Robert Bork’s timing could have been better.
A day after Walt Disney’s “101 Dalmatians” busted the Hollywood record for most revenue on an opening weekend, he was arguing American society is convulsed by moral rot and going to hell.
The brilliant lawyer-turned-national grouch was languidly disputing the proposition, “America’s Brightest Days Lie Yet Before Her.” He was at an event only slightly less frequent here than political fundraisers or Larry King begging to be noticed in a restaurant: a think tank policy conference.
Bork was at home at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, where he is the John M. Olin Scholar in Legal Studies. Indeed, this gathering proved a pointy-head version of an intersquad game.
Not only did the home crowd have Bork, a University of Chicago product, influential legal academic and famously failed nominee to the Supreme Court. His debate opponent was demographer-social critic Ben Wattenberg, a “senior fellow” at the institute, while the moderator was conservative critic Dinesh D’Souza, the John M. Olin Fellow at the institute.
I plopped down in a chair, anointing myself the John M. Olin Spectator, and quickly heard a raspy-voiced, bearded Bork contend that we suffer from a lack of moral consensus and that our culture, politics, technology, education system, military and language are in peril. It reprises the argument in his new, surprise best seller, “Slouching Toward Gomorrah.”
And you can blame much of western decline on New Haven, Conn.
“We are governed by Yale Law School grads with ’60s attitudes. Bill and Hillary were both students of mine (at Yale). But I no longer say they were students of mine, but that they were in the room.”
Ouch. He was kidding on the square. If one had doubts, he elaborated:
“Bill Clinton is a cultural symbol. His ascendancy signals something worrisome. A youngish man with little experience, a record of infidelity and no military service. Americans have turned their back on virtue. Thirty or 40 years ago he would have been disqualified from office.”
The Clintons, he believes, personify a “radical individualism and egalitarianism” that are nihilistic. William Butler Yeats’ notion of the center not holding is true for Bork, if out of sync with a slew of realities, as Wattenberg would underscore.
And it’s not just the lyrics of gangsta rappers that perturb Bork, whose pop culture interests tend toward 1940s big band music and reruns of “Murder, She Wrote.” It’s even mainline churches that don’t “really affect behavior” as they once did.
“With no consensus on morality, how can society have its best days ahead?” he asked 100 or so like-minded souls. “How can a polarized, angry society have its best days ahead?”
Wattenberg dutifully tried to counter the notion of all these liberal elites running amok, correctly citing the ascendancy of conservatives on newspaper op-ed pages.
The country “is pretty good at correcting mistakes and that’s what we are now doing,” Wattenberg said, as he pointed to welfare reform, a decline in crime, the school-choice movement, the greater popularity of family-oriented movies and music over “crapola,” and the mega-sales of conservative icon William Bennett’s “Book of Virtues.”
Bork was unmoved. “Civilizations don’t last forever. This one may not,” he concluded with an air of weary, cosmic resignation. He recounted how during the pubic-hair-on-the-Coke-can portions of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, a friend suggested that the hearings did signal the end of civilization but “in the meantime, it’s possible to live well.”
Wattenberg’s finale began, “Bob Bork has a problem with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.” But these did not obviously just come upon us, he noted. “It was `wine, women and song’ long before that.”
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While Bork quoted Yeats, Wattenberg created and quoted the “Prophetess Annie in the `Book of Warbucks.’ ” Lightly dismissing Bork, he intoned, “Gomorrah, Gomorrah, I love you, Gomorrah. You’re always a day away.”
An older crowd seemed nonplused. But a question remained: Who won?
I am naturally inclined toward the Wattenberg view. Then, again, on the same day last week, I read the following:
– A New Hampshire fellow who announced on “Sally Jessy Raphael” that he’d fathered a child with a 14-year-old girl was charged with statutory rape.
– The tabloid Weekly World News claimed that the biblical Four Horses of the Apocalypse had been spotted in a small Arizona town.
Bork may be right.
`Soft money,’ and lots of it
Inspecting “soft money” contribution lists for the recent presidential campaign cycle, one finds many big Illinois donors. A total of $7.8 million in soft money came in through Oct. 16, the latest available date to inspect.
Leading the pack is Decatur’s Archer Daniels Midland Co., supermarket to the world and, if the Justice Department is on the mark, upholder of a grand American tradition: price fixing.
The company gave at least $435,000 to various Republican committees and $210,000 to the Democrats, according to Federal Election Commission records. Chairman Dwayne Andreas personally gave the national Democratic Party at least $60,000 in soft money, as opposed to the strictly limited “hard” money given directly to a particular campaign.
Bedford Park’s Raani Corp. gave $343,319 to the Democrats; Fruit of the Loom Inc. dispatched $156,100 to the Republicans; Development Specialists Inc. of Chicago sent $150,250 to the Democrats; Personal Health Care Inc. of Schaumburg ponied up $125,000 to the Democrats; United Airlines gave the Democrats at least $127,940 and the Republicans $53,000 (their pilots gave the Dems $38,000); and W M X Technologies Inc. of Oak Brook gave the GOP $104,000.
Those making single, six-figure donations include Evelyn Chambers of Wilmette ($100,000, Dems); media entrepreneur Fred Eychaner of Chicago ($100,000, Dems); investment banker J. Ira Harris of Chicago ($100,000, GOP); Samuel Rothberg of Peoria ($100,000, Dems), Ryan Holding Corp. of Chicago ($100,000, GOP); and Philip Zaidenberg of Chicago ($100,000, Dems).
Mr. and Mrs. Denis Healy of Winnetka, who’ve run Turtlewax Inc., gave $50,000 each to the GOP, as did Reycled Paper Greetings founder Michael Keiser of Chicago and Ole K. Nilssen of Barrington. Donald Rumsfeld, a Bob Dole confidant (and Tribune Co. board member), and his wife Joyce gave the GOP $44,000 and $24,000, respectively.
Goliaths giving David-like donations included Sears Roebuck & Co. ($10,000, Dems); Abbott Laboratories ($13,000, GOP); and J.B. Pritzker ($15,000, Dems).
Hunting big game
Well, at least all those guys merely had to find their checkbook and a stamp. If I understand an invitation from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, you sometimes need a check and the L.L. Bean catalog.
On Jan. 13-14, they are holding the august “Chairmen’s Council Eastern Shore Duck Hunt with the Honorable John D. Dingell in Dorchester County, Maryland.”
The requested contributions: $2,500 personal, $3,500 political action committee or $6,000 in corporate funds.
Oh, when you call Erin Graefe at the committee (202-863-1500), inform him whether you’re bringing a 12-gauge or 20-gauge shotgun or “need to borrow a shotgun.” There’s no mention of whether forest green or royal blue chamois shirts are preferred.
I only wish somebody has a miniature golf outing in the works. Ain’t democracy grand?