When I was a young man I knew a renowned art historian, born a Jew, whose loathing for his co-religionists knew no boundaries. It was the nineteen fifties and this distinguished and successful man -- whom I do not name out of consideration for his living children -- devoted much of his time to living in a pretend WASP world. The Holocaust and the long history of persecution that Jews had suffered had not opened his heart to his own people, it had caused him to shut off any feeling for them. Through a connection to then President Eisenhower, he even managed to purchase an apartment in an elegant "restricted" Fifth Avenue apartment building. He married his young gentile Smith College graduate assistant, and for all his success, deeply resented that his religion kept him from a place on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art which was then off limits to Jews. When a famed Jewish art collector and philanthropist died, and left his remarkable art collection to the state of Israel with the proviso that this "expert" deliver the dedication speech, the art historian kept postponing the trip until he was forced to go by his young wife. As he descended the airplane steps into the Holy Land, he fell forward and dropped dead. He was buried in Israel where he will lie for eternity. A sad, true, and dare I say it, funny story. We all know such people. Their self loathing is often explainable, the effects of a hostile culture upon them in their youth -- explainable but never justifiable, and comically tragic.
We have such an example of the high ranking self-loather on the Supreme Court. Justice Clarence Thomas whose rise in the world was aided by progressive jurists establishing anti-segregation laws, was appointed by Bush the elder to smuggle an unacceptable reactionary into the court under cover of his color. This undistinguished jurist, married to a Caucasian, and beholden to the far right, has possibly done more to halt the progress of African Americans than any other sitting Judge. I say possibly only because it is harder to look into the hearts and minds of a Roberts, or Alito, our recent Bush Junior appointees. You need a canary and a miner's lamp to gaze into that noxious heart of darkness and stay alive.
And now we have another champion self-loather in Senator Larry Craig. An abusive anti-gay culture has created this misshapen monster of a man - one who fought against the rights of homosexuals in the Senate while allowing his own gay proclivities to express themselves behind toilet doors. It is more than an act of hypocrisy; it is an American tragedy. The self hatred has tragic consequences; not only for the Larry Craigs of the world and their families, but for those he viciously attacked in his "Defense of Marriage" proposals. The fear and loathing in Idaho is truly fear and self-loathing. And with any luck and a lot more compassion there will be less of this in my sons' world and in my grand-daughter's generation.
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Posted August 30, 2007 | 10:13 PM (EST)