I’m Spartacus, you’re Spartacus, we’re all bloody Spartacus, blah blah blah. Nonagenarian former actor Kirk Douglas, of all people, is attempting to rally world youth to sort out the mess his generation created:
Kirk Douglas calls on youth to stand up and be counted
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday December 11, 2006
The Guardian
The cleft chin may be familiar to some. But others may have difficulty placing the ageing Hollywood star.
“You may know me,” he writes in an open letter published last Saturday. “If you don’t … Google me. I was a movie star and I’m Michael Douglas’s dad, Catherine Zeta-Jones’s father-in-law, and the grandparents of their two children. Today I celebrate my 90th birthday.”
But Kirk Douglas has loftier things on his mind than summoning up the wind to blow out 90 candles. The man who led the slaves to revolt as Spartacus, the man who embodied the suffering of Van Gogh’s art in Lust For Life is turning his attention to the fate of the planet.
“Let’s face it,” he writes to “America’s young people”, “THE WORLD IS IN A MESS and you are inheriting it.
“Generation Y, you are on the cusp. You are the group facing many problems: abject poverty, global warming, genocide, Aids, and suicide bombers to name a few. These problems exist, and the world is silent. We have done very little to solve these problems. Now, we leave it to you. You have to fix it because the situation is intolerable.”
[..]
Cheers for pointing that out Grandad, we’d never have noticed if you hadn’t said.
I had similar feelings at first on reading recent Digby and Hilzoy posts. Shorter Digby: “America has a class system that’s wrecking the country.” Wow, I thought, who knew? So that’s what all those ads and movies and tv shows are about. Shorter Hilzoy: “The methods used to produce chocolate, gold, diamonds and many other commodities produce human misery and ecological disaster.” Do they really? Well, fancy. Oh, OK, that’s why all those Africans are running away from that misery as fast as they can and making new lives in Europe…
Now I was quite peeved. None of these issues are new or unknown or hidden – anyone outside the US with half a brain and a smidgen of conscience who’s followed current events knows these things, even if not in detail. They’ve been out in the open for a long time in the rest of the world, but Americans are acting as though it’s something newly-dicovered! What do you think all the European and S. American leftists have been telling you all this time? Argh, why are you all so stupid?
I was getting a good head of outraged steam up at this point.
But then I thought, am I just being horribly snotty here? It’s that ‘outside the US’ that makes all the difference in perception. To so many US readers who are just switching on to the liberating idea of online dissenting and blogs the idea that by eating a candy bar they are supporting slavery, for example, must be deeply shocking new information which must challenge their view of themselves and their nation’s way of living in some pretty basic ways.
Similarly the truth about their government’s complicity in the torture and murder of thousands in Chile is shocking the US public following Augusto Pinochet‘s death. The information about how the coup was engineered by Kissinger and other neocons and how Pinochet’s murderous regime was supported by the US is something which has, again, been common knowledge for a long time elsewhere, even in the most remote of places. For example the woman doctor who ran the hospice in Devon where my mother died was raped and tortured by Pinochet’s thugs while working in Chile in the seventies. As a result the US’ role in Chile had massive coverage locally.
But at a national and international level coverage of even the most egregious excesses of the Pinochet regime was constantly downplayed, excused and finessed by the US and UK government/media complex particularly so in the US. American Journalists who didn’t sing the right tune were even disappeared themselves, so it’s not surprising that this is all coming as a bit of a shock to many in Leftpondia.
There are many more such shocks to come too, as the citizenry realises the facts are out there, if you only care to look – take Guatemala, Afghanistan, The Marianas, Diego Garcia or East Timor to name just a few- it’s all there for the knowing. There is a whole other mass of people apart from the liberal left blogerati who can only now, because of the wonders of the internet, find out what has been kept from them for so long. Viewed from this standpoint Digby’s and Hilzoy’s posts are objective, trustworthy and essential guides for people to know where to find what’s been hidden in plain sight, rather than just restatements of received wisdom.
So from my initial irritation and snark I’ve changed my position. Rather than being such a horribly European elitist leftist snot I really should be jubilant to find that after all the chipping away at the tunnel face that others have been chipping away on the other side and we’re about to meet in the middle.
In that light even Kirk Douglas’ slightly bizarre call to arms is actually quite laudable – rarely does someone of his generation actually say ‘Sorry, we were wrong’ and make an attempt, however lame, to put it right.
As my son constantly tells me, it’s all good.
Read more: US media, US politics, Blogs, Kirk Douglas, Augusto Pinochet, Chile, Guatemala, Afghanistan, The Marianas, Diego Garcia, East Timor
