It being the Christmas season, I didn’t want to spoil the warm glow of fellow-feeling by contemplating the death at 78 of Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate, political adolescent, absurdist dramaturge. Now that Santa has come and gone, however, I suppose I should take some notice of his passing. Predictably, the outpouring of adulation–despite a few noteworthy exceptions–was fulsome. “Masterworks . . . captured the anxiety and ambiguity of life in the second half of the 20th century with terse, hypnotic dialogue filled with gaping pauses and the prospect of imminent violence.”–The New York Times.
More on those “gaping pauses” in a moment. Pinter’s hypnosis works even on some resilient souls. My friend Roger L. Simon, for example, rightly abominated Pinter’s repulsive politics but nonetheless confessed that he found himself “in awe” of Pinter the playwright ever since seeing an early London production of The Caretaker in 1960.
It pains me to disagree. But I have always felt about Pinter the playwright the way Mark Twain felt about James Fenimore Cooper, though I am inclined to be less generous. Twain observed that “Cooper’s gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such as it was he liked to work it.” Cooper had his broken twig: “Every time a Cooper person is in peril,” Twain wrote, “and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig.” In the same way, Pinter prized his minatory silences above all else. “Mick is alone in the room, U. S. C., his back to the audience. He wears a leather jacket. Silence. . . . A door bangs. Muffled voices are heard. Mick turns his head. He stands, moves silently to the door, turns off lights at a wall switch, goes out, and closes the door quietly. Silence.” Et very much cetera.
Even at his early best (The Birthday Party, say, or The Dumb Waiter, both 1957), Pinter’s was always a small and highly derivative literary gift–more of a handout, really. Indeed, I would suggest that his talent was not so much literary as histrionic, one of literature’s degeneracies.
What Pinter dispensed was a certain tone–an atmospherics of menace, borrowed largely from Samuel Beckett. Its chief effect, when you first encountered it, was to make semi-articulate dissatisfaction seem like existential profundity.
Alas, it wasn’t long before the illusion of profundity evaporated, leaving only semi-articulate dissatisfaction. Hence Mark Steyn’s unsurpassable definition of “Pinteresque”: “a pause followed by a non-sequitur.” The Pinteresque inhabits a basement flat in the “theater of the absurd.” It tells us a lot that the phrase was–is it still?–taken a compliment, an expression of praise, as if the absurd were something to be proud of. Pinter injected a certain senility into language and counted on a credulous public to mistake catalepsy for depth. It paid off. It paid off so well that Pinter’s admirers often sound a lot like the master. Back in 2005, when Pinter won the Nobel Prize, the Swedish academy’s citation told us that Pinter “uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.” Would anyone care to parse that paean to opacity? I’d suggest starting with the word “prattle.”
Pinter himself said: “I have no idea why they gave me the award.” Really? Let me help you, Harold! Remember your speech before the House of Commons in October 2002? That was the one in which you suggested that Tony Blair was a “deluded idiot” and that “Mr. Bush and his gang . . . are determined, quite simply, to control the world and the world’s resources. And they don’t give a damn how many people they murder on the way.” Or consider your remarks on being granted an honorary degree at Turin University later that year. The terrorist attack on New York in September 2001, you said, was “predictable and inevitable. It was an act of retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state terrorism on the part of the United States over many years, in all parts of the world.” And let’s not forget your poems–”God Bless America” (2003), for example, which begins:
Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America’s God.
There are other poems, little scatological ditties–”shit” is one of Pinter’s favorite words–that pursue the same theme. Johann Hari provides a round-up in his dissenting piece on Pinter. The answer to the question Why did Harold Pinter receive the Nobel Prize? can be stated in two words: his politics. Not, I hasten to add, that every aspect of his aspect of his political opinions counted in his favor. Pinter’s support of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, for example, cannot have done much to recommend him to the Nobel Prize selection committee. No, by “politics” I mean the most conspicuous arrow in his quiver: his virulent anti-Americanism–more precisely, his ostentatious campaigns against George W. Bush and American military action to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq and confound the murderous plans of Islamic terrorists. That’s what set hearts in Stockholm beating pit-a-pat.
Knut Ahnlund, a Swedish writer and long-time member of the Nobel Prize Committee, resigned from the committee a few days before Pinter’s award was announced. His public reason was the 2004 literature prize, which went to the Austrian pornographer and anti-American fantasist Elfriede Jelinek. That award was certainly grounds for anyone’s resignation. As Mr. Ahnlund noted, it did “irreparable damage” to the reputation of an already tarnished prize. But why did Mr. Ahnlund wait nearly a year to act? Could it have been the prospect of the award going to Harold Pinter? Many people reacted to the Swedish Academy’s latest flirtation with absurdity by quoting the English wit who, writing about Harold Pinter’s plays, observed that Pinter was “a man of few words, most of them silly.” There was a lot of sniggering when Stockholm announced Pinter as the winner of the prize for literature. But there was also a certain anger, a certain outrage. If nothing else, Harold Pinter has done us the service of demonstrating that the silly is by no means at odds with the malevolently deranged. R.I.P.
PJM Home
The New Criterion
The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art
Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse
Art’s Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity
Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age
Tenured Radicals, NEW, EXPANDED EDITION FALL 2008! How Politics has Corrupted our Higher Education
Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts
The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America
Against the Idols of the Age
Lengthened Shadows: America and Its Institutions in the Twenty-First Century
The Survival of Culture: Permanent Values in a Virtual Age
Physics and Politics, by Walter Bagehot, edited with an
Introduction by Roger Kimball
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
40 Comments
1. Paul:Pinter’s self-righeous political piffle: essentially vicious, hence perfect for the new European conscience, which contains its own, time-honored, viciousness but thinks of itself as the Good Witch…
Dec 27, 2008 - 9:17 am 2. all my life by america | Digg hot tags:[...] Vote Unpleasant thoughts about Harold Pinter [...]
Dec 27, 2008 - 9:44 am 3. Martin Oldsberg:OK, so you say Pinter got the award for political reasons, more precisely because of his “virulent anti-Americanism”. Is this true for all the recipients, with appropriate adjustments along the political scale; thus, say, also for Naipaul, in 2001, awarded the prize by essentially the same academy? Or does this hold only for the “lefties”?
Dec 27, 2008 - 11:35 am 4. Fausta’s Blog » Blog Archive » Kimball on Pinter:Pinter appeared to have taken the prize as some sort of political reward, but that was simply wrong of him and says nothing of the academy´s intention. (For what it´s worth: they are not a particularly left-leaning bunch.)
All in all and politics aside, Naipaul and Pinter were both worthy recipients; Jelinek perhaps not so –the academy is certainly not infallible — but Ahnlunds defection was a bit late in the day to carry much conviction.
Martin Oldsberg
Gothenburg,
Sweden
[...] started on antibiotics, but here’s a post which elucidates my own attitude on Harold Pinter: Unpleasant thoughts about Harold Pinter, by Roger [...]
Dec 27, 2008 - 12:21 pm 5. 11B40:Greetings:
I wonder what Mr. Pinter’s work would have been like if he were writing in German.
Dec 27, 2008 - 12:38 pm 6. Mary Jackson:Well, I thought pretty much the same thing, until, just recently, I saw “No Man’s Land” on stage in the West End. Perhaps it was all in the acting – Michael Gambon is superb in everything he’s in – but I was fascinated. The pauses, at least in this production, were used for comic effect, not false profundity, and the whole thing was played for savage laughs.
As for deeper meaning, I didn’t bother to look.
I despise Pinter’s politics – he is a champagne Socialist of the first order – and find the poems ridiculous, but did enjoy this particular play, in spite of myself.
Dec 27, 2008 - 1:46 pm 7. ehunter:There is no more telling indicator of how far our elite’s idea of culture has fallen than to compare the recent recipients of this award with the those of 50 or 60 years ago. Think of Pinter alongside Eliot, Yeats, or Faulkner. Embarassing isnt it? In fact the only recent awards that bears up is VS Naipaul, and before him William Golding.
Dec 27, 2008 - 1:47 pm 8. vanderleun:When people like this die, I always think of the quote in Tale of Two Cities:
Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled: “Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.”
Dec 27, 2008 - 2:38 pm 9. Roger L Simon:“In fact the only recent awards that bears up is VS Naipaul, and before him William Golding.”
One other: Isaac Bashevis Singer
Dec 27, 2008 - 3:30 pm 10. Steve Skubinna:Pinter wasn’t fit to clean out Tom Stoppard’s toilet bowl.
Dec 27, 2008 - 5:55 pm 11. Skeptic:>>>>>>Is this true for all the recipients, with appropriate adjustments along the political scale; thus, say, also for Naipaul, in 2001, awarded the prize by essentially the same academy?
The point is not that 100% of the recipients are unworthy who get the prize for being anti-American hacks (Naipaul certainly deserved the prize and is not such a hack). The point is that those who ARE unworthy receive the prize due to being ant-American hacks.
The Literature Nobel prize, in recent years, seems to be working on the 50%-50% formula: about 50% of the literature Nobel prizes go to deserving recipients, such as Niapaul; the other 50% is reserved for pornographic or talentless folks whose main claim to fame is hating the west and all it stands for.
Dec 28, 2008 - 12:39 am 12. Skeptic:>>>>Pinter wasn’t fit to clean out Tom Stoppard’s toilet bowl.
It’s Chistmas, you mentioned Tom Stoppard, and we’re discussion Pinter’s deification in the newspaper, by “with it”, “progressive” journalists. So:
“Perhaps I’ll get him a reporter’s doll for Christmas. Wind it up and he gets it wrong.” — Ruth, in Tom Stoppard’s “Night and Days”.
Dec 28, 2008 - 12:47 am 13. Freespeech:Ouch! Somehow I seem to have stumbled into a pit of sclerotic fascists by mistake……….noisy and annoying in here, but before I hop out:
Those of us in the West who don’t live in the USA can’t all look the other way when the deeply hypocritical and incompetent bible-bashing masters of your race instruct us in Freedom, while bombing those Arab critturs and supplying bombs to others to do the same (they are at it again I think).
In the immortal words of Private Jones to Captain Mainwaring :
“They don’t like it up ‘em Sir”
Pinter RIP: his plays and screenplays will outlast American Imperialism.
Dec 28, 2008 - 5:30 am 14. Alo Kievalar:Anyone interested in reading Pinter’s treasonous Nobel Lecture can go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY2Z27Y-HJE
Anyone interested in watching and hearing Pinter actually giving his speech can go to youtube.com at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY2Z27Y-HJE (46 minutes) (air turbulence bag advised)
The Telegraph has a nice piece entitled: Why Harold Pinter will be not be outlived by his Plays) at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3982332/Why-Harold-Pinter-will-not-be-outlived-by-his-plays.html
I am unable to judge Pinter as a playwright but whatever the merits, they are nullified by his anti-everything stance. I no longer am able to separate the man from his art. They have to complement one another. If they don’t, then it is all valueless, a lie. One doesn’t redeem the other. (conf. Heidegger and the Nazis).
At least the Nobel Prize is not called the Noble Prize. It definitely isn’t that by a long shot.
Dec 28, 2008 - 6:18 am 15. Alo Kievalar:CORRECTION:
The written TEXT of H. Pinter’s Nobel Lecture is at:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
Dec 28, 2008 - 6:24 am 16. ehunter2:I beg to disagree on Isaac Singer..if you want a great Jewish writer you might check out the
Dec 28, 2008 - 8:55 am 17. Gaffe Prices:1976 Nobel Prize winner.
“Pinter wasn’t fit to clean out Tom Stoppard’s toilet bowl.” -Steve Skubinna
… And it would have served him well to do so, given his preoccupation, nay, fascination with what goes on there.
Oh, and also from “Free Speech” -
“Pinter RIP: his plays and screenplays will outlast American Imperialism.”
Ahh, the grandiosity of the secret, closeted, totalitarian socialist. Pinters plays and screenplays won’t outlast “American Imperialism” because it is “American Imperialist” 1st Amendment right to free speech that provided for him and all the other fleas, leeches, and vermin like Pinter to live their lush life as rose petals of praise and sycophancy are heaped before him to keep something between him and the pavement.
But not so for playwrights such as Vaclav Havel, who did not have the good fortune to live outside the grip of Totalitarian Socialism.
For every Pinter there is the corresponding Robin Cook to bring this “theater of the absurd” to the portals of power. Robin Cook, and his party had no quibble about enlisting “American Imperialism” in order to carpet bomb Serbia in 1999. Thousands of civilians killed – “collateral damage” if you will- , while bombing roads, bridges, power plants, public transport, and water works, but strangely enough, not (to) a single military post or facility. Serbians had not seen blitzkrieg since National Socialists delivered it to their door in 1942/3. Pinter seems to have gotten that one right.
So justify collateral damage, i.e. “deaths of innocent civilians” in the name of the Great Robin Cook, since thats the big buggaboo for you fellow travelers, you cafeteria pundits.
And don’t give me that “… it couldn’t be helped” “… it had to be done” “uh… the end justified the means” dismissal and see if you can’t come up with something better that might “uncover the precipice” of such pedestrian prattle as I hear from your faction when its time to own up.
You secret, closeted, totalitarian socialists perpetrate as much total war as you have the power, means, and ability to deploy. And when you don’t, you have pinters to fling as much excretions as possible during the meanwhile. I’m not buying it.
You think you’re taking the high road, but you end up in the same toilet that Pinters should still be scrubbing.
(P.S. Geez, golly gosh… if you have to “uncover” a “precipice”, then its not much of a precipice then, is it? More the work of archeology, I should think. Maybe you’ll come up with another “Imperialist Empire”, if you just dig around a bit.)
Dec 28, 2008 - 10:13 am 18. Freespeech:I just had another look at Pinter’s speech:
nothing to disagree with there. I’m passing a few notes down to the noisome devils in that pit:
One says: Iraq, a chronicle foretold by at least 3 million marching citizens of the True Albion, betrayed by Blair and his running dogs.
(”running dogs” remember that one?)
Another says: who have the Americans got now Arthur Miller has gone? Who have we got?
Is Trevor Griffiths still around?
Another says: to lose Adrian Mitchell and Harold Pinter in a week, as the Irish say:
“our sons have sons……”
Another says: Pinter’s film screenplays, better than most of the commercial trash that comes out of Hollywood
Ref Freedom. Full of ironies, that one.
As a grandson of someone murdered by the NKVD, for me it’s hard to say: the Russkies won WW2: and the Americans sacrificed Poland as well as……….
Take a look at your Imperial Clothes and try on those orange jumpsuits and cable ties that you dehumanise people with.
Dec 28, 2008 - 10:28 am 19. Steve:I’m surprised no one has mentioned Theodore Dalrymple’s excellent comparison of the works of Terrence Rattigan and Harold Pinter from this very publication:
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/rattiganpinter-dalrymple-2306
Dec 28, 2008 - 10:52 am 20. Gaffe Prices:Gee, freespeech, you are pathetic, but you’ve got alot of really solid non-sequiturs going on there!
Your dancing is ok, but you’ve not reprised a single example of the kind of psychological projection that provided that knock-out punch in your first post.
But that is still no substitute for not answering the question
And by the way, I looked, and I’m wearing Pajamas, and they’re in my favorite color- orange!
And also, this is not a pause, but a yawn.
Dec 28, 2008 - 11:10 am 21. Freespeech:Thanks Steve, I really liked that one about
“a larger Belgium” and we know what they did,
or don’t we Monsieur Gaffe Prices?
For your current apocalypses now, I’ll remind you of Joseph Conrad writing in his third language, and refer you to the previous paragraph.
I’ll ask you good American boys to tell me what American dramatist can pass muster with Harold Pinter. Discuss.
Dec 28, 2008 - 6:23 pm 22. Steve Skubinna:Freespeech, you said three posts ago that you were going to “hop out.” Feel free to keep your word. Even though it was given to sclerotic fascists.
Dec 28, 2008 - 7:31 pm 23. Roy M:I named my dog Pinter.
It had very long paws.
Dec 29, 2008 - 8:14 am 24. definition of derivative | Digg hot tags:[...] Vote Unpleasant thoughts about Harold Pinter [...]
Dec 29, 2008 - 1:52 pm 25. Troy Camplin:To my mind, the fact that Milan Kundera hasn’t received a Nobel Prize says volume about whether the Price is political or literary. One can also look to the latest comments form a Nobel Committee member on American literature to see that there is currently an anti-American sentiment. They are apprently not aware of the works of Frederick Fierstein or Frederick Turner, two fine American poets (though the latter is naturalized).
On the other hand, the current trend in the Nobel Prizes is suggestive. Perhaps if I turned my own pen against the U.S. and wrote anti-American plays and poems, I could get my own Nobel Prize.
Dec 30, 2008 - 1:13 pm 26. PA Cat:22 Roy M
And how much poop did it produce?
Dec 30, 2008 - 4:05 pm 27. Mark:Shorter Kimball:
“The worst feature of Pinter’s playwriting was his Nobel Prize Speech”
Who says political correctness is dead!
Dec 30, 2008 - 6:49 pm 28. Chris B:Oh, for Christ’s sake. Of course the right is going to shit all over Pinter the morning after his obituary. And of course they’re going going to claim his Nobel was given for political purposes. I mean, has no one bothered to notice the right has a chronic victim/persecution complex that they exercise at their own political convenience? Incidentally, it also appears no one has bothered to notice that Pinter was absolutely right about the imperial imperatives of the American neo-cons. So what reason has the right to get pissed simply because Pinter described them for what they are?
Dec 30, 2008 - 10:37 pm 29. jjg:“The answer to the question Why did Harold Pinter receive the Nobel Prize? can be stated in two words: his politics.”
And you’ve proven this, have you, or are you just making this up as you go along?
Dec 31, 2008 - 2:50 am 30. Des:Sorry Gaffe Prices, but what is it about Americans that they think they gave the world free speech? Their faulty education system? Pinter lived in a country that had free speech before USA even existed.
Dec 31, 2008 - 3:54 am 31. Skeptic:His political views are irrelevant to his dramatic work, just as Picasso’s communism is irrelevant to his art.
Folks — it’s pointless to argue with someone who uses the word “Fascists!” in the very first sentence he posts in this forum.
Dec 31, 2008 - 4:54 am 32. The Shadow:I recently saw the Pinter play “Betrayal” at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. I thought it was one of the most brilliant evenings of theater I’ve ever seen, a masterpiece of minimalism. I was reminded that writing with depth is difficult, writing with depth and making it seem simple is among the hardest tasks for any writer.
Reading the blather on this website is discouraging. Most postings are narcissistic mash notes to the sender, belittling the other writers in the most arcanely self-aggrandizing fashion, giggling at their oh so literate cleverness – all in order to belittle a renowned writer whose corpse is still warm – because his certainties were different from theirs.
I am American, I embrace the American Ideal with great passion, but it is quite obvious that America has lost it’s way, becoming more Oligarchy than Meritocracy. Our incursion into Iraq led to the deaths of countless Iraqis and 4,000 Americans with little to show for it other than huge profits for a few connected companies. Pinter, who criticized this madness, may have been naive about politics, but the Bush administration painted the bulls eye on our beloved country through it’s cynical and deceptive actions.
The American Right Wing attacks and eviscerates anyone who criticizes anything associated with America. They live in a little fantasy cocoon of self-righteousness, unburdened by acknowledging blemishes. A lack of self criticism is not conducive to growth or character building, as the misfits of the Right like the host of this site vividly illustrate.
Pinter was a great writer, and in spite of his missteps and personal quirks, still tried to fight the good fight against forces he deemed dangerous to the many in service of the few.
The man just died for goodness sake – please go back to pulling the wings off butterflies and gazing longingly into the mirror – and let the man rest in peace.
Dec 31, 2008 - 3:15 pm 33. Gaffe Prices:#32- Mr. Shadow, go right ahead and criticize America, I do it all the time. Thats democratic society: it offers people of different points of view the opportunity to criticize those who hold office and authority, and each other; so I’m not about to sit quietly when a spew of first, hyperbole, and then 2) moral equivalence, and 3) the straw man argument obscures a proper accounting of this man.
First freespeech, makes vague utterances about those who would “instruct us in freedom” but not before the addressing those whose motives he questions by the brilliant ad hominem “sclerotic fascists”.
Des says the same thing, …”what is it about Americans that they think they gave the world free speech?” Des and freespeech, your freedom is your own problem, and what you do with it is your own call. Perhaps lack of manners, lack of respect and inane regurgitations are the results of such sloppy and lazy use of it. If you cannot show respect for others (and their opinions), then there is none that can be left over for yourself.
America did not give the world free speech any more than it gives (gave) individuals free will. An educated person knows this already. It simply guarantees it, and there are those who will fight to preserve that right.
In Britain, they natter on about “constitutional rights”. Britain has no constitution, just layers and strata of court precedent. Do you know parliament has done away with trial by jury? I believe trial by jury of ones peers comes to us from there, but now its an artifact in Britain.
The first linked article takes one to an obit at the huffington post via the blue printed link above- “exceptions”, written by Johan Hari. I just re-read it, and previously, I made the mistake of thinking Pinter supported the idea of Milosovic’s deserving a fair trial and a defense. Hence this quotation [from moi] “Pinter appears to have gotten that one right.”. Pinter wanted more than that, as Johan Hari correctly points out- ‘Right, sign me [Pinter] up for the defense’. The Committee he [Pinter] sat on right up to Milosevic’s death – headed by Jared Israel, a friend of Milosevic – was not simply calling for the Serb to be given a fair trial, a demand all reasonable people supported. It called for Milosevic to be released on the grounds that he was not guilty.’. I stand corrected. I retract that ambivalent comment. But at least this shows a consistency on Pinters part, as Johan Hari recounts- Pinter’s response was simple and visceral: ‘whatever the US and UK governments are for, I’m against. Blair and Clinton are condemning Milosevic?…sign me up for the defense.’
My question is still this, is the action taken on behalf the Blair and Clinton government, by the U.S Armed Forces, namely the Air Force, in bombing Belgrade (without a vote taken on it in Congress, I might add), the work of, as Chris B puts it, the “imperial imperatives of American neo-cons” ?
Chris B says “Incidentally, it also appears no one has bothered to notice that Pinter was absolutely right about the imperial imperatives of the American neo-cons.”
What I notice is that Pinter is against American or British force involving itself in the business of any other countries, on any grounds whatsoever, not NATO’s, and not on the prerogatives of the U.N. either.
Johan Hari states “Pinter repeatedly said the “real” crimes began after the NATO bombing campaign, but most of the crimes Milosevic was charged with were committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. To give just one example, in November 1994, Dzenana Soklovic, 31, and her seven year old son were walking in woods near Sarajevo. A bullet passed through Dzenana and hit her son in the head, killing him.”
This sounds like just cause for charging Milosevic with crimes, so conceding the point that Milosevic committed war crimes is in order, but for all that can be claimed about him, he did not bomb and slaughter his own serbian citizen non-combatants by the thousands as the NATO led mission did. The U.S. did it.
That was Pinters point.
Milosevic planned to call Clinton as a witness, and did not get a trial.
So was it the work of the imperialist (again) “military industrial complex”? A plot of “imperialist imperatives” from “American Neo-cons” perhaps? As Chris B would have it?
Can you draw moral equivalence between dead and injured Serbians unable to get to hospital because the roads and infrastructure are bombed out, and the results of “our incursion into Iraq led to the deaths of countless Iraqis”? You’re going to have to, in order to become as consistently “anti-imperialist” as Pinter is.
Isn’t Pinters point about military non-intervention in the Balkans consistent with an “anti-imperialist” point of view? And If not, how do you justify this intervention there in 1999, when otherwise all we are likely to hear from you is “Iraq, Iraq Iraq”.
Isn’t anti-imperialist point of view that larger powers should not interfere in the business of smaller powers?
How about Georgia, is it a (potential) proxy war between 2 superpowers? How about Iran and Hamas, Hezbulluh? Oh, nevermind…
So you like Pinters plays, fine, I’ve no problem with that. Ideas should compete in a marketplace of ideas.
I’m not a member of any “American Right Wing attacks” machine intent to “eviscerate anyone who criticizes anything associated with America” , I just want to know why you are so bleeding touchy, simply because I, or others, won’t engage in an idolatry of a man (and his works) who is far more consistent than you and y’alls comments are.
Jan 1, 2009 - 11:04 pm 34. Mary Jackson:Do you know parliament has done away with trial by jury? I believe trial by jury of ones peers comes to us from there, but now its an artifact in Britain.
This is absolute rubbish. No it hasn’t. At all. In any shape or form.
The ignorance of Americans about Britain shouldn’t continue to shock me. But it does.
Jan 2, 2009 - 10:28 am 35. James Currin:A Clerihew upon the death of Harold Pinter:
So the Laureate, Harold Pinter
Jan 2, 2009 - 2:40 pm 36. Freespeech:exits, left, in the bleak midwinter.
His theatre of the absurd,
made him Britain’s most admired turd.
Britain has NOT done away with trial by jury,
in spite of “the Guantanamo effect” you would doubtless like us to have.
Some of the right wing idiots in the government have proposed this in some circumstances, but to date, in my understanding, no chance.
Northern Ireland used to have this in the “Troubles”, still may have in some limited respects. Draw your own conclusions from that.
What ignorance: of a piece.
Looking forward to my next jury call-up, (couldn’t make the last one)……….
Jan 2, 2009 - 6:04 pm 37. Mary Jackson:I served on a jury not long ago – an interesting, if frustrating, experience. We knew he’d done it but couldn’t prove it, so we had to let him off. Pity there is no verdict: not guilty, but don’t do it again.
James Currin, that is brilliant.
Jan 3, 2009 - 7:54 am 38. Gaffe Prices:Oh good then, what a relief.
So if an armed burglar enters my property, attacks me and I still manage to get his weapon from him (a knife in this case) and kill the intruder in self defense, I can still count on a trial by jury, when I am charged with his killing, is that what you are saying, #34?
Good, well that sure puts my mind at rest, even though the debate rages on.
And it’s not so bad if I’m convicted; I’ll get to learn how to macrame, or spend more time gardening. If I’m on good behaviour, at least they might not do anything cruel or unusual, such as send me to a hospital, or something. Damn, I’ve just nicked meself with me shears, good thing this isn’t America, where a secondary infection will cost you.
Speaking of medical personnel, Gitmo is a holiday resort paradise, despite not meeting with more strict definitions of the takfiri there. The only ones abused there are the examining medical and military personnel, who are attacked, and bitten, scratched and beaten, just for providing med care. No documented cases of the T-word, even though the red cross gets to see them what, ten times a day, before and after prayers.
There is still, though, the increased weight gain, and (gasp!) the cycle of obesity! Oh! insufferable cruelty!
A judge has ordered them sent to the mainland for trial, but no state will have them. The judge has done everything he can for the sake of their publicity and photo ops. Lets see how much time the press devotes to leaning on Pres. Obama on this issue. Now its his problem.
Jan 3, 2009 - 10:50 am 39. Mary Jackson:So if an armed burglar enters my property, attacks me and I still manage to get his weapon from him (a knife in this case) and kill the intruder in self defense, I can still count on a trial by jury, when I am charged with his killing, is that what you are saying, #34?
Your point is?
Yet another ignorant American who believes that there is no right to self-defence in the UK.
Jan 3, 2009 - 3:31 pm 40. Peter the Australian:All Western countries gave up trial by jury a long time ago, for certain petty offences.
Tjhose who rant on about the evil US are always stupid twats who are keen to pardon any evil done by anyone else, but will hold the Americans to be the worst villains of all time if a child’s toy is broken in Timbucktu. This double racism.
Pinter didn’t deserve the Nobel Prize, because his work was extremely average in quantity and quality. His best work was actually as a director.
Tom Stoppard is definitely the Playwright who should have got the prize. But he won’t because he isn’t a lefty.
Jan 4, 2009 - 6:00 pm