Orwell Monday [Oct 27, 2002]

The trickle of Orwell questions turned into a slightly faster trickle over the weekend. I told Hitch to grab a cup of coffee. We found Sullivan weeping in the hall closet of his beachfront home.

"What's the matter, Sully?" I said.

"Paul Wellstone," he said.

"I know," I said. "We're all sad."

"I didn't want him to die!" Sully said. "Not now! Not like this! I'd barely begun to bash him!"

When you're feeling low, a little George Orwell is a perfect tonic. That's what I say. So I whipped out my PC laptop, sat my peers down, and began to blog.

C. Monks, whose website just celebrated its 100th visitor, asks, "Who would win in a fight, Orwell or a bear?"

NP: A bear.

CH: Orwell. In Homage to Catalonia, he describes a moment when a captain shoots a bear while riding an elephant, but steps around a puddle first. He was the foremost chronicler of the absurdity of the tragedy of the human predicament.

AS: I'd like to point out that even though I wrote a piece this summer in The New Republic titled "Paul Wellstone, American Lenin," I still respected the late senator's right to express himself. And I'd like to add that the following passage from the piece:"If sedition has a human face, it's Wellstone's. If lack of patriotism is a virtue, then Wellstone is a saint," has been misquoted and misinterpreted by my multitude of enemies.

M.S. Fonda, starting a disturbing trend of Orwell-question-writers who for some reason don't include their full names, asks, "What was Orwell's favorite color--Black or white?"

CH: Orwell was always on the right side of the color line. He didn't play favorites.

NP: Black.

AS: I think he preferred black, unlike Harry Belafonte, who, as I bravely pointed out in Salon, is a bigot. To show preference for one race over another is racism, pure and simple, and anyone who disagrees with me is a nigra-loving ass-head.

Howard Peirce of Ohio poses a question for Hitch and Sully. "Sirs," he writes, "In Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell describes a Jew. Given the opportunity, would Orwell agree with your views on the Middle East Crisis unreservedly, or after due consideration?"

CH: I don't know what you mean by Middle East "crisis." There are no crises, only failures of nerve.

AS: Without the Jews, I'd be nothing.

This is an interesting softball from A.A. Shickey. It goes: "If you were eating dinner with Orwell and had to eat three other people from history, Who would you eat?"

NP: If you're talking about history, and if eating is loosely defined, I would eat the 1976 version of Lynda Carter, Marilyn Monroe around 1953, and all the Go-Gos, who count as one person, circa about 1979. Orwell wouldn't be Down and Out anymore, if you know what I'm saying.

CH: A frivolous answer from a frivolous person. I would eat Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa, and Princess Diana, all of whom deserve to be devoured by two superior intellects.

AS: I would eat Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and Howell Raines of the New York Times, thereby making the world safe for democracy again. Orwell despised the Times, and he'd dig in right next to me.

Moacis, from the University of Chicago, so he MUST be well-educated, asks, "In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell spends a lot of pages discussing marksmanship and the uncertainty of hitting a target over a long distance. Would he have been better off ditching the left-wing socialists and joining the right-wing and incredibly facha US Army Engineer Company?"

NP: Probably not.

CH: No. Orwell despised both the right and the left.

AS: I want to clarify a recent post of mine that went, "Paul Wellstone might as well be Pol Pot. He masks his innate desire for the fall of the west with phony populism. And it may be likely that he has sex with underage girls." I was speaking metaphorically. I have nothing but sympathy for the family and friends of this mercifully deceased left-wing opponent of the state.

NP: Andrew Sullivan's opinions are his own. They are not necessarily endorsed by the keeper of this blog.

AS: Shut up, you red bastard.