Re: Koestler's Demons

["Jose G. Perez" <jose_g_perez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Both men were tragically
> incapable of self-reflection when it came to their most unsavory urges,
and
> consequently both may now be remembered as much for their chronic
womanizing
> and sordid private lives as for their public contributions.

    What a crock of liberal shit.

    This is the kind of brain-dead moralistic crap the American people spent
all of 1998 trying to convince the bourgeois reporters and  politicians to
give up on. Just Like "In These Times" to resurrect it.

    What is this about "chronic womanizing"? Sounds to me like the same old
Papal Bull the nuns in Miami kept trying to shovel down my throat when I was
a kid. "Till death do us part." Or else GOD is going to send you to burn in
the fires of hell for all eternity.

    "Sordid private lives..." Just whose private lives wouldn't seem sordid
when made the subject of a Holy Inquisition by the press, the prosecutors
and the Congress?  The "geniuses" in the pig press NEVER even suspected the
truth. They kept writing how Clinton's approval rating had gone up DESPITE
this, that or the other thing. No, Clinton's approval rating went up BECAUSE
of all those things, it was an expression of sympathy and support for
someone being persecuted for doing exactly what every one of his accusers
would have done (and in many cases, it has now come out, actually did do)
under similar circumstances.

    The pundits kept asking how it could be that the public was willing to
forgive Clinton for having sex with Monica and lying about it.

    The public, and especially working people, of course had no difficulty
understanding both the sex AND the lying. What the big majority of the
public COULD NOT forgive were the lawyers, prosecutors, Congressmen and TV
gasbags asking about it in the first place, and then continue INSISTING on
the inquiry for an entire year.

    Imagine that! A middle aged man who accepted the sexual favors of a
young woman who very eagerly initiated the dalliance! Quick, my smelling
salts! And he lied to the lawyers pressing that totally bogus, trumped-up
Paula Jones suit. For shame!  Just what is this world coming to!

    You know, I was well brought up. My parents tried to instill in me a
sense of Chivalry and Honor. "Lying about it" is, of course, precisely what
an honorable gentleman is supposed to do rather than besmirch the reputation
of a young lady who favored him with her attention. Of course, no
*civilized* person would ask about it anyway.

    And now we have the Koestler=Clinton=serial rapist/murderer. This is
just what the nuns tried to warn us about. Get a blow job and next thing you
know you'll turn into Jack the Ripper if not a teenage werewolf.

José
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Pugliese" <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 5:23 PM
Subject: Koestler's Demons


> 2/21/00, In These Times
>
> Koestler's Demons
>
>
> By Laura Brahm
> Arthur Koestler:
> The Homeless Mind
> By David Cesarani
> The Free Press
> 646 pages, $30
>
>
> L ast year, as the Lewinsky scandal oozed across the United States, Bill
> Clinton reportedly lamented to a colleague that he felt like the
protagonist
> in Arthur Koestler's Darkness At Noon. In that classic Cold War novel,
> Communist Party member Rubashov is convicted of treason in a show trial by
> the totalitarian regime he helped bring to power. But in light of the
latest
> biography of the renowned anti-Communist author, perhaps it would be more
> accurate to say Clinton felt like Koestler. Both men were tragically
> incapable of self-reflection when it came to their most unsavory urges,
and
> consequently both may now be remembered as much for their chronic
womanizing
> and sordid private lives as for their public contributions.
> David Cesarani's new biography, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind,
portrays
> Koestler as a misogynist and philanderer whose failure to stop his third
> wife from joining him in a suicide pact may have constituted his final act
> of aggression against women. To those charges it adds the allegation that
> Koestler was a "serial rapist."
> Koestler's reputation as a humanist, political novelist and staunch
opponent
> of tyranny (Darkness at Noon was named the eighth best book of the century
> by the Modern Library) has been severely damaged by the revelations of
> sexual violence. Last year, the release of the Cesarani book in the United
> Kingdom caused an uproar. A bronze bust of the writer at the University of
> Edinburgh, where the Koestler archive is housed, had to be taken down for
> fear of vandalism. In the British press, debates raged whether the book
> constituted legitimate biography or prurient demolition job on a literary
> and political great.
>
> Laura Brahm is a freelance writer and an editorial associate for the
> Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
>
>
>


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