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March 16, 2004
TT: Tim Robbins' ghostwriter
I usually write about theater in Friday's Wall Street Journal, but I made a special guest appearance on this morning's editorial page. The occasion was the opening of Embedded, Tim Robbins' new play about Gulf War II, which he blames on the political philosopher Leo Strauss, quoting chapter and verse to prove his contention that the war was started for nefarious reasons by a cabal of Strauss' neoconservative disciples in the Bush administration (including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz).There's just one little problem--the quote in question is totally bogus. And that's not even the worst part:
Strauss' complex political views are not easily reduced to speeches in a play, but Mr. Robbins has done his best by making one of his characters, a fellow named Pearly White and thus presumably modeled on Richard Perle (that being Mr. Robbins' idea of cutting wit), spout the following lines: "Moral virtue has no application to the really intelligent man, the philosopher. In the words of Leo Strauss: ‘Moral virtue only exists in popular opinion where it serves the purpose of controlling the unintelligent majority.'" Hence the Strauss-inspired Gulf War, which was fought not to topple a bloodthirsty monster but to anesthetize the ignorant masses and thereby ensure the re-election of George W. Bush and all those other nasty Republicans. Got it?
Now I'm a drama critic, not a political philosopher, but I do know a thing or two about Strauss, and I was sure he'd never said anything like that, since he wasn't given to self-caricature. So when I came home from "Embedded," I decided to see whether I could track down the source of that suspicious-looking quotation from Chairman Leo. It sounded like something a half-educated movie star might have found on a Web site, so I looked for it on Google, and immediately hit the jackpot.
The source of Mr. Robbins' alleged Strauss "quote," I discovered, was an article called "The Secret Kingdom of Leo Strauss." The author, Tony Papert, turned out to be paraphrasing in his own words the opinions of Thomas Pangle, a student of Strauss, which Mr. Papert had gleaned at second hand from a book by a third party, a Strauss-hating Canadian academic named Shadia Drury. "Pangle had implied," Mr. Papert wrote, "that for Socrates (i.e., for Strauss), moral virtue had no application to the really intelligent man, the philosopher. Moral virtue only existed in popular opinion, where it served the purpose of controlling the unintelligent majority."
Oh, yes, one more thing: Tony Papert's article appeared in the April 18, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review, a magazine published by none other than Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., that well-known millionaire crackpot and purveyor of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Let's review: (1) Leo Strauss never said what Tim Robbins quoted him as having said; (2) Thomas Pangle didn't say it, either; (3) Tony Papert, a LaRouchie, said it; and (4) Mr. Robbins lifted Mr. Papert's quote from a LaRouchie magazine and dropped it into his play, deliberately passing it off as an authentic Straussian utterance.
None of this, of course, has any necessary bearing on the theatrical quality of "Embedded." But it does suggest that Tim Robbins, whatever his other virtues, is not a man to be trusted with facts....
No link, alas, though sometimes the Journal's free Web site, opinionjournal.com, puts up additional links to editorial-page pieces over the weekend. If they do, I'll let you know. Otherwise, you can read the whole thing by going out and buying a copy of the paper (which you should be doing anyway!).
If you want to see Tony Papert's article for yourself, go here. Bring your boots, though: it's in LaRoucheland, where the fever swamps are deep....
Posted March 16, 2004 12:03 PM
