Wednesday, August 01, 2001

Everybody is talking about the rude obit of Katherine Graham crafted by some anonymous minion of Scaife's Pittsburg rag. The best part of the National Post article, by Mark Steyn, is this (first a quote from the Pittsburg article, then Steyn's comments):

"She married Felix Frankfurter's brilliant law clerk, Philip Graham, who took over running The Post, which her father purchased at a bankruptcy sale. Graham built the paper but became estranged from Kay. She had him committed to a mental hospital, and he was clearly intending divorce when she signed him out and took him for a weekend outing during which he was found shot. His death was ruled a suicide. Within 48 hours, she declared herself the publisher."

That's the stuff! As the Tribune-Review's chap has it, Mrs. G got her philandering spouse banged up in the nuthouse and then arranged a weekend pass with a one-way ticket. "His death was ruled a suicide." Lovely touch that. Is it really possible Katharine Graham offed her hubby? Who cares? To those who think the worst problem with the American press is its awful stultifying homogeneity, the Tribune-Review's deranged perverseness is to be cherished. Give that man a Pulitzer!"

Unfortunately, he ruins the mood by getting to his point, which is that Katie Graham was soft on Clinton - a rather ridiculous charge, as anybody who read the Post during the dismal impeachment days knows. Or at least, it is ridiculous as Steyn couches it. If Steyn's problem with the Post that they did not harp continually on Clinton's willingness to bomb Sudan for petty political gain, certainly an impeachable offense in my book, then I would have been all with him - but no, Steyn thinks that Monica =Watergate. The delusions of the right have no end.

On the other hand, give The Spectator, definitely a rightwing magazine, a prize for a really scathing obituary by a Andrew Gimson. He starts off with a killer lede: "Helmut Kohl has buried many bodies in his time, and now he has buried his wife Hannelore." He manages to stuff into the first graf an jibe at Kohl's arranging the funeral in a Roman Catholic church for a supposed protestant suicide, and then ends on this wonderfully abrasive note:
"The German media had already, almost without exception, swallowed Mr Kohl�s explanation for her death, which was that she was suffering from such an agonising allergy to light that for the last 15 months she had only been able to leave the house under cover of darkness."

Subsequently, Grimson shows that Hannelore Kohl's curious condition might have had less to do with the heliophobia, and more to do with his husband's "companion/secretary," Juliane Weber.

Basic subtext is the fat guy strangling his wife, then unctuously conducting her obsequies in a cathedral stuffed vest to wurst with Deutschland's best and brightest, in a tableau right out of Georg Grosz. Probably took his chippie out for funeral meats, afterwards. Much more topical than Philip Graham's suicide, right? I wasn't expecting such a bracing little tale from the Spectator, of all places.

Back in June, when Roland Dumas was sentenced to a pittance punishment, I got up a head of steam and wrote my friend MB an e-mail which read:

I don't know if you have been following L'affaire ELF, but the sentences came out today, and Dumas got basically six months. That is so outrageous I can barely believe it. The french elites definitely protect each other - to an alarming and disgusting extent. Even in the USA, not a standard by any means, the secretary of Defense being on the take would have brought a sentence of at least 5 years or more. I don't remember how much John Mitchell got, but I think it was something like that.
It did get me thinking, however, about Dumas' old patron, Mitterand, and whether he was, possibly, the worst Western leader since 1945. I think Nixon has to have that honor, but Mitterand is a close second. His system of traditional corruption - you know, it was through ELF that M.'s government basically fronted money to Kohl - his gutting of socialism, so that it is impossible to know, nowadays, if you are a voter, whether a vote for the socialist or the conservative will result in more conservative politcies - his dirty-ness in Africa, especially Rwanda - his intellectual filthiness, starting with his collaborationist past - hmm, yeah, right after Nixon. Even Thatcher and Reagan weren't as bad as old M. Really, if Europe takes a lunge towards fascism again - as is possible with Berlusconi - it will be because of the seeds left by the eighties - the sort of triangle of corruption, Andreotti/Craxi -- Mitterand -- Kohl.
Ah, as Rimbaud used to say,
Mon triste coeur bave � la poupe.

And then, still not finished with the subject, I wrote:

I am still steaming over the Dumas trial. Finally I've been able to read most of the net newspapers about it - and one of the things which does make me, well, sad, is how it was reported in Liberation. Which used to be a lefty, investigative paper. It seems to me that their reporting, here, was pretty establishment. Something has gone out of Libe - they are too interested in being cool, nowadays. They'd rather report on some goddamn trend in French pop music than on who is giving who money under the table.
I guess the thing that amazes me most is that Dumas' ex-mistress got a tougher sentence than he did. That makes no sense to me - her job, as procuress for ELF, would not exist except for the fact that she was indeed able to procur for ELF, via Dumas. She was just an instrument.
But anyway, what really amazes me is that a thug like Dumas still has his influence in the PS - and more, that Jospin is doing his best to stifle the few legislators who are willing to go after the elite crooks, including Chirac. The NYT quoted the mayor of Paris as saying that if they made arrests for all the corruption, they'd "empty" the political field.
My god, what a system.
Well, I might have been too harsh on Libe.
Anyway, the point of the post today, people, is that the tie between the financing of the CDP in Germany, Mitterand, and ELF, still has not become totally clear. Maybe poor Frau Kohl knew too much. Reach me for comments at the Editor

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