Happy Post-Election Day, y’all. Gonna make a few notes (as usual). I went to vote at my polling place on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. There were just a few voters there and this was about lunchtime. Place smelled of urine. There were workers, or hangers-on, talking about politics. Are they supposed to? As always, I was not asked for any ID I just had to sign my name. This seems a little . . . loose. As if it would insult someone to ask for his ID, before he proceeded to vote.
As I mentioned in the Corner yesterday I know you know NRO’s group blog I voted for Josh Goldberg, so happily. He was running for City Council, on the Republican line. He is the brother of Jonah, and the son of the late Sid, plus the divine Lucianne. Republican levers actually work in Manhattan though you may have to give them an extra yank. Back in Ann Arbor, when I was coming of age, we used to joke that the Republican levers barely worked: They were rusted over from disuse.
In addition to Josh, I voted for Michael Bloomberg, for mayor. That is, I voted to reelect him. May I share a little exchange with you? A dear friend of mine, recently moved to New York, e-mailed me in the morning. “I must avail myself of the Jay Nordlinger Shortcut to Knowledge I know you’ll give me the lowdown. Is Bloomberg worth voting for? As far as I know, good on schools and city management, horrible on ‘nanny state’ and social issues. He will win anyway right? so this is just a philosophical question. Does he deserve my vote?”
(I should have mentioned that my friend is a strong, principled conservative.)
I answered this way: “Yes, he deserves your vote go to the polls now. In New York City, we are single-issue voters: All we care about is crime. Who will keep the criminals at bay? Who will continue the Giuliani renaissance? Who will maintain New York as the safest big city in America, if not the world? Who will perpetuate the Garden of Eden?
“I tell you, you could practically sleep in Central Park, or Riverside Park. The biggest danger in my neighborhood, late at night, is being trampled by happy moviegoers. The biggest danger during the day is being run over by happy young mothers pushing baby strollers. (Or nannies pushing those strollers.) This is not a state of affairs to be taken for granted. It is reversible, with a little inattention and laxity. It needs constant care and determination.
“So, as far as I’m concerned, there is
one issue in this city. All the rest is secondary, at best. I wouldn’t care if Bloomie banned ice cream, as long as I could whine about it in a back alley at 2 a.m.”
I’m not entirely sure I’m right, but I
am sure that that is how I think, presently.
The governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey always get a lot of attention, because they are in off years. This is kind of a shame, in a way: We freight them with so much importance. They’re the only games in town. And they are near the big media markets: near D.C. and N.Y. This year, these races have been interesting, and we’ve had the bonus of N.Y.-23. Very interesting races, all of them. But, you know? Most political races are interesting. Most bear watching (if you like politics). It’s just that the ones in regular years get lost amid the general clamor, the nationwide hustle-and-bustle.
Virginia and New Jersey are privileged, in a way, not having to share the stage with hundreds of other races not even having to share the stage with congressional elections in those states. The gubernatorial candidates are the gladiators of the hour.
That said:
Do the results in Virginia and New Jersey mean something mean something beyond their borders? Yes, they do.
Last Friday, David Pryce-Jones wrote an amazingly stirring post on his blog. Find it
here. It has the heading “We Need a Muggeridge for Iran.” DP-J talks of how Malcolm Muggeridge skewered credulous Westerners who visited the Soviet Union. And then he talks about how the spiritual descendants of those Westerners are visiting Iran now:
Here are advocates of human rights enthusing over the general happiness of Iranians even while disgusting crimes of murder and rape are routine in the prisons. Here are ecologists promoting windmills everywhere at home, obsessed with their carbon footprint while oblivious to the Iranian nuclear program. Socialists and Leftists in a permanent fury about American foreign policy have nothing to say about Iranian sponsorship of terror far and wide. Pacifists and aesthetes are so eager to see the splendours of Qom and Mashhad that they are oblivious to the Islamist Republic’s testing of long-range missiles and repeated threats to exterminate its enemies. Feminists eager to uncover gender discrimination in their own sphere respond to the plight of Iranian women by praising the attractive colours of their clothing. Tourism to Iran is apparently the latest fashion among rich Westerners, and they come back saying that the country is peaceful, prosperous, no danger to anyone but altogether a brilliant success. My dear, let’s meet up at Isfahan, you have to see those mosques.
He concludes,
Only a few short years ago, these very same rich Westerners were adamant about refusing to go to South Africa for fear of seeming to condone apartheid. As for Franco’s Spain, it was out of bounds for such people for decades on the strict moral principle that the regime’s violence was intolerable. Even Salazar’s Portugal was forbidden. Iran is a great deal more vicious, indeed fascist, than those formerly pariah states, yet it is excused as they were not. There doesn’t seem to be anyone with Malcolm Muggeridge’s powers of mockery to explode this latest odious example of double standards.
That last sentence is the only thing DP-J gets wrong, you may agree: His own powers are plenty sufficient.
The above-quoted material reminds me: Do you know the Fauré song “Les Roses d’Ispahan”? “Tantalizingly beautiful,” to use a cliché.
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