I found myself at a Holiday Season party here the other night – woe betide, more than ever, anybody who dares utter the word “Christmas” here these days – and found myself digging at the food and drink with, among others, Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer.
Scalia, 64, is the extreme right-wing member of the Supreme Court appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1986; Breyer, 62, is the most recent appointee to the court, having been one of two selected by Bill Clinton (or, indeed, any Democratic president) in 1994. The two men seemed affable enough, both to each other and to the rest of us, but in a way, they personify the new polarised America: if Breyer had his way, we would now be preparing for a Gore administration, but the Scaliaites just had their way when the nine votes of the Supreme Court were counted, and so Boy George clawed his way into the White House.
This, Americans and their apologists in the UK keep repeating, has been democratic institutions resolving matters peacefully, but it is hard to see how the selection of America’s 43rd president should have rested with two such partisan and, judicially, not especially distinguished judges (not to mention the pitiful Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by George Bush Sr in 1991).
But then it always has been a myth that the Founding Fathers intended America to be a democracy: that is why they created an electoral college, to prevent the masses having their say (ie, putting Al Gore in the White House next month), and why senators were originally voted into office by House members. Thomas Jefferson may have loftily proclaimed that “all men are created equal”, but that actually meant only landowning white men; poorer white men, blacks and all women were excluded even from voting in the new democracy.
Looking back on the 36 days of America’s bloodless civil war of 2000, though, I suspect that most Americans have been shocked by just how shambolic their elections are – and by the fact that anachronistic institutions still deliberate on who governs them. The hallowed constitution drawn up in the 18th century collided horribly with the America of the 21st, exposing contradictions and anomalies that may once have seemed reasonable, but no longer are.
A Gallup poll tells us that Americans were more transfixed by this year’s electoral saga than they were by Monicagate: in terms of media impact, it concluded, it ranks with the assassination of JFK in 1963, the first step on the moon by Neil Armstrong in 1969, and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.
Will the electoral farce of 2000, I wonder, also end up alerting them to the dangers of an outdated, undemocratic, written constitution which has hitherto been assumed by them to be a model for the rest of us?
In just over three weeks, I may have new neighbours. Over the weekend, Hillary Clinton looked at a house that is literally a stone’s throw from mine – and, I’m told, though my informant could be wrong, that she signed a contract to buy it. In which case I hereby pledge to keep NS readers informed of comings and goings at 31st and O. And if I don’t, I’m sure my other friend and neighbour, Kitty Kelley, will be delighted to do so.
Don’t forget that if you had believed the British media, Clinton would not be there to hand over presidential power peacefully on 20 January. Following my criticism of British coverage of the US, incidentally, I’ve had several queries as to the identity of the Independent on Sunday hackette so ignorant that she did not know the difference between Senator Eugene McCarthy and the red-baiter of the Fifties, Joe McCarthy.
I will not embarrass her by exposing her identity, however; nor that of the Times‘s London-based “expert” on the US who told his readers: “President Clinton will not be lighting the White House Christmas tree this year . . . I believe he has two more weeks left in Washington.” That was in 1998, and the Times had it all worked out: “From there will come the resignation speech, the last helicopter ride to Little Rock, and Mr Gore’s inauguration . . . Mr Gore will echo Gerald Ford’s speech in similar circumstances 24 years ago when he told Americans that ‘Our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a Government of laws and not men.” Er, that’s not quite how it worked out, you chaps in Wapping. Have they no shame, these people?
I went to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at the National Cathedral here, and we were all duly wished a happy Hannukah, Kwanzaa and Ramadan before the bishop who was leading the service had opened her (yes, her) mouth. The “Happy Holidays” we are supposed to wish each other are now a commercial bonanza that starts before Thanksgiving in November and does not finish until after New Year, with Christmas fitting only vaguely in between for those brave enough to go samizdat and breathe its name. Here we come, again, to another of those contradictions central to American life and stemming from the “wisdom” of the Founding Fathers of 1787. In Election Farce 2000, Boy George or Al Gore hardly ever failed to end a broadcast with “God bless America”; pennies and $5 bills proclaim “In God we trust”.
Yet so much as a mention of God, let alone Christmas, is forbidden in schools. I like the school regulations of Alexandria, a suburb of DC, which list what is allowed: “Seasonal tree with lights and ornaments (provided ornaments are not of a religious nature), seasonal songs which have no religious reference or significance, greeting card exchange (teachers may not suggest, encourage or use a religious theme)” – and so on, ad nauseam. If the merest mention of God is forbidden in schools or other public places, why does the Supreme Court allow Him to figure so prominently on the nation’s currency, its very lifeblood? Next time I bump into Scalia or Breyer I must ask them – but I am sure they will have an answer one way or the other. The constitution is like the Bible: people can peer into it and see whatever they wish.
A place where you will see a “Merry Christmas to all” sign is on the 30ft walls of the Huntsville prison in Texas, where Boy George – by far the country’s busiest yet most compassionate executioner – has presided over a record 40 “state-ordered legal homicides”, as the death certificates say, this year. Last Monday, an international anti-capital-punishment petition with 3.5 million signatures was handed over to Kofi Annan in New York.
Tony Blair, I have a challenge for you this Christmas: when you meet Boy George for the first time next year, why don’t you take it upon yourself to be the official emissary for the rest of the western world and tell him in no uncertain terms of your personal revulsion, besides that of the western world in general, to capital punishment? A date is looming for the first federal prisoner due to be executed here for decades, and President Bush II will have the power to save him. Good friends can always speak the truth to one another: so, Prime Minister, show us the strength of that special relationship you are always going on about and win a reprieve, OK?
Because life has been so busy here, I’ve missed the rounds of Christmas parties in London. But one part of it I haven’t missed: the wretched cigarette fumes that arrogant smokers think they have the right to inflict on the rest of us. That, at least, is one area in which the US is ahead of the UK. California has been the most militant anti-smoking state, and in 1989 increased taxation on cigarettes, besides banning them in restaurants and many public areas. The fruits of that action have come to bear: lung cancer rates in California dropped 14 per cent between 1988 and 1997, compared with 2.7 per cent nationwide.
The mayor of Friendship Heights, a suburb of DC, is now crusading to institute a $100 fine on anybody who smokes anywhere outdoors, on lawns and in parks or even while walking along pavements. Right on, I say. This is an area the America-is-wonderful-Britain-is-terrible crowd could really latch on to and promote.
Talking about the America-is-wonderful-etc crowd, I have been unable to avoid watching television in the last few weeks here – and one of the 24-hour news channels I have been obliged to look at is Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch. We are used to Murdoch newspapers abandoning any pretence to political neutrality, but it is a new development when a supposedly mainstream television news channel does the same. Fox News is known to many Democrats as GOP News, such is its devotion to the Republicans and its right-wing ideological stance.
Indeed, it is arguable that Murdoch’s channel played a decisive part in the outcome of the election. Boy George’s cousin, John Ellis, was working for Fox News and was busily swapping data with Boy George and Kid Brother Jeb throughout the long election night. By 1.16am, he and Fox decided they should be the first on the air to announce that Boy George had won Florida, and with it, so the implication went, the presidency. The other channels quickly felt obliged to follow, giving Boy George the imprimatur of a legitimate presidency that was, in fact, always in doubt.
In the immortal words of Justice John Paul Stevens, we may never know the true winner of Florida – whatever the Bushie conspirators in the media want us to think.
This is the Christmas spirit here: I’ve just received a fax entitled “Gore Judged?” – inviting me to tick one of two boxes labelled “Just and Fair?” or “Political and Partisan?” before faxing my answer back to one of two 900 numbers. Look carefully, and it says in tiny print “calls to these numbers cost $2.95 per minute, a small price for greater democracy” – meaning that by the mere act of sending the fax back, you have put a minimum of $2.95 on your phone bill and into some crook’s pocket. Now that’s the American entrepreneurial spirit in action as we look forward to a new millennium with an administration headed by Boy George.
Happy Christmas.
Andrew Stephen is the New Statesman‘s Washington editor
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