After the swearing-in in (as usual) chilly, windswept Washington, after the parties and party-delirium end, and the million visitors depart, after the interviews on "Access Hollywood" with Will Smith, and Samuel Jackson, and Oprah Winfrey, when they are solemnly asked to tell millions of viewers what they made of "the whole experience" of the Inauguration, Obama should signal a reordering of national priorities.
And this is what he, Obama, should and could do: he could get on a plane, while the household staff are still vacuuming in the White House and the Old Executive Office Building – not just on any plane, but that special plane, the airforceoney one -- and fly straight down to San Antonio, Texas. And there he should present the very first Presidential Medal of the Obama Administration to Jacques Barzun, aged 100. And then Barack Obama should fly back to Washington.
What will be made of this, by those who have helped make this such a silly and distracted land – the television personalities, the radio talkshow hosts, the columnists, the bloggers, the guests on Larry King and Larry King himself, perhaps even including some of those who found out about the Inauguration by watching "Access Hollywood" (or "ET" or any other similar idiocy). They will start by asking, as is their wont, huh? Or rather, they will ask who, where, what was that visit by Barack Obama all about? Among the political commentators, those largely unlettered denizens of book-or-two Washington, some will now have to find out something about this Jacques Barzun fellow, and about his two dozen works. It’s even possible that an intrepid columnist will read one of Barzun’s books and report on it, to a surprised million or two readers. Such attention, say, to “The House of Intellect” or “From Dawn To Decadence,” can only do the country good. As President, Obama should be partly in the business of promoting, not so much “The House of Intellect,” but rather, the House of Intellect. He has made a start, with the appointment of excellent science advisers who are no fools and who will not suffer fools gladly. But before getting down to the great business of governing, which nowadays mostly involves business itself, and rescuing the economy, it would be good to have the whole radix-malorum rat-race impliedly held up for inspection and ridicule and demotion, and something else, much more admirable and sustaining, held up for admiration. And that something would be Jacques Barzun, and all his works, and days. It’s going to take not just a change in laws, but a change in attitudes – call it a mix of mockery and higher marginal tax rates – to bring under control all that that radix-malorum-prompted madness. Honoring Barzun would be a good start.
Brecht’s well-known and lapidary observation goes like this: :
Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral . Grub first, then ethics.
The statement is not always wrong. In fact, if you are starving, it’s right.
But only if you are starving, or close.
The world-wide economic desarroi is a result of out-of-control greed, and if that greed, in turn, stems in part from the widespread anomie and even despair of minds emptied, or perhaps never filled with, anything substantial or sustaining. So dealing with the economic malaise requires some sign, from those who may not be satisfied in taking “a leadership role” but might actually wish to be leaders, that they have their own priorities right. Jacques Barzun, and his writings on literature and art and on what’s wrong with American culture or “culture” today, should be seen as more important than any bankers on the dole today. Part of the present economic mess is a result of the promptings of ingenious but unhinged greed. That kind of greed reflects an emptiness of mind, a starving of the soul, for which the wrong nourishment – money – is frantically fixed upon by the sufferers as a panacea. It could happen to you.
Obama’s lightning homage-visit to Barzun would signal a making-right-of-priorities. Unexpected and dramatic, such an act would push people who had begun to think they had forgotten how to think to think again, to think beyond the platitudes and shallowest of plongitudes to which they had grown accustomed. And they might then refuse to accept, when it is passed out at mealtime, the thin gruel of broadcast distractions. And, having caught sight of what a nourishing mental meal might look like, the kind that Jacques Barzun, that master chef, used to prepare for students in person, they will look for and find his books of recipes, many of which are still in print.
So here’s how that Brechtian phrase should, in the advanced West, now read:
Erst kommt die Moral, dann kommt das Fressen.
Now, where’s that Flight Plan for San Antonio? The Air Force One boys need to know.
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