[Clips] Rosenberg Reruns

Tyler Durden camera_lumina at hotmail.com
Fri Jan 27 07:51:56 PST 2006


What's the relevance here?

Also, this guy is a real Soviet-style thinker. He believes art should 
somehow be subservient to politics, or to the latest political winds. I'm 
wondering why WSJ even bothered to publish this: Is there some kind of 
political alignment test they see coming down the pike?

-TD


>From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
>To: cypherpunks at jfet.org
>Subject: [Clips] Rosenberg Reruns
>Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:03:48 -0500
>
>--- begin forwarded text
>
>
>   Delivered-To: clips at philodox.com
>   Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:02:59 -0500
>   To: Philodox Clips List <clips at philodox.com>
>   From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
>   Subject: [Clips] Rosenberg Reruns
>   Reply-To: rah at philodox.com
>   Sender: clips-bounces at philodox.com
>
>   <http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007878>
>
>   OpinionJournal
>
>   WSJ Online
>
>   DE GUSTIBUS
>
>   Rosenberg Reruns
>   They were guilty, but the left can't give up their cause.
>
>   BY JOSEPH RAGO
>   Friday, January 27, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
>
>   You would think, by now, with a half-century of scholarship behind us 
>and a
>   great deal of damning evidence on display, we would not have to be 
>arguing
>   about the guilt or innocence of various iconic figures of the late 1940s
>   and 1950s: Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White or, perhaps most notoriously,
>   Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But the martyr status of such figures seems
>   irresistible, even today, to a certain kind of sentimental leftist. They
>   still remain symbols of some malevolent American quality--never mind the
>   truth of what they actually did.
>
>   Such was the lesson of a forum last week in Manhattan convened to 
>discuss
>   the "artistic influence" of the Rosenbergs. The invitation to the event,
>   sponsored by the Fordham Law School, referred to the Rosenbergs as "the
>   accused." It was a tellingly exculpatory phrase. For the record, both
>   Julius and Ethel were convicted as communist spies and executed for
>   espionage in 1953.
>
>
>   The stars of the evening were the novelist E.L. Doctorow and the 
>playwright
>   Tony Kushner. Mr. Doctorow is the author of "The Book of Daniel" (1971), 
>a
>   novel that centers on a couple loosely patterned after the Rosenbergs; 
>Mr.
>   Kushner wrote the play "Angels in America" (1993), which imagines the
>   specter of Ethel Rosenberg returning to haunt various protagonists. Both
>   works are highly sympathetic to the Rosenbergs' dilemma, if that is the
>   right word.
>
>   The forum was generally arcane and self-serious. Messrs. Doctorow and
>   Kushner ventilated many concerns about the relation of culture to 
>society,
>   chief among them the obligation of the artist to accurately represent 
>the
>   past. The pair eventually settled on the definition of historical art as
>   "an aesthetic system of opinions," as the good Doctorow put it.
>
>
>   Fair enough. But why would "the artist"--let alone anyone--still be hung 
>up
>   on the Rosenbergs? To plow through the evidence for the millionth time:
>   While the trial of the Rosenbergs was flawed by technical improprieties,
>   their crimes are not uncertain or unresolved. Julius Rosenberg, with 
>Ethel
>   as his accomplice, was the head of a sophisticated spy network that 
>deeply
>   penetrated the American atomic program and relayed top secrets to 
>Stalin's
>   Kremlin. In his memoirs Nikita Khrushchev noted that the Rosenbergs 
>"vastly
>   aided production of our A-bomb." Joyce Milton and Ronald Radosh wrote a
>   damning account of their activities in "The Rosenberg File" (1983). And 
>the
>   Rosenbergs' guilt was corroborated by the 1995 declassification of the
>   Venona documents, thousands of decrypted KGB cables intercepted by the
>   National Security Agency in the 1940s.
>
>   The notion that anyone would today deny their fundamental complicity in
>   Soviet subversion is extraordinary, almost comically so. But comedy was 
>not
>   quite the mentality at the Rosenberg event. "Ambiguity is the key word, 
>I
>   think," said Mr. Doctorow, regarding our understanding of the past, 
>though
>   in this instance ambiguous is precisely what it is not.
>
>   Mr. Kushner argued the Rosenbergs were "murdered, basically." Mr. 
>Doctorow
>   went further, explaining that he wanted to use their circumstances to 
>tell
>   "a story of the mind of the country." It was a mind, apparently, filled
>   with loathing and paranoia--again, never mind the truth of the charges
>   against the Rosenbergs or other spies of the time. "The principles of 
>the
>   Cold War had reached absurdity," he continued. "We knew that the 
>Russians
>   were no threat, but we wanted to persuade Americans to be afraid" and so
>   impose "a Puritan, punitive civil religion." Pronounced Mr. Kushner: 
>"Our
>   failure to come to terms with a brutal past, our failure to open up the
>   coffins and let the ghosts out, has led to our current, horrendous
>   situation."
>
>
>   The enduring artistic influence of the Rosenberg case, then, seems to be
>   primarily allegorical. Guilt and innocence drop away (rather, guilt is
>   converted to virtue) and the Rosenbergs are made into victims of 
>"American
>   fascism," to use Ethel Rosenberg's own phrase. Or to borrow the 
>exquisite
>   formulation of the scholar-apologist Ellen Schrecker, the Rosenbergs 
>were
>   guilty only of "nontraditional patriotism."
>
>   The arts should not be judged entirely on political character, of 
>course.
>   But in considering an "aesthetic system of opinions" when the aesthetics
>   are pointless bathos and the opinions are the whole point, politics 
>ought
>   to be taken into account. And for all the hand-wringing about fidelity 
>to
>   historical accuracy, the point is that Messrs. Doctorow and Kushner get 
>the
>   politics so wrong.
>
>   As the artists turned the Rosenbergs' treason into dissent and then into
>   patriotism, the audience was enthusiastically in tune. Present were the
>   Rosenbergs' children, Robert and Michael Meeropol, who continue to 
>contest
>   their parents' Soviet entanglement, and the former editor of the Nation,
>   Victor Navasky. When it came time to ask questions, the moderator warned
>   off any "Cold War warriors" from asking "disrespectful" questions, like,
>   presumably, how these authors could defend an ideology that took 
>millions
>   of lives. No one did.
>
>   Mr. Rago is an assistant features editor of The Wall Street Journal's
>   editorial page.
>
>   --
>   -----------------
>   R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
>   The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
>   44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
>   "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
>   [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
>   experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
>   _______________________________________________
>   Clips mailing list
>   Clips at philodox.com
>   http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips
>
>--- end forwarded text
>
>
>--
>-----------------
>R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
>The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
>44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
>"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
>[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
>experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'





More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list