Madonna, Sloane Ranger; Another U.S. War Crime; Good Riddance to Bill; The Fat Are on the March
Like a Sloane
The term Sloane Ranger was coined by a subeditor at Harpers & Queen?an upscale, British glossy?to describe a particular type of conservative, upper-class Brit, the kind that reads the Financial Times, eats jello with a fork and regards Sloane Square?in Chelsea at the end of the King's Road?as the center of the universe. Sloane Rangers, or Sloanes, are the British equivalent of preppies. They were immortalized in The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook (a ripoff of The Official Preppy Handbook), which was a huge bestseller in the early 80s. Princess Di was their patron saint.
Sloanes aren't very popular over here at the moment. Since the Labor Party's victory in the 1997 general election, anyone thought of as remotely posh has become a social pariah. Once a dominant tribe, Sloanes have become the Kurds of the United Kingdom. The Princess of Wales is dead and the government wants to outlaw hunting.
But just when you thought the lost tribe of Britain was about to disappear forever up the Queen's fundament, a new messiah has emerged: Madonna. I know that sounds preposterous. How could the former Mrs. Sean Penn pass as a member of the British aristocracy? I'm not claiming that Madonna has managed to fool anyone that she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, only that she has embraced the whole Sloane way of life. She isn't being laughed at by the members of the class she's aspiring to join, either. On the contrary, they've put on their finest jewels, polished the family silver and lowered the drawbridge. To receive such a high-profile celebrity endorsement is a wonderful morale-booster for a group that has almost no public defenders.
At first, the dwindling ranks of Britain's landed gentry couldn't quite believe it. Madonna a Sloane? Okay, so Guy Ritchie is the stepson of a baronet, but surely she was no more impressed by his aristocratic pedigree than he was. Then she was spotted quaffing a gin and tonic in the Grenadier, a pub in Knightsbridge that's actually listed in The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook. That was harder to dismiss.
Finally, she appeared on the front page of The News of the World being put through her paces at the West London Shooting School! In Britain, unlike in America, shooting is still pretty much the exclusive preserve of the upper classes. That was incontrovertible proof. The queen of pop really had embraced Sloanedom?hook, line and Barbour. The sound of tea cups clattering to the floor could be heard all over Gloucestershire.
Madonna's coming-out party was held just before Christmas, cunningly disguised as a wedding. Everything about the event was redolent of British Society at its height. With its Scottish setting, its kilt-wearing groom and its ceilidh band, it was straight out of a Merchant-Ivory film. The fact that the happy couple chose to honeymoon in Wiltshire, of all places, rather than St. Bart's, was the icing on the cake. No danger of bumping into Puff Daddy there.
It's fair to say that some PLUs?People Like Us, another euphemism for Britain's upper classes?are awfully excited about this. If Madonna has traded in her cowboy boots for a pair of green Wellingtons, then the fortunes of Sloanes must be due for a revival, right? What more accurate barometer of changing fashions could there be than the Material Girl? Her ability to anticipate coming trends is what's kept her in the spotlight all these years. This isn't just a fashion spread in The Daily Telegraph. This is the golden seal of approval from the most accurate judge of the zeitgeist in modern pop history.
On the other hand, it could be part of a cynical attempt to try to fill Princess Di's shoes. If Madonna's going to be spending more time in Blighty, perhaps she's earmarked that role for herself. She originally wanted to get married at Althorp, the Princess of Wales' ancestral home, until that plan was vetoed by Di's brother. Dominic Mohan, the showbusiness editor of The Sun, seems to think Madonna has royal aspirations. "Since we're restricted with what we can write about Prince Harry and Prince William, we're left with Charles and Andrew, which isn't too thrilling," he told The New Yorker last month. "If we put Madonna on the front page, sales go up."
An alternative theory is that she's just behaving like a typical American millionaire who's fallen in love with all things British. You see them all the time, these Yankee Anglophiles, hoisting their shopping baskets around Harrods. Madonna has even started speaking with a British accent. Sloane Rangers may be considered a bit passe over here, but over in your country some people?particularly rich, white people?still think they're pretty glamorous.
If this last theory is correct?and my hunch is it is?it doesn't bode well for Madonna's marriage. Guy Ritchie may have been brought up at Loton Park, one of the finest estates in Shropshire, but he'd prefer to think of himself as an East End barrow boy. The 32-year-old director of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is what's known over here as a Mockney, a Sloane Ranger desperately trying to pass as a cockney. With such conflicting social aspirations, it's only a matter of time before Guy's and Madonna's worlds collide.
Good Riddance
David Halberstam, writing in the January Vanity Fair, calls Bill Clinton a survivalist, a word the writer says he did not know existed. Halberstam is a hell of a writer and a man of principles. When Mort Zuckerman tried to suck up to him at some cocktail party, DH told him to f?- off, and turned his back. (Zuckerman was bidding to build a humongous edifice at the time, one that would cast a shadow over parts of Central Park, along with Halberstam's building.)
Halberstam is almost alone on this one. Not many writers have been able to resist Zuckerman's oily charms. When I wrote that Sylvester Stallone had gotten seven draft deferments by changing schools every three months, thus avoiding Vietnam in a more ingenious manner than the 42nd Commander-in-Chief, Stallone sued me in England, where the draconian libel laws effectively mean that truth is no defense. Amy B., an assistant to Graydon Carter at VF, came up with the goods, but I nevertheless had to pay. In England. Over here the great Rambo dropped the suit quicker than you can say "coward." The only person to congratulate me for my mini-exclusive was David Halberstam, a man who won a Pulitzer Prize for his Vietnam reporting.
"For all Clinton's weaknesses, he was better than his enemies," writes Halberstam in a pro-Clinton but quite objective essay on the Draft Dodger's legacy. As an implacable enemy of Clinton's, I, of course, beg to differ. Ironically, he is the first American president I've ever hated, and I hope the last. Why should a Greek, whose country was saved after the war by the Marshall Plan, hate an American president? Easy. It has to do with the intellectual treason of the left, which he championed, while pretending the opposite; the betrayal of the gentlemanly code of honor; his refusal to fight for anything substantial, except for reelection, for the posturing, the stage-management of everything, the use of office and country to promote himself and his wife.
The lies under oath, needless to say, do not help. As R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. wrote in The American Spectator, "The impact of a presidency is felt everywhere, bearing upon tastes, styles, normative standards, humors, even the average citizen's use of language?as when said citizen appears in a court of law to defend himself against yet another charge of indecent exposure." Clinton contaminated the presidency and the country with his lies and, believe me, I'm the last man on Earth to condemn someone for getting a Monica Lewinsky. (Had I been asked a similar question, in the rather unlikely scenario of Taki being president of the United States, my answer would have been as follows: "It is none of your business, and I'll gladly be held in contempt rather than answer your questions.")
But the First Liar reverted to type and lied time and again. He showed his contempt for law, truth, morality, the dignity of his office and the public's trust by doing what he's always done best: lying. He lied to his wife?which I do all the time?but also to his daughter?which I do not?to his friends, to his Cabinet, and to the American people, who he evokes time and time again. And when he survived, he claimed he did what he did in order to save the Constitution. He never apologized for sexually harassing, perhaps raping, the various women who have come forward, he never apologized for skirting the law in shaking down special interests for campaign cash, he never apologized for obstructing justice and arranging payoffs to a crook like Webster Hubbell.
What he did do was to insult our intelligence by refusing to admit he committed perjury on many occasions. He used class-war rhetoric to divide the races and, as David Halberstam admitted in the VF piece, "His constituencies were an odd amalgam of women, blacks, liberals, Latinos, gays and some blue-collar workers"?i.e., Clinton knew very well how to divide and conquer, something a president of a diverse society like that of America should rather die than do. There was no malice in him, writes Halberstam. Perhaps. But thriving on manipulation, on manufactured sentiments and on falsehoods is in itself extremely malicious. As Mark Steyn wrote, "Shrinking the office to fit him, he shrank the country, too."
And now for his legacy. Again, very easy. Eight years of lies and abuse of power. Sure, the Dow Jones index was 3400 when he came in and gained 7000 points after that. Talk to poor white folk in Appalachia about it, and see what they think. Sure, he kept Saddam Hussein at bay. Talk to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi parents whose children have starved to death, and find out what they feel. Sure, he managed to overthrow Milosevic. Talk to the thousands of innocent Serbs he deracinated and ruined and get their opinions.
Under examination, his regime attacked with no holds barred, willing to do anything to destroy an opponent, with no compassion, no sense of fairness or decency, no sense of truth. He never understood what being president meant. He hung out with Hollywood stars and fatcats, he rung out the last drop of celebrity, he stole the credit of others, he remains shameless to the bitter end.
And speaking of the end, he chose to act as a provocateur, refusing to hold his tongue?unlike George Bush the Elder?refusing to act in a dignified and presidential manner, reveling in the sleazy soundbite while pretending to accept the rule of law. It is a fitting end to a sleazy presidency and an even sleazier person. This is why I have to respectfully disagree with David Halberstam.
Nuclear War
Two years too late, Western public opinion has at last turned to outrage over NATO's aggression in the Balkans. It took the sickness and death of European servicemen to bring home to people the horrendous carnage the U.S.-led bombing wrought.
The United States rained down 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium (DU) shells on Yugoslavia. Depleted uranium is a by-product of the enrichment of uranium for the production of nuclear weapons and reactor fuel. As it is heavier than lead, DU is added to munitions to enable them to penetrate heavy armor. On impact, it erupts in a vapor cloud of radioactive uranium oxide, emitting dangerous alpha and beta radiation.
Seven Italian soldiers and one aid worker are now dead?as are five Belgian peacekeepers, two Dutch nationals, two Spaniards, two Portuguese and one Czech?all from leukemia and other cancers. NATO responded the usual way. It orchestrated an orgy of lying. "Negligible hazard," according to one NATO spokesman. "There's absolutely no proof that there's a connection" between DU and cancer, spluttered our repulsive, soon to be ex-Secretary of State. "We cannot possibly act on the perceptions of people or on the view of a word such as 'uranium,'" declared the grotesque Secretary-General of NATO, Lord George Robertson. "This is a proven technology that has been independently tested."
Governments, bought and paid for by the United States, were then wheeled out to parrot the NATO line. Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova dismissed the concern about DU. It was all being whipped up by people trying to get Western troops out of the Balkans. The Kostunica regime in Belgrade, hoisted into power by a U.S.-sponsored coup, chose last week, of all weeks, to pay obeisance to NATO. Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic trotted off to Brussels, tail wagging cheerfully, to frolic with Robertson. Yugoslav forces and NATO, a delighted Svilanovic announced, are "not enemy armies anymore." Serbs must have been surprised by the news. They had not considered themselves enemies of NATO?more victims of an unprovoked attack. Robertson and Svilanovic then solemnly agreed "to set up channels of communication to exchange information" on the issue of depleted uranium. "We need to continue this very open discussion," little Goran explained, "to have guarantees for the local population that they are safe." That's so sweet.
Unfortunately, few share the new Yugoslavia's faith in NATO, or the U.S. Certainly not the scientists of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). For more than a year they could not get Washington to divulge the location of the sites targeted with DU weapons. Finally, last November UNEP scientists visited 11 such sites in Kosovo and found evidence of significant radioactivity in eight of them. "We found some radiation in the middle of villages where children were playing," said Pekka Haavisto, former environment minister of Finland who headed the mission. "We were surprised to find this a year and a half later? [T]here were cows grazing in contaminated areas, which means the contaminated dust can get into the milk." Meanwhile, in Bosnia?hit with 10,000 DU shells in 1995?cancer cases are dramatically on the rise.
In the face of widespread public fury, NATO governments are in full retreat. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, who had insouciantly declared that he harbored a "healthy skepticism" about the DU-cancer connection, quickly changed his tune. Now he was "skeptical about the use of munitions that could lead to dangers for our own soldiers." The British government?the most reliably toadylike of all of America's allies?is now offering to test any soldier who served in the Balkans and the Gulf War for depleted uranium.
What is causing outrage is the revelation that both the British and U.S. military had known for at least 10 years the disastrous consequences of depleted uranium. Prof. Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project, claims that as far back as 1991 he had told his bosses that DU could cause cancer, mental illness and birth defects. According to Scotland's Sunday Herald, a British Ministry of Defense document, dated Feb. 25, 1991, explained that servicemen needed to wear full protective clothing and respirators when close to DU shells and that human remains exposed to DU had to be hosed down before disposal. In 1997 a British army report, entitled "The Use and Hazards of Depleted Uranium Munitions" asserted: "Inhalation of insoluble uranium dioxide dust will lead to accumulation in the lungs with very slow clearance?if any? All personnel? should be aware that uranium dust inhalation carries a long-term risk? [The dust] has been shown to increase the risks of developing lung, lymph, and brain cancers." Just before NATO began its military occupation of Kosovo, commanders warned of "residual heavy metal toxicity in armored vehicles" that had been struck by DU missiles, posing health risks to anyone coming in contact with them. A report by the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute, released four years ago, claimed that "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences. The risks associated with DU in the body are both chemical and radiological."
That DU has continued to be used despite these warnings is testimony to the Pentagon's spectacularly successful campaign of deceit. In the waning days of the Gulf War, a Lieut. Col. M.V. Ziehmn wrote a letter that has come to be known as the Los Alamos memo. He warned that unless the Pentagon was ready to lie on behalf of DU, the weapon would become politically unacceptable. "If DU penetrators proved their worth during our recent combat activities," Ziehmn wrote, "then we should assure their future existence...through Service/DoD proponency. If proponency is not garnered, it is possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat capability... Keep this sensitive issue in mind when after action reports are written." With full knowledge of its long-term hazards, using DU in the Balkans was yet another war crime perpetrated by the United States.