Radical shock
Taki
High-lifers and gamblers were in a state of deep shock last week. Uncharacteristically, it was neither a lack of good coke nor the closing of a nightclub that provoked such an emotional reaction. Rather the opposite. It was the fact that the Beautiful People suddenly realised that they were not even in the running for the use Koch prize, an award won hands down by certain gentlemen up in Birmingham.
Needless to say, but for the benefit of anyone who might have been in a coma for the last two weeks, the above-mentioned prize goes to those kindly pickets who blocked urgently needed medical supplies for cancer-ridden patients at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. And speaking of use Koch reminds me of another famous doctor of that period, Dr Goebbels, who also seems to have his disciples. Specifically, a certain shop steward who indignantly but nonchalantly announced to the press that, 'We are not trying to harm patients, just slowing down their treatment.'
My reaction to his statement was a fer vent wish that the speaker would come down with a galloping case of the big C, preferably in the throat, where it's most painful. Alas, he is 27, and healthy as an ox. Nevertheless, his altruistic statement has managed to lurch a few radical chicsters off their convenient perch, an act that ideologists of the Right have been singularly unsuccessful in accomplishing.
Lunching at an expensive restaurant this week, I was about to leave upon seeing the people my host had invited, when I heard a jet-setting lady, known for her 'progressive' views, proclaim that 'this time the trade unions have gone too far'. When I inquired what took her so long to come round (had the unions perhaps blockaded her supply of dope?) she immediately and predictably said that I was fascist and did not understand that socialism implied egalitarianism while capitalism connoted greed and selfinterest.
This fashionable set of attitudes held by the haves, the well-known and the glamorous, is not only hypocritical but tends to convert the weak and unthinking to the side of the totalitarians. Remember Leonard Bernstein's party for the Black Panthers, immortalised by Tom Wolfe? Every fat-cat in New York was there pledging money and help. Along with the fat-cats of industry and society was the kulturny. And that is when things get serious.
In political circles one expects lies, halftruths at best; in cultural circles lies are taken for truths. And culture cannot long withstand perversions of truth. Today in the West more lies are being told about the state of our society than Moscow or Havana ever dreamed of.
The teenage daughter of a friend recently told me that if she had a choice she would believe what, say, a clown like Mick Jagger had to say rather than her teacher. Significantly, real artists like Yehudi Menuhin have neither the time nor the wish to discuss politics. They give everything to their art. The second-class artist, however, or the movie star or pop musician, is different, with both the time and the money to proselytise. And of course it is the latter types that cafe society and the jet-set gravitate to. As most of the jet-set consists of groupies, it is hardly surprising that the large majority is very 'progressive'.
As the favourite relaxation of most Europeans and Americans is watching TV and going to discos, the politics of glamour girls and pop stars have suddenly become . . . important. And that is why the unions are flirting with trouble. They can push around the old, the disabled and the ill. They do not matter. But heaven forbid that a lead guitarist is unable to get his stomach pumped after an overdose because of an industrial dispute. Every groupie will be out in force and in a lynching mood. Housewives brought down Allende. Groupies and the jet-set might — if they go too far — do something about the unions.
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