1 Re: Dr. Arnold's Diet -- Take a Steroid; Kick a Woman 
  -- Gail Brooks
2 Bush misread Camus -- Ronald Aronson
3 Re: Hal Foster in Central Park 
  -- Kevin Murphy, judith lelchook
4 Re: Nader: Bush family profited from Iraq War -- FMillspa
5 A suggestion for the unions -- mark

From: Gail Brooks
Re: Dr. Arnold's Diet Take a Steroid; Kick a Woman

I wish he were losing momentum as Cockburn suggests, but
they love him in CA

===

From: Ronald Aronson
Subject: Bush misread Camus

To Portside,

You might be interested in my op-ed just posted by UPI
and linked by Arts and Letters Daily's Nota Bene, "Bush
Misread Camus." It's about President Bush's astonishing
yet unnoticed gaffe in quoting Camus in Brussels last
week. There has been some internet buzz about his
reading, but none of it looks at the text itself. This
is because no one has ever read the text in its true
context before, Camus's relationship to Sartre. As
you''ll see, Bush was unwittingly parodying his own
hypocrisy about freedom.

I'm pasting it below, but it's available at
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20050301-054358-9493r
Or at www.aldaily.com

Best wishes,
Ronald Aronson

Bush Misread Camus

A careful reading of The Fall reveals that President
Bush's quote from Albert Camus in Brussels last week was
an astonishing mistake. Many of our European friends may
now be laughing up their sleeves at the American head of
state. To those who know Camus, a White House
speechwriter may have created a spectacle in which the
President unwittingly parodied himself.

The quote, "freedom is a long distance race," was ripped
from its context, a context that establishes beyond a
doubt that Camus's words were not meant
straightforwardly, but as a spoof of the thought of his
former good friend, Jean-Paul Sartre. The words spoken
by the President are part of a reflection near the end
of The Fall by Jean-Baptiste Clamence, the book's
narrator and sole character. Clamence offers drinks and
tells his story in the Amsterdam bar he habituates. He
is a former Parisian defense attorney "specializing in
noble causes" until one day when he stood by without
lifting a finger while a woman committed suicide by
jumping into the Seine. He abandoned his practice, fled
France for the gloom of Amsterdam, and now spends his
time luring visitors into hearing his confession and
telling their own sins.

The paragraph just before the one quoted by President
Bush begins with Clamence uttering a Sartre-sounding
proclamation, "no excuses ever for anyone" and ends by
Clamence calling himself "an enlightened advocate of
slavery." Both remarks reflect Camus's bitterness
towards Sartre after their 1952 breakup, and his
admission, in an interview in the New York Times Book
Review on February 24 ,1957 that Sartre and his close
colleagues were targeted by The Fall. The paragraph from
which the President quoted begins by having Clamence
extolling slavery, as Camus believed Sartre had done by
aligning himself with the French Communist Party. Then
Camus has Clamence condemn himself of hypocrisy, for
which Camus criticized Sartre in his journal, by saying
that that he "was always talking of freedom. At
breakfast I used to spread it on my toast, I used to
chew it all day long, and in company my breath was
delightfully redolent of freedom. With that key word I
would bludgeon whoever contradicted me; I made it serve
my desires and my power." After the "long-distance race"
statement Camus concludes the paragraph with other
Sartre-sounding phrases, especially on the theme of our
being alone with our freedom and freedom being a heavy
burden to bear.

Camus's character, while sounding resolute and tireless
about pursuing freedom, making it seem daunting and
thankless, but the mark of a true human being, is really
prattling on about freedom, intimidating people with it,
using it for purposes of self-interest - but does not at
all believe in it. The grand-sounding phrase about
freedom being a "long-distance race" is just another
piece of flimflam. Camus, a writer who pondered every
phrase, every word, might turn in his grave upon hearing
President Bush misunderstand his meaning. He might also
insist that those responsible for the Camus vogue among
the neoconservatives because of his determined
opposition to terrorism are picking and choosing their
Camus in their own self-interest, ignoring his equally
determined condemnation of political violence. But,
great French ironist that he was, he might just as well
be smiling a sly smile of satisfaction at seeing the
American president spreading freedom on his breakfast
toast. The President's speechwriters obviously should
read their sources more closely - or perhaps the
President's unconscious self-parody was deliberately
crafted by a French mole in the White House?

Ronald Aronson is author of Camus and Sartre: The Story
of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It. He is
distinguished professor of humanities at Wayne State
University.

===

From: Kevin Murphy
Re: Hal Foster in Central Park

To Hal Foster's trenchant critique of The Gates project
by Christo and Jeanne-Claude it might be added that the
artists did an enormous disservice to the cause of
modern art in their presentation of their work in the
media. Rarely, if ever, are contemporary artists
accorded the amount of media attention that these two
received. Yet sadly, they took that opportunity to
proclaim the absolulte irrelevance of art to anything
but itself. The artists strenuously denied that the
Gates had meaning beyond the work's status as a
manifestation of their desire to make it. Any
relationship that The Gates might have been thought to
have had to extra-artistic, and social rather than
personal, considerations was rejected. Those who
criticize contemporary art as self-referential, self-
indulgent, and irrelevant must have had a field day.

Kevin Murphy
Williasmburg, VA

---

From: judith lelchook
Re: Hal Foster in Central Park

Sometimes....beauty and line are just....lovely and
fine...

===

From: FMillspa
Re: Nader: Bush family profited from Iraq War

"Nader was third with about 407,000 votes -- about 1
percent of votes cast."

It would be more accurate to say that Nader came in
tenth in a field of three.


===

From: mark
Subject: A suggestion for the unions

One of the major problems that came into the unions by
the sixties was the concept of co-managerialship, which
replaced the clearly correct adverserial relationship
with management.

Along with this came union officers with salaries
comparable to CEO's at the time. Obviously, their
salaries have not kept pace with CEO's the last 15
years. However, it's been a long time since the leaders
were hungry enough.

To give them that edge, I suggest to union folks reading
this to follow the path taken by the Wobblies, many
years ago: the highest salary that paid union officers
make should be equal to the median salary of the rank
and file. I would also add in that their medical and
other benefits be comparalble.

Perhaps trying to live on $50k/yr, instead of hundreds
of thousands, might make them more sympathetic to the
members they represent.

Comments?