Just Had to Have The Last Word

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Enemies, wrote uber-historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in his posthumous, just-published "Journals: 1952-2000," are "the people who go out of their way to attack me, dragging my name into irrelevant contexts in order to make what they regard as devastating insults."

Schlesinger's enemies list included Gore Vidal, Conor Cruise O'Brien and Christopher Hitchens. And he says so in print, adding, "I wish they were more distinguished." But he is also candid and caustic when describing many people -- friends and enemies.

Sure, it's not nice to speak ill of the dead, but it's fair game when the dead speak ill of the rest of us. Here then a sampling, presented as a history quiz. Match the Schlesingerian description with the person:

1. "He swells like a bullfrog and punctuates his speech with a repertoire of sweeping gestures and smug expressions."

2. "He is conservative, unimaginative, filled with solicitude for business, and tight and defensive in his personal relations."

3. " He was . . . vulnerable, insecure and, at critical moments, fatally weak."

4. " . . . an odious and despicable ex-radical."

5. "A smug and odious interviewer . . . mingling sanctimoniousness and prurience."

6. " . . . a viperish, whispering little creature, and . . . a breathy, faux-sensitive writer."

7. " . . . a sour Irish drunk."

8. " . . . a dull speaker . . . his talk was pretentious and interminable -- the deep thoughts of a bright sophomore."

9. He "looked like a frightened, ventriloquist's dummy."

a) Norman Podhoretz

b) Joan Didion

c) Jimmy Carter

d) Steve Kroft

e) George W. Bush

f) John Gregory Dunne

g) Bill Bradley

h) Hubert Humphrey

i) Daniel Patrick Moynihan

-- Linton Weeks

Answers: 1. i) 2. c ) 3. h) 4. a) 5. d) 6. b) 7. f) 8. g) 9. e)