ROY EDROSO

Reversal of Fortuyn

In life, Pim Fortuyn was a fascinating conflator of traditional Dutch liberal values and contemporary European anti-immigration animi. In death, he is becoming, to some conservatives, a holy martyr--felled not by radical vegetarianism, but by those who had the gall to call him such vile names as "right-wing" and "racist."

People have called names like those, and worse, in elections throughout the Western world without being declared accessories to murder. But tell that to Andrew Sullivan, who blames Fortuyn's assassination on an astonishingly large number of people:

"So this is quite possibly an assassination of an openly gay man by the extreme left, because he held contrarian but completely defensible views. The vicious rhetoric spouted against him by leftist, liberal and even moderate politicians and journalists no doubt contributed to this outcome."

It is odd to hear an avowed opponent of hate crime legislation claiming that vigorous political opposition abets homicide. But the opportunity to score points on lefties (and their fellow-travelers, the moderates) is too good to pass up, it seems, even if it means a momentary change in tactics.

At the same time, it seems Fortuyn's association with the Right is being retracted posthumously in the conservative press. At the London Times, Michael Gove portrays Fortuyn as "uncompromisingly neo-liberal"--an oxymoron new to Crank Watch. At National Review Online, Rod Dreher says, "Fortuyn is being described as a 'far right' or 'hard right' politician, which is nonsense," and at NRO's blog Dreher quotes a Dutch supporter as saying, "I don't think [Fortuyn] would have been considered on the right at all in America"--which is a bit like saying that Bill O'Reilly would not be considered particularly bellicose at a WWF wrestling match.

Right-leaning (Don't kill them, it's just an adjective!) big media outlets in America are slowly picking up instructions on the proper portrayal of Fortuyn from their blogbrothers. The Washington Times, which on Sunday described Fortuyn as a "Dutch Rightist," rendered him a "Gay Dutch leader" and a "populist" on Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, while admitting that "his program may have appealed to some baser sentiments," pointed out that Fortuyn "never used Le Penesque rhetoric about 'expulsions' and "camps" for immigrants."

At the New York Post, Fortuyn is at present still a "right-winger," but you can expect that to change.

On a related note, I wonder what the folks who are now so allergic to political labels will say when the feds start kicking out details in the case of mailbox guy Luke Helder.

One hopes investigators thought to ask Helder his opinion of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.

Wherever There's a Hang-up, You'll Find Spider-Man

Providence has sent the new Spider-Man movie to keep warblogger Jim Lileks' head from exploding. His war coverage had left some of us afraid that he might blow a gasket, but on Tuesday his vengeful fury was harmlessly redirected toward persons unknown who might not like the movie as much as he did:

"You will find a reason to dislike it to show how cool you are. You would have called Citizen Kane 'crap' because there weren't any lightsaber duels...You will find the CGI 'unconvincing,' and make mental notes to buy the DVD and do a frame-by-frame so you can point out the errors...stay up until midnight IMing your friends about how this was going to SUCK--and even though you saw right away how well this worked, well, no way you will ever admit you were wrong..."

Etcetera. But at least Ted Rall gets a break this week.

Lileks was already obsessing on the movie last month, in this Randian disquisition on the jealousy of J. Jonah Jameson: "He hates Spiderman and the others: because they are better than us. Because they do great things...We are less than they are and we know it...."

When the pop artifact itself was delivered unto his pulsing nervous system, Lileks' serotonin levels spiked, and he writes on Spider-Man with a passion he usually reserves for old matchbooks.

Of course, like everything else to Lileks, the film is eventually related to 9/11. "I don't think we're in the mood for Dark Tortured Heroes anymore," he intones. "Batman had, shall we say, issues...yes, he lost his parents through no fault of his own, but you could say the same about the 1500 orphans created by the attack on the WTC." Take that, commie wuss DC superhero! POW! ZAP!

But these are mere tics--stray, cantankerous mutterings the old pop-culture hand makes in passing as the CGI-fueled rocket-car of Hollywood ballyhoo bears him speedily along. Not once does he talk of the Taliban. Not once does he imagine them slaughtering his own family. No more Dark Tortured Warblogger, at least for a day.

I have not seen Spider-Man, and thus cannot support Lileks' claim that "this movie is more important, in the long run, than any other movie, novel, artwork or musical composition that will be produced in 2002..." It's hard to see how even he can, come to think of it--it's only May--and his explanation makes things no clearer: "Deeper, smarter, wiser movies will be released, but they will have small audiences of people who were already inclined to believe whatever point the movie made." Yes, a pity that these art-house freaks can't share the Brechtian detachment of Spider-Man fans.

"Art," Lileks finally declares, "be it sculpture or painting, is culturally irrelevant." Well, glad he cleared that up. Let's all stop trying to make any.

All in all, though, a cheerful exercise in testosterwriting, but for one bad omen: Lileks indicates, near the end, that he might brave the spectre of imminent nuclear death to visit New York again. Oh, great; that's all we need.

PS: National Review Online devotes three, count 'em three, pages to Spider-Man reviews. Robert A. George says the film "reminds us what being American is all about" and compares the Green Goblin to Bin Laden and others: "After saving the innocents, [Spidey] then goes to extinguish the evil that is the Goblin. How can any great power do less?" Josh Goldberg agrees that it's about good versus evil, and sticks in one of those "no guardrails" references which, like the dollar-sign pins in Atlas Shrugged, neoconservatives use to signal each other. Only John Podhoretz implies that the whole thing may not be about 9/11, or good versus evil, but about money and the separation of suckers from same.

That's What Makes Horse Races

Those Saudis--can't live with 'em, can't win the Derby (or maybe even a war) without 'em. At NRO's blog on Saturday, John J. Miller cheered: "There's something appropriate, this year, about a horse called War Emblem winning the Kentucky Derby..."

War Emblem is owned by Saudi Prince Ahmed bin Salman. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Prince is the first Arab owner ever to win the Derby. He bought the horse--from an American!--three weeks before the race.

"'There's some anti-Arab sentiment here,' a Kentucky horse breeder told us after War Emblem crossed the finish line," the New York Daily News reported on Tuesday. "'But the Prince has pumped a lot of money into this game. You can't bite the hand that feeds you.'"

As NRO is famously hostile to Saudi Arabia ("They also export hate--the hatred of America"), it's a surprise that none of Miller's colleagues blogged to differ with him on War Emblem's symbological value. Or maybe not. As they say in the sports world, a win is a win.