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"'All Governments Lie!': The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone,"
by Myra MacPherson. Scribner, 2006, 598 pages.
He Should Have Been a Libertarian by Richard Kostelanetz
Born Isador Feinstein in 1907, Izzy took the rock-hard Americanische name of I.F. Stone (much as Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum took the name of Ayn Rand) and became one of the most impressive investigative journalists in American history. Residing in Washington, where he refused politicians' invitations to socialize, he was during the 1950s and 1960s unrivaled at unearthing damning documents and other illustrations of politicians' idiocies. My sense is that Stone developed the ability not to read closely but to look at a document until something problematic jumped out at him, much as experienced lawyers know how to find the decisive lines in a judge's verbose opinion without reading every word.
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Richard Kostelanetz has written many books about contemporary art and literature.
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When the last newspaper to employ him, the New York Compass, went under, Stone went into business for himself. The eponymous I.F. Stone Newsletter attracted a sufficient number of subscribers to keep going for eighteen years (1953–71). Only In Fact, published between 1940 and 1950 by his acknowledged hero George Seldes (1890–1995, yes, 104 years old) could stand as a precursor. Even in the era of the internet, which makes so much more public information accessible (if you can find it) to people working at home, as Stone did (and I do), there's been no one like him since.
Stone's problem was that he remained sympathetic to communism in general and Soviet Russia in particular for so long that this sympathy remains the major issue for most reviewers of him now, whether they are commenting on the new biography about him, or on the recent anthology selecting from his voluminous writings. On the one hand, I think the conversion of intellectuals, especially Jewish intellectuals, to communism, especially Soviet communism, ranks among the greatest con jobs of modern times. On the other hand, since I grew up among the children of American communists, whom I now regard as deceived but not stupid, I can't get too worked up about the issue, either to praise or to blame. The ancient debate no more engages me (and, I would wager, those younger than I) than charges of anti-Semitism in Ezra Pound and Ferdinand-Louis Céline, let alone E.E. Cummings.
Nonetheless, reviewers disapproving of Stone's 1940s politics feel compelled to document, yet again, the fact that he tolerated Stalin for too long and that he had contact with Soviet agents. (If so, what did he pass on to them? He could only have passed on information that was already public to those who knew where to find it. He wasn't working in Los Alamos. Nor were government officials sharing confidences with him.) People more sympathetic to his 1940s politics doubt these charges, citing fogginess of evidence derived from coded cables and KGB agents who were no more reliable at collecting accurate information than, say, gumshoes at the FBI. Respecting the principle of full disclosure, I should confess that I think the fellow who stole my football in the playground at pinkish Downtown Community School in 1949 was a commie agent. You could tell by the red shirt he was wearing.
The title of the latest Stone biography, "All Governments Lie!", expresses a truth familiar to libertarians. But what should we make of the fact that Stone is beatified to a level unavailable to, say, John T. Flynn (1882–1964) and Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968), both comparable writers? Remember that just as Flynn was skeptical about the beginnings of World War II, so Stone's "Hidden History of the Korean War" (1952) suggests that South Korea, with U.S. support, provoked the North Korean attack.
This third Stone biography clocks in at the now customary size of 564 large pages, besides the customary footnotes and index. Written by Myra MacPherson, a veteran D.C. journalist, it was, internal evidence suggests, begun a while ago and then put aside until a contract for 600 book pages came. To characterize it as padded is an understatement. Though it received many favorable reviews, usually from journalists who like to honor Stone's memory, and some unfavorable notices, from those predisposed to remind readers of his protracted Stalinist sympathies, may I predict that this is the sort of book that will soon be remaindered for less than five dollars?
The book contains some fresh, though not exactly titillating, gossip. Stone and the famous attorney Leonard Boudin married sisters who were both loyal helpmates, Esther Stone becoming her husband's principal assistant on the Newsletter; but whereas Boudin was a philanderer, according to Susan Braudy's biography of Boudin and his daughter Kathy (the long-imprisoned Weatherman), "Family Circle" (2003), it now appears that Stone remained faithful to his wife and three children. The second revelation is that federal authorities wasted a ton of money tailing Stone, interviewing informants, illegally searching his car, and even pawing through his garbage. Again, it's interesting, but not exactly shocking.
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The conversion of intellectuals,
especially Jewish intellectuals,
to communism, especially
Soviet communism,
ranks among the greatest con
jobs of modern times.
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We also learn that, notwithstanding his drive to read what others ignored, weak eyesight plagued Stone for his entire career. Toward the end, he needed to use a magnifying glass to supplement his thick eyeglasses. For many years he was also deaf. Though multiply disadvantaged at pursuing his work, he survived, depending on his tough ego and the strong support he received at home.
One detail in the book's cover photograph has a significance that apparently escaped the author. Behind Stone's right ear is a video screen; beside his left arm is a computer screen and keyboard, suggesting that perhaps the greatest tragedy of Stone's writing career might be that he didn't get the opportunity to exploit the new information-retrieving technologies that have arrived since his death. He didn't live long enough to have a blog. This in turn suggests the unhappy thought that our lives as writers and readers are always limited by the information technologies that lie beyond our use.
MacPherson thinks that Stone was among the first to see through "the myth of a united Communism" popularized in the 1950s by John Foster Dulles. She repeatedly contrasts Stone with the D.C. journalist Walter Lippmann (1889–1974), a self-consciously establishment Jew, who was easily deceived. What clearly emerges from Stone's writings (see "The Best of I.F. Stone," edited by Karl Weber [Public Affairs, 2006]) is that he was best at exposing government officials. The fact that he was the first D.C. journalist to challenge President Johnson's version of the Gulf of Tonkin incident gave credibility to his subsequent criticisms of the unnecessary war.
A further point Castronova misses is that if costs of change are a serious problem, in virtual worlds it is not only possible but profitable to reduce them sharply. There is nothing to prevent a new entrant to the market from offering a special deal to its competitors' customers. I turn over my "World of Warcraft" account to them, and they provide me with the equivalent in their world — an avatar of corresponding level with the same name, a sum in virtual gold sufficient to equip him as my old avatar was equipped. They then sell off my old account for dollars, and we split the money. Creating virtual gold, advanced avatars, and high-end gear, after all, costs them nothing. Potential customers may be reluctant to leave their friends behind, but then, the invitation is open to the friends too.
As high-speed internet connections become more common and the quality and variety of virtual worlds continues to increase, more and more people will use them. As the technology improves, worlds will become increasingly immersive. In the limit you can imagine a society where almost everyone spends almost all of his time in virtual reality, perhaps through a direct link between mind and computer, with only enough real-world production to keep our bodies alive while our minds wander.
Would this be a bad thing? Castronova worries about "toxic immersion" — games sufficiently addictive to pull customers in, keep them in, and ultimately give them very little in exchange. One might argue that some real-world institutions already do that: the Church of Scientology, the Moonies, fundamentalist churches — a list whose contents depend on which of the things to which other people devote their lives that you consider obviously worthless.
A more fundamental problem is the philosophical issue of what sort of life is worth living. If I write books, I do not care whether they are read on paper or on a computer screen, in real space or in a virtual world. If I make clever conversation, it is equally satisfying in my living room or online. But if some day a computer can give me a believable illusion of the experience of rearing happy and productive children, it will still be no substitute for the real thing. As the illusion gets better and better, we will all have to choose between the experience and the reality.
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Stone was unrivaled at unearthing
damning documents
and other illustrations of politicians'
idiocies.
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But then, we have to make that choice already. Considered as an illusion, playing "World of Warcraft" is a great deal more rewarding, more useful, more real, and a better environment for learning useful skills — not how to throw fireballs but how to get along with other people — than watching soap operas.
To my mind, the dumbest line in MacPherson's biography is the quotation of Stone, four years before his death in 1989: "I was a strong Wilsonian at elementary school. I still think Wilson was a great president in many ways, although he was a terrible imperialist in Latin America, I realize." Hell, Izzy, that ranks among the least of Woody's faults. Don't forget that "high-minded" Wilson got us into the First World War, even though no one had attacked our shores; he instituted the federal income tax; he introduced segregation into the American military; he sabotaged civil liberties in a phony Red Scare, deporting radicals who weren't even threatening (most notably Emma Goldman); he collaborated with Winston Churchill in redrawing the map of the Middle East (thus creating preconditions for the current Iraq mess); he sponsored the League of Nations, whose peculiarities helped cause the Second World War; etc, etc., etc. Woody rightly ranks as the worst American president, with Honest Abe a
distant second. Perhaps this love for Woodrow Wilson explains why Izzy was slow to identify evil in other leaders of a state. Had he been a libertarian, he wouldn't have made such an egregious error.
Stone's intellectual problem was that he was essentially a newspaperman, and most comfortable with short forms. His typical article depended upon a revelation, followed by a witty punch line. Contrast him with such masters of the longer form as Seymour Hersh, who cultivates dissenting informants within the government; Edward Jay Epstein, whose books get remarkably little attention, though they continue to appear; and Noam Chomsky. Nonetheless, no matter how hard these guys tried, none could have written as Stone did: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." Or: "You may just think I am a red Jew son-of-a-bitch, but I'm keeping Thomas Jefferson alive." Or; "Once the secretary of state invites you to lunch and asks your opinion, you're sunk [as an independent journalist]."
Soon after Stone became a Random House author, the New York Review of Books (founded by an RH vice president) commissioned from him longer pieces that were less effective, because, not unlike many other newspapermen writing at length, he tended to get lost. I remember that in 1964 the New York Times' chief editorialist, James Reston, came to lecture us graduate students at Columbia University. He said that instead of giving a prepared lecture he preferred to answer questions that were put to him. To each question he delivered a reply that was 500 words long, with two sentences to each paragraph, which is to say a draft of a Times editorial. This guy, I thought at the time, has a great 500-word mind. Reston's rare attempts at longer essays revealed his limitation. Much the same could be said of Stone, and of MacPherson. As a veteran newswoman, she gets lost in writing her book. Haven't we all noticed that people whose reading is mostly newspapers get lost discussing anything at length?
May I raise the question about how else biographies might be written? Can they be shorter and more focused? Need they be chronological? Can they move beyond conventional truths? Certainly changes can be made, beginning perhaps not with the subject's birth, for instance, but with a definition of his principal cultural achievement. But 600-page biographies are what the better publishers seem to want from overeducated writers, and so readers are stuck with books like MacPherson's.
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