In his piece about the Academy Awards, the New Yorker’s David Denby wrote this:
I can’t give up my feeling that people are approving of their own tears when they respond to “Les Misérables.” After all, Michael Gerson, George Bush’s principal speechwriter, wrote an entire column in the Washington Post about how much he cried at “Les Mis.” But how much did the Bush Administration do for the downtrodden? I can’t think of a better definition of sentimentality—an emotion disconnected from what one actually is and does—than effusions like Gerson’s.
This is a sneering ignorance. Even a liberal film critic should be familiar with President Bush’s 2003 announcement of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the largest program in history to fight a single disease. The plan included a massive increase in funding–$15 billion over five years–to promote prevention, treatment, and compassionate care, mainly in Africa. Many were skeptical that large-scale AIDS treatment was even possible in the developing world. But studies show that PEPFAR is estimated to have saved 1.2 million lives between 2003-2007. The most recent data show that the number of AIDS-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa has fallen by about a third.
“The substantial life expectancy afforded by widespread access to cART [combination antiretroviral therapy] underscores the fact that HIV diagnosis and treatment in resource-limited settings should no longer be considered a death sentence,” according to Dr. Edward Mills, who helped oversee a large-scale analysis of life expectancy outcomes in Africa for HIV patients. “Instead, HIV-infected people should plan and prepare for a long and fulfilling life.”
“PEPFAR is changing the course of the AIDS epidemic,” according to Dr. Peter Piot, former executive director of the Joint United Nations Programm on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief was among George W. Bush’s finest hours–and for the record, Michael Gerson was one of the main advocates for PEPFAR in the Bush White House.
It takes a particularly confused and cynical individual to dismiss as “sentimentality” one of the most humane and effective enterprises in our lifetime. PEPFAR is certainly a more unambiguous success, and has saved many more lives, than the War on Poverty.
I can’t think of a better example of moral idiocy–of words disconnected from what reality actually is and what people have done–than columns like Denby’s.
He should stick to movie reviews.
Unfortunately, you are preaching to the choir. I wish the right wing press would be more effective on getting our message out that left wing policies hurt the very people they claim to help.
But who pays attention to the right-wing press? The same choir. That's the problem. As long as most Americans believe in an unbiased MSM, they'll discount the right-wing press as propaganda. If it's on CNN, however, take it to the bank! The first step, then, is somehow convincing people of the liberal bias. nOf course, liberals are very good at ignoring messages they don't like that do manage to make it to the MSM – the Geldof Time article mentioned below is an example of something that maybe could have turned the dial a bit but didn't.
Film critics. I suppose there is a more useless profession out there, but I can't think of any right now. A guy who makes his life writing about an imaginary world created by some of the richest buffoons on the planet ripping on Bush for not doing enough for the poor – now that's precious.
Politics, is probably more useless, or rather, filled with more useless people. It is showbiz for the ugly.
Well, whether or not politicians are more useless, or politics is filled with more useless people, they can certainly do more damage than some twit film critic.
I write movie reviews (probably one of the few conservatives doing so), and I hear this a lot. But ignorance like this is not limited to film reviewers. For years, I've told people who slam Bush for lack of caring, etc. about his work on AIDS and malaria in Africa. They've either never heard about it or sort of don't believe it, and this comes from very educated people, too. I don't think this kind of ignorance is the exclusive domain of film critics, though perhaps it sounds stupider coming from someone who's day job is in the world of the arts. But think of all the politicians, historians, and intellectuals who spout similar nonsense. It's annoying whereever you see it!
I have had the same conversation with liberal friends. I remember especially one colleague, who just refused to believe me…until she read it in the New York Times. then, and only then, did she grudgingly admit that Bush had "done a lot" in the fight against AIDS.
You know, you're right – film critics, like political pundits, book reviewers, etc., are part of the intellectual landscape that thrives in a society as steeped in freedom of speech as we are – and that's a good thing. And I'm not sure that hearing inanities from a film critic is any worse than hearing them from anyone else. Stupid is stupid – and there is plenty of it out there to go around. nSo I take back my "useless profession" comment. But I still think Denby is an ignorant twit!
I haven't read the New Yorker in years, but when I did I always enjoyed his commentary on films. He never seemed that political, at least that I can recall. But this does take the cake for ignorance, so maybe he's taken a different turn or is just trying to keep up with the other Leftists who run and write for that magazine. n nRegarding film reviews as being useless or not, I hear it a lot (and don't entirely disagree with it in some ways) but it is a pretty essential role in the film industry whether some people like it or not. Every studio wants buzz and any time there is a movie released they climb over themselves to get people to a press screening.
It comes from a moral arrogance that because I am X only X is good, anyone who is not X is bad and any and all actions taken or thoughts of X are good due to there "X" ness rather any inherent merit. The nonX doer rather than any deed is hated. And this is liberalism? At another time it was considered bigotry.
Beyond the work in AIDS, Denby might recognize unemployment was quite low for most of the Bush administration. I bet that helped a lot of the downtrodden. Did Bush cancel anti-poverty programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and on? One shouldn't even have to raise PEPFAR. The comment on its face is so ridiculous, as if the 8 years under GWB were a time when we all turned our back on the less fortunate. There are a million rebuttals to it beyond PEPFAR, I can't believe it made it past an editor.
Not incidentally, Denby also betrays his ignorance of both European history and American politics — not surprisingly. Why should today’s American conservatives — whose political canon draws from the Scottish Enlightenment, the American Revolution, Jefferson and 19th century liberalism — not feel sympathy for the Paris Insurrection of 1832? To be sure, like most Americans, we look askance at most everything those crazy French have done in their politics since 1789. Still, 1832 was a Republican uprising against a monarch! After the Bourbon Restoration was overthrown in 1830 and the Orleanist Louis-Phillipe put on the throne as a supposedly constitutional monarch, Republicans gradually became alienated and, led by middle-class students, the insurrection broke out in Paris and was suppressed. So, does Denby think Bush appointees in 2013 are expected to sympathize with the House of Orleans? I guess so.
Don't be too hard on Denby. n nI've had conversations with people who actually worked in the field in Africa for USAID-supported health organizations that have directly benefited from PEPFAR, and they give Bush no credit whatsoever. If you push them on it, they'll maybe give a grudging nod to him, but then turn to nitpicking bureaucratic problems that they hope will somehow show that PEPFAR's impact isn't all that great. n nDespicable people, really.
The more "winged," be it to the left or the right, that the press is, the less trustworthy it is. And I do not wish to have "messages" delivered to me from either direction, or any direction.
we-l-l-lll… n nI agree in principle…except that there simply is not a "winged" press of the right that is anywhere NEAR what the "winged" press of the left is. (I also suspect that many of the "objective" newsmen of the past that we admire were a lot more liberal than we realized, and therefore brought their own spin…but we just didn't realize it.) n nand there's a big difference in the wings. the Right likes to take Obama and his minions to task for their socialism-lite policies. the Left, otoh, likes to take Republicans to task for being evil, heartless, racist, and misogynistic. n nsome nite at 6pm, switch back and forth between Bret Baier on Fox and Al Sharpton on MSNBC. one is news. the other is ad hominem invective directed at anyone who disagrees with Obama. sad. n n n n
David Denby was the first to defend Clint Eastwood's chair talk at the GOP convention, which shut down a lot of rabid smears of "racist!". n nWhy is his blogpost singled out here? The blogposts at The New Yorker rarely last more than a day or two where you can find them. n nI finally saw "Les Mis" today, and was crying towards the end (Anne Hathaway really deserved her Oscar), thinking about the cruelty of humans, and the arc of history that keeps almost everyone in the world on the edge of disaster, whilst secretly applauding the French devotion to taking to the barricades to protest anything and everything. n nMr. Wehner needs a time-out in a world with shades of gray.
Clint Eastwood needs a defense? That is the differnce.