DIARY
CHARLES MOORE This magazine has now been owned by the Telegraph group for nearly two years. This ownership has been beneficial to The Spectator in every respect except one: it has been awkward when we have wanted to write about the affairs of the Daily Telegraph or the Sunday Telegraph. This week has been a delicate one. Mr Andrew Knight, who was, until the autumn, the man to whom I answered, has now gone to be Mr Rupert Murdoch's Executive Chairman in Britain, and Mr Black, the man to whom I answer now, has written him a letter which says exactly what he thinks of this proceeding. The correspondence has been published. There is a great (and intensely enjoyable) public row. We have to com- ment on it: what can we say? Paul Johnson offers his view on page 19; Wallace Arnold discloses his intimate friendship with the men involved on page 39. I have only two points to make. One concerns the 'ethical' question. It was tempting, but was It right for the Sunday Telegraph to run a hostile profile of Mr Knight this week? If the situation had been reversed and Mr Knight had just left the employ of Mr Murdoch and a Murdoch paper had then published such an article there would have been loud protests about proprietorial bullying. That there were hands at the Sunday Telegraph who needed no promp- ting from Mr Black to write as they did does not make the thing any more edifying.
My second point concerns the epistol- ary style of Conrad Black. Those unfamil- iar with it will have taken his letter to Mr Knight as a piece of invective shocking in its fierceness. Spectator readers, however, will recognise it as relatively tame. We have published three letters from Mr Black, two written before he owned the magazine, one after he had bought it. Here are some typical phrases: • . . he deserves better than Hitchens's nas- ty, macabre, vulgar, and insolent claptrap. So, even, does The Spectator's readership.
Mr Saul is a familiar and somewhat pitiful figure, who has hovered and festered for some years on the fringes of Canadian government — and fiction-writing. Those who would retain his services should confine him to subjects better suited than this one to his sniggering, puerile, defamatory and cruelly limited talents.
Given his own techniques and proclivities, it is understandable that Mr Saul would con- fuse the neurotic and unrequited gossip of a notorious society groupie, from which he obviously cribbed his outburst, with general informed opinion.
The style is instantly recognisable grand rolling, adjectival, slightly old- fashioned, neither rapier nor bludgeon, more like some huge mediaeval siege engine. I can testify that it is alarming to receive one of these communications, but I can also testify that, despite being full of sound and fury, they do not signify all that much. Or, to change the metaphor, Mr Black's bark is worse than his bite. If his reaction to anything we have published this week causes me to change that judgment, I shall do my best to let you know.
Lest we forget, the ecclesiastical con- tribution to the freedom struggle of the people of Rumania should be recorded. Meeting in Moscow last July, the Central Committee of the World Council of Chur- ches, 'opted' (I quote from the Church Times) 'for a cautious approach to the situation in Rumania'. It voted by 78 votes to 33 against a motion condemnatory of repression in Rumania, and voted instead for a proposal ' "to reaffirm the prayerful, fraternal relationship" ' with the Ruma- nian Churches. The reason for the decision was that the Rumanian Churches them- -selves supported President Ceausescu's ' "systematisation and modernisation" ' and opposed ' "outside interference" '. In the days 'when the Dutch Reformed Church underwrote apartheid, did the WCC show a similar respect for its sensitivities, and refuse to condemn the actions of the South African government?
Many thanks to all Spectator readers who have so generously contributed to our Spectators for Poland scheme. By Tues- day, we had already received 242 subscrip- tions — more than 50 above our final total last year. It would be marvellous if we could get into the 300s. An annual sub-
'It carries a deny-by date.' scription under the scheme costs £35 and the cheque should be made out to The Spectator and sent do The Spectator for Poland, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. If donors supply the names and addresses of individuals we shall send their subscriptions anywhere in the Eastern Bloc, including, now that recipients will not be prosecuted, Rumania. Otherwise, we shall send the copies to Poles, using our own lists. All gift subscriptions will be acknowledged in due course.
0 n Monday, I went to the funny new film When Harry Met Sally, which is a sort of modern Much Ado About Nothing set mainly in New York. The most talked about scene is one in which Sally and Harry, sitting in a café, discuss orgasms. Sally says that most women have faked an orgasm. Harry boasts that they never have with him: he knows they haven't because he can tell the difference between a fake and the real thing. Sally disagrees and tries to prove her point by faking one there and then in front of the customers. What irritated me was her implication, which I have frequently heard stated explicitly on phone-in programmes, that the fact that women fake orgasms reflects very badly on society's attitude to them. The 'fact' is unprovable anyway, but even if one assu- mes that it is true, surely men would be equally ready to fake orgasms, being just as keen as women to convince their partners that they are enjoying them- selves. Anyone . who is fond of anyone knows that it is necessary from time to time to express pleasure where none is felt because no affection can be expected to survive merciless truthfulness and a com- plete lack of manners. If women do fake orgasms, it is because they are polite and feel pity for men's insecurity. If women ever stop faking orgasms, it will not be because they are all having real ones, but because the war between the sexes will have abandoned its equivalent of the Geneva Convention and become total.
This week sees an ugly innovation in The Spectator. This is the bar code which appears on the front cover. The code will appear every week from now on, and there is nothing that we can do about it. If it is not there, the magazine will not be distri- buted to the newsagents. It is all something to do with counting the number of returned copies. I apologise for the disfigurement, and feel rather as if Mr Murdoch had untrammelled power to stick one of his satellite dishes on my house.
Auberon Waugh is away writing his auto- biography.
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