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My Quarrel with The Weekly Standard's Stephen Schwartz 3/4/2006 10:12:57 AM
O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book, as you have books for good manners. I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Couteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. -Touchstone the Clown, from William Shakespeare's As You Like It
Some months ago I had a rather polemical exchange with Stephen Schwartz, contributor and sometimes literary critic for The Weekly Standard ( http://www.weeklystandard.com ) a publication affiliated with the Neo-Conservative movement and owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. After privately sharing the correspondence with a number of friends, I was persuaded that it would make for an entertaining blog entry. Leaving aside the entertainment value of the exchange, it serves as documentation as to how today's culture warriors think and write. The occasion was the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature which had just been awarded to British playwright, Harold Pinter. Pinter, generally considered to be one of Britain's most important living playwrights, was considered a controversial choice by many conservatives and right-wingers in America. Schwartz, in an essay entitled "And The Winner Is..." ( http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/208tcruy.asp ) attacked the Nobel committee as having a political bias and awarding undeserving writers purely for being "anti-democracy miscreants." This argument would be repeated over and over again in the right-wing press and blogs Of course, neither Schwartz nor his followers ever suggest a living right-wing writer who was deserving of the award, nor could they deny the literary worth of Pinter's plays, merely focusing on his political speeches and his anti-war poems. I have seen a few of Pinter's plays performed, but not recently enough that I could claim an educated opinion on them, however, Schwartz, in his attempt to ascribe a left-wing, anti-American bias to the Nobel Committee made brief references to past Nobel Laureates, usually providing a brief characterization that one would expect to be offensive to readers of the Weekly Standard at one point, referring to "Dario Fo, [as] a tireless enemy of religion." I am familiar with Fo's work and took issue with that characterization, and so began our exchange. I quipped that if he could make such an assessment it was evident that he had likely not read Dario Fo's work and thus could not be trusted to hold an opinion on any other writer he named-- this is an assault on the pride of any literary critic (Interestingly enough, Schwartz had written an earlier essay ( http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=4746&R=A0A96A7 ) in which he characterized Fo somewhat more accurately as "an Italian playwright specializing in denunciations of capitalism" and had he done so again, there would have been no cause for this exchange.) On October 18, 2005, Stephen Schwartz wrote me to say: ...Your pedantic, pathetic attempt to turn his assaults on religion into "criticism of the Vatican" wouldn't do credit to a 12 year old. The claim of a Vatican association with fascism is an anticlerical hoax. As far as the charges of "hoax," I will let the professional historians decide. James Carroll's recent Constantine's Sword well documents the linkage between Catholic teaching and the anti-Jewish that ultimately manifested in the Holocaust. Carroll's account is well substantiated by the work of other historians. There were few instances where Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, their Cardinals, Archbishops, or Bishops openly criticized, protested, or worked against the Fascist regimes of either Italy or Nazi Germany and the various occupation governments. With very few exceptions the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church was either openly supportive or conveniently silent regarding the wars of expansion, the destruction of civil society, and the Nazis' "Final Solution." Only the Nazi policy of euthanasia of the sick and disabled incurred open resistance from the Catholic Church. Though there were any number of Catholic clergy and lay people who helped those targeted by the Final Solution, these were exceptional Catholics acting according to their conscience and not the leadership of the Holy See. Indeed, the motivations in some instances are still questionable given the number of forced conversions of Jewish children and the Vatican's refusal to return these children to surviving family members for few that the children would return to Judaism. The only hoax is the one that washes Pius XII's hands of responsibility for the genocide. I am a full-time literary critic and do not write on writers I haven't read. I also pay closer attention to foreign literature than American literature. And who, precisely, are you? You don't even have the courage to sign your own name. The idea that only ignorant people could disagree with you is typical of leftist morons today. Stephen Schwartz The listing of professional credentials as a substitute for dialogue is a nasty habit some self-proclaimed intellectuals acquire. It is a rhetorical move designed to either intimidate (and end the conversation) or to show one will not be intimidated. Both Schwartz and I are guilty of this but I will spare the reader by editing out both our excesses. That afternoon I responded with: Dear Mr. Schwartz: Despite appearances, I did sign my name on the form on theWeekly Standard's website along with my email. If my name was not attached, then it was a fault of bad coding by the website's manager, not an attempt on my part to remain anonymous. I will forgive you for thinking me cowardly. [Obligatory listing of credentials excised for the reader's sake.] There are many things with which one can find fault in the work of Dario Fo that would both not endear him to readers of the "Weekly Standard" and would have been reasonably accurate. You could have called him an anarchist, anticlerical, or a buffoon; you might have even cited some of his comments made after the 9/11 attacks, which have caused the vast majority of his American fans great discomfort. The point is that while Fo is certainly anticlerical (which is only a vice if the clergy is virtuous,) he is not a relentless enemy of religion. He has set himself up against the hierarchy of the Church native to his homeland but not against faith, or more specifically the content of the faith of the Church. The content of his own plays shows his admiration for Jesus, Saint Francis, and other figures of the Roman Catholic faith-- even if he presents them in a comic setting. Indeed, the theatre piece that most offended anger from the Vatican appears to be Fo's Mistero Buffo. Fo's contention is that the Gospels as interpreted by the Church serve the interests of the ruling elites, but unlike "enemies of religion" he a populist Jesus who loves the downtrodden. In this, Dario Fo is not an "enemy of religion" and not even a blasphemer, but a heretic. Mistero Buffo is a heretical theatre piece much like Lord Buckley's monologue, "The Nazz." Reverence is still accorded to the figure of veneration, irreverence is reserved for a particular orthodox viewpoint that is supported by institutional power. Mistaking or misrepresenting anticlericism for hostility to belief as you have done is the sort of conflation that would not do credit to a college freshman, and is a rhetorical move shared by morons on the left and right. Ian Thal I could not restrain myself from the snarky close just as Schwartz could not. The response that followed turned out to be quite bizarre: Dear Mr. Thal, Let me explain something very simple to you. Your attempt to make a distinction between anti-clericalism and hatred of religion is so ridiculous and far-fetched I am quite convinced of your youth, and in fact your total immaturity and incompetence to comment on anything. I am a recognized authority on several important themes, including the Spanish civil war and on the culture of Albania. I have written extensively on the Spanish war from he perspective of the anti-Stalinist left. The simple reality is that great numbers of nuns and priests were killed by the left in the Spanish war, in mass executions and other atrocities. Was that because those members of the clergy were corrupt? Not at all. It was because the anticlerical movement in Spain, which was always extremely violent, had indoctrinated the working class in the belief that the Spanish clergy were corrupt. Schwartz repeats the same rhetorical move, also citing the violence against Catholic clergy practiced by the Communist regimes of Poland and Albania. Each time, questioning if I believe that any victims of Communism were deserving of their persecution, suggesting that I regard these regimes as attempts to reform the Catholic church. Interestingly enough, I would discover that it was Schwartz, not I, who, according to a flattering article at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=1610 had had "a youthful background in... Communist, Trotskyist and other socialist groups" ... If you think that you are an extremely stupid little boy with no education whatever who should just shut up. Note that Schwartz makes an unsubstantiated hypothesis about what I do think despite the fact he has read my writing more recently than he has Dario Fo's. This is a view that likely coincides with the position taken by his former comrades. [T] he kind of idiotic nonsense indulged in by Dario Fo, however many times he may praise St. Francis or Jesus, legitimates hatred and contempt for believers, which in turn enables the enemies of religion to commit acts of violence. Stop trying to swim in the deep end of the intellectual pool without your waterwings. Stephen Schwartz Finally: Dear Mr. Schwartz: I believe you have me confused for someone who would engage in apologetics on behalf of communist totalitarianism. The insinuation is bizarre, and at best, tangential to our discussion as to the accuracy of your description of Fo as "a tireless enemy of religion." My contention is that given the religious themes of so many of Fo's plays, this description is, at best, anoversimplification, and at worst, inaccurate. It is simply strange that you would assume anyone with whom you disagree on any subject would also be an apologist for political violence, human rights violations, or totalitarianism. It appears that your zeal for polemics has made you incapable of presenting a coherent argument. One could speculate as to why such an attitude is worth taking seriously. Perhaps you think everyone who disagrees with you is a communist. Perhaps you merely feel insecure and have retreated to the ground on you feel more confident-- even if it is not relevant to the discussion at hand. Either way, the logic is faulty. I am certain that my fellow third-graders will be amused when I mention our exchange during this afternoon's swimming lessons. Ian Thal Given Schwartz' strange claim that Dario Fo's irreverence towards the Church hierarchy makes him "an untiring enemy of religion" and makes him complicit in the violence of Communist regimes in Albany and Poland, one might think that Stephen Schwartz is a conservative Catholic, who like Thomas Aquinas, believes that the only true religion is Roman Catholicism and that the Church's ecclesiastical order is divinely ordained. However, while doing research, I discovered that the same Stephen Schwartz who writes for the Weekly Standard is also Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, the Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism ( http://www.islamicpluralism.org/ ) and, according to his bio, "has been a student of Sufism since the late 1960s and an adherent of the Hanafi school of Islam since 1997" and frequent critic of Wahhabi extremism who presents himself as an essential link between the American Neo-Cons and the Iraqi Shiite community, even as he argues for Catholic orthodoxy. Even more bizarre, his position that Fo's work incites anti-Catholic violence seems to have been contradicted by his position on the Danish cartoon controversy ( http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/699xftsa.asp .) For Schwartz, religious pluralism is only for the Islamic world. I durst go no further than the Lie Circumstantial, nor he durst not give me the Lie Direct; and so we measured swords and parted. -Touchstone the Clown, Ibid.
