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    Give Paz a Chance
    Give Paz a Chance
    Give Paz a Chance
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    Give Paz a Chance

    By Joseph P. Duggan

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    Give Paz a Chance, by Joseph P. Duggan, includes reflections on the transformation of the media industry; remembrances of political and cultural figures from the author's years in Washington politics, including finely rendered portraits of Robert Novak, Huntington Cairns, and Jeane Kirkpatrick; and observations on Mexico. Included is Duggan's 2009 “Líderes Académicos” lecture at Tecnológico de Monterrey, “Life After Liquidation of the Fourth Estate: New Media versus Gnostic Bureaucracies.” The title essay lauds Octavio Paz's commitment to criticism as a way of thinking with integrity, as ”the imagination cured of fantasies and determined to face the world's realities.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPennylesse
    Release dateJul 16, 2011
    ISBN9781452410777
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      Book preview

      Give Paz a Chance - Joseph P. Duggan

      GIVE PAZ A CHANCE

      Essays on Media Studies, Politics and Culture

      By Joseph P. Duggan

      ****

      Published by:

      Pennylesse Editions at Smashwords

      ****

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

      Joseph P. Duggan is author of these essays, some of which were published first in newspapers and periodicals and republished here with permission as noted in the acknowledgements.

      This electronic edition published by Pennylesse Editions, 2011.

      Author’s Introduction

      Give Paz a Chance is a selection of occasional magazine and newspaper essays as well as two lecture texts. Included are media studies, political commentary, biography, travel observations, and, especially, appreciations of the lives and works of notable cultural critics. This volume is carved, like Gaul, into three parts.

      Part One is called Mainstream Media in the Rearview Mirror. The essays here examine the meltdown of newspapers and other former pillars of mass communication, and they discuss the continuing relevance of the work of great critics such as Marshall McLuhan in the quest for understanding our technological and information environments. The first selection in this section is the text of a lecture I presented at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Estado de México. As a nightcap I offer a nostalgic snifter of early times (haunted by the bosky aroma of Early Times) from my career under the magnolias in Richmond, Virginia, when people still lived mythically in a chivalrous Old South where every dawn greeted a shining new yesterday.

      The satirist Christopher Buckley, who, like me, once wrote speeches in the White House for George H.W. Bush, says that the theme of all White House memoirs is: It Wasn’t My Fault and It Would Have Been Worse If I Hadn’t Been There. Part Two of this book gathers some reminiscences from a quarter-century in politics and government in Washington, and as such they may be possessed by some of the self-regarding demons Chris Buckley labors so wittily to exorcise. My intention is to present respectful recollections of some of the better leaders and thinkers I encountered in the capital. I would like readers to appreciate these persons but not to take me too seriously. If you find anything pompous in these essays, blame it on me and on the Washington culture from which I’m trying to recover, not on the admirable people who undertook the Sisyphean task of trying to change the place. The lecture text, Jeane Kirkpatrick and the Recovery of Moral Realism, is much more than a profile of the late diplomat and scholar; it is a consideration of several currents of thought – notably those of George Kennan and Sherman Kent -- I have observed influencing United States foreign policy, and the work of John Courtney Murray as exemplar of moral realism. In my essay on Robert Novak, I hope you’ll find it a refreshing discovery that deep down, this consummate Washington insider and scoop-chaser was intensely devoted to the appreciation of poetry and literary criticism.

      The third section, Gringo in the Labyrinth, comprises dispatches from Mexico, my wife’s native home and a second home to me, where I was a visiting professor in 2008 and 2009. The title essay honors Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet, diplomat and critic who set a standard for criticism in calling it the imagination cured of fantasies.

      For lagniappe there is a piece from a recent visit to a place whose je ne sais quoi won’t let go of me. The place is Tyre, one of the oldest, most beat-up cities in the world.

      Tyre is the birthplace of Europa, progenitor of the phonetic alphabet and once the richest and most fabled of the Phoenician city-states. Today it is a bullet-riddled backwater within too-easy shooting distance of the domains of Hezbollah, Israel, and various Palestinian and Lebanese factions.

      In this one little Mediterranean port, Western Civilization has been conceived, born, slaughtered, reconceived, reborn and trashed again so many times over the millennia that it is hard to keep count. When the volleys are not flying, it offers today a genial and seductive lap on which to repose and tuck into a meal of freshest seafood and hearty Bekaa Valley vintages.

      The cradle of Dido and Jezebel and a favorite shopping destination for Helen of Troy, Tyre itself -- herself -- is feminine. To recline in her easy bosom, a long time forgotten with dreams that just fell by the way, is to be reassured that Western Civilization ain’t over till it’s over. For this jukebox listener, Tyre evokes the collective unconscious of 5,000 years of the good times we’ve had and all the good times to come.

      Acknowledgments

      These essays would not have been possible without the encouragement of the editors, academic administrators, and institutions providing the venues for their first expression.

      I am most grateful to Octavio Islas Carmona, director of Mexico’s Proyecto Internet and holder of the chair in Communication Strategy and Cyberculture, and Fernando Gutiérrez Cortés, director of the Department of Communication and Digital Arts, both at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Campus Estado de México. Their offer of a visiting professorship in politics and communication in 2009 gave me a most welcome opportunity to reflect upon, write and discuss issues of change in the media industry. Frank Bick was very gracious to invite me to speak to the Saint Louis Men’s Leadership Forum.

      Paul Akers is one of the most talented editorial page writers and editors extant in the United States today. It means a lot to have a piece of writing meet his approval. His publication, the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, is a venerable institution and one of the nation’s few remaining independent, locally owned daily newspapers.

      Bob Tyrrell, the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator, gave me my first job out of college 35 years ago. I also am indebted to him for introducing me many years ago to Huntington Cairns, about whom there is an essay in this volume. Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, the Spectator managing editor, graciously provides a platform for some of my writings today. I also owe thanks to Gerald Russello, the learned editor of the indispensable University Bookman. Elma Sabo, then with the Greensboro News and Record, was very kind to publish my article on President Reagan.

      Deepest thanks go to my parents for their long years of encouragement and their magnificent example, and to my dear and patient wife Lucía.

      Contents

      Part I

      Mainstream Media in the Rearview Mirror

      Life After Liquidation of the Fourth Estate

      Marshall McLuhan: Postmodern Grammarian

      The Medium is the Magisterium

      How Many Richmonders Does It Take?

      Part II

      ‘It Wasn’t My Fault and ….’

      Jeane Kirkpatrick and the Recovery of Moral Realism

      Reagan Taught Speakers to Speak and Writers to Write

      Edward Równy: Always on the Level

      Huntington Cairns at the Limits of Art

      Tony Snow: What Color Was His Paraclete?

      William F. Buckley Jr. at theSacrum Convivium

      Robert Novak: Stirrer Up of Strife

      Part III

      Gringo in the Labyrinth

      Give Paz a Chance

      In Yucatán: Love in the Ruins Revisited

      ‘It’s Not a Place, It’s a Pathology’

      Unsinkable City of Cinco de Mayo

      Greatest Pro

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