The conscience of Kissinger
Nicholas von Hoffman
Washington After the controversy over the FrostKissinger tiff hit the newspapers. NBC still had so little confidence in the videotaped interview that it was aired when a competing network was televising 'live' the baseball world series. Predictably, it is next to impossible to find anyone who chose to watch the two men when they could see the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Baltimore Orioles, The nastiest, and therefore the most entertaining, parts of the Frost-Kissinger debate weren't broadcast anyway, although NBC said that anyone who wished would be supplied with a printed transcript. For most People, though, the incident had the gossipy, transitory quality of a Frank Sinatra bar-room scuffle or another Kennedy family scandal; any details not supplied the first • time round aren't worth the getting.
The root of the trouble lies in the practice of having the person you are interviewing on your payroll. When Kissinger left office, he, like President Ford, was paid a reported million dollars to be available for television performances on NBC.
Frost, who was hired by NBC because of the generally good reviews he received here for his Nixon interviews, was also functioning as an NBC employee, so you would think: that the .matter could be handled as any other corporate endeavour. It doesn't work that way, however, because both men also insist on living up to their antagonistic social roles as newsmaker/public personage versus journalist/celebrity. Had Kissinger not been on NBC's payroll, then the rights and Prerogatives of interviewer and interviewee would have been mutually understood, and the bruised feelings would have been of the ordinary kind politicians and hacks inflict Upon each other.
Another kind of distortion arising from the purchase of Kissinger, or at least his memoirs, occurred with Tune magazine. Having paid what was reputed to be an enormous sum to print them before book Publication, for weeks prior to publication the magazine used its news columns to 'plug' Kissinger and therefore their purchases. The business was so absurd that Garry Trudeau, perhaps the nation's most Widely circulated cartoonist, devoted a series of comic strips to satirising Kissinger and the magazine. He might have also made fun of Kissinger's bodyguards. The famous doctor of diplomacy, who is testing new levels of self iMportance,makes no public appearance Without his protectors, Since the opinion is growing the man is scarcely worth the powder to blow up, the only reason the kriegsdoctor has for surrounding himself with armed men — ego aside — is a guilty conscience. He is certainly entitled to one, as anyone who has read Sideshow, William Shawcross's recent book on Nixon, Kissinger and Cambodia knows. Incidentally, neither Kissinger's published excerpts nor his electronic spewing have acquitted horrible Heinrich of Shawcross's indictment that he, more than any other, is responsible for the end of Cambodia and the Cambodians, — and that it happened out of ego, negligence, stupidity and an invincibly uninformed and pompous prejudice about the peoples and politics of South-East Asia.
These days, however, Kissinger isn't courting the good opinion of the types who would spare the time to read Shawcross's excellent book, Mr Guttural is flying on hawkish wings to Republican fund raisers, where corporate top management types are inundating their hero, John Connally, with the money they believe will put him in the White House. In Connally, the cuddly, fangtoothed German has found his match. The hippopotamus-mouthed Connally has been rocketing around the country as though he had overdosed on 'speed'. MosCrecently, this cliche Texan, the embodiment of gonadal politics, has proposed a Middle Eastern settlement which would in effect turn the entire region into an American protectorate. Under its provisions, the Israelis would return to their pre-1967 borders, the Arabs would agree to sell out at a fixed price, a Middle Eastern NATO would be established with the Japanese incorporated into its membership, a new American fleet would be created and stationed permanently in the Persian Gulf where a vast air-naval base would be placed. Something, one gathers, of the dimensions of Subic Bay in the Philippines. Preposterous, but, while thoughtful people see that Governor Macho has genitals where his brains are supposed to be, we are living in a moment when any loud noise out of either end of the steer is mistaken for leadership. Hence, the curious interest in the selection of delegates to a thoroughly unimportant meeting of Florida Democrats next month. At that meeting, the delegates will express an unofficial preference for their party's presidential nomination and, as of this writing, it appears that that person will be James Earl Carter, Jr, The Kennedy people made a showing which, depending on the newspaper you read, was either surprisingly strong, about what you'd expect against an incumbent president, or rather weak.
It's a tough moment for any public figure to win approbation. Even the Pope really didn't fare so well on his visit. The crowds were nowhere the size of those predicted. In Chicago, where there still are a large number of firstand second-generation Poles, the turnout was big, although not overwhelming, while in Washington it was only marginally larger than that which Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden received for their last anti-nuclear rally. The weather was against his Holiness, but so were the women. Numerous Catholic and nonCatholic women were offended by what he had to say on birth control, abortion, divorce and the ordination of priestesses in the Roman Church. Since some of these questions are a matter of strong contention in law court and legislature, there was some feeling that Pope John Paul had come entirely too close to dabbling in domestic American political affairs.
The hardest thing for most Americans, Catholic or not, to understand is his argument against birth control. Every survey taken indicates that Catholic couples take contraceptive measures as frequently as non-Catholic ones. They find papal objections to the practice incomprehensible but, by appearing to oppose birth control with the same moral vehemence as abortion, the Pope missed a chance to score points On abortion —something that many Americans, of all faiths and none, feel very uncomfortable about.
Another thing which is causing concern is the new high interest rates brought on by the recent actions of the Federal Reserve Board. In the face of a prime rate of nearly 15 per cent, predictions from every side indicate a recession. But seldom has a recession been predicted for as long as this one and yet refused to manifest itself. There have been times when business has been better, but, on the whole, it's been holding up and why it has been decided to associate the ever forthcoming recession with higher interest rates is a puzzle. In 1934 the prime rate was one and a half per cent, treasury bills were 0.008 per cent and a third of the country was out of work. Fifteen per cent or 30 per cent aren't high rates to someone who sees how he can make 31 per cent on his money. But the important part of the Fed's decision was the switch from a failing effort to control interest rates to concentrat ing on controlling money supply. The vote on the board was unanimous, but only the last set of unemployment figures have been good.
Not all the pressures on the White House are economic, however. Twenty-five thousand poufs and poufettes, or whatever is the correct name for those of the lesbionic persuasion, demonstrated here over the weekend. Whatever it was which caused so many limp wrists to stiffen was not immediately ascertainable outside the White House or even inside, where an aide explained,'We often see people demonstrating out there and never know whoor why, and when you go out and ask them, all they do is shout "More. More. Now.":
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