Go Ahead. See If I Care

Cross Fire in the Drug War: Aftermath of a Crack Article

2005-06-02T11:17:00.000-07:00

The Nation
Jefferson Morley
November 20, 1989
2363 words

I smoked crack and wrote an article abut it for The New Republic. As I had hoped, "What Crack Is Like" instigated many debates within the Washington political class and attracted more than a little interest outside that cloistered group. The article made three points, all of which will strike some people as self-evident: Crack is a pleasurable drug with unpleasant side effects; crack can "make sick sense to demoralized people" and the spread of crack capitalism is related to the phenomenon of Reaganism. That same week I published a historical-economic analysis of the drug problem in The Nation ("Contradictions of Cocaine Capitalism," October 2), which initially drew little media attention, no doubt because it was a more substantive article. In fact, the reactions to the New Republic piece were more interesting than the piece itself. The peculiarities of our so-called drug war and the desire for a new debate about the problem have never been more evident.

By noon of the day The New Republic rolled off the presses William Bennett had described my piece as "garbage" and called me "a defector in the drug war." In this compliment I resented only Bennett's implication that I was a soldier, not a citizen, and somehow bound to salute his efforts. Over the weekend, the usual suspects from the Sunday morning talk shows -- Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak, Al Hunt -- reiterated Bennett's criticisms, often word for word: "garbage," "irresponsible" and so on.

What especially galled the pundits was my remark that "if all you have in life is bad choices, crack may not be the most unpleasant of them." No one said this statement was untrue, as Michael Kinsley, editor of The New Republic, pointed out in my defense -- only that it was "unhelpful." Indeed, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., editor of The American Spectator, expressed a journalistic philosophy no longer current, even at Pravda. Tyrrell said my article was "contemptible" because I did not express support for benevolent state efforts to wipe out market activity.

Stephen Rosenfeld, a foreign policy columnist for The Washington Post, at least tried to debate the issue, devoting a confused column to my article. The ink not spent on abusing my person was spent quoting a Washington public health official about the crack experience. Rosenfeld was so excited that he never noticed the official's description of the crack experience in no way contradicted my own. The damaging effects of addiction to drug war rhetoric were evident. Rosenfeld asserted that crack "withers the mothering instinct" among the female users. Exactly how the drug does this, biologically and chemically, he was unable to explain.

The following Monday morning, I went on C-Span, the public affairs cable channel, and exchanged pleasantries with Brian Lamb, a conservative gentleman and a soothing interlocutor. Wasn't I condoning the use of crack? Lamb inquired. If anything I was discouraging it, I said. The curious could learn about the drug from my article. If they took it seriously, they would learn that in one man's very limited experience, crack's pleasure quickly gave way to its side effects, combining "the worst of marijuana and cocaine" and inducing both stupefaction and paranoia. "Let's go to the phones," Lamb said, eyes twinkling. He was enjoying the prospect of my imminent pasting by the vox populi.

Thirteen of the next fifteen callers approved of my article, several of them using the same phrase, "I'm with you 100 percent." What came through most consistently in the comments was a sense of relief at hearing someone in the media say something--anything--outside the rhetorical consensus of just-say-no and zero-tolerance.

I went on radio talk shows in Washington, Milwaukee, Detroit and Boston. "What's crack like?" my interviewers inevitably wanted to know. Or did they? Crack has been around for six years and smoked by millions of Americans. I asked several of these media representatives if they had ever posed the question to the many available crack users in their home towns. Most had not. They were such loyal soldiers in the drug war that they had forgotten to do their jobs. Others said that they regarded local crack smokers as less reliable and less interesting than me. "You're a real person," one TV reporters said in a revealing slip. "I mean, you're a real, articulate person."

The inevitable second question was, "They say you smoke crack once and you're addicted. Are you addicted?" The answer was no. I often replied by asking why they believed that one-time crack use leads to addiction. "That's what everybody says," answered Mark Belling, a talk show host in Milwaukee. Had he ever conducted a survey of crack users in his city to answer the question for himself? Neither he nor any other journalist critical of my article had ever attempted such reporting. (In fact, Harper's magazine reported in November that six out of ten crack users eventually become addicted, compared with nine out of ten cigarette users.)

My mother liked the article; my father hated it. He called to tell me I'd made a "big mistake." He said that I was an elitist wise-ass in the worst New Republic tradition who had trivialized a terrible problem by drawing attention to myself and not to the real issues involved. This criticism left me depressed for a week. Like the Sunday morning gasbags, my father is a Reaganite. Unlike them, he knows what he's talking about. He's a journalist who knows and works with the neighborhood activists who are trying to extirpate the crack economy block by block in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

When I attempted to say something about challenging the Bennett propaganda barrage, he cut me off. "What's Bill Bennett got to do with the crack problem?" he demanded. A good question. I admit that I couldn't dismiss entirely his argument that even to joint this spurious Washington debate, especially in the provocative way that I did, was "counterproductive."

The personal letters I received were supportive by a margin of about ten to one. "The criticism that you lacked sufficient reverence for the drug problem seems to me symptomatic of the very hysteria that you pointed out," wrote Dave Hage, a newspaper reporter from the Twin Cities. "I may take an even stronger position than you--that this drug hysteria is a grotesque deception and a classic case of inventing a problem we'd like to solve so we can ignore problems we don't want to solve."

The letters to The New Republic, on the other hand, were critical by a margin of fifteen to eight. The charge of irresponsibility recurred, most compelling from people with firsthand experience in the drug problem. Michael Kellogg, a former prosecutor from the Bronx now living in Washington, said, "I felt nothing but sorrow for the kids who used and sold crack as a means of escaping their already blighted lives. I feel nothing but contempt for a twit like Morley who uses the drug to spice up his otherwise unimaginative writing."

Cynthia Malenfant of Newburyport, Massachusetts, said, "What gives him Morley the right to break the law?" Nothing, I had to concede. I'm in the same position as the journalist who wrote about his experiences in a speak-easy in the 1920s. I harmed no one and hardly tried to evade the consequences of my actions. I was (and am) prepared for drug enforcement agents knocking on my door, and I'm willing to go to court to testify about my actions. If the drug warriors want to get tough on that contemporary beast, "the casual user," then I am their man. But the knock never came, and I'm confident it never will. I have access to expert legal counsel and to the media. The drug warriors prefer to go after casual users who have fewer defenses.

The most original point was made by Kenneth Anderson of New York City, who said my article was "a print version of that other much-publicized, equally exploitative Washington drug buy." Anderson, of course, was referring to the drug enforcement agents' buy of three ounces of crack in Lafayette Park prior to President Bush's nationally televised address on drugs in early September. Anderson's analogy was apt, but I would add that Bush "used" crack to make a point that was frankly dishonest--despite that millions of Americans have been told by the President, you can't buy crack in Lafayette Park. I used crack to make points that were at least debatable.

I could tell the controversy was dying out when Abe Rosenthal, senior columnist for The New York Times, called. "Very interesting, very interesting," he said. Could I spare a few moments to answer some questions? I understood these sonorities to mean that he was preparing a vicious hatchet job on me.

"Ask away," I replied nervously.

How many times had I used cocaine in my life?

"Well, I'll put it this way, Mr. Rosenthal," I said. "I've used cocaine fewer times than Fawn Hall." (The Washington Post reported last summer that Hall had told drug enforcement agents investigating a local cocaine dealer that she had used cocaine some forty times while working for Oliver North.)

"And how many times have you used marijuana?"

I thought: Is this news that's fit to print? I said: "My favorite recreational drug is Miller Lite."

"Miller Lite," he murmured, as if I had uttered a pleasantry in Swedish, and he had to pretend, out of sheer politeness, to comprehend the meaning of such a strange expression. "Millerlite. Millerlite." End of interview. Rosenthal wisely decided not to write about me.

Since then, I've been receiving many more calls asking about my Nation article on the cocaine economy. I spent an hour on the phone lines on "The Mike Cuthbert Show" on WAMU here in Washington, and every caller save one was dissatisfied with the national drug debate. Jay Marvin, a talk show host on WTKN in Tampa, wanted to hear about banks in Florida that launder drug money. Jean (Queen) Steinberg, a talk show host on WQBH, a black community station in Detroit, was hoping for a wide-ranging discussion with her listeners. And "Addiction-Free Radio" (then KJIM, now KFRR) in Boulder, Colorado, was especially receptive to alternative views on the drug war.

The new drug debate is hindered by the realities of our political culture. Representative Charles Rangel, appearing with me on Larry King Live, said that the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 was a mistake. Rangel, of course, doesn't really want to ban alcohol. As a career politician, he just can't imagine entrusting the American people with the task of controlling antisocial behavior. Then again, he is a Congressman from Harlem, a devastated community that has little reason to entrust its fate to the American sense of social responsibility. If we were all more civic-minded, Rangel's constituents would not be in such bad shape. Rangel's lack of faith in the collective social responsibility required to make drug reform succeed is understandable, if self-defeating.

"So what's your answer?" Rangel, a drug prohibitionist at wit's end, said to me, "Legalize?"

Well, yes. But legalization is only the beginning. The so-called war on drugs is no substitute for social policy--despite what the Bush Administration pretends. And neither is drug legalization. The drug crisis in the United States is really two crises: a crisis of public health that has created millions of untreated drug addicts and a crisis of economic opportunity that has created millions of unregulated and untaxed drug entrepreneurs.

Current government policy is to eliminate these problems by coercively discouraging the desire, exhibited in the actions of as many as 50 million Americans, to use marijuana and cocaine. Few believe this experiment in social engineering will succeed. Bennett's aides routinely tell reporters that they don't expect to "win" the war on drugs for a generation; as much as 80 percent of the public say that they don't expect current policies to solve the problem. Yet in public debate most elected officials feel obliged to pledge allegiance to the government's fantasy. And many journalists feel it's not their job to question the officials who are promoting it.

Other journalists and citizens believe the public health problems related to crack are so severe that any discussion of pleasurable casual crack use in the media is irresponsible, even (especially) if it is accurate. Their intentions--to try to prevent crack from taking over any more lives--are unimpeachable, but I think they are also reinforcing the unreal drug debate. In fact, the drug experience is governed not just by the drug, but also by the person who uses it and the social setting in which he or she uses it. If I could rewrite my article, I would say even more explicitly that I was reporting on my own unique crack experience, which has no necessary implications for how anyone else would experience the drug.

Then why write about it? Because writing about my drug use did have one implication for other people: that it could be informative and useful to discuss drugs in ways that are considered unacceptable by the moral custodians of the current drug debate. That spurious debate, as even my sober Reaganite father knows, promises virtually nothing for the pathetic people whose only solace is crack. It trifles with the safety of policemen on the beat, who are asked to risk their lives to do the impossible, and it compromises our civil liberties in pursuit of the illusory (and undesirable) vision of a drug-free America.

Taken together, my Nation and New Republic articles suggest that our unreal drug debate ghettoizes the social problems generated by the drug economy. In the process, it removes from public debate the rewards of the drug economy: the political and financial opportunities now enjoyed by drug bankers and testers, by ambitious bureaucrats and sycophantic journalists and, most of all, by politicians who prefer to ignore the country's social crises. I think a lot of people intuitively understand this, which is why interest is beginning to shift from what crack is like to the contradictions of cocaine capitalism.

Vanity Fair press release, May 31, 2005

2005-05-31T10:18:00.000-07:00

W. MARK FELT REVEALS HIMSELF TO BE WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN'S DEEP THROAT

New York, N.Y. -- After decades of hiding the truth, even from his family, W. Mark Felt, number two at the F.B.I. in the early 70s, reveals himself to be the source who leaked secrets about Nixon's Watergate cover-up, telling lawyer John D. O'Connor, the author of Vanity Fair's exclusive, "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat."

O'Connor reports that Felt, aged 91, is a retiree living in Santa Rosa, California, with his daughter, Joan. After witnessing the decline of Felt's health and mental acuity, and after receiving his and Joan's permission to reveal this information, O'Connor decided to write this article for Vanity Fair. The Felt family cooperated fully, providing old photographs for the story and agreeing to sit for portraits.

Felt's family did not learn of this aspect of his past until 2002, when Felt's close friend and frequent social companion Yvette La Garde told Joan that Felt had confided to her he had indeed been Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's source. Joan confronted her father, who initially denied it, but after she explained La Garde's disclosure Felt responded, "Since that's the case, well, yes I am." Then and there, she pleaded with him to announce his role immediately so that he could have some closure, and accolades, while he was still alive. Felt reluctantly agreed, then changed his mind. He seemed determined to take his secret with him to the grave.

Joan tried to elicit further response from her father about his role as Deep Throat while they were watching a Watergate TV special. When his name came up as the possible informant, she says, she deliberately questioned her father in the third person: "Do you think Deep Throat wanted to get rid of Nixon?" Joan says that Felt replied, "No, I wasn't trying to bring him down." He claimed, instead, that he was "only doing his duty."

Felt was initially adamant about remaining silent on the subject, thinking disclosures about his past somehow dishonorable. "I don't think [being Deep Throat] was anything to be proud of," Felt indicated to his son, Mark junior, at one point. "You [should] not leak information to anyone."

Felt told his daughter, Joan, that he worried "what the judge would think," fearing, perhaps, that a court might look down on his actions.

"He was amenable at first," his grandson Nick tells O'Connor. "Then he was wavering. He was concerned about bringing dishonor to our family. We thought it was totally cool. It was more about honor than about any kind of shame [to] Grandpa.... To this day, he feels he did the right thing."

O'Connor reports that after learning their father's secret, Joan and Mark junior urged him to go public, explaining that they wanted his legacy to be heroic and permanent, not anonymous, and adding that perhaps he could profit from his revelations. Felt argued with them, saying he didn't want the story out there. Joan recalls saying: "Bob Woodward's gonna get all the glory for this, but we could make at least enough money to pay some bills, like the debt I've run up for the kids' education. Let's do it for the family." With that, both children remember, Felt finally agreed. "He wasn't particularly interested," Mark says, "but he said, 'That's a good reason.'" The Felt children were motivated by the desire to have their father's legacy permanent and heroic, not anonymous.

At that time, Felt agreed to cooperate, but only with the assistance of Woodward, now assistant managing editor at The Washington Post. Acceding to Felt's wishes, Joan and O'Connor spoke to Woodward by phone on a half-dozen occasions over a period of months about whether to make a joint revelation, possibly in the form of a book or an article. O'Connor says that Woodward would sometimes begin these conversations with a caveat, saying, "Just because I'm talking to you, I'm not admitting that he is who you think he is."

According to O'Connor, Woodward's chief concerns were: Was this something that Joan and O'Connor were pushing on Felt, or did he actually want to reveal himself? And, was Felt actually in a clear mental state? To make his own assessment, Woodward told Joan and O'Connor, he wanted to come out and sit down with her father, whom he had not seen since August 1999, around the 25th anniversary of Nixon's resignation. At that time, Woodward had appeared at the house unannounced, telling Joan he was a friend of her father's. Felt had been dodging reporters all week but seemed totally comfortable with Woodward, and even went to lunch with him.

In recent years, Woodward spoke by telephone to Joan, Mark junior, and twice to Felt himself "without anyone else listening," says Joan. "Dad's memory gradually has deteriorated since the original lunch, [but] Dad remembered Bob whenever he called.... I said, 'Bob, it's unusual for Dad to remember someone as clearly as you.'" She says that Woodward responded, "He has good reason to remember me."

According to Joan, Woodward later scheduled two visits to see her father, but had to cancel both times, then never rescheduled. "That was disappointing," she says. "Maybe [he was] just hoping that I would forget about it." Joan and Woodward still correspond by e-mail, she says, and Joan thinks very highly of him. "He's so reassuring and top-notch," she says.

During one phone conversation, O'Connor reports Joan said to Woodward: "'Bob, just between you and me, off the record, I want you to confirm: was Deep Throat my dad?' He wouldn't do that. I said, 'If he's not, you can at least tell me that. We could put this to rest.' And he said, 'I can't do that.'"

Mark junior tells O'Connor: "Making the decision [to go to the press] would have been difficult, painful, and excruciating, and outside the bounds of his life's work. He would not have done it if he didn't feel it was the only way to get around the corruption in the White House and Justice Department. He was tortured inside, but never would show it. He was not this Hal Holbrook [who played Deep Throat in All the President's Men] character. He was not an edgy person. [Even though] it would be the most difficult decision of his life, he wouldn't have pined over it."

O'Connor reports that Yvette La Garde shared Felt's secret with her eldest son, Mickey, a retired army lieutenant colonel based at NATO military headquarters (requiring a top-secret security clearance). Mickey La Garde tells O'Connor that he has remained mum about the revelation ever since: "My mom's condo unit was in Watergate and I'd see Mark," he tells O'Connor. "In one of those visits, in 1987 or '88, she confided to [my wife] Dee and I that Mark had, in fact, been the Deep Throat that brought down the Nixon administration. I don't think Mom's ever told anyone else."

The July issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands in New York on June 8 and nationally June 14.

David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College, May 21, 2005

2005-05-29T02:03:00.000-07:00

[This transcription was hurriedly done, and was only minimally checked for spelling and grammar errors. Text surrounded by parentheses are portions of the speech which seemed to be, you know, parenthetical; apparent departures from the actual text of the speech. Text surrounded by brackets include portions of the speech which were difficult for this transcriber to understand, and sometimes include my guesses as to the actual words used based on context and multiple re-listenings, and sometimes include notes which might aid in the appreciation of the context, et cetera. My punctuation, paragraph breaks and capitalizations are arbitrary; guesses on my part based on his flow of speech and a – rather limited – familiarity with his writing style.]

(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005.

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish.

The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning. Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff.

So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think.

But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.

Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled.
"Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive."
The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence.

We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education – at least in my own case – is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.

Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the leas bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master.

And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large arts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you
can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be.

And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea.

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the
world's priorities.

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness.

Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship –- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are
default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible – sounds like "displayal"].

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away.

You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish.

But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime.

And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.

A Return to National Greatness: A Manifesto for a Lost Creed

2005-03-01T14:18:00.000-08:00

The Weekly Standard
David Brooks
March 3, 1997
3891 words

The original Library of Congress building celebrates its centennial this year. When I mention the Jefferson Building, as it is now called, to people who have done research there, they smile at the memory of it. There's something about the place that seems to inspire affection.

In fact, the building just overpowers you with its exuberance and grandeur. The interior is unabashedly ornate and infinitely decorated. You may cross into the main reading room in a sober mood to get some serious work done, but then this great dome opens up above you. It's covered by a thousand floral medallions and a complex weave of terra cotta figures. You're surrounded by warm amber marbles, bronze sculptures, and a collection of frescoes, columns, and pediments without end.

But the Jefferson Building is more than just a giant Faberge egg. When you get down to looking at the details, you find that the craftsmanship is actually mediocre: You can travel around Europe and find a hundred buildings with better paintings and better sculpture. Nonetheless, there is something about the energy of the building that makes it more than the sum of its parts, that makes it not so much an artistic wonder as a spiritual artifact. How did any group of builders muster so much vitality?

The answer is that this is an American building. For all its classical and Renaissance style, this 1897 building speaks to us in American. It embodies the optimism and brassy aspirations of Americans in the Gilded Age, their faith in the power of beauty to elevate, their confidence in America, their brash assertion that America was emerging as a world-historical force.

What a melancholy thing to compare today's Washington with the Washington in which there was such enthusiasm for grand American projects. The congressmen who appropriated the funds for this building wanted to make sure it was the most expensive and most glorious library on the face of the earth (some even toured Europe to check out the competition). Its architects chose the Renaissance style to invite comparison to that golden age -- to suggest that America was making contributions to world culture equal to it or any other epoch. The librarian of Congress at the time, Ainsworth Spofford, gave pride of place to American heroes like Benjamin Franklin and Robert Fulton in the pantheon of historical likenesses that covers the walls. Spofford and his colleagues saw the building as a statement of American greatness -- and as a way to elevate America to greatness.

It is worth noting that for all its aspirations, the Library of Congress was not completed at a moment of giddy prosperity. In the 1890s, Americans endured a depression during which unemployment peaked at 17 percent (it hovered above 12 percent when the library opened). A quarter of the nation's railroads had become insolvent. America was under strain on other fronts, too. During the 23 years it took to design and build the library, more people immigrated to America than in the previous 250 years combined. The nation's population almost doubled, and white Americans settled more land in these years than in the preceding three centuries. Cities grew exponentially. Slums spread. It was a period of labor unrest.

But menaced by these threats to national cohesion, Americans redoubled their devotion to American nationalism. Hit by economic blows to their confidence, they reasserted their faith in themselves. Faced by anxiety and intellectual uncertainty, they did not succumb to malaise or cynicism. Instead they counter-attacked, with big projects like the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the Library of Congress.

At their worst, Gilded Age Americans reacted to anxiety with dogmatism -- ponderous chest-thumping about the "superior races." But at their best, they asked big questions: How can America produce a culture it can be proud of? How will the inhabitants of some future world power look back on American achievement during its moment of supremacy? What are the steps that a nation can take to preserve the virtues that lead to greatness in the first place?

For all that our current politicians take advantage of the library -- J. C. Watts delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union there, Bill Clinton signed the telecommunications bill there -- present-day leaders possess none of the library's confidence and sureness of purpose. American politicians show little evidence of the great national vigor that animates this building. They don't dare to make great plans or issue large challenges to themselves and their country. At a moment of world supremacy unlike any other, Americans are not asking big questions about their civilization, nor are they being asked anything but the sorts of things pollsters and marketers want to know. And so our politics has become degrading and boring. Political conflict appears trivial, vicious for no good reason.

The Elevation of America

The designers of the Library of Congress had a view of history that is now deeply unfashionable. They saw civilization as a chain of achievement in which each generation is the grateful inheritor of a precious legacy and is called upon as a matter of highest duty to add to and continue the great transmission. Around the Jefferson Building's central dome is a mural that epitomizes this idea. It features 12 seated, monumental figures representing the nations or epochs that, in the words of the building's original catalogue, "have contributed most to the development of present-day civilization in this country."

Under each figure is a plaque naming that culture's great achievement. Egypt is first, given credit for "Written Records." Then come Judea (religion) , Greece (philosophy), Rome (administration), Islam (physics), the Middle Ages (modern languages), Italy (the fine arts), Germany (printing), Spain (discovery), England (literature), and France (emancipation). The list ends with America, which is credited with "science." The American figure in the mural, based on the young Abraham Lincoln, is dressed as an engineer, sitting in a machine shop, contemplating an electric dynamo.

The theory of history depicted in this mural balanced change and continuity. It demanded that people march forward by looking backward. It gave America impressive historical roots, a spiritual connection to the centuries at a time when Americans like Henry James felt their civilization was "thin." And it assigned a specific historic role to America as the latest successor to Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. In the procession of civilization, certain nations rise up to make extraordinary contributions. Their golden ages, it was believed, are to be revered and studied. The designers of the Library of Congress, like so many of their countrymen, thought America was on the verge of its own golden age. At the dawn of the 20th century, America was to take its turn at global supremacy. It was America's task to take the grandeur of past civilizations, modernize it, and democratize it. This common destiny would unify diverse Americans and give them a great national purpose.

The designers must have felt in their bones what Tocqueville observed: Democracy has a tendency to slide into nihilistic mediocrity if its citizens are not inspired by some larger national goal. If they think of nothing but their narrow self-interest, of their commercial activities, they lose a sense of grand aspiration and noble purpose. "What frightens me most," Tocqueville writes, "is the danger that, amid all the constant trivial preoccupations of private life, ambition may lose both its force and its greatness, that human passions may grow gentler and at the same time baser, with the result that the progress of the body social may become daily quieter and less aspiring."

The whole purpose of the library's grand interiors -- and those of the Chicago Columbian Exposition, four years before the library was dedicated -- was to lift Americans above the petty concerns of bourgeois life and put them in touch with aristocratic virtues and transcendent truth. The aim was not to renounce elitism, magnificence, and the aristocratic virtues, but to allow every citizen the chance to become an aristocrat through work, study, and merit. The building's artists and designers had enormous faith in human willpower, in its ability to master the passions and enable the individual to overcome social obstacles. For them, heroic individualism complemented heroic nationalism. They built this elaborate edifice to raise the stakes, to make life in America a more demanding and a more heroic enterprise.

So America was to strive upward. But toward what? Toward more wealth? Greater scientific achievement? Bigger buildings? No, these were just steps along the way. America's mission was to advance civilization itself. Americans and Britons of the late 19th century believed that, transcending human affairs, there is a universal order created by God. Man's duty is to strive toward that order, which precedes and controls politics, morals, history, economics, and art. A phrase from Tennyson, selected by Harvard president Charles W. Eliot and inscribed in the library, captures the message: "One God, one law, one element and one far-off divine event, to which the whole creation moves."

The library's artists broke that cosmic order down into its constituent parts. There are murals depicting each of the virtues, each of the occupations, each of the arts and sciences, each of the races. And the murals celebrate the great men and women -- artists and scientists and thinkers -- who were able to rise up and glimpse this universal order.

The library represents a coherent system of belief: A divine order created by God. A view of history in which man makes long progress toward that order. A series of great nations which contribute to that progress. And for Americans, a remarkable opportunity to join the great chain and participate in a heroic enterprise.

This form of American nationalism served as a foundation for the political ideas of people like Theodore Roosevelt, who believed in limited but energetic government, full-bore Americanism, active foreign policy, big national projects (such as the Panama Canal and the national parks), and efforts to smash cozy arrangements (like the trusts) that retarded dynamic meritocracy.

But now, on the verge of the 21st century, Americans have discarded their pursuit of national greatness in just about every particular.

Post- Greatness America

Our culture no longer speaks of a unified and coherent order. The post- modernist view emphasizes fragmentation and disorder. Philosophers talk about contingency and irony and the ever-shifting meanings of words. Since Hemingway, our intellectuals have perceived hypocrisy, not transcendence, when words like "honor" and "glory" are used.

Our official culture disdains the idea that history is a story of progress unfolding. We think it naive. Maybe it was World War I that made the idea unpopular, or the Holocaust, or a thousand other events in our pessimism- inducing century. We no longer look at history as a succession of golden ages. Instead, history is something of a chaos; cultures bubble about in a relativistic stew. Historians do not measure cultures by their contribution to one central world civilization.

And, save in the speeches of politicians who usually have no clue what they are talking about, America is assigned no special role as the vanguard of civilization. Nobody talks of America as a New Jerusalem; that would be ethnocentric. Nor do we engage in grandiose hero-worship; indeed, we are more adept at debunking than idolizing. We are suspicious of hierarchies, of the idea that one art form is higher than another, that one way of living is superior to another. On the contrary, as Denis de Rougemont says, "It is whatever is lower that we take to be more real."

America is a more dominant power in the world than Americans a century ago could ever have imagined. Yet we have almost none of the sense of global purpose that Americans had when they only dreamed of enjoying the stature we possess today. Domestically, we have a president and a Congress whose major common purpose is . . . balancing the budget.

For much of this century, liberals possessed high aspirations and a spirit of historical purpose. Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, the New Deal, John F. Kennedy's New Frontier -- these were efforts to aim high, to accomplish some grand national endeavor. Liberals tried to use American preeminence as a way to shape the world, fight communism, put a man on the moon. But then came the 1970s, and suddenly liberalism became a creed emphasizing limits. Small became beautiful. A radical egalitarianism transformed liberalism, destroying hierarchies and discrediting elitist aspirations. An easygoing nihilism swept through academia, carrying away any sense of a transcendent order. The civil- rights era turned into the affirmative-action era, and what had been a great national crusade for justice devolved into a series of petty squabbles over spoils.

Worse, under the influence of the New Left, the personal became political. Private concerns came to eclipse the larger public realm. At a time when a teenager's haircut was a political statement to be adjudicated by the Supreme Court, all the issues of the private realm -- smoking, methods of raising children, sexual preferences -- began to overshadow the traditional subjects of the public realm: subjects like order, justice, and the distribution of wealth. Americans have almost forgotten what the public realm is and how it differs from the sum of private concerns.

Thus has our America neglected the sphere of issues that transcends the desires of a single generation. As a nation, we have realized Tocqueville's worst fears; we have replaced high public aspiration with the narrower concerns of private life. These days in politics it is more important to be seen possessing the private virtues -- compassion and caring -- than it is to be seen possessing the public virtues like courage and integrity.

Consider Bill Clinton. He longs to be a great leader, but cultural liberalism has robbed him of any way to realize his dream. The national- greatness ideal of the 19th century was based first on the vigorous virtues, but cultural liberalism mistakes virility for sexism and the oppression of women.

The national-greatness ideal was also based on reticence, the idea that people should present a more austere and noble face to the world and reserve their less austere side for private life. Publicly, Theodore Roosevelt was unforgiving of his brother Elliott's adultery; privately, he tried to help Elliott through his ensuing despair. But cultural liberalism has smashed reticence, mistaking it for hypocrisy. Finally, the national-greatness ideal was based on iron discipline over the passions. But cultural liberalism mistook self-control for unhealthy repression.

And so, at the end of liberalism, we find Bill Clinton. Longing to personify greatness but too easy on himself, trained to discard the qualities that comprise it, he is the opposite of vigorous, the opposite of reticent, the opposite of self-disciplined.

Post-National America

But it is primarily the fault of conservatives that America has lost a sense of national mission and national greatness. After all, this is a conservative era, and one shouldn't expect the Democrats to come up with the energy that animates a conservative era. But since Ronald Reagan returned to California, conservatism has shrunk.

The fact is, if liberals choke on the "greatness" part of national greatness, conservatives choke on the "national" part. Most conservatives have come to confuse "national" with "federal." When they hear of a national effort, they think "big government program." Conservatives have taken two sensible ideas and ballooned them to the point of elephantiasis. The first is anti-statism. They took a truth -- that government often causes suffering when it interferes in the free market -- and stretched it into a blanket hostility to government. Instead of arguing that government should be limited but energetic, slender but strong, they have often argued that government is itself evil.

In so doing, conservatives have introduced their own version of the liberal sin by allowing the private to eclipse the public. Many conservatives argue simply that the private realm is good and the public realm is bad, that private endeavor is moral and public endeavor is corrupt. They saw that many of the public policies that emerged during the 60 years of liberal dominance had nightmarish consequences. Now many can't conceive of a public realm that would affirm any of the virtues they hold dear. Instead, they have concluded that the public policy issuing from the public realm is the problem. They want to free the private sector from big government, which is a worthy goal, but you can't lead a great nation if you don't have an affirmative view of the public realm.

Today's congressional conservatives couldn't conceivably sponsor a daring statement of American greatness like the Jefferson Building. They would refuse to pay for the artists to construct such a work on the grounds that the federal government should have no role in such cultural action. They would balk at anything public that was so conspicuously lavish. They don't have the self-confidence to put forth a cultural vision that is so clear and striking. Few conservatives could even conceive of a federal arts program that would reflect glory on America.

The other idea that conservatives have stretched to elephantiasis is populism. They have taken a healthy distrust of elites and turned it into a blanket hostility to establishments. The men who built the Jefferson Building hoped every person would have the chance to work his way into the elite, into a natural aristocracy. But many of today's conservatives use the language of populist resentment more than of meritocratic aspiration. They use phrases like "inside the Beltway" to condemn those who have risen to high positions in public life. They support term limits on the grounds that experience in government is corrupting, rather than a form of public service.

They have become besotted with localism, local communities, and the devolution of power to the localities. By contrast, those who preached national greatness were not believers in the superior virtue of the simple folk, as today's populists are. They believed in effort, cultivation, and mastery. They believed in cities and urbanity. They believed in capitals, in monuments, in grandeur.

In their passion for devolution, conservatives have neglected the need for a strong national government. Certain government services may be delivered more efficiently from Albany, Harrisburg, or Sacramento, but ultimately, American purpose can find its voice only in Washington.

The best conservative thought knows that without a sense of national community, we balkanize. We become acutely aware of the different needs of our national subcultures: black, white, Hispanic, gay, feminist. But we are not reminded of any common mission that unites us. It becomes easier for demagogues to pit us against one another because there are no countervailing leaders offering common national tasks. We begin to turn on outsiders and immigrants.

Without vigorous national vision, we are plagued by anxiety and disquiet. The great questions of the age are, Why do we feel so bad when we are doing so well materially? And why do we feel the nation is doing so badly if we ourselves are doing so well? The common answer is that we don't have a clear sense of what America is for, what we, as a nation, should achieve with all our wealth. As our public realm collapses into the private, our public morality becomes confused with matters of public health, from smoking to the distribution of free needles. We try to curb bad behavior by scolding and political correctness, but we have no way to inspire good behavior by holding up lofty goals.

Restoring American Greatness

Can we create a 21st-century version of the national-greatness ideal and so recapture the confidence manifest in the Library of Congress? What is needed is a process of pruning -- cutting government's forays into private life while strengthening its public role. This is not the anti-statism of recent conservative vintage, nor is it a proposal to reinvent government along neoliberal lines. It's a more fundamental change that requires a transformation in the way we think about the federal government's role.

Currently, American political philosophy has divided itself into the opposing principles of "order" and "freedom." Now, when liberals stand for one, conservatives stand for the other. Liberals want economic order; conservatives want economic freedom. Conservatives want social order; liberals want social freedom.

This has forced the national government to engage in a pervasive balancing act. It is forever invading the private sphere in an effort to strengthen community here, or strengthen individual freedoms there. Washington becomes the battleground on which the fine distinctions between individual rights and community prerogatives are fought out. The national-greatness ideal assigns the federal government another role: It should accomplish national missions. And in so doing, it will set the national tone.

The national mission can be carried out only by individuals and families -- not by collectives, as in socialism and communism. Instead, individual ambition and willpower are channeled into the cause of national greatness. And by making the nation great, individuals are able to join their narrow concerns to a larger national project.

Historically, national missions have included settling the West, building the highway system, creating the post-war science faculties, exploring space, waging the Cold War, and disseminating American culture throughout the world.

The most successful missions have set physical goals, rather than abstract ones: America in 1897 constructed the world's finest library. The library has had an important impact on culture, but its impact is the byproduct of a physical project. Sometimes the federal government has funded these efforts. Sometimes it has merely identified the new national cause. Sometimes it has eliminated barriers to ambition.

It almost doesn't matter what great task government sets for itself, as long as it does some tangible thing with energy and effectiveness. The first task of government is to convey a spirit of confidence and vigor that can then spill across the life of the nation. Stagnant government drains national morale. A government that fails to offer any vision merely feeds public cynicism and disenchantment.

But energetic government is good for its own sake. It raises the sights of the individual. It strengthens common bonds. It boosts national pride. It continues the great national project. It allows each generation to join the work of their parents. The quest for national greatness defines the word " American" and makes it new for every generation.

Nexis Results for iraq and w/3 collaborators

2005-02-19T23:40:00.000-08:00

Nexis
News, Most Recent 90 Days (English, Full Text) [Expanded List]
Power Search Results for: iraq and w/3 collaborators

1.
Times-Picayune (New Orleans), February 13, 2005 Sunday, NATIONAL; Pg. 1, 2606 words, KILL ZONE; The Louisiana National Guard’s 256th Brigade Combat Team has suffered 17 combat deaths in a little less than three months on patrol. No other similarly sized Army unit has had so many casualties in so little time., By Brian Thevenot, Staff writer
... in frightening potential Iraqi collaborators and soldiers. After three ...

2.
The Associated Press, February 8, 2005, Tuesday, BC cycle, International News, 691 words, Pain and loss of a brutal beheading lingers on for young son of the victim, By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer, IRBIL, Iraq
... campaign against foreigners and Iraqi collaborators, often filming the act and ...

3.
Associated Press Online, February 8, 2005 Tuesday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 687 words, Pain and Loss of Beheading Lingers for Son, SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI; Associated Press Writer, IRBIL, Iraq
... campaign against foreigners and Iraqi collaborators, often filming the act and ...

4.
Associated Press Worldstream, February 8, 2005 Tuesday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 690 words, Pain and loss of a brutal beheading lingers on for young son of the victim, SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI; Associated Press Writer, IRBIL, Iraq
... campaign against foreigners and Iraqi collaborators, often filming the act and ...

5.
Xinhua General News Service, February 6, 2005 Sunday, 4:00 PM EST, WORLD NEWS; Political, 157 words, Four Iraqi collaborators with US forces killed, BAGHDAD

6.
Los Angeles Times, February 4, 2005 Friday, Home Edition, MAIN NEWS; Foreign Desk; Part A; Pg. 8, 836 words, THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ; Shiites Lead in Partial Results; Violence Resumes, Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff Writer, BAGHDAD
... U.S. forces consider Iraqi security forces collaborators and have killed hundreds of them. Militants ...

7.
The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), February 2, 2005 Wednesday, LETTERS, 275 words, U.S. must leave Iraq and pay reparations
... attacking the occupying forces and the Iraqi collaborators, there isn't an incipient ...

8.
Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia), February 2, 2005 Wednesday, OPEDIT; Pg. 21, 1137 words, Freedom's triumph, Andrew Bolt
... earlier demanded the murder of the Iraqi "collaborators", who have since brought ...

9.
National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada), January 31, 2005 Monday, National Edition, COMMENT; George Jonas; Pg. A10, 832 words, A democracy - for now, George Jonas, National Post
... Baghdad, the bodies of five Iraqi "collaborators" were found, four shot, ...

10.
Times-Picayune (New Orleans), January 31, 2005 Monday, NATIONAL; Pg. 1, 2152 words, La. guardsmen claim a place in history, By Brian Thevenot, Staff writer
... use to attack soldiers and Iraqi collaborators. "It only crushed ...

11.
LANCASTER NEW ERA (LANCASTER, PA.), January 27, 2005, Thursday, Pg. A-6,, 563 words, For people of Iraq, an historic election
... Qaida has threatened harm to those Iraqi citizens deemed "collaborators with the foreign occupation of Iraq."

12.
DAILY MAIL (London), January 27, 2005, ED_2ND_04; Pg. 14, 1195 words, Sorry, but this election will change nothing, CORRELLI BARNETT
... American occupation forces and their Iraqi collaborators. In fact, it ...

13.
Fox News Network, SHOW: THE BIG STORY WITH JOHN GIBSON 5:15 PM EST, January 26, 2005 Wednesday, NEWS; International, 857 words, Interview With Michael Rubin, John Gibson
... later targeting American collaborators, later targeting Iraqi police, later Iraqi ...

14.
Los Angeles Times, January 23, 2005 Sunday, Home Edition, MAIN NEWS; Foreign Desk; Part A; Pg. 1, 992 words, The Conflict in Iraq; Security Vies With Danger at Iraqi Polls; With the election a week away, officials will seal borders, limit travel and impose a curfew to prevent insurgents from derailing the voting., Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff Writer, BAGHDAD
... Iraq. Insurgents view Iraqi lawmen as collaborators with U.S. forces and have slaughtered ...

15.
San Jose Mercury News (California), January 23, 2005 Sunday MO1 EDITION, A; BRIEF; Pg. 15, 710 words, Iraqi government outlines election day security plans; STRICT MEASURES ON BORDERS, DRIVING, Mercury News Wire Services, BAGHDAD, Iraq
... Iraq. Insurgents view Iraqi police as collaborators with U.S. forces and have slaughtered ...

16.
The Independent (London), January 18, 2005, Tuesday, Final Edition; FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 23, 237 words, CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP TAKEN HOSTAGE AS 20 KILLED IN STRIKES ACROSS IRAQ, ROBERT REID IN BAGHDAD
... handwritten notes declaring them to be collaborators, Iraqi officials said. Four had been ...

17.
Agence France Presse -- English, January 14, 2005 Friday, 10:02 AM GMT, 263 words, Islamist group in Iraq says it killed Sistani aide: website, DUBAI Jan 14
... group," which vowed to target Iraqi police and all "collaborators and traitors ... who have sold their ...

18.
Belfast News Letter (Northern Ireland), January 6, 2005, Thursday, 1st Edition; NEWS; Pg. 13, 436 words, 25 KILLED AS REBELS TARGET IRAQI POLICE
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers. "Hostile ...

19.
Birmingham Post, January 6, 2005, Thursday, First Edition; NEWS; Pg. 9, 274 words, BLASTS KILL MORE IRAQI POLICEMEN
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers.

20.
Geelong Advertiser (Regional Daily), January 6, 2005 Thursday, WORLD; Pg. 24, 207 words, Explosion hits police graduation ceremony; Car bomb kills 20, IRAQ Baghdad, Wednesday
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers. Today's ...

21.
Irish News, January 06, 2005, Pg. 10, 521 words, Bombings kill 25 in Iraq;
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers. "Hostile ...

22.
Newsletter, January 6, 2005, 434 words, 25 KILLED AS REBELS TARGET IRAQI POLICE
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers. "Hostile ...

23.
The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario), January 6, 2005 Thursday Final Edition, FRONT; Pg. A8, 465 words, Car bombs kill 25 in Iraq, BAGHDAD
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers. Earlier ...

24.
Taiwan News, January 6, 2005, 394 words, CAR BOMB CARNAGE CLAIMS 20 IN IRAQ
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers.

25.
The Associated Press, January 5, 2005, Wednesday, BC cycle, International News, 205 words, Car bomb attack at Iraqi police graduation ceremony kills at least 20, BAGHDAD, Iraq
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers. Wednesday's ...

26.
The Associated Press, January 5, 2005, Wednesday, BC cycle, International News, 827 words, Car bomb attack at Iraqi police graduation ceremony kills 20, By DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer, BAGHDAD, Iraq
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers. "Hostile ...

27.
The Associated Press, January 5, 2005, Wednesday, BC cycle, International News, 968 words, Car bomb attack at Iraqi police graduation ceremony kills 20; blast outside police station kills five Iraqis, By DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer, BAGHDAD, Iraq
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers to be collaborators with the American occupiers. "Hostile ...

28.
Associated Press Worldstream, January 5, 2005 Wednesday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 214 words, At least 20 killed in car bomb explosion south of Baghdad, BAGHDAD, Iraq
... forces. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers. Wednesday's ...

29.
Liverpool Daily Echo, January 5, 2005, Wednesday, Extra Edition; NEWS; Pg. 7, 157 words, CAR BOMB IN IRAQ KILLS 20
... equipment. The militants consider Iraqi soldiers as collaborators with the American occupiers. Today's ...

30.
Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2004 Wednesday, Home Edition, MAIN NEWS; Foreign Desk; Part A; Pg. 1, 1669 words, The World; COLUMN ONE; Getting an Education in Jihad; Infuriated by the U.S.-led 'crusade' in Iraq, a Lebanese teacher left his country and steady job intending to die for the insurgency., Megan K. Stack, Times Staff Writer, BEKAA VALLEY, Lebanon
... bombs to residential neighborhoods. Iraqi collaborators with the U.S.-led forces would ...

31.
Copley News Service, December 27, 2004 Monday, EDITS; EDITORIAL WEEKLY FEATURE, 485 words, Daily Editorials Heroes and villains, The Omaha World-Herald Copley News Service
... arrogant American empire and its Iraqi collaborators. Seen from that anti-American ...

32.
Omaha World-Herald (Nebraska), December 26, 2004, Sunday, IOWA;MIDLANDS;NEBRASKA;SUNRISE EDITION, Pg. 12B;, 478 words, Heroes and villains The Iraqi insurgents promote a hollow agenda; the police, an uplifting one., 6
... arrogant American empire and its Iraqi collaborators. Seen from that anti-American ...

33.
Daily News (New York), December 22, 2004 Wednesday, SPORTS FINAL EDITION, NEWS; Pg. 4, 334 words, BUSH CITED TERROR GROUP FOR IRAQ INVASION, BY JAMES GORDON MEEK DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
... allies, civilian contractors and Iraqi "collaborators." Ansar has also copped to firing ...

34.
The Washington Post, December 20, 2004 Monday, Final Edition, A Section; A01, 2482 words, In Iraq: One Religion, Two Realities; Sunni, Shiite Sermons Leave No Room for Dialogue on Election or Insurgents, Anthony Shadid, Washington Post Foreign Service, BAGHDAD
... similarly betrayed by Iraqi collaborators who have deserted them and fallen ...

35.
BBC Monitoring International Reports, December 17, 2004, 581 words, CUBA: HIGHLIGHTS OF CUBAVISION TV NEWS 0000 GMT 17 DEC 04
... 31:21 Iraq - Two Iraqi collaborators killed today in ...

36.
BBC Monitoring International Reports, December 17, 2004, 581 words, CUBA: HAVANA CUBAVISION NTV SPANISH 0000 GMT 17 DEC 04
... 31:21 Iraq - Two Iraqi collaborators killed today in ...

37.
BBC Monitoring International Reports, December 13, 2004, 1353 words, IRAQI GROUPS ACCUSE COLLABORATORS WITH "OCCUPATION" OF "HIGH TREASON"

38.
The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario), December 13, 2004 Monday Final Edition, FRONT; Pg. A5, 630 words, Saddam no closer to trial one year after being capture, BAGHDAD
... against U.S. troops and their Iraqi collaborators. The United States is increasing ...
... bombings that target Americans and Iraqi collaborators. Al-Rubaie said ...

39.
The New York Sun, December 9, 2004 Thursday, EDITORIAL & OPINION; Pg. 10, 574 words, History Being Made
... Catholics from becoming close collaborators. The divergences between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites are at ...

40.
Fox News Network, SHOW: FOX SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRIT HUME 6:00 PM EST, December 7, 2004 Tuesday, NEWS; International, 1603 words, Bush Encourages Troops at Camp Pendleton; Hamid Karzai Sworn in as President of Afghanistan; The 1000-American is Killed in Combat in Iraq and Violence there Intensifies; Secretary Powell Criticizes President Putin, Brit Hume, Jim Angle, Mike Emanuel, Greg Kelly
... a coward and American collaborator," referring to the Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad ...

41.
The Frontrunner, December 6, 2004 Monday, THE BIG PICTURE, 444 words, Headlines From Today's Front Pages.Los Angeles Times:
... Like A Rose" "Iraqi Collaborators Still In Line Of ...

42.
AFX.COM, December 2, 2004 Thursday, GENERAL; GOVERNMENT, 577 words, US to increase troops in Iraq for elections, BAGHDAD
... claimed to have killed three Iraqi "collaborators" with US forces west of ...

43.
Agence France Presse -- English, December 2, 2004 Thursday, 1:41 AM GMT, 841 words, US announces more troops as Iraq rallies support for elections, BAGHDAD Dec 2
... claimed to have killed three Iraqi "collaborators" with US forces west of ...

44.
Agence France Presse -- English, December 1, 2004 Wednesday, 6:29 PM GMT, 800 words, Iraq rallies support for elections as deadly violence goes on, BAGHDAD Dec 1
... claimed to have killed three Iraqi "collaborators" with US forces west of ...

Interview With Snoop Dogg

2005-02-13T07:06:00.000-08:00

CNN
Larry King Live
February 4, 2005
3608 words

LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, exclusive, rap superstar Snoop Dogg. Always controversial, he survived gang wars and a murder trial. And now his first interview about being accused of rape by a woman who's hit him with a multimillion dollar lawsuit.

Then, a gorgeous young model, a drunken driver, her perfect face and a promising career shattered. The reconstructive surgery so agonizing she nearly lost her mind along with her looks. It's all next on LARRY KING LIVE.

Let's get you up to date on the Snoop Dogg story. Late last month, a female makeup artist filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against rapper Snoop Dogg, the ABC Network, the Walt Disney Company and the "Jimmy Kimmel Show." The woman alleges that on January 31, 2003, over two years ago, she was drugged and raped backstage at "The Kimmel Show" by Snoop Dogg and four associates.

We'll get into all of this. We thank him for making his exclusive appearance with us to discuss it.

What was your reaction to this? What to your knowledge happened that night, Snoop?

SNOOP DOGG, RAPPER: Well, actually, I was kind of shocked when I heard of the information, Larry, because this was a woman that I had gave a job to do the makeup on "The Jimmy Kimmel Show." And when she originally made the police report, my name had nothing do with it, I was never there. Through payments or what not through certain companies like Disney and myself, with my lawyers advising me to pay her, it was supposed to go away because it was all extortion as far as I was concerned.

And then the last couple of months, she threatened to go to the "Enquirer" and all of these news stands to say that I had something to do with it and make up allegations. So, I said, you know what, I'm tired of this. I'm going to sue her. And I'm putting this out to let people know that she's trying to extort me. Because I had nothing to do with it. And don't know nothing.

KING: Well, let's go back. You hired her to do makeup. Were you hosting a show that week?

SNOOP DOGG: Yes, I was hosting for first week on "The Jimmy Kimmel Show" when it first opened. I believe it was 2 years ago.

KING: Did you know the woman? SNOOP DOGG: No, I didn't. I had met her that same week.

KING: When the original charges were made that four associates, and you weren't involved, what did you think of those charges?

SNOOP DOGG: Well, my suggestion to her was go to the police and have the police do an investigation, because I felt like rape is a serious charge. And, you know, it should really be handled the right way. Like I said, if it is rape, you need to really go to the police and see what's up. But her intentions weren't to criminally convict somebody, it was to get paid financially off of me or Disney. Disney stopped paying. So the next in line was me.

KING: Did you talk to the associates that she alleged raped her? Were they your associates, people that work for you?

SNOOP DOGG: No, I haven't talked to anyone who she accused of doing this to.

KING: Who are these people?

SNOOP DOGG: I have no idea. I know that my name is not on the police report. And that's what I'm here to talk about, me individually. She said Snoop Dogg raped her. So, I'm just here to show you that Snoop Dogg didn't.

KING: So she has never filed a police report regarding you?

SNOOP DOGG: Nope. No police report regarding me, Calvin Broadus, Snoop Dogg, anything relevant to me.

KING: So the only thing you have been hit with is a lawsuit, not a criminal charge?

SNOOP DOGG: Exactly. This is straight extortion.

And what is so crazy, Larry, this type of stuff happens all the time to entertainers where someone makes a false accusation and lawyer tells them just pay them and it all go away. And me personally, I was going along with it for first year and a half, because I thought would go away. Then I said, you know what, I'm not going to pay nobody no $100,000 check for me to clear my name up over rape. I would rather go court and fight it in the court of law and prove that I was innocent. And show that she was trying to extort me. So this type of act will never happen again.

KING: Why, Snoop, were you going to give her $100,000? Why give her anything if you weren't named? You weren't even involved?

SNOOP DOGG: Well, actually, I never wanted to give her anything to begin with. But my attorneys advised me to pay her this certain amount of money monthly, because she was having problems with her medical bills and just all kind of excuses that they were making up to pay her because they felt it was a nuisance and would all go away.

So I agreed with them, because I was doing so much work. But then after a while, I said I'm innocent. Why am I paying her? I need to be suing her like she trying to sue me.

KING: Do you think entertainers do this a lot, pay off people, just not to be nuisanced?

SNOOP DOGG: Definitely, it happens a lot of times to a lot of my friends. I know of a lot of cases where it happens you pay somebody off to keep your name going, because it becomes a bigger situation in the court of law when you have to really try to fight the fact that somebody is extorting you.

But me personally, rape is not my nature. I feel very compassionate towards any woman that has been raped. I have a mother, a daughter and a wife and rape is a serious allegation. That's why I'm here tonight with you to let you know that that is not in my nature and I cannot believe that I've been accused of this financially, but not criminally.

KING: This program, Snoop, has invited the accuser and her attorney to be guests on the show. They are considering the invitation. The woman's attorney, we're not naming her, but her attorney Perry Walter was interviewed by CNN earlier this week.

We have some excerpts from the conversation. He talked about the other defendants in the clients lawsuit and why they also should share blame for what was done to her. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PERRY WALKER, ATTORNEY FOR ALLEGED RAPE VICTIM: The media seems to be focusing a lot on Snoop Dogg. And his involvement in this is -- we have alleged he's one of the perpetrators. But one of the other perpetrators are the corporate defendants in this case. ABC, Disney, "The Jimmy Kimmel Live Show" in my opinion, metaphorically raped my client as much as the perpetrators. They provided alcohol for the guests. They provided alcohol for the hosts. They provided alcohol, even, for the audience. They created an atmosphere of partying in order to attract a younger audience.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Walt Disney, ABC and "Jimmy Kimmel Live" respond. They say there is simply no merit to the charges against the company.

Was alcohol being -- were you consuming alcohol while on the air that night, Snoop?

SNOOP DOGG: Me personally, I don't really drink alcohol. So I can't say what other people was doing. But I know personally me, I don't going to down with alcohol like that. So, I would have to say no for myself.

KING: Do you think in your heart something happened to that girl that night?

SNOOP DOGG: In my heart, I don't know if something happened to that girl that night, because, you now, like I said, she immediately started asking me for money instead of asking to go to court. And like I said, any woman that I know that has been raped, their first mindstate is, I need to go find the guy that raped me, get them off of the streets, and get them away from me so they did not do that to me or any woman again.

They don't automatically say I need to get some money from you. It is the other way around. You go for the criminal side first and then you ask for the money second.

KING: What is your memory of that night when the show ended? Do you remember what you did? Where you went? Did you remember seeing her?

SNOOP DOGG: Well, actually, every night after "The Jimmy Kimmel Show," I proceeded to jump in my vehicle with my PR guy, Richey Abbott, my hairstylist Queen Bee. And we rolled back to the house and go do what we do in the studio. You know, because I had another day to go back to do that. It was a five day show.

KING: So, you didn't go in to have your makeup taken off. You didn't go back -- you didn't see her after the show. You were out of there?

SNOOP DOGG: Yes. I never went to have my makeup taken off. I was more or less, once she put it on, I go home and take a shower and take it off like that.

KING: So, when she initially made the charges, you were there to help figuring -- did you believe her initially when she didn't name you?

SNOOP DOGG: I believed her. And my suggestion to her was go to the police. Because if you have been raped, your first state of mind is go to the police to find the perpetrators to take them off the streets. And that's what I was -- under the assumption that she was going to the law.

But now I'm reading into the paper and seeing on TV that Snoop Dogg raped her. And my name is not in the police report. So that just throws me off. That's why I'm here taking a stand, because I refuse to be another entertainer that just writes a check on a false allegation. And this allegation is not like, you know a car accident or something that -- of that nature, this is rape. And don't stand for that. I'm not with that. That's why I'm here to defend myself and let you all know I don't get down like that.

KING: We'll be right back with Snoop Dogg on this edition of LARRY KING LIVE. Don't go away.

KING: We're back with Snoop Dogg. So you're telling us that you've never had a relation of any kind with this woman?

SNOOP DOGG: No. And I was willing to take a DNA test, a lie detector test, all of that. But she was not with me doing neither one of them. So like I said, that's a serious allegation, rape. So the first thing you do when you say you're raped, you go find a guy who you said that raped you, you get a DNA test on him, and you find all the evidence and you take him to court and you prosecute him. None of that has ever happened with me. This has happened two years ago. Why now is it coming out in the media?

And I'm going to tell you why it is coming out in the media. Because Disney refused to keep paying her, and I told myself that I'm not going to pay her. I would rather go to court and show that she's trying to extort me. And that's what time it is right now.

KING: Was Disney paying her?

SNOOP DOGG: Yeah, they paid her off a little bit, you know what I'm saying, because they felt like it was a nuisance and it would go away sooner or later. But then I guess she got some new attorneys that just felt like they could get a lot of money from me. You know what I'm saying? I've got a lot of money, true indeed, but I'm not going to give it to you for something that I didn't do.

KING: Now you filed an extortion lawsuit against her. Where does that stand?

SNOOP DOGG: I filed an extortion lawsuit. It's actually a motion right now. And we got a deposition set up in a couple of weeks for her to come do a deposition and tell her side of the story, so that way we can get it all documented and we'll roll from there. Like I said, even in America, as a celebrity, you're innocent until proven guilty, and that's what I am, I'm innocent until proven guilty. And actually I haven't even been charged, so I don't even know what these statements are even about.

KING: Her lawyer, Perry Wander, was asked his reaction to the extortion complaint that you filed. Here is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PERRY WANDER, ATTORNEY FOR ALLEGED RAPE VICTIM: The lawsuit that was filed in my legal opinion is a total abuse of process. That lawsuit doesn't even name anybody in the lawsuit. And Snoop Dogg, if he really felt and his attorneys really felt that he was a victim of blackmail and extortion, they should have filed a police report, but they didn't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Why didn't you file an extortion report?

SNOOP DOGG: Well, what we did was we did file one. We had Jane Doe. I had respect for her. I didn't want to put her name out there like that, you know what I'm saying? Because I felt like, you know, she had been raped if that's what she says she had been done, you know, I'm going to keep that name in discreet right now. But then after a while, we started to think, and me and my attorneys said, why is she coming down on me like this all of a sudden? We need to go back and show people that this is a lie. And like I said, in a court of law, it will all come out. It should be criminal first, civil second. Not civil first, criminal second. That's what I was taught, you know what I'm saying?

KING: What has this done to you personally? Relationship with other people, children?

SNOOP DOGG: Nothing with the children. You know, I coach football and I have a Snoop Youth Football League, Snooper Bowl game out here in Jacksonville tomorrow. And everything is going beautiful. And that's what I love the most, is out there coaching the kids and being a part of their lives. Their parents don't even have no insight on this right now. They know that this is not even my nature. They support me. They're down with me. And they're just waiting on the truth to come out.

KING: Oh, yeah, that game tomorrow, you have the Snoop's Youth All-Star football game, the Snoop Bowl, right? The Snooper Bowl.

SNOOP DOGG: Yeah, the Snooper Bowl. Snooper Bowl, Larry, Snooper Bowl. Not the Super Bowl, but the Snooper Bowl.

KING: Now, you have done some sometimes sexually explicit videos, haven't you?

SNOOP DOGG: Yeah, I've done it in my past.

KING: Do you think this puts you -- do you think this puts you more open to this kind of thing, where the public might tend to believe it?

SNOOP DOGG: I think it makes me a target. But the public and the people in general that know Snoop Dogg and follow me and support me know that that's not my nature. So that's why, you know, we go at it with such diligence as far as putting an extortion lawsuit on her, instead of just sitting back, waiting on the police to try to come and arrest me, which they won't, which they haven't, and if they are, I believe it is a little bit too late. But I'm willing to go do whatever they want me to do -- DNA, lie detector, all that. I'm down to do that. Come get at me, policeman, so we can get this resolved.

KING: Has your ex-wife said anything?

SNOOP DOGG: Oh, no. Me and my wife are still together. We filed for divorce, but we reconciled and we're living together...

KING: Oh, I didn't know that.

SNOOP DOGG: ... and enjoying ourselves. Yeah. She's out here with me right now. So Shante, if you're watching, I love you, baby.

KING: What has been her reaction to this?

SNOOP DOGG: Oh, actually, she's the one that called me first and -- when she seen it on CNN, she was, like, baby, you ain't going to believe this BS I just seen on TV. You know what I'm saying? She talked to me about it, and she knew that, you know, I had nothing to do with it and she stands by my side.

KING: Do you think having a -- you had a criminal record once. Do you think that is going to affect you in this lawsuit?

SNOOP DOGG: I don't think so, because the criminal record that I have has nothing to do with rape. I've never been inclined to do rape, never been involved with anything that has nothing to do with rape. My criminal cases were completely separate. And just to let you know, Larry, my record has been expunged, it's closed. You know, I haven't committed a crime in over 10 years. So I've been doing the right thing lately.

KING: Would you say you've changed?

SNOOP DOGG: Oh, I know I've changed. And that's one thing about life. Change is going to come. And that's where I'm at right now in my life. I'm about doing more right than wrong. I come from a background where, you know, crime is every day. You can see it everywhere you turn. But that doesn't mean it's still in me. It's around me. You know what I'm saying? But at the same time, I learned to walk my walk. I learned to be more positive, to be creative, to be innovative, to be a role model and to be a leader. And that's what I am.

KING: How has the public treated you since all of this?

SNOOP DOGG: Well, it's still the red carpet treatment. They still love Snoop Dogg. Like I say, you're innocent until proven guilty, and that's one thing America stands by. I have not been handcuffed, I have not been charged, so that really makes America just really wanting to, you know, plea with me and side with me and understand the fact that this could be a real extortion case like I'm saying it is, because like I said, a lot of people don't understand that these types of events happen all the time with entertainers, and they're quick to write a check because their attorney says, hey, man, write the check, you don't want to blemish your name.

But me, personally, I don't care about blemishing my name. I'm with going to court and proving this lady wrong, and keeping my name clean the way I worked it to be out.

KING: You're saying tonight, then, you will pay no more money, there is no settlement involved, that's it, you want to go to court?

SNOOP DOGG: I want to go to court. I want them to come at me the way they come at real rapists. If somebody -- Ted Bundy was a rapist, right? I'm pretty sure they didn't get Ted Bundy and say, hey, Ted, we need to get $35 million out of you, and then we're going to try to prosecute you. They locked him up, and then they went after his money, if he had money. That's the proper way. That's the appropriate way. If you have a criminal act committed against you, you go to the law enforcement and you get that act handled. That didn't happen with me. My name was not named in none of the criminal acts that happened. I wasn't even in the building.

KING: Does it make you feel an affinity for, like, Kobe Bryant or other celebrities charged with things?

SNOOP DOGG: Oh, definitely. Definitely, Larry. And it is crazy because this game is designed to make us feel like that. But we have to know and understand that somebody has to take a stand and stand up and fight this. And not just write the check because an attorney says, write the check. Stand up and fight this. If you're innocent, go all the way to court. I'm innocent. I'm with going to court. I stand before one judge or 12 jurors, it don't matter. I'm innocent.

KING: Good luck, Snoop. Thanks.

SNOOP DOGG: Thank you for having me, Larry. And you all stay tuned for the Snoop Youth Football League taking over a city near you.

KING: Who are you picking in the Super Bowl?

SNOOP DOGG: I'm taking the Patriots. Willie McGinest, that's my homeboy, from Long Beach.

KING: Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that figures.

SNOOP DOGG: Yeah, yeah, though.

KING: Thanks, Snoop.

SNOOP DOGG: Be cool, Larry.

KING: Snoop Dogg. You too.

When we come back, we'll meet Eiseley Morgan Tauginas. She has an unbelievable story and a remarkable essay coming in "Marie Claire" magazine, the story of a tragic accident that happened to her and the resulting effects from it. Her mother will also be with us in a while as well. Don't go away.

Washington's Shevchenko and his neighbors: if only they could converse

2005-01-29T19:59:00.000-08:00

The Ukrainian Weekly
Yaro Bihun
April 6, 2003
1360 words

WASHINGTON - Taras Shevchenko got a rare birthday gift this year - a welcome neighbor in the form of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk.

A 12-foot bronze statue of Czechoslovakia's founding father and first president was unveiled March 8 on a small triangle of land on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and 22nd Street, N.W., a block away from Shevchenko's monument on 22nd and P Streets. It was a gift to the nation's capital from the Czech Republic and the American Friends of the Czech Republic.

As is noted on the monument, Tomas Masaryk (1850-1937) is honored as a "professor, creator of a democracy and champion of liberty." Ukrainians - especially a couple of generations of Ukrainian scholars and professionals - remember him also for the helping hand he extended to them as the president of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1935, when his government not only facilitated but helped finance the Ukrainian Free University in Prague and the Ukrainian Academy of Technology and Technical Husbandry Institute in Podebrady.

Unlike the Shevchenko statue, which Leo Mol (Molodozhanyn) created specifically for the Washington site, Masaryk's statue has a long history to it. Czech sculptor Vincenc Makovsky created it soon after Masaryk's death in 1937, but because of the Nazi and then Soviet occupation that followed it was not cast in bronze until the "Prague Spring" in 1968, only to be put back into storage when the Soviets quashed that political experiment. There it remained until its unveiling in Washington.

The statue depicts Masaryk in his later years, his head ever so slightly bowed and with a downward gaze. An overcoat draped over his shoulders, he holds in front of him a rolled-up Constitution of Czechoslovakia in one hand and his hat in the other. With his balding head and full mustache, Mr. Makovsky's Masaryk is reminiscent of most of the statues of Shevchenko in Ukraine and elsewhere, in sharp contrast to Leo Mol's young, vibrant and defiant Shevchenko standing ramrod straight a block away.

Kindred spirits in many ways, the Ukrainian poet and the Czech president, unfortunately, are positioned facing away from each other.

Both monuments stand on triangular plots of park land. Shevchenko's is many times larger, with space enough for a lawn, trees, shrubs, benches and a fountain. Masaryk's park, although less than one-fifth the size, stands right at the entrance to "Embassy Row," a mile-long stretch of Massachusetts Avenue lined with foreign embassies and diplomatic residences.

When the Shevchenko monument was unveiled in 1964, this fashionable area of the capital was a lonely place for statuary. The only other statues along or near Embassy Row at that time were that of Civil War Gen. George P. Sheridan of the Union army on his horse in the middle of a traffic circle bearing his name and the four bronze bison standing guard at the ends of a nearby bridge.

Within two years, however, some prominent and interesting new neighbors began to appear along Massachusetts Avenue. The first two - of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and of the 18th Century Irish revolutionary Robert Emmet - were unveiled in 1966. Appropriately, they are separated by at least a hall mile and stand on opposite sides of the street.

Signifying his Anglo-American ancestry, Churchill stands with one foot on embassy grounds and the other on U.S. territory, his right hand raised in a signature two-finger victory salute.

The statue of the Irish patriot Emmet, whose life was cut short by an English executioner in 1803 when he was 25, was presented to the United States when Ireland became independent in 1916, but had to wait a half century for its unveiling on Embassy Row. As Ukrainians have raised much of Shevchenko's poetry to the level of anthem, so the Irish hold in special reverence Emmet's final statement to the English court on the eve of his execution. In his last act of defiance in the face of death, the Irish patriot, among other entreaties, expressed his hope for a future Ireland with a phrase that most Ukrainians would recognize: "I wished to procure for my country the guarantee which Washington procured for America," Emmet told his oppressors many years before Shevchenko penned a similar appeal now inscribed on his monument in Washington.

In 1996 Lebanese Americans dedicated the Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) Memorial Garden, directly across Massachusetts Avenue from the Winston Churchill statue, to honor their Lebanese American poet and philosopher for "the powerful simplicity of his words, which continue to inspire those who long for peace, search for love and strive for justice."

By far the most puzzling statue a tourist will encounter in Shevchenko's neighborhood stands - or, more precisely, sits - in front of the embassy of Croatia. It's that of St. Jerome (340-420), described on its pedestal as the "Greatest Doctor of the Church." It is a larger-than-life nude figure of the saint sitting in a semi-lotus position, studying a large book cradled on his feet.

One suspects that it is not St. Jerome who is being honored here, even though he is the patron saint of the Franciscan Fathers in Croatia, but the statue's creator, Croatia's most famous sculptor Ivan Mestrovic (1883-1962), whom Auguste Rodin called "the greatest phenomenon among the sculptors" of his time. Sculpted in 1954, it was placed in front the newly opened Embassy of Croatia following the break-up of Yugoslavia.

The last statue before Masaryk's to be erected in this area was that of Mahatma Gandhi, whose name has become synonymous with non-violence and civil disobedience, a philosophy not found in the "Testament" (Zapovit) by his less forgiving Ukrainian neighbor two blocks away.

Its dedication in September of 2000 in a small triangular park on 21st Street and Massachusetts Avenue was unique in its brevity and simplicity, according to a report in The Washington Post. There were no microphones, speeches or music during the 10-minute ceremony, in which President Bill Clinton and the prime minister of India threw rose petals at the sandled feet of the lean, robe-clad figure of Gandhi striding on a low, rough-hewn granite pedestal.

If statues could talk to one another - and some people with imagination think they do late at night when, unlike New York, Washington sleeps - one can presume that Shevchenko would welcome his new and interesting neighbors and relish the opportunity to discuss the things that matter to people of their stature.

Considering Shevchenko's bad experience with involuntary military service, he probably would not go out of his way to engage Gen. Sheridan in a conversation, and one could presume that there would be some arguments with a few of the other honorees - civilized, of course, as befits gentlemen. (Isn't it a shame that not a single woman has been honored in this neighborhood.)

But if Shevchenko was allowed to invite only one guest next door for an all-night session over beer at the Brickskeller, which boasts of serving a thousand world brands of beer and helped quench the thirst of at least some of the 100,000 people who witnessed his unveiling on that hot summer day almost 40 years ago, it most likely would be Emmet.

There is much in what that young Irishman told the English court that Shevchenko would like and he would recognize the similarities in his own, later writings - as in Emmet's concluding entreaty:

"Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times, and other men, can do justice to my character; when my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done."

And so the epitaphs of a handful of brave and creative men have been written - along Embassy Row, in Washington.

No copyright infringement here...

2004-07-17T21:49:00.000-07:00

...yet.