agencies in the 1990s are revealed to have been hollow lies. Free speech? Not so much...the NEA for some reason never funded an exhibition featuring a photograph titled "Piss Mohammed." Non-Commercial? Again, not so much, as the Muppets are owned by Disney and Sesame Street airs on HBO. Providing resources not available elsewhere? Nope. YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, iTunes, and podcasts of all kinds  provide free or low-cost educational programming that once was the purview of PBS. Current affairs? Sorry, Charlie, the American public has access via C-Span and a plethora of online public service options dedicated to everything from city council meetings to university lectures. Education? Available free from EdX, Coursera, OpenCulture, Harvard's Open Learning Initiative, and dozens of other providers. Children's programming? Any iPad has more educational software available than your local PBS station.

So, what do PBS, NPR and the cultural agencies provide that can't be found elsewhere? The answer is simple: political propaganda of a predictably progressive tilt, combined with lucrative paydays for politically-correct and politically-connected cadre...all wrapped in a package with British sitcoms, antiques shows, and costume dramas -- now available directly from the BBC and ITV on Britbox.com.

Add to this the realization that in some 50 years of broadcasting, Sesame Street has not eliminated the achievement gap in education--its declared purpose as a Great Society Program--there is simply no rationale other than interest group politics for the continuation of federal funding. Sesame Street may be a great business success at selling toys and other merchandise, but it has clearly and demonstrably failed in its educational mission aimed at the underprivileged.

Sadly, the impact of the twin Endowments since the GOP saved them from extinction in the 1990s has been to further the transformation of the art world and humanities into Politically Correct wastelands, phenomena documented extensively by authors like Bruce Bawer and Roger Kimball.

Bottom line: In the past 20 years, American culture has gone from bad to worse, thanks in no small part to the record of federal cultural agencies saved by the GOP in the 1990s. To begin a turnaround around, start by cutting off funding to the CPB (PBS, NPR & Pacifica), NEA & NEH, to send a strong signal that the new Administration is serious about change.  Far from fearing the charge of killing Big Bird, Republicans should embrace it, as an example of Schumpeterian "creative destruction," in order to make room for something better.

Kill Big Bird?

Go ahead, make my day.

Hillary Clinton's Fingerprints Evident on Russian Hacking Charges...

Visiting the International Spy Museum bookshop in Washington, DC a while ago, a paperback on one of the tables caught my eye. It was titled: The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and Wikileaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election. Author Malcolm Nance is a career intelligence agent who has written for The Huffington Post and heads an organization called TAPSTRI: The Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics & Radical Ideology. His book was published in October 2016, before current headlines charging Russian hacking on behalf of the Trump campaign, indeed before the victor of the 2017 election had been decided. That was curious. How come I haven't seen this book mentioned in press coverage of President-Elect Trump?

I didn't read the book, I confess, but judged it by the cover, and after a quick flip of the pages decided it resembled a file produced for Hillary Clinton in another era:  Chris Lehane's "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" memo (originally called the "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce"), which appeared during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1995 to discredit critics of President Clinton.

Which is to say, even without reading it, Hillary Clinton's fingerprints were all over Russian Hacking allegations, because it fit her M.O. during the Impeachment of President Clinton, a conspiratorial--dare one say Nixonian--world view in which dark forces were conspiring to undermine her. They were out to get the Democratic Nominee...

The Russia Card is America's Trump Card

Opponents of President Trump have forced the resignation of General Mike Flynn as President Trump's National Security Advisor--by playing the Russia Card.

It is the second time Russian connections have led to a resignation of a top Trump official, since Russian intrigues brought down Paul Manafort as campaign chairman shortly after Trump had secured the Republican nomination for President.

It looks like history has repeated itself.

However, the Russia Card cannot be understood out of context. In fact, the Russia Card is about more than Russia--for it is also the flip side of the Muslim Card, which Trump deployed against Hillary Clinton and President Obama.

Interestingly, Russophobes also tend to oppose Trump's travel ban, "extreme vetting," and efforts to add the Muslim Brotherhood to the list of terrorist organizations. Likewise, they expressed little public objection to the foreign connections Huma Abedin, whose parents were active in the Muslim Brotherhood, and had alleged links to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, serving as a top aide to Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, nor to the Clinton Foundations ties to repressive Islamist regimes. Nor did they object when the so-called "Arab Spring" installed Islamist governments in the Middle East.

This is not a double standard, because it is a single standard, indeed an Islamist standard--because Russia has been at war with Islamic fundamentalists since at least the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Although Islam is one of the officially recognized religions of Russia, some would say the history of Russia has been one of confrontation with Islam since the conquest of Persia in 651. In the 19th Century Tolstoy wrote about fighting Chechens in Haji Murad. They are still fighting Chechens today.

Islamist supporters play the Russian Card like this: Unable to directly defend Islamic terrorism, ISIS, or unlimited Muslim immigration to the United States, they choose to attack Russia to achieve the same ends, playing on ancient--and I believe obsolete and inappropriate--grievances.

They take advantage of lingering resentments among Republicans who are still anti-Russian because Russia was once Communist. When these Republicans see Putin, they see him a Communist commissar, a former KGB officer,  a "thug." When they see Russia, they see it as if it were still the Soviet Union--even though Russia voluntarily withdrew from its former Soviet satellites, allowed some of them to join the EU, and dissolved the USSR.

On the other side, leftist Democrats have lingering resentments that Russia rejected Communism. They are as strongly hostile to Putin as Stalin was anti-Trotsky. When they look at Putin, they see a turncoat KGB agent who sold out to capitalism, suppresses LGBT causes on behalf of Russian Orthodoxy, and who encourages the very Russian nationalism that the USSR suppressed with its "Friendship of Peoples" doctrine (Soviet multiculturalism), therefore another kind of "thug" (like Cuba calls its refugees from Communism "gusanos"--worms).

As a result Russia experiences significant enmity from both the Right and the Left sides of the American political spectrum.

Similarly, Right-wingers don't credit Russia for its support of American troops in Afghanistan, for Putin's crushing the Communist Party, or for co-operation in fighting terror--including unheeded warnings about the Boston Marathon bombers. And Left-wingers don't care that Russia enjoys good relations with China or Cuba.

Additionally, since 9/11 American strategic planners have been unwilling to undertake a full alliance with Russia against Islamist fundamentalism because of objections from Arab Gulf states, and European allies in NATO are suspicious of Russian designs in Europe.

Compounding the problem has been the taboo on public discussion of Islamist terrorism in both Europe and the United States (there is no such taboo in Russia). Since discussion of the actual enemy has been repressed, it is my belief that anti-Russian sentiments have actually been symptoms of psychological displacement--unable to criticize the actual enemies of the United States, the public has been licensed to oppose imaginary enemies, such as Russia, "Global Climate Change," Israel, and "White Privilege."

Exacerbating this phenomenon has been a US foreign policy that is totally unsuited to the dangers facing the country since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead of crushing Islamic extremism, America has chosen to pursue essentially an updated version of Britain's 19th Century "Great Game" in the Middle East and Central Asia, attempting to reduce Russian influence, including in Afghanistan, once a Soviet satellite, and Iraq, once a Soviet ally. Seen in that context, wars in the former Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Libya, Syria, the 'Stans of Central Asia, have privileged Islam in order to undermine Russian interests.

Unfortunately, America's strategic planners failed to realize that after the end of Communism, Russia's enemies were also America's foes. They wished to "divide and rule" by setting Russia against the United States, in order to establish an Islamic Caliphate in the contested zones.

This remarkably successful policy has led a number of previously pro-American nations to turn back to Russia for protection and support--including a number of former Soviet nations in Europe as well as Egypt, most recently. Turkey may well be joining them, unless American policy shifts dramatically--endangering NATO itself. Ironically, Britain had supported the Ottoman Empire, the "sick man of Europe," as a bulwark against Russian expansion during the 19th Century.

Today it would appear that good relations with Russia could change the dynamic of international relations in our favor, given the manifest failures of America's pro-Islamist foreign policy. With Russia as a full and equal partner in American foreign policy, the West could make short work of Islamic terror. Russia has a proven track record of success, little discussed in the USA--in Chechnya, of all places, where Putin ground Islamists to dust on the orders of Boris Yeltsin. The same sort of Russian tactics are working in Syria...just as they worked against Hitler during World War II.

That is why the Russia Card is the flip side of the Muslim Card. Attacks on Russia are support for ISIS. There is no "Third Way." There are no "Syrian Moderates." Putin is no more of a thug than American allies such as the King of Saudi Arabia, the so-called "Syrian oppostion," or the leaders of Iran who signed a deal with President Obama. Indeed, one could make the case that he is far more civilized.

While General Flynn's resignation is his own fault,  he is also a casualty of the Great Game between Islam and the West, in which Russia has played and will continue play a central historical role. No victory in this struggle is possible without Russian support. Flynn realized this, and so must any successor.

It is clear from the failure of American policies since 9/11 that only a full alliance with Russia can defeat Islamic terrorism. So after Flynn's resignation, it has become crystal clear that America is at a crossroads:

We must accept Russia as an ally in the struggle against Islamic terrorism, or surrender to an Islamic Caliphate.

Bottom line: the Russia Card is in fact America's Trump Card.
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Memo to the President-Elect: Time to Establish a Cabinet-Level US Department of Industry

It's the time of year when think-tanks, political consultants, lobbyists, corporations, unions, and NGOs are busy developing recommendations to the incoming administration which might help their cause.

Knowing that the inboxes and Twitter feed of the Trump Transition are filling up with white papers, memoranda, reports, and articles suggesting agenda items for the first 100 days, I've taken the liberty of coming up with one of my own to help Make America Great Again:

*ESTABLISH A CABINET-LEVEL US DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRY.

Here's the rationale:

The de-industrialization of the United States did not happen by accident. Rather, it was the result of deliberate policy decisions to encourage development of a Post-Industrial Society made over at least the past half-century, based upon theories of economic development which held that as societies progress they inevitably evolve from agricultural, to industrial, to service economies in a sort of Darwinian evolution. To re-industrialize America after fifty years of Post-Industrialism will require a laser-like focus that only a Cabinet-level Department could provide.

There is ample precedent for this step: President Nixon created the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Administration; President Carter created the Department of Education; President Reagan created the Department of Veteran's Affairs and elevated the Office of National Drug Control Policy to the Cabinet; President Clinton did the same thing for the Federal Emergency Management Agency; President George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security.

In each case, serious issues required the attention of the President and his Cabinet--and the only way to insure that attention was with a new Department. Today's Manufacturing Crisis is obviously as severe as the Energy Crisis, the Environmental Crisis, the Education Crisis, the Veteran's Crisis, the Drug Crisis, hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, or floods, and the Terrorism Crisis after 9/11.

The almost total destruction of American Industry wasn't built in a day--it took several generations of hard work, beginning in the late 1960s, popularized by Harvard professor Daniel Bell's 1974 The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, which reflected concepts discussed in French intellectual Alain Touraine's 1971 The Post-Industrial Society. Tomorrow's Social History: Classes, Conflicts and Culture in the Programmed Society and Ivan Illich's 1973 Tools for Conviviality. 

In this manifesto, the Rousseau-like author of Deschooling Society declared his opposition to Industry:

I want to show that two-thirds of mankind still can avoid passing through the industrial age, by choosing right now a postindustrial balance in their mode of production which the hyperindustrial nations will be forced to adopt as an alternative to chaos.

Illich added:

A society committed to high levels of shared learning and critical personal intercourse must set pedagogical limits on industrial growth. 

Sound familiar? Likewise, Alain Touraine's book reads like another May '68-inspired manifesto:

A new type of society is now being formed. These new societies can be labeled post-industrial to stress how dif­ferent they are from the industrial societies that preceded them, although-in both capitalist and socialist nations­ they retain some characteristics of these earlier societies. They may also be called technocratic because of the power that dominates them. Or one can call them programmed societies to define them according to the nature of their production methods. and economic organization. This last term seems to me the most useful because it most ac­ curately indicates the nature of these societies' inner workings and economic activity. 

Finally, we have Daniel Bell's conclusion that a post-industrial society would be a "communal" society:

It seems clear to me that, today, we in America are moving away from a society based on a private-enterprise market system toward one in which the most important economic decisions will be made at the political level, in terms of consciously defined "goals" and "priorities." The dangers inherent in such a shift are familiar enough to anyone acquainted with the liberal tradition. In the past, there was an "unspoken consensus," and the public philosophy did not need to be articulated. And this was a strength, for articulation often invites trials by force when implicit differences are made manifest. Today, however, there is a visible change from market to non-market political decision-making...

...Whether such a change will represent "prog­ress" is a nice metaphysical question that I, for one, do not know how to answer. This was a society "designed" by John Locke and Adam Smith and it rested on the premises of individual­ism and market rationality in which the varied ends desired by individuals would be maximized by free exchange. We now move to a communal ethic, without that community being, as yet, wholly defined. In a sense, the movement away from governance by political economy to gover­nance by political philosophy-for that is the meaning of the shift-is a return to pre-capitalist modes of social thought. But whether this be progress or regress, it clearly makes it incumbent upon us to think more candidly and rigorously about our values, and about the kind of world we wish to live in.  

You don't have to be a sociologist or an economist to realize that the 60's intellectuals were calling for a program of de-industrialization in order to bring about socialism, although at the time they apparently didn't feel free to say so directly.

The problem seemingly, was that the working-class had become insufficiently revolutionary and too individualistic, materialistic, and competitive. In the 1960s, the American factory worker had become a problem--so the factories would have to close. To bring back that pre-industrial lifestyle...

Now comes the moment where we realize the Utopian fantasies of the socialist intellectuals were dependent upon something rather darker. For, just as in Stalin's time, or Hitler's, if you weren't going to pay workers a living wage, someone would have to do the job for free (or as close to it as possible): thus, Slave Labor.

So, the export of American jobs to realize the "Post-Industrial Society" was, like the leisurely lifestyle of the Ante-Bellum South, dependent upon the ruthless exploitation of slave labor abroad and illegal alien labor at home paid sub-standard wages. Because it might offend the sensibilities of Americans to see this, the slave system of industrial production was kept off-shore, or in the case of illegals, in the shadows--out of sight, out of mind.

However, as Milton Friedman has noted, in economics there are always trade-offs, even for a "Post-Industrial Society." In this case, one trade-off in addition to the dependence upon slavery or virtual slavery, was increasing impoverishment of what was once the world's most affluent working class...for jobs sent abroad did not recycle dollars into the American economy, did not pay taxes, and did not stimulate growth. Rather, they "milked" the existing system, transferring wealth from one place to another, with profits skimmed by the new class of "symbolic manipulators" working in the professional, technocratic, and financial sectors.

Paradoxically, the "Post-Industrial Society" turned out to be dependent upon a traditional industrial base--factories and workers--just located in other countries or illegal sweatshops. Likewise, the vaunted high-paid technical and "knowledge sector" jobs started to follow the factory jobs elsewhere.   The "Post-Industrial Society" wasn't post-industrial after all. It was in reality a slave society dependent upon an exploited working class located somewhere else, or not legally acknowledged.

Result: increasing frustration and resentment among the American population left out of the bubble economy created by what Ross Perot called a "giant sucking sound." When the numbers affected eventually hit a tipping point in 2016, the country gave Donald Trump a mandate for change.

However, to implement this mandate will be extremely difficult for President-Elect Trump. All entrenched beneficiaries of the status quo will fight very hard to protect their current privileges. That goes double for existing government departments.

Traditional "conservative" attempts to cut government frequently mean that only the hard-core "burrowed-in" opponents of change survive the RIFs in federal agencies--then work night-and-day to undermine, subvert, sabotage, block and defeat the initiatives of the new President.

That is why it is imperative to create a new Cabinet Department, reporting directly to the President, in full view of the public, dedicated to the primary mission of the Administration: Making America Great Again. New hires for this large department--which could do for American Industry what the US Department of Agriculture did for American Agriculture, all joking and complaints aside the most successful agricultural sector in the world today is American--would have what are essentially lifetime government jobs and thus be better able to continue the Trump vision long end-of-term. In this regard, the bigger the agency, the better, given the way Washington works. Like the EPA, once planted, the Department of Industry would prove difficult to uproot.

A US Department of Industry could work with both the for-profit and non-profit sectors of the country to develop the eco-system necessary to restore American industry to pride of place in the world--able to compete and beat the Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans and anyone else when it comes to productivity, quality, price, and convenience.

In addition to economic benefits, there are serious national security implications to having the US military dependent on foreign manufacturers for high-tech and often classified weaponry, control systems, and software. Long supply-lines, transit times, and vulnerable supply chains make the country susceptible to economic warfare. Domestic production could give us peace of mind--and leverage in international negotiations.

Finally, there is the sociological benefit to be derived from a focus on Industry. The "Post-Industrial Society" was also a "Leisure Society." But as Max Weber pointed out in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, that there is a moral element to capitalism, quoting Benjamin Franklin:

Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.[...]Remember, that money is the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding feline taint, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.

That is, the Protestant Work Ethic is both a cause and an effect of Industry. The answer to idleness, is work; the answer to poverty, is work; the answer to despair, is work.

A re-industrialized America will be an America that works, and a Department of Industry can therefore be an important catalyst to Make America Great Again. To quote Weber again:

We shall nevertheless provisionally use the expression 'spirit of capitalism' for that attitude which, in the pursuit of a calling [berufsmäßig], strives systematically for profit for its own sake in the manner exemplified by Benjamin Franklin."

And that is an old Republican struggle--dating to the battle between Free Labor in the North and Slave Labor in the South that created the Party of Lincoln. 

Even a "Never-Trumper" like Richard Lowry has pointed out Lincoln's belief in the Work Ethic on Breitbart.com:

This country needs a revival of both Lincoln’s appreciation of work and his protectiveness of its proceeds. It needs, again, to be a country where you can earn your way and where you have to earn your way. It needs to be a country–to borrow the terms Lincoln’s Whigs used to describe their electoral base–of “sober, industrious, thriving people.”

Another "Never-Trumper" even proposed establishing a Department of Business: President Barack Obama floated the concept in 2012:

Under the president's original proposal, six different commerce and trade agencies, including the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Export-Import Bank, would be brought under one roof. The president also said the SBA should be elevated to a Cabinet-level position. Obama blamed Congress for inaction on the proposal. 

"The reason we haven’t done that is not because of some big ideological difference," the president said in his interview, taped Saturday and aired Monday. "It has to do with Congress talking a good game about wanting to streamline government but being very protective about not giving up their jurisdiction over various pieces of government.

I bet Donald Trump could succeed where Obama failed, by fine-tuning the proposal to focus on rebuilding American Industry. He could tweet the words of President Lincoln in defense of his industrial policy:

"No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive."

Which might be an inspirational quotation to carve in stone at the entrance to the headquarters of the US Department of Industry, when President Donald Trump cuts the ribbon on Opening Day in 2017.

One speculative postscript: Someone like Peter Thiel might make an inspiring choice for the first US Secretary of Industry.

Harvard Campaign Catfight!

Public Broadcasting v Steve Bannon

One of the more obscure aspects of the 2016 post-election season has been participation of public broadcasting, both television and radio, in personal attacks on Steve Bannon, currently chief strategist for President-Elect Donald Trump, formerly Trump Campaign CEO, and executive chair of Breitbart News Network. 

Recently, NPR Ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen proposed that the network no longer permit conservatives to be interviewed live on-air, following a Morning Edition interview with Steve Inskeep in which Breitbart senior editor Joel Pollak responded forcefully to charges against Bannon as a "white nationalist" -- with his own accusations of NPR racism. After published criticism in Breitbart News as well as elsewhere, an NPR executive announced the network would continue to interview conservatives live on-air, despite the ombudsman's recommendation. 

Not discussed was the possibility that perhaps NPR had only allowed Pollak on-air because PBS had not permitted a response to earlier attacks on their air? 



Only two days before the NPR interview, PBS Newshour had broadcast a television segment moderated by John Yang in which outgoing Minority Leader Harry Reid denounced Bannon on the Senate floor as a racist: 

SEN. HARRY REID, Minority Leader: If Trump is serious about seeking unity, the first thing he should do is rescind his appointment of Steve Bannon. Rescind it. Don’t do it. Think about this. Don’t do it. As long as a champion of racial division is a step away from the Oval Office, it will be impossible to take Trump’s efforts to heal the nation seriously.

This was followed, without rebuttal, by an interview with Bloomberg reporter Joshua Green, who stated: "Breitbart publishes a lot of things that are vaguely racist, anti-Semitic, far, far outside the bounds of what would ordinarily be considered acceptable in U.S. politics." 

Yang then joined in for himself:

JOHN YANG: You talk about Breitbart News. We have got some headlines that we can show to give people an idea of what Breitbart News is.

“Bill Kristol, Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew.”

“Gabby Giffords, The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield.”

“The Solution to Online Harassment Is Simple: Women Should Log Off.”

How much of Breitbart is Steve Bannon, and how much of Steve Bannon is Breitbart?

In response to this list of putatively extremist headlines,  Green qualified his original attack by backpedaling slightly: "He reminded me a lot of other Wall Street bankers I have encountered, sort of testosterone-addled and vaguely sexist, but certainly not racist or anti-Semitic or some of the more serious charges we have seen thrown him and at Breitbart News." 

In other words, although Bannon supposedly published racist and anti-semitic extremist articles, Green hadn't seen any personal behavior of that sort...which somehow made Bannon sound even worse because it appeared calculated rather than sincere.

Again, there was no response from any Breitbart defender, before Yang went on to discuss the appointment of Reince Preibus as Trump's chief of staff. 

Bottom line: One segment featured three personal attacks: (1) from a clip of the Senate Democratic Leader; (2) from testimony by a Bloomberg reporter; (3) from headlines read by the moderator. 

These three accusations were permitted to air without any defense whatsoever, although PBS could have invited pro-Bannon journalists to balance the critics. Therefore, one may conclude the segment had been calculated to leave an impression that Bannon was a racist, sexist, anti-Semite who ran an extremist publication, and deprive him of a right-to-reply.

Likewise, the following Friday, PBS's character assassination against Bannon continued in the weekly analysis segment featuring David Brooks and Ruth Marcus. 

Incredibly, the purportedly "conservative" analyst took pains to personally denounce Bannon even before defending an anodyne proposal for increased infrastructure spending, declaring: "Bannon is the interesting case. He is, of course — I do not approve of his news organization or his judgments..."

To which Marcus added her own insinuations of racism and anti-Semitism: "I’m kind of having a hard time seeing the Steve Bannon silver lining here, even with a big infrastructure program, because his Web site and his own history has been so divisive, so hurtful to people of — minorities, people of other faiths. I think having somebody like that in the White House — I understand, to the victor go the spoils, but bringing someone like that inside the White House who you’re going to be listening to is a bad thing."

Yet neither Brooks nor Marcus cited a single example of supposed prejudice from Bannon or Breitbart News, nor did Woodruff ask them to back up their characterization of Bannon with evidence, an indication that she accepted them.

In conclusion, it is clear that the PBS Newshour's recent unfair treatment of allegations against Steve Bannon violated legal requirements that public broadcasting adhere to objectivity and balance in all matters of public controversy, a commitment reiterated in a CPB Board resolution of November 19, 2002:

CPB Board Reaffirms Commitment to Objectivity and Balance 

Unanimously

WHEREAS,

It is especially important in these extraordinary times for public broadcasting to provide information to the public about issues of national import in a manner that represents multiple points of view; and

WHEREAS,

The Public Broadcasting Act recognizes the need to treat subjects of a controversial nature in a fair and balanced way. (47 U.S.C. 396(g)(1)(A))

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED,

That the Board of Directors hereby reaffirms its commitment to carrying out this mandate; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED,

That CPB Management must ensure that programming CPB funds comports with this statutory mandate. Management also must continue to work with the system to collectively ensure that all programming is produced in a manner consistent with the high editorial standards that the public expects of public broadcasting.

Resolution Date: 

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Filed Under: 

Objectivity and Balance.

One first step to remedy this problem might be replacement of David Brooks as a conservative analyst with a Breitbart News editor, as well as regular inclusion of Breitbart News reporters in the PBS Newshour's roster of hosts, moderators and guests.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Alice Goldfarb Marquis' BRUSHSTROKE! on Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

http://www.laurelzuckerman.com/2016/11/brushstroke-art-fiction-alice-goldfarb-marquis-painting.html#more

President-Elect Trump's Arts Policy Statement...

Q: Does the federal government have a role to play in funding the creation and performance of art, or in making art accessible to all Americans? Federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts currently stands at $148 million. Do you think that funding level is appropriate? What would you request in your first budget as president?

A: The Congress, as representatives of the people, make the determination as to what the spending priorities ought to be. I had the great fortune to receive a comprehensive liberal arts education from an Ivy League institution. What is most important is that we examine how one-size-fits-all approaches imposed by the federal government have corrupted the availability and efficacy of liberal arts education. Critical thinking skills, the ability to read, write and do basic math are still the keys to economic success. A holistic education that includes literature and the arts is just as critical to creating good citizens. 

SOURCE: http://afa.3cdn.net/2fcccc8e4901fbfa61_xnm6iyphs.pdf

Hillary's Emails are on Wikileaks...

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/561

Huma Abedin--Then & Now...

Huma Abedin (center) with then-House Speaker John Boehner (left) and then-Cong. Anthony Weiner (right)

2007: https://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com/2007/11/who-is-huma-abedin.html

2016: https://search.wikileaks.org/?query=abedin&exact_phrase=&any_of=&exclude_words=&document_date_start=&document_date_end=&released_date_start=&released_date_end=&new_search=True&order_by=most_relevant#results

http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/?s=abedin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huma_Abedin

https://www.google.com/#q=huma+abedin

Agustin Blazquez's Video Critique of American Marxism

Is Donald Trump America's Boris Yeltsin?

Some three weeks before Election Day, with polls essentially tied due to the margin of error,  the "Russia Card" has become a major campaign issue, with Hillary Clinton accusing Donald Trump of having Kremlin support -- both overt and covert. 

Clinton raised specter of Russian influence on Trump's campaign in the first debate, when she declared: 

"I was so shocked when Donald publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans. That is just unacceptable."

She went on to suggest Trump had business ties to Russia, then returned to the issue in the second debate:  

"...our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days that the Kremlin, meaning Putin and the Russian government, are directing the attacks, the hacking on American accounts to influence our election. And WikiLeaks is part of that, as are other sites where the Russians hack information, we don’t even know if it’s accurate information, and then they put it out. We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election. And believe me, they’re not doing it to get me elected. They’re doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump."

Recent reports of attacks on Wikileaks have raised the specter of an escalation of "cyber-warfare" between Russia and the United States in the closing weeks of the Presidential campaign, as well as the possibility of more dangerous military confrontations in the Middle East and Europe.

It is likely that Russians would prefer a President Trump to a President Clinton. However, it is more than likely that Russian support for Trump is not based on personal business connections between Putin and Trump, but rather based upon rational calculations of their national interest. 

A precedent may be found in American influence in Russian elections of the 1990s, when Clinton administration support for reformer Boris Yeltsin may have proven decisive in his victory over the Communist Party in the 1993 Constitutional Crisis. At that time, armed factions fought pitched battles in the center of Moscow, circumstances which make our current election season look like a church picnic. Hundreds, if not thousands, were killed in Yeltsin's military assault to re-take the Russian "White House," then in the hands of his Communist opponents. Without American aid, Yeltsin may very well have been overthrown.

So, while we may not remember, it is likely Russia is taking a page from America's playbook by backing a maverick reformer in a stiff confrontation with an entrenched political establishment.

In addition, there are some obvious personal parallels between Yeltsin and Trump.

First, both are successful construction executives: Yeltsin was trained as a civil engineer in Sverdlovsk, and oversaw "crash construction" of multiple high-rise apartment complexes; Trump took over his father's company and erected his own high-rise buildings.

Second, both are considered "crude" and provincial personalities: Yeltsin was "Siberian" and known for his love of drink; while Trump came from Queens and is known for his love of the ladies.

Third, both rose through the establishment they eventually came to challenge: Yeltsin had been a Communist Party official and governor; Trump had been a big Democratic donor who even invited Hillary Clinton to his wedding. Both subsequently soured on the "insiders" and became "traitors to their class."

Fourth, both are strong anti-Communists: Yeltsin confronted the Communist Party in the 1991 coup attempt and again in the 1993 Constitutional crisis; Trump's lawyer was McCarthy sidekick Roy Cohn and he has continually attacked "Political Correctness."

No wonder that a Russian President picked by Boris Yeltsin himself would throw his support to an anti-Communist, crude, provincial, construction tycoon taking on an entrenched establishment, over a competing candidate backed by the Communist Party.

For, although little reported in the US, no doubt the Russian President is well aware that John Bachtell, national chair of Communist Party, USA endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. He declared that "Trump is a danger to the whole world..." and so Communists must work with the Democratic Party for a Clinton victory, because: "Any substantive change in domestic and foreign policy begins by blocking Trump from the presidency and breaking the GOP majorities in Congress."

So, in this year's US Presidential election, Vladimir Putin is backing the anti-Communist in the race by supporting Donald Trump--just as Bill Clinton did in the 1990s, when he supported Boris Yeltsin in Russia. Turnabout is fair play, indeed.

Of course, we now know that history was on his side, because Yeltsin won, and Putin is in Moscow.

However, whether Donald Trump is on the right side of history, is yet to be determined...

El Greco the Greek

Last night we attended Professor Marinia Lambraki-Plaka's very interesting lecture, PowerPoint presentation, and film screening, co-sponsored by the Society for the Preservation of the Greek Heritage, at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, "The Enduring Legacy of El Greco: Monumental Works in Toledo and Escorial." She was introduced, in part in Greek, by Professor Gregory Nagy of Harvard, the Center's charismatic director.

Speaking inside Washington, DC's mini-Acropolis, just across Whitehaven Street from the Washington home of Hillary Clinton, Professor Lambraki-Plaka presented her case that the work of El Greco, seen by many as one of the foremost Spanish artists of all time, reflects his youthful Byzantine origins as an icon-painter in the town of Candia, prior to his migration to Rome and Toledo. Some 402 years after his death, it was time to recognize that El Greco was Greek.

Professor Lambraki-Plaka is director of the Glyptotek in Athens, and a leading scholar of El Greco. She began her talk by showing slides of thousands of Athenians lined up to view two works by El Greco purchased for the National Museum in Athens upon the 400th anniversary of his death in 2014, truly an impressive sight. On one level, her plea to treat El Greco as a Greek was a curious one, mostly because his name translates from Spanish to English directly as, "The Greek." So what exactly is the problem?

According to the professor, the problem is that many do not accept that The Greek was a Greek artist. She argued that El Greco's artistic style, which may appear strange or personal or avant-garde to the uninitiated, can best be explained through an understanding of Eastern iconographic traditions which El Greco brought to Western art. El Greco is a Greek artist, which explains some of his unconventional techniques, for his approach is rooted in Hellenism and Byzantium. His technical choices are an expression of the Greek Way, as Edith Hamilton called it, and his peculiar style a Greek choice by an artist who was a master of artistic technique of all kinds, including the Western portraiture techniques in his portrait of his son, Jorge Manuel (above).

His mastery of so many styles inspired modern artists such as Picasso, who adapted his works as templates for modernist interpretation, for example, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, based upon El Greco's Vision of St. John.

El Greco's own years spent in Rome, as well as a bitter Counter-Reformation dispute over nudity in The Last Judgement with followers of Michaelangelo, may have led to his move to the ancient Spanish capital of Phillip II, where he could paint in his own personal style. Furthermore, according to Professor Lambraki-Plaka, the Greek element is especially signficant because the development of art in Greece itself, birthplace of Western Civilization and humanism rediscovered by the Renaissance, was denied to the Greeks by Ottoman occupation. In order to participate in the flowering of Western Civilization, El Greco needed to migrate to the West, to Rome and then Toledo--but in so doing, he never lost touch with his Byzantine roots, one reason he signed his name in Greek rather than Latin script.


Professor Lambraki-Plaka's remarks did not sound controversial when she made them to the audience at the Hellenic Center, but have been strongly disputed by Professor Cyril Mango, who wrote in The Oxford History of Byzantium: "The most famous Greek painter hailing from Crete, Dominico Theotokopoulos (El Greco), started his career with some rather Italianate icons, but was then completely won over by Mannerism. Despite claims to the contrary, the only Byzantine element of his famous paintings was his signature in Greek lettering." (left)


However, to this writer, admittedly an amateur, Professor Lambarki-Plaka's case sounded reasonably persuasive. First, because she displayed early icons painted by El Greco in the Byzantine style; secondly, because she analyzed the composition of El Greco's later Italian and Spanish paintings in comparison to the Byzantine works; thirdly, because of her Greek enthusiasm--and that of Greeks at the reception following her talk as well as those who lined up in Athens; and finally because of detailed visual analysis and comparison of early works to later ones, such as the Cretan Dormition of the Virgin (pre-1567) (left) and the Spanish Burial of Count Orgaz (1586-88) (right).

In a deft and diplomatic touch, the Hellenic Center reception following Professor Lambraki-Plaka's talk featured Spanish tapas, a culinary nod to the master's adopted country, as a member of the Greek diaspora who not only contributed to the Western canon, but who also indisputably influenced the development of modern art. Thus Picasso's modernism, in some sense, served as commentary on Byzantine icon-painting, just as El Greco's work did, perhaps nowhere more obviously than in Picasso's iconic 1950 Portrait of a Painter after El Greco.