On Jerusalem, He Dared to Differ; The UK Views Us; Power Politics; Fatso the Wombat

Fatso the Wombat When I started in television 20 years ago, the first thing I learned was that no matter how big the story, if you didn't find the one metaphor that reduced the whole thing to a simple understandable truth, you didn't have the story. And NBC didn't have the story. The Olympics went on right before their cameras, but they missed their moment. As an Australian, I can tell you there's no story on the Australian Olympians that doesn't involve mischief. It's what we do best. Dawn Fraser, at the height of her glory during the 1964 Tokyo games, was caught halfway up a Japanese flagpole stealing the Rising Sun from the Emperor's palace. Good onya Dawn!

This year Grant Hackett, Susie O'Neill, Michael Klim and the members of the victorious men's 100-meter Australian relay team appeared on billions of television screens clutching "Fatso the Wombat" as they bent to accept their gold medals. (Australians sometimes use "wombat" as a term for dull-witted determination.) Told by IOC members that only official Olympic mascots are appropriate at such occasions, the rebel Australians decided that corporate imperialism had gone far enough. "We had a bit of a contest to see how many stuffed toys we could get on the dais," Klim the multi-medaled said last week. "I think we got four at one stage... To be honest, I didn't understand its significance. I just thought it was a wombat, an Australian animal...with a big arse."

A renegade humorist in Australia heightened the stakes by using an animated wombat that waddled across the tv screen leaving droppings after disappointing Olympic moments. The Australian Olympic Committee was pissed that an incontinent mammal had taken the limelight and tens of millions of dollars in retail sales away from its officially licensed, network-friendly "Boxing Kangaroo." When asked about the order to keep "Fatso" away from the cameras, the AOC's Peter Montgomery replied, "It's a matter of some commercial sensitivity," then refused to say anything more. The AOC bought the rights to the "Boxing Kangaroo" from failed tycoon Alan Bond, believing it had "recognition factor" in America after it was used as the mascot for the successful Australian challenge in the 1983 America's Cup.

I, like millions of others, was puzzled that NBC felt the need to protect me from the life-threatening thrill of live Olympic competition by installing a 17-hour delayed-broadcast "safety buffer." This also allowed the network to decide which moments would be best edited and served during dinner hour as our Olympic McNuggets. Of the many messy moments left on the cutting-room floor was the triumphant display of Eric Moussambani, of the Equatorial Guinean men's swim team. A man who had only learned to swim in January, he was placed in a heat for the 100-meter freestyle with three contenders, all of whom made false starts, disqualifying them from the event. The race was his. The capacity crowd at the Sydney Aquatic Center watched as a single Olympian of indomitable will swam for the first time in his life in an otherwise empty 50-meter pool. Moussambani had trained in a hotel pool in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, that is only 20 meters long. Thus the challenge of completing a full 100 meters was a new one. He compromised his moment of glory by a short rest at the far end of the pool. However, his final 50 lifted 18,000 people to their feet and earned the greatest display of support and empathy since Eddie the Eagle ate high-impact snow at the '88 Winter Olympics.

Minutes after the race ended my friends in Sydney called me. "Yashouldaseenit! Uglier than a hatful of arseholes, but what a guy, what a swim!" At the time, NBC was showing a sepia-tinted retrospective of an alleged future freestyle champion. I searched for footage of Eric Moussambani's marvelous, mad moment. It was a global "watercooler" moment, and I wanted to share in the excitement. But I couldn't break the cordon. I certainly wouldn't see a live picture unless I could steal a Canadian satellite signal. The Internet, fearless voice of an unfettered world, was gagged: a looped message informed me the prevailing powers had prevented Australian broadcasters from sharing their coverage with their American cousins. I turned to the BBC radio website. It ran a recorded message saying its coverage of the Olympics was unable to be broadcast in America because of NBC rights. I was left with nothing but what The Big Guys wanted me to have?a prepackaged prime-time version of the human condition. The Today Show ran a bit on Moussambani the next day.

Perhaps the best story that was never seen here was the "Torrid Love Affair of the Olympic Anchors." Scheduled to lead the broadcast team of the host Australian network, Stan Grant and Tracey Holmes fell madly in love during Olympic rehearsals, abandoned their family responsibilities and began a torrid affair. Fearing a backlash, the image-sensitive network sacked them both, just weeks before the opening ceremony. Leaving male and female viewers bereft, unable to watch both a soap and a sports show at the same time. These tv guys just don't get it.

Classicus Feature Power Politics Our favorite new Olympic sport is women's weightlifting. Did you see the Mexican gold medalist's beautiful snatch? A staggering 209 pounds! And she cleaned and jerked 281 pounds to boot. Mexico's first gold medal in weightlifting. Finally, world recognition for a country known by gringos for its superior snatch and cleaning before jerking from Matamoros to Tijuana. Furthermore, the performance was more edifying and a good deal less embarrassing than that of Mrs. Clinton (or Mr. Lazio, for that matter) in their televised debate. Compared to enduring the debate, we've been more enlightened and less discomfited at a Juarez donkey show. Mrs. Clinton keeps urging her opponent to debate the issues. The only problem is?there are no issues. It's the same story with Bush vs. Gore. Not only are there no issues, there's hardly any difference between the candidates. It's pretty much Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee. As Pat Buchanan has pointed out, the voter has a choice between a St. Albans/Harvard son of a senator and an Andover/Yale son of a president. Not a big difference.

Face it, the country finds itself in an unprecedented period of prosperity and security. The USA is the world's only superpower, and there's no military threat in sight even if you've got high-powered binoculars trained on the East. It's time to live it up and let 'er rip, which is just what Clinton has been doing for some time now?traveling around the world in Air Force One with fighter escorts, swanning around in limos, guarded by black vans and motorcycle outriders. Weekends at Camp David. Wow, what a life! Who wants to be a millionaire?this is the absolute top drawer. Servants, flunkies, an army, navy and air force. It's the greatest power trip in history.

The next president would do well to do absolutely nothing, too?just let Greenspan tinker with interest rates from time to time to forestall inflation?but otherwise have himself a ball. The only trouble is that instead of a dirt-poor, hardscrabble Arkansan who can appreciate the good life when he falls into it, the next president is going to be a spoiled rich kid who's been brought up in the good life and now wants to do something "meaningful."

The risk is that whichever of these?some say?second-rate candidates gets the nod will actually do something and throw the whole world a wobbly. You've got to admit it's a little worrying. In the interest of a lasting place in history, Gore the Bore may try something "exciting," and Dubya the Dunce something "clever." We would probably be better off, or at least better entertained, with a third term for Bubba, were it possible.

Now we probably have our head in the sand, or up our fundament. It's too calm. Some rough beast out there in the desert may be moving its slow thighs, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. Perhaps the oil crisis or the antiglobalization movement, or Qaddafi or Saddam Hussein, or Yasir Arafat, or the Pakistanis or the Indians or the Taiwanese or the Red Chinese. Or the West Nile mosquitoes start to multiply like, well, flies and a new plague grips us. Or we get visited from outer space. Are there any clues in the past? As Hegel said, the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

But if we don't get blindsided by a surprise, the scenario calls for more prosperity and progress. The big-money boys are interested in the battle between wire, cable and satellite for broadband Internet access, and in the mergers of gigantic, global financial and commercial enterprises. The thoughtful in the scientific and medical communities look forward to applying the mapping of the human genome to a genetic cure for disease, eventually cancer. Soon women (well, rich Western ones) won't have to endure the burden of childbirth. Their eggs will be whipped up with a little sperm in a vinaigrette for the incubator, or babies will be cloned.

And, frankly, it won't make a difference worth a hill of beans who is president, just as long as one has access to corridors of power and a favorable outcome from the SEC, the FTC, the FCC and the FDA. Which is why the clever lads are giving money to both parties. It used to be said that the definition of an honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought. But if you back both sides, who cares?

You know who cares? The New York Times cares. Every day the paper twists and turns in agonizing vortices of illogic and semantics to put forward its partisan view, overlaying every little issue with its politically correct ideology. Bush and Cheney were overheard calling one of the Times' writers a major-league asshole. Well, we heard a pundit go one better: The New York Times is a paper written and edited by assholes for assholes.

Taki LE MAÎTRE The UK Views Us The London Spectator, England's oldest and most elegantly written weekly, has come out with an American special issue, with six different viewpoints on why America is a good place after all. The first, by Peter Hitchens, on why he'd like to move across the pond and settle in America, I found nice but quite incorrect. "In British universities, the leaden censorship and tiny-minded oppression of political correctness march on unchallenged in faculties and student-union bars alike," he opines. Now, I've been out of university for a hell of a long time, but it seems that P.C. in Britain has nothing on P.C. in American schools. In the Ivy League, for example, with Dartmouth at the head, a student is as likely to defend freedom of thought and speech?and get away with it?as I am to vote for Hillary come November. At Smith, once upon a time a great college with beautiful girls, lesbianism is the order of the day, with faculty and student body coming down hard on anyone who insists on remaining "normal." "In Britain," writes Hitchens, "freedom of speech seems only to apply to sexual or ultraviolent pornography, not to social, political or cultural dissent." He could be writing about America. In Britain, at least, there are still major newspapers like the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, and weeklies like the Spectator, which not only tell it like it is, but also have great influence. Over here we have to rely on journals of opinion with small circulations and, at times, the Wall Street Journal.

Up next, the great Mark Steyn writes that Americans are fat and ugly, but they live in a dynamic society that knows when not to change. "After many years in rural America, I hardly notice the 300 lb women any more? but when I do notice them, they look pretty good to me: the familiar lumpy double-decker-breast effect from the folds of flesh bursting over the brassiere; the vast prairie of a stretchpants-encased butt you could park your pick-up on..." He then goes on to say how in 1981 the Centers for Disease Control classified 25 percent of Americans as obese; by 1991 it was 33 percent and today it's pushing 40 percent. "On current trends, 75 per cent of Americans will be obese by 2050."

Steyn is very funny on 50-year-old guys waddling down Main Street in oversize t-shirts with silly slogans and shapeless diaper-like pants. A frightening thought to a discerning European like yours truly, but soon he comes to the fatties' defense: "That's why I'll stick it out over here, drooling lardbutts and all. The EU and most of its member States operate on a set menu; America is a-la-carte. One of the reasons I'm a federalist?in the proper sense, not its Euro-perversion?is that I believe that, in a healthy society, if you don't like things the way they are, you shouldn't have to leave the country. That's the genius of America: there's always somewhere to move to." Hear, hear!

The American Julia Reed, a southern lass, tells us how when the Supreme Court outlawed the Lord's Prayer before Friday night high-school football games, Dixie did not flinch. To the distress of civil liberties groups, the ruling prompted the immediate formation of organizations such as "We Still Pray," which encourage students to engage in "organized spontaneous outbreak of prayer" in the stands. Hooray for Dixie, boo to the ACLU. Americans in general, and Southerners in particular, according to Reed, do not like to be told what to do, especially not by the federal government.

Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's and an American, says that if America is about nothing else, it is about the manufacture of the self. Without the constraints of the European class system, Americans tend to do just that. A very good thing, in my opinion, and the more the better. Then comes the deputy editor of the Spectator, Stuart Reid, a Brit who comes down rather hard on America. Stuart is good on the candidates: "Bush and Gore are behaving like half-wits not simply because they are half-wits but because without the support of half-wits they are lost. The two candidates are concerned not to lead the people but to bow to the will of the people (whom they will then betray). It is disgusting. It is demeaning. It is democratic. Above all, it is American."

In all good faith, I cannot disagree. The bar has been lowered to such an extent, candidates have to go to Oprah to get noticed. Gore has to French-kiss his wife for his polls to go up. Hillary has to take up the cause of a spy and traitor in order to obtain the Jewish vote. (Israel held an Israeli citizen in solitary confinement for 12 years?he is still imprinsoned?for revealing to the London Sunday Times that his country possesses nuclear weapons.) Bush is required to take elocution lessons to please people who cannot string a sentence together without the multiple use of the words "like" and "you know."

John Micklethwait, the U.S. editor of The Economist, brings up the rear by writing why he has no time for Americaphobes. In the past anti-Americanism in Britain was largely the preserve of the Left. The Thatcher-Reagan relationship vs. the evil empire did not suit fellow travelers. America was looked upon by most Brits with a mixture of gratitude and admiration. But times change. With Tony Blair being Clinton's and America's chief cheerleader (and fellow bomber of innocent people) people of my political persuasion?Thatcherites?fret about the corrosive effects of American culture. "Conservative Britain seems to be peeved not by American foreign policy, but by the idea that something is rotten inside the United States. When people talk about Americanization they do not imagine GIs and missiles, but high-school children clutching machine guns."

Well, yes and no. I worry more about Jerry Springer than kids with machine guns, but then I do not live in a ghetto. Let's face it. Athens and Rome collapsed from within, although Sparta had something to do with the demise of the former. The American colossus can only fall from its own excesses. This special issue of the Spectator gave me lots of food for thought on how great America could be without busybodies like Hillary who think they know better what's good for us.

George Szamuely The Bunker He Dared To Differ Extraordinary silence greeted the news of the suspension of Martin Indyk's State Department security clearance. The current U.S. Ambassador to Israel, a U.S. citizen only since 1993, he's the first Jew to hold that position. Though the ADL's Abraham Foxman made a few predictable noises about possible anti-Semitism at work, he quickly dropped the subject. This was rather odd, for the charges against Indyk look rather feeble. He is accused of "sloppy handling of information." Apparently, while traveling, Indyk had used unclassified laptop computers to write up his discussions with foreign leaders. How classified could his discussions have been? Interestingly?and doubtless entirely coincidentally?just a few days before this public censure, Indyk had delivered a major speech in Israel calling on Israelis and Palestinians to share the city of Jerusalem. "There is no other solution," he pointed out. "It is not, and cannot be the exclusive preserve of one religion." Even Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has not gone this far. He insists that Jerusalem remain undivided and under Israeli control, with only some Arab neighborhoods within and just outside the city being ceded to the Palestinians.

Amazingly, though Martin Indyk's entire career has been devoted to the cause of championing Israel's interests, this has done him precious little good with Israel's amen corner here. He has repeatedly been denounced for insufficient pro-Israeli ardor. Indyk, the New Republic sneered a few years ago, is "as indifferent to Israeli sensibilities as any State Department Arabist." The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's chief lobbying organization in the United States, accused him of "faulty moral equivalence."

Indyk was born in England, grew up in Australia and lived for some years in Israel. When he came to the United States he took a job with AIPAC. In 1985, Indyk created an AIPAC offshoot, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Though the Institute claims to be "a public educational foundation dedicated to scholarly research and informed debate on US interests in the Middle East," very little debate about U.S. interests takes place there since they are taken to be the same as Israel's. Institute members flood talk shows, op-ed pages and congressional committees with a steady stream of pro-Israeli views. The board of advisers includes such reliable advocates of Israel as Martin Peretz, Edward Luttwak, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, Eugene Rostow, Max Kampelman, Paul Wolfowitz and Mortimer Zuckerman. Its staffers regularly trot out articles with titles like "The Case for Hitting Hard at Saddam."

Indyk's successor as executive director, Robert Satloff, is a regular habitué of the pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New Republic. His articles are always the same, elaborations on one argument: the United States has no business demanding any concessions from Israel. We should simply stay the hell out of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. U.S. policy toward the "peace process," he wrote in the New Republic two years ago, should be to "recognize any agreed outcome of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and only an agreed outcome of negotiations." Since Israel is by far the stronger party of the two, this policy amounts to little more than blanket American endorsement of the Israeli position.

Having advised Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992, Indyk was appointed to the National Security Council as Middle East expert. He became a U.S. citizen a few days before Clinton's inauguration. At the NSC, Indyk became famous as the inventor of the "dual containment" strategy, whereby the United States would block Iran's and Iraq's access to the world?a naive and hubristic policy that unraveled very quickly. In 1995 Indyk was appointed Ambassador to Israel, where he became a confidant of the Israeli Labor Party leaders.

In October 1997, he came back to Washington to become Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs. Even before his Senate confirmation hearings were under way he was under attack. The Center for Security Policy, run by various Reagan Administration retreads, denounced his "contemptuous attitude toward Israel." Senator Joseph Lieberman wrote to Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms demanding that Indyk be made to "state for the record his support for and intent to implement" the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, itself Lieberman's handiwork. Indyk was also criticized for his lukewarm support for a bill requiring the State Department to use the term "Jerusalem, Israel" on the birth certificates of Americans born in Jerusalem. Currently, the State Department lists only "Jerusalem," with no mention of Israel.

Indyk was confirmed. Last year he was attacked again, this time by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Indyk had hired Joe Zogby (son of Arab American Institute President James Zogby) who, it was alleged, had written articles "harshly attacking Israel." ZOA National President Morton A. Klein wrote: "Zogby's harsh attacks on Israel and US policy in the Mideast for not being sufficiently pro-Arab, should disqualify him from serving on the staff of US government officials involved in shaping America's Mideast policies." That just about every senior State Department official involved in "shaping" America's Mideast policies is Jewish is, however, seen as perfectly just and reasonable. Last October, at the request of Barak, Indyk was reappointed U.S. ambassador to Israel?a cozy arrangement the United States would not dream of entertaining with any other country. His humiliation now is further proof, if any was needed, that when it comes to Israel, nothing short of grandstanding will do.