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DIARY  To Paris to attend a convivium on
the Continuing Revolution, presided over by Dr Thomas Fleming. Dr
Who? Tom Fleming is editor of the monthly magazine Chronicles, based
in Rockford, Illinois, and big chief of the palaeoconservative
movement — though movement may be too grand a word to describe an
engagingly barmy political army that has perhaps 20,000 followers in
the US and fewer than 20 here. The reactionary and pacific — but not
pacifist — palaeoconservatives (palaeos) are the sworn enemies of
the hawkish and progressive neoconservatives (neocons). Shortly
after Jacques Chirac declared that he would not support an American
war against Iraq, Fleming wrote, ‘I respect and admire the French,
who have been a far greater nation than we shall ever be, that is,
if greatness means anything loftier than money and bombs.’ There was
a fearful commotion. Such talk is considered treason by neocons,
some of whom believe that enthusiasm for France makes one a Nazi
sympathiser.
Palaeos are losers, at least politically, which is what makes them so attractive. They do not share the popular prejudices of the American Street. They recognise the dangers of militant Islam, but do not believe that bombing Arab women and children is the answer to the problem. They are pro-life and pro-death penalty. They are anti-big business and anti-big government. There is no party line, however; no ideology. These people keep you guessing. Some palaeos admire Tariq Ali, Alex Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Gore Vidal and Joseph de Maistre, Patrick Buchanan and Taki; others detest Fisk and Ali, and are not crazy about de Maistre or Taki. All, however, are against wars of liberal imperialism, and consequently have a low opinion of Christopher Hitchens, Tony Blair, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Geoff Hoon — and most of the right-wing columnists in Great Britain and the United States. They do not subscribe to the view of the family-values press that the Sixties were uniquely decadent. They think that the Fifties — to the neocons a golden age of Eisenhower and Norman Rockwell — were also a cultural and political calamity. But palaeos take the long view. They see the big picture. The root causes of the Continuing Revolution emerged long before the 20th century; indeed long before 1789. A recent issue of Chronicles carried the cover line: TURN LEFT AT THE RENAISSANCE. Get the idea? These are not people you’d want to introduce to your social worker, but they are good company. At dinner on the first evening I knew I was in the right place when a delightful woman to my right, reflecting on her youthful innocence, said, ‘Why, I did not know what a homosexual was until I got married.’ Later, as we drank and smoked in our hotel, a loony grinned and capered outside the window of the bar — no doubt seeing the joke more clearly than we did. A toast to France was proposed by one of our number. ‘Vive la France!’ we cried. I was among fiercely patriotic Americans, but it was left to me to add, ‘And God bless America.’ Is Paris a little overrated? Greatest city in the world and all that, but the Seine end of the Boulevard St-Michel is just like Leicester Square, and how many times can you walk past Shakespeare and Company, all higgledy-piggledy and coy, without wanting to throw a copy of Ulysses through its window? If there is one thing more kitsch than the exterior of the Sacré Coeur, it is the interior of Notre Dame, where the confessionals are glass boxes in which penitents seem to be negotiating bank loans with cross-dressed ledger clerks. St Sulpice may have its Delacroix murals, but there is something irredeemably naff about the place, with its participatory liturgy and Taizé-inspired choir. A year ago, I saw a priest there pick his nose while reciting the canon and crumble the snot on to the altar cloth. This is my bogey. If Henry IV had been alive today, he might have thought Paris worth a miss. Give me Rome or New York — even London — any day. My French is so poor that I am reluctant to try to compliment a woman in case I proposition her by mistake. If my language skills were better, I might have got myself temporary accreditation at the Cannes film festival after leaving Paris for the Côte d’Azur, but the woman in the press tent said, ‘It does not exist.’ I pointed out that there was a notice over a desk saying ‘TEMPORARY ACCREDITATION’. That, apparently, was for people who’d applied for temporary status in March. So I nosed about. Cannes was hot and tacky. Off the beach huge motor yachts stood at anchor, quietly polluting the bay. Loud music — easy-listening classical or sentimental French pop — played from speakers, and there were posters everywhere for violent or coarse films, most of them American. (The French love America.) Old men with tits sunbathed on the promenade. With the exception of the two paraplegics gamely wheeling themselves about, I seemed to be surrounded by the ‘assorted “stylists”, hairdressers and gossip columnists’ denounced so eloquently in this space last week by Miss Joan Collins. Give me Nice any day. (But I think I saw Tim Robbins.) Love is in the air. The other evening, in the bath, I found myself listening to a sex show on the radio. A man representing Mates condoms was talking about safe sex and urging listeners to check out the Mates website: www.ishaggedhere.com. I am told by my youth adviser, Mary Wakefield, that the site is being advertised everywhere. It has a link for those who want to get in touch with former one-night stands. Here’s a typical posting: ‘The wood. Michelle you were the best, any chance of you being tied to that tree again x.’ Two things are distressing about this (at any rate to prurient humbugs like me): one is the smirking self-righteousness of the men from Mates; the other is that there is no such thing as safe sex, even within a disease-free marriage, and it is cruel to children to pretend that there is. History today: four young Kiwis were on the Tube discussing their recent adventures on the Continent. One said: ‘And we went to a concentration camp, din’ we?’ Another said: ‘Yih. What was it called?’ Someone else: ‘Dachau, wasn’t it?’ Someone else: ‘Nah, Cracow.’ Someone else: ‘Nah, Dachau.’ First person: ‘Oh yih, Dachau.’ Whatever. With this level of general knowledge, our democratically elected leaders will have no trouble in selling the next war against the next new Hitler. · Send comment on this article to the editor of the Spectator.co.uk · Email this article to a friend © 2003 The Spectator.co.uk |
