[PEN-L:30238] Re: Re: RE: Re: Reply to Marc Cooper

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Perelman wrote:

> Maybe that is why he pisses me off.  He does sometimes do interesting
> journalism, but on some issues he is so far off that he gets my anger up.
> Very few people can do that to me.

Sorry to sound like a shrink, but maybe that's a sign worth
interpreting. Why does he get you so angry? It might be about
ambivalence or defensiveness or the sense that maybe he has a point
that you'd rather not consider. I doubt Alterman makes you mad in the
same way.

Doug

PS: One of the funniest columns ever written was this account of a
Marc Cooper book party.

Daily Telegraph (London) - February 3, 2001

The smart set entertains thoughts of revolution

By Zoe Heller

ONE of the more curious aspects of LA life is the way in which a
certain sector of its middle class is constantly trying to prove the
city's cultural standing. The disinterested visitor is likely to find
all sorts of things to recommend Los Angeles - beautiful scenery,
nice beaches, a pleasant climate and of course the specific, vulgar
charm that comes with being Entertainment Capital Of The World.

But the would-be bohemians of the city want you to know that LA also
boasts a thriving life of the mind. One highly suspect factoid often
used to substantiate this idea has it that Los Angeles represents
"the largest book market of any city in the United States". If I had
a dollar for every time I've heard an Angeleno say, "People think all
we do here is watch movies, but actually we are voracious readers", I
wouldn't be flying Economy any more. I don't know, perhaps Angelenos
do buy a lot of books. (The vast "libraries" of those movie star
mansions in Bel Air have to get filled somehow.) But it is definitely
a step too far to claim - as people inevitably do, every time one of
the city's gruesome dance groups is putting on a Tribute to Spring -
that the LA arts are "as good as anything you'll find in New York".

The attempt to position LA as a cultural mecca has recently received
a big boost from the advent of Arianna Stassinopoulos's radical
Brentwood salon. The LA Times ran an article about this new
intellectual forum the other day, citing it as "precisely the sort of
cultural and artistic resource that the city is often accused of not
having". As fate would have it, just a few hours after I had read
this article, a friend of mine called to say that he had an
invitation to the next Stassinopoulos gathering and would I like to
go with him? This particular soiree, he explained, was being held to
celebrate a new book about Pinochet by the Left-wing journalist (and
Arianna's dear friend) Marc Cooper.

Leftist chums are, of course, a relatively recent phenomenon in
Stassinopoulos's life. It was only a few years ago, you will
remember, that she was being hailed as one of the Boudiccas of
America's Right wing. In 1994, when she was still married to the
billionaire Michael Huffington, she essentially ran his $30 million
campaign to become Republican Senator for California. But Huffington
lost the Senate race to the Democratic incumbent, and shortly
afterwards he and Stassinopoulos parted ways. He publicly declared
his homosexuality and joined the Democratic Party. She abandoned
Washington for California and repositioned herself as a populist
progressive.

You have to hand it to her; the woman is a lightning-quick study. In
her new revolutionary incarnation, Stassinopoulos rejects both the
Democrats and the Republicans as equally corrupt and regards civil
disobedience as the only way forward. Her latest book, published
during the presidential campaign, is Overthrow the Government. On the
home page of the overthrowthegov.com website, you will find a cartoon
image of Stassinopoulos at a cocktail party, tossing a complacent
male voter over her shoulder.

The vast neo-gingerbread mansion that is the Stassinopoulos residence
was all lit up when we arrived on the appointed Tuesday evening. We
handed over our car to the valet parkers, crunched up the drive and
rang the musical doorbell. We were, it seemed, horribly early.
Inside, Stassinopoulos was whisking about attending to domestic
affairs with her housekeeper and the retinue of canape servers were
still changing into their butler and maid outfits. We stood at the
bar and chatted with the other premature arrival - a handsome but
phenomenally dull Texan who wrote scripts for a Fox sitcom. After a
while, I began to want to escape the Texan, so I pretended to need
the loo.

The downstairs guest bathroom was a pretty snazzy affair with a
sunken Jacuzzi and paper towels arranged in little fans, as if it
were a hotel restroom. In order to get to it, I was delighted to
discover, you had to pass through a vast, walk-in closet stuffed full
of the hostess's clothes. Judging from the number of extremely
expensive, brightly chequered, woollen skirt suits, this was the
graveyard for Stassinopoulos's redundant Republican-wife costumes.

I stayed in the closet for quite a while, checking out the Right-wing
schmatte and when I emerged, the party had got going. Roughly 200
people - a weird mix of highly groomed Hollywood types and
considerably less groomed bien-pensant types - were milling about
eating stuffed vine leaves and spannokopita. At some point, Warren
Beatty and Annette Bening turned up and made one or two vaguely royal
circuits of the living room. "Warren," people kept saying as they
leapt into his path, "you don't know me, but I've been wanting to
talk to you for a long time about . . ."

Personally, I didn't enjoy many intellectual exchanges. For some
reason, I kept being approached by young women wanting me to
introduce them to eligible men. It was rather sinister. I'm all for
playing Cupid, but there is something a bit galling about having
twenty-somethings assume, just by looking at you, that you are one of
those raddled, giggly old trouts from an Austen novel, whose sole
remaining delight in life is brokering the romantic liaisons of the
junior set.

Still, Beatty had a harder time, by the looks of it. As I was
leaving, some very tenacious old fart had managed to collar him and
was sharing his dreary thoughts on Ralph Nader. Beatty had a slightly
panicked look in his eye and kept making Must Be Moving On gestures,
but the man wouldn't take the hint. "Now about this Stassinopoulos
woman," he said when he'd exhausted the Nader issue, "can we trust
her?"

"Oh yes," Beatty said, nodding furiously, "she's uh, very much a
woman of the Left." Then, capitalising on the momentary distraction
caused by a passing tray of miniature raspberry tarts, he turned and
fled.