ROY EDROSO

The impresarios of our current war effort continue to expand their enemies list. As reported here previously, dozens of nations, including many formal allies, made that list early; recently, France ascended to the top spot (with at this writing more hateful ink from some quarters than even Saddam gets), and Germany and Belgium are not far behind. (Curiously, the other big abstainer, Russia, seems to be getting a pass so far.)

But beyond the nations that putatively comprise the new Axis-plus, the enemies list also has room for special categories of offenders, ranging from reflexively despised individuals to groups affiliated by profession. Foremost among the latter are American and English artists.

Aesthetes of a certain stripe have stooped to protest since long before any such thing as anti-war movements was imagined. But while most of the entertainers taking a stand against, for example, the Vietnam War waited till the quagmire was evident before safely donning their peace pins, currently several (though certainly not many) actors, writers, etc., have caught the antiwar bus early.

These folks have little to gain from opposing a popular war, and little chance of affecting its prosecution. One might, if sympathetic, applaud them for their courage, or, if unsympathetic, dismiss them as irrelevant and misguided. But the current crop of war advocates are not content to let them off so easily. Every celebrity deliberator on the war, from Sheryl Crow to Rickey Medlocke, is exposed to journalistic scrutiny far surpassing their impact on the national discourse.

Scan any conservative website nowadays and you'll likely find, nestled among the expected indictments of Hitlery Klintoon et alia, angry lashings at pop-culture celebrities who have spoken out of turn.

Take the case of Viggo Mortensen, star of the Tolkien movies, who for his statements against the war gets the Chomsky treatment here and here and here and here and hundreds of other places. Representative quote: "You're out of your mind, Viggo."

Most of the anti-lefty-artist commentary runs like that. "What planet are these people from?" says Velvet Hammers of Martin Scorsese. "Anti-War Rantings from Hollywood are Asinine," says the Tucson Citizen. "John Cusack would now get run over with my tank," asserts Pdawwg. One Pundit Ex Machina reserves a whole page for his similar celebrity backhandings, in which the word "idiot" repeated several times serves as a unifying theme.

Deeper thinkers pursue the anti-artist offensive at greater length and with more creative angles.

Sometime thespian Andrew Sullivan, who has led the charge with frequent derisory "Sontag Awards" to complainers like Kurt Vonnegut and Terry Gilliam, connects the dots in a more sweeping indictment, suggesting that antiwar artists are not only wrong, but also artistically invalidated by their politics. Of Sean Penn: "I won't be able to take his real career as seriously again." As for Sheryl Crow, she has "undermined her own considerable talent as a song-writer." The formal charge leading to their disbarment: "abuse" of fame. "Far from clarifying our public debate," Sullivan writes, "this confusion of separate worlds, separate standards and separate callings merely accelerates our cultural and political decline." (Some artists do pass Sullivan's smell-test, though--his model for a responsible artist/politician is Arnold Schwartznegger. He also mentions Bono, but means Sonny Bono, not the one from U2.)

Artists don't even have to take a stand on the war to get war treatment: Colby Cosh does a long treatise on songwriter Richard Thompson's long-ago conversion to Islam and, decoding his lyrics, decides, "Once you've renounced the world it is easy to form the desire to destroy it." Why's this coming up now? "What I notice, looking at Thommo's recorded output, is that the cynical, bleak tenor of his early solo work took on positively violent and apocalyptic tones after he went Muslim," writes Cosh. "I've always thought so--this isn't me rewriting history to suit a new view of Islam..." Uh huh.

It appears the damned artists have got pro-war writers so nervous that even a mildly satiric view of American life puts them, these days, into attack mode. George F. Will pounces on Alexander Payne's recent film About Schmidt: "It is still very modern," Will sniffs, "to suppose that people like Schmidt who do not 'share their feelings' have none..." Will also swipes at long-dead proto-Payne Sinclair Lewis: "Some critics insist that the portraits of Winesburg, Gopher Prairie, Zenith and Schmidt's Omaha are 'really' sympathetic," he baits, before inferring strongly that they are in fact "exercise[s] in condescension" and insisting balefully that "a haunting sense of regret about time wasted...is the human condition, not a Midwestern affliction." Like thunder after lightning, Emmett Tyrell seconds: "a tedious regurgitation of all those novels beginning somewhere in the 19th century whose mission it was to lecture us on the mindlessness of middle-class life." (via Brad Olsen.) Over at National Review Online, Ned Flanders calls The Hours "pure poison" and "an apologia for evil." And it wasn't even directed by Michael Moore!

Brecht once jokingly (one supposes) commented that if a citizenry were turning against its government, the government ought to sweep out that citizenry and appoint a new one. Toward this end, not content to merely devalue renegade artists, some plucky scribes have proposed something similar to Brecht's bagatelle, but in earnest. "Not everyone in Hollywood is pro-Saddam," assures OpinionJournal, offering several celebrities (e.g. Dennis Miller, Ron Silver) that its readership could patronize without fear of political taint.

And when Sam Hamill, an invitee to Laura Bush's White House poetry summit, made some dissenting comments beforehand, and Mrs. Bush, perhaps sensing an Eartha Kitt moment, cancelled said summit, Hammil's fellow-invitee Roger Kimball suggested that there were "many distinguished poets who believe Sam Hamill is a publicity-craving nonentity who spoiled their chance to celebrate American poetry at the White House," and that these "Poets for Responsible U.S. Foreign Policy" (as if a shared disappointment were the same thing as support for Kimball's politics) comprised "a bigger group than you might think." As if in answer to this, one Charles L. (Charley) Weatherford convened "Poets for the War." A sample verse from Weatherford: "Now, in a land of suicide bombs/security is a dangerous job./Men and women do it anyway,/although their families may be left to sob." (If you think I'm giving him short shrift, go to his website and check the remainder.)

Some go so far as to denounce even the merest notice of artists as distasteful. "In truth, the media monolith that fed the country incessant celebrity pap instead of news for a decade or more was already exhausted before 9/11, as the public turned increasingly to such alternative sources as the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh," observes one Melik Kaylan (best known, insofar as he/she is known, as an Ann Coulter apologist). "The celebrity era was already dying... A sharp change occurred in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when most citizens felt a twinge of nausea at the sight of an Entertainment Weekly cover."

Let the record show that, per Adweek, in the storied year 2001 Entertainment Weekly's ad revenue grew by 6.9 percent, to $198.5 million; during the first six months of 2002, per the Magazine Publishers of America, EW charted an average circulation of 1,539,979--not bad for a specimen that provokes in "most citizens" a "twinge of nausea." Let common sense show that American culture is at least as steeped in pap and pop-cult refuse as it has ever been. There is no quantifiable sign that Joe Sixpack has abandoned Joe Millionaire for Drudge dispatches.

Again, where's this coming from? It may only be that prowar commentators recognize that they have a better chance of getting readers to attend a lambasting of, say, Sean Penn than of, say, David Hackworth.

Also, as I have observed elsewhere, the new shouters are more plugged into popular culture than their forebears. Even pundits deaf and blind to the nuances of art are aware of how much it is talked of in our entertainment-obsessed times. (It may be that they are similarly obsessed themselves, and hate that their iTunes playlists have been polluted by songs whose creators, they must always be aware, do not share their views.)

Or it may reflect the new commentariat's commitment to total war, in the ideological sense. During the long march to Baghdad, this column has monitored the increasing stridency of the commentariat's attacks, which, inspired by talk radio hotheads and abetted by the massive reach and easy standards of the blogosphere, have turned our public debate into a shouting match and creative invective competition. Opponents are routinely tagged "idiotarians" and "weasels," as if substantive argument were too good for them. The primary goal is not the victory of ideas, but the depersonalization of enemies.

So if you thought it didn't make much difference what your preferred vendor of songs, stories, poems etc. did when he or she was off the clock, you are mistaken. This nation has not been asked to sacrifice materially for the war--indeed, government non-military spending is going through the roof--but we have been told to get our minds right. Most of us are inclined to go along to get along, and need only a hint. Purveyors of intellectual product, even the fun kind, are getting a stronger warning.