The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel, Part 2
Lorin Maazel could really use a publicist who understands the concept of “stop digging.” Just when we thought we’d put this flame war behind us, he goes off again, in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page. With time for further reflection and careful editing, here’s how he rephrases his central point:
If we are to be effective in bringing succor to the oppressed, many languishing in foreign gulags, the U.S. must claim an authority based on an immaculate ethical record, toughened by economic clout. Woe to the people we are trying to help if we end up in a glass house. [Wall Street Journal]
Immaculate? By that standard, only Jesus Christ’s mother is qualified to talk about Darfur, and a certain conductor who is now on this third wife clearly lacks the moral credentials to speak of Gitmo.
The other thing about the piece that just strikes you is what a banal, pseudointellectual poseur Maazel is. Having spent so much time surrounded by admirers and sychophants has taken an obvious toll on him. He even feels qualified to pronounce on matters other than music, despite his factual ignorance of those matters. Strip away the Chanel vocabulary in which his thoughts are clothed and those thoughts are stick figures.
We would then be unable to defend our human-rights record with honor, would weaken our position dramatically, and could be of little help to the people who might require our aid in their time of need.
Which, of course, is exactly Maazel’s goal. Maazel, goaded on by the beleagured Christopher Hill and buoyed by self-importance, politicized this visit with breathtaking idiocy. When rightly attacked for it, he then decries those who would politicize music. What Maazel really means is that he does not want to be held responsible, in his own small way, for the actions of a regime he chose to defend. Maazel doesn’t care about Gitmo — to Maazel, Gitmo is just a shiny shield for blinding the eyes of fools.
Maazel will soon miss an opportunity to bring some “succor to the oppressed” when, during his audience with the North Korean elite and their Supremo, he will fail to make one brief, extemporaneous comment: “General Secretary Kim, please release the prisoners in Camp 22.” It would be that simple. I would be the first to forgive his recent stupidities. But I’m betting that the devils on Maazel’s shoulder –vanity, arrogance, and cowardice — will talk him out of it, assuming that the angels even suggest it.
I was originally willing to accept the N.Y. Phil’s visit as mostly harmless. The succor with the baton has talked me out of that. Still, there is a silver lining. A Nexis search turns up page after page of denunciations of Maazel’s moral retardation, and those denunciations necessarily remind readers about the things that are going on in North Korea.
The funny thing, he’s already showed his hand on this when he explained on his blog his motivation:
He doesn’t care about Gitmo. He cares about offending the multicultural norms of the Manhattan elite. Tom Wolfe would have a field day with this guy.
I will say this, however — he’s taken so much shit for his comments, I could imagine him pulling a Lee Bollinger and giving it to his hosts with both barrels. In which case, he’d be seen less as a valiant defender of human dignity and more of a rude asshole.
“Multicultural norms?” You may be giving Maazel too much credit for intellectual depth. His best words are probably rented. Really, I think Maazel’s problem here is not realizing how far out of his mental and moral depth he really is … and being too arrogant to see it.
As for Lee Bollinger, surely you’re not saying that denouncing Ahmedinehad for, say, hanging homosexuals or denying the Holocaust makes him “a rude asshole.” This is Columbia U. we’re talking about, not the Supreme Peoples’ Assembly.
Likewise, Maazel could (but won’t) actually do a lot to redeem himself and this visit if he’d have the balls to make one brief, simple, clear call to ease just one of Kim Jong Il’s worst atrocities. I’m sure the North Koreans’ reaction would be an interesting litmus test of their interest in openness and reform.
Well……Jesus had brothers — later on — so I think he’d have to conclude even Mary doesn’t fit…..
(Somehow, I have the feeling his Manhattan sensibility would work Christ out of the picture as too….)
Update: I really liked B.R. Myers’s response.
Marmot said exactly what I was thinking when reading this that this guy might do what the Columbia president did with his buddy from Iran which just made matters even worse. The best thing this guy could do now is just shut up and play his music because he is really digging a bigger hole for himself.
B.R. Myers response that you linked to is excellent by the way.
Whenever I go into rants about the intellectual and pseudo-intellectual elites in higher education and (pop)-intellectual culture, this and Obama’s wife’s comment are exactly the kind of thing I have in mind….
I, too, am moved to tears . . . tears for all the starving, shivering, sick and mal-nourished, abused North Koreans outside the glitzy concert hall and throughout the land.
I really wonder what the admission fee was–how much the sponsors of this extravagant Pyongyang pilgrimage paid the portly one. And if you think the General did not charge and receive a hefty fee for this special “privilege,” well, there’s this fabulous bridge in Brooklyn I could give you a fabulous deal on.
What’s wrong with this “cultural exchange”? KJI reinforces the illusion that he intends to open up his destitute kingdom, thereby taming the new South Korean lackey and the new American imperialist-to-be. Any future deviation from the negotiationist (opting for a perpetual state of negotiation for the sake of negotiation) path much of the uninformed world will come to believe as the fault of Americans or South Koreans (or the Japanese). Neither sing-song nor sunshine-moonshine-shoeshine stands a chance against Pyongyang’s seasoned professional propaganda machinery.