Re: Koestler's Demons

[Michael Yates <mikey+@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jose,

Koestler is accused of rape.
This seems a pretty serious accusation and if true surely reflects badly on
him.  Working people certainly for the most part do not condone rape, do they?

Michael Yates

"Jose G. Perez" wrote:

> > 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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