[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
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> 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'
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>--- end forwarded text
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>
>--
>-----------------
>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'
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