JUST SAY NO THANKS!
Isn’t it kind of divine that in the same week that Tim Thomas, the goalie of the Boston Bruins, refused to attend a White House reception in honor of the team’s championship last spring, Buckingham Palace released the names of 277 people who between the years 1951 and 1999 declined to accept one of the Queen’s Honors, including, in some cases, knighthood, and with it the right to be be called Sir or Lady. Among the refusniks were Roald Dahl, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, JB Priestley, Lucian Freud, Robert Graves, FR Leavis, LS Lowry, Henry Moore, Philip Larkin and CS Lewis.
In a statement he posted on Facebook, Thomas was plain about his decision. “I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government. Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.” Thomas has been tut-tutted by such political philosophers like Michael Wilbon and Tony
Kornheiser, who on ESPN played establishmentarian court jesters, saying that when one has been invited by the President, one ought to go, out of respect for the office.
Nonsense. First, this has nothing to do with the country. President Obama is merely copying a move pioneered by John Lindsay, who in the midst of tight mayoral race in New York City in 1969, barged into the locker room of the World Series-winning Mets and inserted his head under waterfalls of champagne. (The ploy worked; he won a narrow plurality in a three-way race.) President Nixon soon began rewarding winning coaches with congratulatory phone calls. Now it’s receptions. Clearly these are held as publicity opportunities for the incumbent, and I have no problem with Tim Thomas or any of these other jocks exercising his right to absent himself. The White House is such a bubble, it’s good when this or any president hears some disagreement.
Indeed, I wish it was plainer why the 277 would-be honorees in Britain declined their invitations; no reasons were cited, and the Palace took care in its response to a BBC request to release only the names of people who are dead. Over the years, explanations have been provided by some
people who are not on the list. According to the New York Times, the writer J. G. Ballard said he did not want to be named a Commander of the British Empire because the whole thing was a “preposterous charade.” The poet Benjamin Zephaniah (left) refused membership in the Order of the British Empire, saying “Stick it, Mr. Blair and Mrs. Queen.” David Bowie declined a C.B.E. in 2000, saying “I seriously don’t know what it’s for.” (Selling records, duh!) In 1992, Doris Lessing declined a knighthood, saying “Surely there is something unlikable about a person, when old, accepting honors from a institution she attacked when young?” But eight years later, she accepted another title, the Companion of Honor, saying she liked that “you’re not called anything” special.
And that’s the point–we don’t know if these folks were trying to raise an objection, or to avoid being used as a monarchical prop, or simply because they were holding out for a better honor. After all, Alfred Hitchcock turned down a C.B.E. in 1962, then later accepted being named a Knight Commander of the British Empire. But I like what Terence Blacker wrote in the Independent. Noting that the opt-outs “have little in common politically or personally beyond the fact that their work is the product of uncompromising individuality,” Blacker suggests that “Simply by accepting a bauble of thanks from the nation, they would be sacrificing what was best about them – their apartness. Once they became part of the national community, their voice, their eyes, their strength would be changed. They neither accepted the honour nor, in what has become a new form of boasting, told the world that they had rejected it.”




I have long admired the critic James Wolcott–his slashing wit, his erudition, his vocabulary, his taste and perception–but although we know many people in common, we have never met. Until I read his new book Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York, his lively memoir of a youth spent in Manhattan during a decadent, fertile decade, I didn’t realize how very much more we had in common. Wolcott, like me, grew up in Maryland, although his home was not Baltimore but Edgewood, where my sister now lives. He, like I, spent afternoons in libraries sopping up Norman Mailer essays and evenings watching Dick Cavett, trying to absorb their teachings of far-off New York. He mentions making exciting visits to Sherman’s newsstand (on Charles Street, was it? Or Cathedral?), just as I did, where under the dusty posters of Yves Montand and Steve McQueen and the gnarled supervision of the proprietor, Abe Sherman, he eyeballed exotic publications like Ramparts and The Nation and tasted an intellectual world far away. Later, his Old Line State roots served him well when he was able to decode the Baltimore Colt references in Diner for the New Yorker‘s Pauline Kael. Wolcott is a coupla-three years older than I, knew what he wanted earlier than I, moved to New York several years before I, and made important connections sooner; in reading his memoir, I felt like I was being caught up on what I’d missed about scenes that I had entered a few years later in their lives–garbagy, crime-ridden Manhattan, porny Times Square (“Wanna go out?”), punky Greenwich Village, the fesity, glamorous Village Voice and New York magazine, the city’s whole collapsing, Bronx-Is-Burning era. Those were different days,as Wolcott points out, when people didn’t spend much thinking about real estate or their salaries; when the city, as Christine Baranski recently pointed out, was governed by creative people who cared about the arts, not by financiers. It was a city that writers found it worth fighting to get into; now I wonder if it still a city worth fighting to hold onto. In one of the most valuable moments in the book, Wolcott shares the lessons he learned from his days working the front desk at the Voice, taking in over-the-transom submissions from optimistic freelance writers. “Avoid parody, which slides too easily into facetiousness. Avoid political satire, which has the shelf life of a sneeze. Avoid preamble–flip on the switch in the first sentence. Find a focal point for your nervous energy, assume a forward offensive stance, and drive to the finish line, even if it’s only a five hundred word slot: no matter how short a piece, there has to be a sense of momentum and travel, rather than just allotted space being texted in. . . Writing that was too talky lacked the third rail below the surface that suggested untapped power reserves, an extra store of ammo.” And danger, I might add. Thank you, maestro, for the lesson, and for the recollections. 
Writing on redstate.com, Erik Erikson says “[Rick] Perry is rapidly becoming the front running and consolidating the lead.” Just speculating, I assume this has to do with his leaderly Texas macho swagger (“He’s a good lookin’ rascal,” said Bill Clinton, with what I detect is just a bit of mischief in his choice of words), as well as a strong record of job creation in Texas. I guess the theory is that if he can created jobs in Texas, he will be able to create jobs in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and so on.
Don’t you think that sooner or later, don’t you think one of Perry’s opponents is going to point out that Texas’s enrichment has been at the expense of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and so on? Folks in those states are paying somewhere between $3.50 and $4 a gallon for gasoline, much of which is flowing into the Texas economy. And this isn’t just a lone example of taking advantage of a beggar-thy-neighbor opportunity; this is Perry’s economic policy. According to The Economist, “in 2003 the legislature established the Texas Enterprise Fund, a “deal-closing fund” that gives the governor subsidies and incentives to use in his efforts to woo, or if you’d prefer, poach businesses from elsewhere. This seems to deviate from free-market orthodoxy and it has exposed him to charges of crony capitalism, but it has also helped his administration create jobs.” He will be Governor High Gas Prices; you can write him off today.
On Wednesday, Ginny and I and Cara headed out for the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where Cara will soon begin her freshman year. Thinking to combine some tourism with one of the last acts of basic parenthood (everything after this gets placed in the supplemental category), we headed first for Cleveland, where we saw the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (left), which sits inside a dazzling I.M. Pei pyramid on the shores of Lake Erie, which, as just as the advance word promised, is indeed a Great Lake. We stayed in a Crowne Plaza Hotel with bad room service, and then hit the Hall on Thursday. It was pretty cool, although it wa bit disconcerting to see one’s youth in a musem. The effect that is produced is not the warmth of nostalgia, nor the intellectual
stimulation that is produced by going to, say, the Met. It’s kind of cool, but kind of dull. The best moment was seeing a montage of British Invasion groups, and being reminded how very cool the Kinks and the Zombies and the Animals really were. It was amazing how well Eric Burden could shake his hair and his ass simultaneously, but of course one now sees that lhe indeed loked like the spastic madman his critics said he did.
After lunch it was south on a very straight and boring I-75 (highlight: a huge billboard in a cornfield says Hell Is Real), through
Cincinnati, and then onto Lexington. On Friday we moved Cara moved into her room, a process hectic
enough to inspire a couple of stories that will be top of the line private stock family stories. After she settled in, we went back and spent the night in a very nice Hyatt. The next day, we visited Ashland, the home of the Great Compromiser Henry Clay, and then attended a couple of information sessions with Cara before sharing a pretty bland meal at an Italian restaurant (this is why Tony Soprano was neve drawn to the witness protection program), before taking our leave, and driving back up to Columbus, where we spent the night in an excellent Westin, of whose quality we were not worthy. (Top right, a new Wildcat in her lair; bottom right, Clay’s pile; Top left, Cincinnati, Thursday, 4:55 PM; bottom left, Columbus, Sunday, 8:30 AM.)
On Sunday, we drove from Columbus to Canton, which turns out to be far from everything, to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (If you wonder why the Hall of Fame is in Canton, it’s because football had it’s roots in Canton specifically and Ohio generally. But football soon left Canton for the bright lights of the big cities, and it’s no mystery why.) I liked the museum–it had some pretty cool Baltimore Colts stuff, including the Marching Band’s drum and Tom Matte‘s famous play-inscribed arm bands–but a lot of it was kind of static. They really could do a lot more. The best part was the collection of amazing films. And then it was eight hours back through Pennsylvania, and home. Happy to be back, but already missing Cara.
Jayne Mansfield knew it. Whenever the blonde, buxom, modestly-talented starlet threatened to become lost amid the endless parade of up-and-coming bombshells Hollywood produced, Jayne found a way to display her breasts in view of a host of compliant paparazzi. Because Jayne knew the secret of success, she managed to support herself and her girls for years.
disappear into the funny enough indistinguishable mass of Jack E. Leonards and Jack Carters and London Lees, Buddy would go onto The Tonight Show and say something obscene to get him bleeped. That would get him talked about and written about and boost his bookings. Because Buddy knew the secret of success, he managed to maintain a profitable show business career for decades.
Madonna knew it. Whenever the unremarkable pop star threatened to become eclipsed by other attractive warblers, Madonna would expose some part of her body or insult some sacred cow or so something provocative with a crucifix or a water bottle, and this would open a rich new vein of publicity that would help sell her albums and support her tours. Because Madonna knew the secret of success, she has become a beloved show business icon.

Sarah Palin has done the same thing. She clearly has no intention of running for president, but to retire form the race would immediately diminish her status. So she continues to refuse to announce, and continues to put no resources into building a presidential campaign, but continues to whisper and leak that she might be interested, and puts targets on her website and uses phrases like blood libel to continue to draw interest to herself. She’ll managle the story of Paul Revere and continue to push nasty’s inferences about Obama’s ancestry (“The perfect example of the media one- sidedness is Obama’s record not being explored. . .and now revelations of maybe some of his upbringing, some of his background, certainly his associations, how they impact his world view and how that affects his decisions today.”) She won’t run, but her bookings and fees will get one more bounce.
Remember: Jayne Mansfield never went to Cannes in order to win the Best Actress award. She went to Cannes because that was where she could find the most cameras, so that when she bent over, her cleavage could get the widest exposure. Same thing here: Trump and Palin and Gingrich don’t run for president to become president: running is just the thing they have to do to create their brand.
It was my great pleasure to participate in the 1st Annual Writers’ Conference of the Writing Center, now of Hunter College, late of Marymount Manhattan. I was on a panel that made pronouncements about the Blogosphere, of all things. Joining me in this mission was the estimable Patty Marx, Jesse Kornbluth, Susan J. Behrens, and moderator Marcia Yerman. It was fun, and there were many good questions. It was great to see my former students Millie Burns and Joe Lisanti. In this photo, as I speak, I turn Patty Marx into one of those children from Village of the Damned. Thanks once again to my friend Lewis Burke Frumkes for inviting me.
Sometimes writing for a weekly newsmagazine means being willing to ask a dumb question. Writing Time‘s cover story this week on the sexual trespasses of Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and other powerful who did not happen to specifically get into trouble this week, Nancy Gibbs, one of the best to ever write in this format, asks the Duh-worthy question, “How can it be, in this ostensibly enlightened age, when men and women live and work as peers and are schooled regularly in what conduct is acceptable and what is actionable, that anyone with so little judgment, so little honor, could rise to such heights?”