Quite a switcheroo
Taki
New York A lthough they 'shoulda stood in bed', Bill and Pat Buckley gave their traditional election-night party in their elegant Park Avenue maisonette despite a dislocated hip, a broken shoulder and a painful cracked rib between them. (Pat fell while gardening and Bill broke his rib soon after.) Not many celebrities were smiling that night in the Bagel, the exception being chez Buckleys. Mind you, Torn Wolfe, Henry Kissinger, the Oscar de la Rentas, Drue Heinz and folks like them are not the type to draw attention to themselves, so as the results came in you'd think the Grand Old Party was taking a beating. Well, as we all now know, Americans are much too dumb to understand Hollywood's message, and they went out in droves and voted for George W. Score one for the square versus the hip.
It's a strange thing, but nowadays being a billionaire like the currency-speculator George Soros, a professional celebrity and party-goer like Bianca Jagger, or an Ivy League school professor makes you almost a perfect Democrat. Hard-working, church-going, poorer types are far more likely to he Republicans. As the great Tom Wolfe has said, 'Support for Bush is about not wanting to be led by people who are forever trying to force their twisted sense of morality on to us, which is a non-morality.' A slob like Michael Moore or the truly obnoxious Whoopi Goldberg can get lots of publicity by heaping abuse on W and his church-going family, but the chickens came home to roost on election night. The Democrats, in effect, are now the party of the elite, and the GOP that of the common folk. It is quite a switcheroo. While pampered liberals sat in their fancy Manhattan pads ridiculing Bush and his dummy followers, people who still think it's okay to talk about loving God and country were casting their vote for the dummy. 'Flyover country', as the great spaces between the Bagel and Hollywood are known by the elite, sent them a message that will keep for the next four years.
There is always a certain moment during an electoral period which somehow stands out in one's memory. More often than not it has the opposite effect to what was intended. For me, it was the foul-mouthed tirade against George Bush by Whoopi Goldberg during a John Kerry fund-raiser. The Hollywood types roared with delight, and she went on and on repeating it. The networks were delighted, the gossip columns full of praise. Actually, all it did was to show the lack of connection between the amoral elite, whose names appear in the press, and the folks back home, so to speak. Or was it when it transpired that the Guardian had printed a column praising Lee Harvey Oswald and John Hinckley Jr? (However much in jest, it caused outrage over on this side.) It could also have been when John Kerry was photographed ad nauseam windsurfing and snowboarding, sports known as elitist in the good old US of A. It also could have been Teresa Kerry's incredible charge that Laura Bush has never held a real job, not much appreciated by simple folk who think teaching is a real profession while manying money is not quite the real deal.
George Soros, Michel Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Bianca Jagger, Harvey Weinstein, Dan Rather, Jon Bon Jovi, Bill Chit on (yes, the original Draft Dodger could not even carry the state of Arkansas
for Kerry) need I say more? Yes, I do. The New York Times, CBS, NBC and ABC, the Washington Post, Time and Newsweek (the seven deadly sinners as our Paul Johnson dubbed them a quarter of a century ago) all did their stuff against Bush, from outand-out fabrications to misrepresentations, but at the end all they got for their troubles was an increased Republican majority in both houses and 60 million votes — an all-time record — for George W. Bush, the dumbest buffoon to win the White House since Ronald Reagan.
Is Bush-bashing by celebrities coming to an end? I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Hollywood simply can't help it. Nor can New York. It's a question of snobbism. Church-going folk look stupid to them, as did soldiers, firemen and cops until 11 September 2001. It's also a cultural thing. The snobs think that sex with anyone for whatever reason is good, that gay marriages are normal and that big government is great government. The little people do not agree, and that's where the lack of connection between them lies. I don't know how it happened but, as I said, it's quite a switcheroo. I landed in this country when Henry Cabot Lodge, Howard Taft and people like the Rockfellers were Republicans, and those who worked for us — drivers, maids and office employees — were Democrats. The meek shall, after all, inherit the government.
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