The Hundred Years’ War, fought in the late Middle Ages between two royal houses for the French throne, actually lasted 116 years. America’s Culture Wars could last longer.
For readers under fifty who might be unfamiliar, a history of the Culture Wars might go like this: the Beats, as they were called (proto-Hippies in Greenwich Village, LA and San Francisco), challenged the country’s prevailing Ozzie-and-Harriet cultural norms in the mid-1950s. They were succeeded by the Counterculture, which was a grab bag of Hippies and Civil Rights and Vietnam War protesters, in the mid-to-late 1960s. The Counterculture (the Civil Rights movement in particular) then inspired the Women’s Movement and the Gay Rights Movement in the 1970s, and the Civil Rights movement gave way to more radical groups like the Black Panthers.
Those who participated in these various anti-establishment movements were mostly young people who had been born between the end of WWII and 1960, otherwise know as the Baby Boom generation (then the largest demographic cohort in America’s history). But not every Boomer was a Hippie or a demonstrator. A lot of young people supported their parents’ social values and the war, and were skeptical or even threatened by the various rights movements that advanced the interests of blacks, women and homosexuals. Which side of the fence you were on was usually determined by where you grew up, your socio-economic status, and where – or if – you went to college.
Bill O’Reilly and I were on opposite sides of the divide. I grew up in a Republican household in Pennsylvania and became an anti-war protester when I went to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Bill grew up on Long Island and kept his distance from the Counterculture during his years at Marist College in Poughkeepsie.
Our paths crossed when we enrolled in the Broadcast Journalism master’s degree program at Boston University in the fall of 1973. There were only about two-dozen students in the two-year program, so Bill and I got to know each other fairly well. And even though I’d marched on Washington and celebrated the Age of Aquarius at Woodstock, and Bill had played college sports and kept his nose clean, we had a friendly relationship. I was an amateur photographer and Bill occasionally asked me to shoot pictures for him to accompany articles he was writing for the school newspaper. I remember taking a photo of Bill interviewing Eli Wallach; another time Bill and I took pictures of each other with the porn star Linda Lovelace when she won Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Award.
If you had asked anyone in our program what they thought Bill O’Reilly would do with his career, I think most of us would have said that he would end up as a TV sports or entertainment reporter. Bill was fascinated by Hollywood celebrities, and he loved the New York Knicks. But though he’d studied history in college, he seemed to have almost no interest in the burning issues of the day. The Senate Watergate hearings, which had riveted the nation and exposed the duplicity and criminality of the Nixon White House, had taken place the summer before we arrived in Boston. The Vietnam War was still raging, and racial tensions in Boston and other northern cities were high. Bill seemed untouched by any of it.
But O’Reilly fooled us all. He managed to build a successful broadcasting career by tapping into the anger and resentment that all of those jocks and straights felt toward the Hippies and the demonstrators, and in the process became a spokesman for the sons and daughters of Nixon’s “silent majority.” The rest of us took our places in the much-maligned Mainstream Media, serving witness to history-in-the-making and searching for the next government conspiracy or social injustice.
I recently came across a quote I copied from a New Yorker profile of the late Yale chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, who was a significant figure in the anti-war movement. Coffin said, “Not to share in the activity and passion of your time is to count as not having lived.” As a young man, I shared in the activity and the passions of my time. Now, as I look at the Tea Party movement and the demonstrations on the right, I suppose Bill is sharing in the activity and passions of his.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Playing for Time
Every New York school child learns the story of Peter Minuit and the handful of Dutch settlers who, it’s said, purchased the island of Manhattan from the Indians for $24 worth of beads and trinkets.
The original record of the transaction, dated 5th November 1626, says that they “purchased the Island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders,” which, as Russell Shorto explains in his wonderful history of Manhattan, The Island at the Centre of the World, amounted to the going rate for real estate in the New World at that time. The settlers didn’t pay cash, which, as Shorto notes, “the Indians would have found useless.” Instead, they gave the natives goods worth 60 guilders. The actual merchandise isn’t specified, but in a similar deal for Staten Island, Peter Minuit gave the Tappans tribe “Duffels, Kittles, Axes, Hoes, Wampum, Drilling Awls, Jews Harps and diverse other small wares.” This merchandise sounds more useful than beads and trinkets, but however you calculate it, there can be no doubt that in 1626, New York real estate was a steal.
And, in fact, the idea of theft has become a common theme in discussing the European colonization of the New World. I think most Americans now accept the notion that the natives who originally inhabited North and South America were either cheated out of, or forcibly driven from their lands by the Europeans who arrived on their shores. But though most of us would probably acknowledge this – perhaps with a touch of politically correct regret – few of us, Native Americans excepted, would even consider the idea that the descendants of the original European settlers should ever give the land back to its original inhabitants.
Why?
Because too much time has passed, too much history has unfolded and too much change has taken place. However morally just the claims of the original Manhattan Indians, it’s been too long and there’s simply no rolling back the clock.
Now contrast the European colonization of the Americas with the colonization of Africa. Many of the same players were involved (the English, the Dutch, the French and, to a lesser extent, the Germans, the Portuguese and the Italians), but the results, historically speaking, were completely different. In Africa, the European colonists first took control of the continent, as they had the Americas, and then, beginning in the early 1960s, gave it back.
A lot of factors contributed to Europe’s decolonization of Africa in the second half of the 20th Century, but I’d venture to guess that the biggest factor was demography. There were just too many Africans and never enough Europeans to make European domination stick.
South Africa was one of the last redoubts of European colonial rule, and I distinctly remember a conversation I had with an Afrikaner at a dinner party shortly after I’d moved there in 1988. As I recall, I was full of righteous (and justifiable) indignation about the plight of the Africans who were suffering under the yoke of apartheid, and it was clear that my dinner companion, a descendent of the Dutch settlers who had colonized the country, had heard it all before. I remember that he listened patiently to my rant and then said, “Yes, I’m sure you’re right. I guess we should have just killed them all, like you did in America.”
But, of course, the Europeans didn’t “kill them all” (though, in fact, they killed many). Instead the European “masters” used the Africans for cheap labor, to work the fields and the mines. From the European point of view, this proved to be a short-term success but a long-term failure as, in country after country, it became impossible for a tiny minority to dominate and suppress the overwhelming majority. Demography, it turned out, was destiny. The Africans had the numbers and the Europeans were shown the door.
Which brings us to the Middle East.
I’ve often wondered why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been so resistant to a peaceful resolution, and I’ve decided that the problem is that both sides believe time is on their side.
The Israelis have adopted the Dutch-in-Manhattan mindset. They know that between half a million and a million Palestinians were displaced when Israel was created in 1948, but rather than argue the morality of their national existence, they’ve decided to play for time. At some point in the future they figure that 1948 will become like 1626, and Israel’s right to exist will no longer be challenged. So I think that the Israelis figure that any comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians now would only work to their long-term disadvantage. In their view, the more history they can put between 1948 and an eventual settlement with the Palestinians, the better.
The Palestinians, too, think time is on their side. And their logic, as you might expect, follows the African model. Yasser Arafat once famously said that the “womb of the Palestinian woman” was the best weapon of the Palestinian people. In his view, it was inevitable that the Israeli position in Palestine would become untenable as the number of Palestinians rose relative to the number of Jews. For Arafat, demography was destiny, and the longer a peace agreement with Israel could be delayed, the better terms the Palestinians might expect.
Most of the political conversations about Middle East peace revolve around endless arguments about who’s right and who’s wrong, who built the first temple and who fired the first shot. Dialogue like that supports the delay-and-get-a-better-deal strategies of politicians on both sides, but in the end I think it's immoral to pretend to talk about peace when innocent Israelis and Palestinians are being killed. It was probably right to create a homeland for the Jews, and it was probably wrong to displace the Palestinians. But a comprehensive peace agreement that accommodates that messy reality will be hard to achieve. What's needed, of course, is a serious plan for peace. But that seems unlikely when both sides are playing for time.
The original record of the transaction, dated 5th November 1626, says that they “purchased the Island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders,” which, as Russell Shorto explains in his wonderful history of Manhattan, The Island at the Centre of the World, amounted to the going rate for real estate in the New World at that time. The settlers didn’t pay cash, which, as Shorto notes, “the Indians would have found useless.” Instead, they gave the natives goods worth 60 guilders. The actual merchandise isn’t specified, but in a similar deal for Staten Island, Peter Minuit gave the Tappans tribe “Duffels, Kittles, Axes, Hoes, Wampum, Drilling Awls, Jews Harps and diverse other small wares.” This merchandise sounds more useful than beads and trinkets, but however you calculate it, there can be no doubt that in 1626, New York real estate was a steal.
And, in fact, the idea of theft has become a common theme in discussing the European colonization of the New World. I think most Americans now accept the notion that the natives who originally inhabited North and South America were either cheated out of, or forcibly driven from their lands by the Europeans who arrived on their shores. But though most of us would probably acknowledge this – perhaps with a touch of politically correct regret – few of us, Native Americans excepted, would even consider the idea that the descendants of the original European settlers should ever give the land back to its original inhabitants.
Why?
Because too much time has passed, too much history has unfolded and too much change has taken place. However morally just the claims of the original Manhattan Indians, it’s been too long and there’s simply no rolling back the clock.
Now contrast the European colonization of the Americas with the colonization of Africa. Many of the same players were involved (the English, the Dutch, the French and, to a lesser extent, the Germans, the Portuguese and the Italians), but the results, historically speaking, were completely different. In Africa, the European colonists first took control of the continent, as they had the Americas, and then, beginning in the early 1960s, gave it back.
A lot of factors contributed to Europe’s decolonization of Africa in the second half of the 20th Century, but I’d venture to guess that the biggest factor was demography. There were just too many Africans and never enough Europeans to make European domination stick.
South Africa was one of the last redoubts of European colonial rule, and I distinctly remember a conversation I had with an Afrikaner at a dinner party shortly after I’d moved there in 1988. As I recall, I was full of righteous (and justifiable) indignation about the plight of the Africans who were suffering under the yoke of apartheid, and it was clear that my dinner companion, a descendent of the Dutch settlers who had colonized the country, had heard it all before. I remember that he listened patiently to my rant and then said, “Yes, I’m sure you’re right. I guess we should have just killed them all, like you did in America.”
But, of course, the Europeans didn’t “kill them all” (though, in fact, they killed many). Instead the European “masters” used the Africans for cheap labor, to work the fields and the mines. From the European point of view, this proved to be a short-term success but a long-term failure as, in country after country, it became impossible for a tiny minority to dominate and suppress the overwhelming majority. Demography, it turned out, was destiny. The Africans had the numbers and the Europeans were shown the door.
Which brings us to the Middle East.
I’ve often wondered why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been so resistant to a peaceful resolution, and I’ve decided that the problem is that both sides believe time is on their side.
The Israelis have adopted the Dutch-in-Manhattan mindset. They know that between half a million and a million Palestinians were displaced when Israel was created in 1948, but rather than argue the morality of their national existence, they’ve decided to play for time. At some point in the future they figure that 1948 will become like 1626, and Israel’s right to exist will no longer be challenged. So I think that the Israelis figure that any comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians now would only work to their long-term disadvantage. In their view, the more history they can put between 1948 and an eventual settlement with the Palestinians, the better.
The Palestinians, too, think time is on their side. And their logic, as you might expect, follows the African model. Yasser Arafat once famously said that the “womb of the Palestinian woman” was the best weapon of the Palestinian people. In his view, it was inevitable that the Israeli position in Palestine would become untenable as the number of Palestinians rose relative to the number of Jews. For Arafat, demography was destiny, and the longer a peace agreement with Israel could be delayed, the better terms the Palestinians might expect.
Most of the political conversations about Middle East peace revolve around endless arguments about who’s right and who’s wrong, who built the first temple and who fired the first shot. Dialogue like that supports the delay-and-get-a-better-deal strategies of politicians on both sides, but in the end I think it's immoral to pretend to talk about peace when innocent Israelis and Palestinians are being killed. It was probably right to create a homeland for the Jews, and it was probably wrong to displace the Palestinians. But a comprehensive peace agreement that accommodates that messy reality will be hard to achieve. What's needed, of course, is a serious plan for peace. But that seems unlikely when both sides are playing for time.
Monday, April 12, 2010
The People's Capitalist
Probably few Times readers caught the update on the Khodorkovsky trial on the inside pages of last week’s paper. The former Russian oil magnate was first arrested in late 2003 – for tax evasion on YUKOS Oil sales – and has been in a Siberian jail for the past five years. He was scheduled to be released in 2011, but the Russian government brought new charges of embezzlement against him last year. In a development worthy of Orwell or Kafka, the Times reported that Khodorkovsky is now charged with stealing the same oil he was formerly charged with selling.
When I met Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2002, he was the president of YUKOS and one of the richest men in the world. The circumstances of our meeting were interesting. Jacob Rothschild, of the famous European banking family, had invited Khodorkovsky to Waddesdon Manor, the palatial Rothschild estate in Buckinghamshire, England for a high-level, three-day conference designed to drum up business for a private jet company called NetJets.
The Waddesdon Conference was presented as an elite international business gathering where global leaders would discuss world affairs – a sort of a mini-Davos – but its real purpose was to interest wealthy European business leaders in buying shares of NetJets planes. The idea was to put happy NetJets owners (Lord Rothschild owned a share of a NetJets plane) together with prime NetJets prospects and hope that the former would persuade the latter to become NetJets customers. The guest list included Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway company owns NetJets, as well as Paul Volcker, Barbara Walters, Jim Wolfensohn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bono, David Frum, and some wealthy European business leaders whose names are less familiar (except to other wealthy European business leaders). I served as the Director of Communications for NetJets Europe in those days, and I was privileged to serve as the Master of Ceremonies for the conference.
Khodorkovsky arrived on the first day, and he was friendly but very shy. He spoke little English and his translator was constantly by his side. He was invited to address the conference and I remember that he talked briefly about the history of YUKOS Oil and the current business environment in Russia. Knowing what happened later, I wish I’d taken notes, but I was busy preparing an introduction for the next speaker and I didn’t pay careful attention.
The next time I met Khodorkovsky was in October of the following year. I was attending a World Economic Forum meeting in Moscow and was asked to chair a session on the outlook for global business in the “new Russia.” Khodorkovsky and two other prominent Russian businessmen were on the panel.
Relations between Khodorkovsky and Russian president Vladimir Putin had soured since I’d seen the Russian billionaire at Waddesdon Manor. The Russian president was angry about the fact that Khodorkovsky had donated money to several opposition parties in the run-up to the State Duma elections in 2003. Even worse, Khodorkovsky had publicly criticized Putin’s “managed democracy” economic model in the international media.
“It means that theoretically you have a free press,” he told the New York Times, “but in practice there is self-censorship. Theoretically you have courts; in practice, the courts adopt decisions dictated from above. Theoretically there are civil rights enshrined in the constitution; in practice, you are not able to exercise some of these rights.”
During our panel discussion in Moscow, Khodorkovsky complained that the Russian economy was not structured in a way that allowed the poor to move up to the middle class, a problem that he identified as critical to Russia’s future. After the session ended, I asked him what he’d meant by that.
“I recently returned from a vacation with my family to South Africa,” he said, “and I was struck by the fact that the wealthy people there all live behind high walls, with armed security guards. The rich people are constantly afraid that the poor people will climb over the walls and take what they have. It’s not healthy, and it’s not good for democracy. I don’t want my own children to grow up in a country like that.”
The next morning, Russian president Vladimir Putin was scheduled to deliver remarks at the Forum’s final plenary session, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky was seated in the audience. Putin was uncharacteristically late and I could see the Forum organizers fidgeting and making calls on their cell phones. A rumor spread that Putin had decided that he would not address the gathering if Khodorkovsky were in attendance.
As the minutes dragged on, Khodorkovsky’s cell phone rang and he hurriedly left the hall to take the call. His offices, he was told, were being ransacked by the secret police. The billionaire jumped into a waiting car and sped to the YUKOS headquarters. Several minutes later, Vladimir Putin entered the hall and delivered his prepared remarks.
Three weeks after the Forum’s Moscow meeting, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport and charged with fraud. Anticipating the worst, he had arranged to have his YUKOS shares transferred to Jacob Rothschild in the event he was arrested, but in a matter of days, the government froze YUKOS’s assets and the value of the shares plummeted.
I really don’t know whether Mikhail Khodorkovsky was a legitimate businessman or a thief. There was a Wild West quality about Russia in the early, post-Soviet days and a lot of people got very rich, very fast – Khodorkovsky among them – so it’s certainly conceivable that the oilman cut corners and took advantage of a lax regulatory system to build his empire. But it’s equally possible that Russia’s rulers felt threatened by the country’s newly wealthy oligarchs and just decided to take Khodorkovsky out, Soviet-style, to send a message. Given the Russian government’s aversion to transparency, I suppose we’ll never know the truth.
But whatever the source of Khodorkovsky’s billions, he seemed to understand a basic truth that often eludes less thoughtful business leaders. Any system that allows the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer is ultimately bad for the rich and the poor. Khodorkovsky learned that in South Africa, and it helped make him a “people’s capitalist.” Other wealthy businessmen I’ve met, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, seem to have learned the same lesson as they’ve made their own fortunes.
Over the years I’ve followed Khodorkovsky’s trials and tribulations with interest, but with little hope for his eventual freedom. He’s already spent almost seven years in prison and the new charges he’s facing carry a 27-year sentence. He was eligible for parole in August of 2008 but the presiding judge dismissed his application. Khodorkovsky, the judge said, had “refused to attend jail sewing classes.”
When I met Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2002, he was the president of YUKOS and one of the richest men in the world. The circumstances of our meeting were interesting. Jacob Rothschild, of the famous European banking family, had invited Khodorkovsky to Waddesdon Manor, the palatial Rothschild estate in Buckinghamshire, England for a high-level, three-day conference designed to drum up business for a private jet company called NetJets.
The Waddesdon Conference was presented as an elite international business gathering where global leaders would discuss world affairs – a sort of a mini-Davos – but its real purpose was to interest wealthy European business leaders in buying shares of NetJets planes. The idea was to put happy NetJets owners (Lord Rothschild owned a share of a NetJets plane) together with prime NetJets prospects and hope that the former would persuade the latter to become NetJets customers. The guest list included Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway company owns NetJets, as well as Paul Volcker, Barbara Walters, Jim Wolfensohn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bono, David Frum, and some wealthy European business leaders whose names are less familiar (except to other wealthy European business leaders). I served as the Director of Communications for NetJets Europe in those days, and I was privileged to serve as the Master of Ceremonies for the conference.
Khodorkovsky arrived on the first day, and he was friendly but very shy. He spoke little English and his translator was constantly by his side. He was invited to address the conference and I remember that he talked briefly about the history of YUKOS Oil and the current business environment in Russia. Knowing what happened later, I wish I’d taken notes, but I was busy preparing an introduction for the next speaker and I didn’t pay careful attention.
The next time I met Khodorkovsky was in October of the following year. I was attending a World Economic Forum meeting in Moscow and was asked to chair a session on the outlook for global business in the “new Russia.” Khodorkovsky and two other prominent Russian businessmen were on the panel.
Relations between Khodorkovsky and Russian president Vladimir Putin had soured since I’d seen the Russian billionaire at Waddesdon Manor. The Russian president was angry about the fact that Khodorkovsky had donated money to several opposition parties in the run-up to the State Duma elections in 2003. Even worse, Khodorkovsky had publicly criticized Putin’s “managed democracy” economic model in the international media.
“It means that theoretically you have a free press,” he told the New York Times, “but in practice there is self-censorship. Theoretically you have courts; in practice, the courts adopt decisions dictated from above. Theoretically there are civil rights enshrined in the constitution; in practice, you are not able to exercise some of these rights.”
During our panel discussion in Moscow, Khodorkovsky complained that the Russian economy was not structured in a way that allowed the poor to move up to the middle class, a problem that he identified as critical to Russia’s future. After the session ended, I asked him what he’d meant by that.
“I recently returned from a vacation with my family to South Africa,” he said, “and I was struck by the fact that the wealthy people there all live behind high walls, with armed security guards. The rich people are constantly afraid that the poor people will climb over the walls and take what they have. It’s not healthy, and it’s not good for democracy. I don’t want my own children to grow up in a country like that.”
The next morning, Russian president Vladimir Putin was scheduled to deliver remarks at the Forum’s final plenary session, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky was seated in the audience. Putin was uncharacteristically late and I could see the Forum organizers fidgeting and making calls on their cell phones. A rumor spread that Putin had decided that he would not address the gathering if Khodorkovsky were in attendance.
As the minutes dragged on, Khodorkovsky’s cell phone rang and he hurriedly left the hall to take the call. His offices, he was told, were being ransacked by the secret police. The billionaire jumped into a waiting car and sped to the YUKOS headquarters. Several minutes later, Vladimir Putin entered the hall and delivered his prepared remarks.
Three weeks after the Forum’s Moscow meeting, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport and charged with fraud. Anticipating the worst, he had arranged to have his YUKOS shares transferred to Jacob Rothschild in the event he was arrested, but in a matter of days, the government froze YUKOS’s assets and the value of the shares plummeted.
I really don’t know whether Mikhail Khodorkovsky was a legitimate businessman or a thief. There was a Wild West quality about Russia in the early, post-Soviet days and a lot of people got very rich, very fast – Khodorkovsky among them – so it’s certainly conceivable that the oilman cut corners and took advantage of a lax regulatory system to build his empire. But it’s equally possible that Russia’s rulers felt threatened by the country’s newly wealthy oligarchs and just decided to take Khodorkovsky out, Soviet-style, to send a message. Given the Russian government’s aversion to transparency, I suppose we’ll never know the truth.
But whatever the source of Khodorkovsky’s billions, he seemed to understand a basic truth that often eludes less thoughtful business leaders. Any system that allows the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer is ultimately bad for the rich and the poor. Khodorkovsky learned that in South Africa, and it helped make him a “people’s capitalist.” Other wealthy businessmen I’ve met, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, seem to have learned the same lesson as they’ve made their own fortunes.
Over the years I’ve followed Khodorkovsky’s trials and tribulations with interest, but with little hope for his eventual freedom. He’s already spent almost seven years in prison and the new charges he’s facing carry a 27-year sentence. He was eligible for parole in August of 2008 but the presiding judge dismissed his application. Khodorkovsky, the judge said, had “refused to attend jail sewing classes.”
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