I’m pretty sure Stephen King is skeptical about the war, for example. I know his politics. But he hasn’t made the leap so common to others in the scribbling, warbling and gesturing arts - he doesn’t think we’re all dying to hear his prescriptions for Middle East foreign policy. Oh, interview him on the matter and he might pop off, but I can’t imagine him sitting down, firing up a Winston Light, and telling himself that this 1200 word essay will change the world, because people will think: hey, it’s Stephen KING talking! He wrote “The Stand,” and his fictional account of the repercussions of biological weapons programs gives him a unique perspective. Let’s lend an ear!
That's James Lileks, in an introductory paragraph to his response to an antiwar article written by novelist John LeCarre. I confessed last week that I'm no longer a regular reader of Lileks, because quite frankly I had my fill long ago of "Bomb Iraq; bomb Iraq; dumb liberals; Isn't Gnat cute; bomb Iraq; I took Gnat to the mall; dumb liberals". But this quote is not only dull and predictable, it's actively stupid.
First, it's predictable because no prominent left-leaning person in the arts can open his or her mouth these days to voice a left-leaning opinion on any issue without being met by a chorus of right-leaning persons yelling for him or her to shut up and just keep making movies or writing books or whatever and leave the Important Political Stuff to the grownups who know all about such things, as if a person's occupation has any a priori bearing on the quality of any commentary they might provide. It's always, "Shut up, Barbra Streisand! Shut up, Ed Asner! Shut up, Sean Penn! Shut up, John Le Carre! Shut up, Martin Scorsese! You're actors and writers, not pundits, so shut up and just do what you're supposed to do!" The obvious rejoinder, I think, is that these people are Americans (well, not Le Carre, but he's being tarred with the same brush) and thus they have the same rights of free speech as anyone else, and thus the same right to push for their causes as anyone else. The right-wing meme, that famous people should be quiet, is pretty weird -- ironic, even, considering the previous occupation of the right's patron saint, Ronald Reagan. So, I think that if the right is going to hand an open mike to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Selleck and Ted Nugent, they should stop complaining when the Streisands and Asners and Scorseses of the world do their own thing on their own respective "open mike nights".
But further, in the specific case of Lileks whining about John Le Carre, I wonder if Lileks knows the first thing about Le Carre. We're talking about a writer who, before he became a novelist, worked in the British foreign service; and we're talking about a writer whose novels deal with geopolitical realities. Now, are there any novelists who are taken seriously by the right in this country, by virtue of their subject matter and expertise on such things? Tom Clancy, perhaps? I don't agree with all of what Le Carre says; I'm pretty much on the side of invading Iraq, for instance. But quite frankly, on matters of international perspective and foreign relations, I have to say: Yes, James. I'm going to listen to what John Le Carre has to say about these things, based on his experience and his fictional accounts thereof. In any case, he's got a lot more by way of credentials in that regard than a pseudo-humorist from Minneapolis.
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