AND ANOTHER THING
New York, Mr Mayor, is a single Big Apple, not a bunch of ethnic cherries
PAUL JOHNSON
Frequent visitors from Europe to New York, like myself, have reason to be grate- ful to Mayor Giuliani. In a single term of office he has brought about a bigger improvement in the well-being of the city than any mayor I can remember. He has cut down street crime dramatically. He has cleared the aggressive professional beggars off the pavements. The zero tolerance policing policy has now made it possible to visit Harlem and other fascinating quarters in safety, something ruled out since the early 1950s. No wonder the mayor's meth- ods are now being imitated in many British and Continental cities. He is up for re-elec- tion this year. Good luck to him! We all understand that he has to be nice to every group in the city, including the Puerto Ricans. But that does not excuse his vindic- tive behaviour towards The Spectator's Taki.
The Spectator is a peculiarly English insti- tution, going back in earlier incarnations to a time when New York had a population of well under 10,000. It has no collective opin- ion. All the writers on it do their own thing. Subject to certain inescapable legal restraints, they are permitted complete freedom, provided only they inform and delight readers in the elegant manner they expect. The paper is a college of talent, a synod of heterodoxy and, at times, a bear- garden. It is also an engine of infuriation. But those so angered are catered for too. The correspondence columns are crammed with vitriolic ripostes. The paper's writers are assassinated weekly, sometimes without provocation, by some of the world's sharpest pens. The Spectator is an acrimo- nious notice-board for the vendettas of the English middle and upper classes. But it is open to the workers too, and indeed to for- eigners.
If Mayor Giuliani, instead of calling a press conference, had chosen to write us a letter denouncing Taki unmercifully, it would not only have been printed but accorded star treatment. Indeed, had the mayor demanded the right of reply, he would have been given the hospitality of our editorial columns. The paper is often crammed with articles in which our writers are attacked, and indeed attack each other.
But the mayor did not exercise this right. He not only called a press conference to denounce Taki — fair enough — but demanded that the editor sack him and, failing that, that the proprietor of the paper sack the editor and, failing that, that the properties of Conrad Black in the United States be subjected to sanctions. He also uttered threats against Taki personally, that he would have him banned from the coun- try etc. It all sounded like King Lear on the blasted heath: 'I shall do such things, what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth!' Taki, as a United States citizen, is beyond the power even of the mayor of New York to be banished from his own country. And the mayor's threats provoked derision in the corporate office of Hollinger plc. Such rantings are unworthy of the man who holds in his hand the dignity and honour of the Big Apple. Moreover, they raise two important points which friends of America find increasingly disturbing. First, what hap- pened to freedom of speech and the First Amendment? The right to express unpopu- lar, ornery and even inflammatory views is written into the title deeds of the American Republic. Thomas Jefferson argued that a free press was even more important to American liberties than all the apparatus of constitutional government. He said, in his First Inaugural, that erroneous views must be permitted so long as sane men had the right to refute them. And, in saying this, he had in mind the words of our own great poet, John Milton, pleading with the authorities not to use their power to sup- press the words of those they disagreed with. 'So long as Truth be in the field,' wrote Milton, we must never `misdoubt her strength'. He added: 'Let her and False- hood grapple. Who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?' You have your Truth, Mr Mayor, and you have every opportunity to exercise her in the columns of The Spectator. Why mis- doubt her strength, as you do with your threats of suppression?
There is another thing. What became of America's taste for vigorous and even vitu- perative expression? Has the mayor forgot- ten Mark Twain, whom some regard — I certainly do — as America's greatest writ- `We have discovered a hedgehog- like life form.' er? Twain, with his scorching pen, would not long have survived in Mayor Giuliani's America, where strong words are frowned on and euphemism reigns. And what about H.L. Mencken, the Shakespeare of Ameri- can journalism? His abuse of high and low, not sparing creed or ethnicity, region or occupation, was more vituperative than anything Taki dishes out. Yet Mencken was revered as a seer. Come on, America! What is happening to your traditional regard for robust discourse, fierce debate and the battle of words?
It is bad enough that political correct- ness, the deadly enemy of free speech, should spread its tentacles across the cam- pus. Must they now emerge from the sew- ers into municipal politics too? How can America's great cities be given honest gov- ernment if everyone is reduced to plati- tudes, compliments and conventional nois- es? Then again, what about the melting-pot? When the British took over New York from the Dutch in the 1660s and began to let in all comers, beginning with Jews and other non-Christians, the first flames of the melting process began to lick around the pot, and New York was on its way to becoming the world's greatest and richest city. It was melting and blending, the sublimation of race, religion and eth- nicity in one gigantic new entity, which pro- duced the dynamism of New York's teem- ing streets and the nobility of its skyline. New York is a single Big Apple; it is not a bunch of ethnic cherries.
As one who loves New York and Ameri- ca — and who has just completed a 1,000- page History of the American People which New Yorkers will be able to read early next year — I confess I do not like these endless `pride' marches, stressing race, gender, reli- gious and ethnic origins. They bring out the negative and destructive fragmentation of society, instead of its positive and creative unity. One man's prideful march is another man's fear. If I see a Gay Pride march, I fear for my young grandchildren. Aggres- sive pride-marching is at the very root of Ulster's troubles. Orange marches, on which New York's marches were originally modelled, were designed to make Catholics cower. Marches do no good, except to the local politicians who profit from them, and they often do harm. Hence Taki, in his inimitable way, was making a serious point. So hands off him, Mr Mayor, drop your ugly threats and put your case instead.
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