A LIFE IN LETTERS

LETTERS

Mourning Hitchens; the look-back attack; royal blood ties; Rick Perry's power; an upstanding oeuvre; not making cents; and Eisenhower's wizard of cause

Dying of a throat cancer, and wishing to save his family from poverty, the greatest Union hero of the Civil War spent the last year of his life in severe pain, writing his memoirs. He died a few days after completing an excellent, detailed, and lucid work, highly praised ever since.

A public ordeal ["Trial of the Will," January], I was reminded of Ulysses S. Grant. After all, Grant had been bankrupted following his presidency by a Jon Corzine-like Wall Street partner, this in the days before presidents received rich pensions.

The prolific Hitchens, far as I know, had no financial problems. But he wrote during the year and a half he was dying, in what also must have been great pain, as a simple act of civilized, intellectual defiance of the anarchy of death. And this without any comforting belief in the divine or the immortality of the soul. I found him very brave.

ROBERT CHANDLER Beverly Hills, California

THERE NEVER WAS a braver lightning rod than Christopher Hitchens. Thank you for being his pulpit. At his death I feel such a loss for reason and erudition but also for whimsy, wit, and whiskey appreciation.

I'm "only" a Connecticut housewife, but even I know there always has to be another side to things, a place where Christopher Hitchens so often dwelled. How truly American, really...

HELEN L. A. EPLEY Ridgefield, Connecticut

THIS HAS BEEN one of those weeks. I heard the words I never thought I would hear about a colleague of mine, whom I've known for 29 years. As he quietly battles cancer, the words "inoperable" and "terminal" are used to describe his current condition. I somehow found my way to my desk, logged in to my computer, and pulled up the news: Christopher Hitchens had lost his own battle with the disease that very day.

Then I got home only to find, in a huge pile of unread mail, your January issue with Hitchens's article—and it was completely him: raw, intense, soul-baring, full of a sense of urgency that this might be his last chance to fully express his feelings about the disease that now devoured him. The piece confronts all of the deep, dark places that no one should have to suffer in his or her lifetime, and I hung on his every word. Brutally honest and intense, the article made me see that, while Christopher fought the good fight to the clickety-clack of his keyboard, my suffering colleague and friend could similarly face his own fight with his quick wit and dry sense of humor.

DAWN LEIGH BESSETTE Dover, Delaware

CONFRONTED WITH THE PHOTO of Hitchens's ravaged face alongside his January article—only four days after his death—

I thought it just as well that I was sitting with my back to the other passengers on my city-bound tram. Polemicist and contrarian, Hitchens was witheringly frank, uncompromising in his views, bristling with conviction, vigorous in debate, and candid as to his failings. You couldn't wait to read what he had to say, and even if you disagreed with his arguments, it was hard not to admire the tenacity and clarity with which he made them.

We live in an age that increasingly seems to deride serious thought and shun concerted discussion about anything important. Hitchens despised the complacency of the mainstream media, the bland, fuzzy populism, and the trend toward selfserving, unctuous prattle. Sadly, he will probably rank as one of the last great intellectuals of his age.

INGA WALTON Victoria, Australia

CULTURE BLOCK

I WAS QUITE HAPPY to read Kurt Andersen's article ["You Say You Want a Devolution?," January]—finally someone had written what Pd been complaining about to friends and associates for decades.

Perhaps this is a blessing for those of us old enough to remember the bygone era of constant cultural change. We grew up enthralled by keeping current with what was "cool," haunted by the prospect of inevitably falling behind as we grew old. The specter of Willy Loman was our worst nightmare. But now that the rules of cool seemingly no longer evolve, falling behind is no longer an issue. That being said, the vibrant and living popular culture of long ago was free of the depressing apathy that accompanies cultural stagnancy.

While Mr. Andersen may be onto something concerning the causes of this devolution—namely economics—I'm much more in agreement with his theory of cultural fatigue. It was shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall that I first noticed the great cultural stasis, which had more to do with the new era of political instability that had been ushered in. The end of the geopolitical stasis of the Cold War, the time of so much cultural innovation, was also the end of all that creative change. I have been scanning the horizon ever since for that energy, that excitement for something new. As global politics become more and more dire, our global culture sits dead in the water.

CORBIN POTICHA Amsterdam, the Netherlands

I WAS SURPRISED that Kurt Andersen only briefly mentions the economy to exA plain our cultural treadmill. 1 The recession, after all, is the 1 main cause of the downturn in \ the arts.

I studied illustration in college with the aspiration of creating children's books. Any publishing rep or author who visited my classes made it a point to warn us of how much the entertainment industry had changed in recent years. Showbusiness brass are too frightened of the risk involved with investing in new projects. Instead of testing the waters with unknown authors, publishers will seek out celebrities, such as Perez Hilton or Steve Martin, to write children's books because the publishers know they will sell. And Hollywood keeps churning out remakes, sequels, and trilogies because their backers, too, know they will sell. On the flip side, consumers encourage this behavior because they don't want to risk spending $10 on a movie they might not like. Or they buy books for their children that they enjoyed as children because they know they'll get their money's worth.

When the economy tanked, many aspiring artists changed their minds, having been easily discouraged by others about their career paths. Schools are pushing math, science, and trade skills to compete with other countries. Music and visual-arts programs are being cut more than ever as their budgets continue to shrink. Until the economy becomes more stable, art will continue to rank low on the priority list.

LEE ANNA FITZGERALD Altamont, New York

TOO CLOSE FOR CONSORT?

SALLY BEDELL SMITH'S article "Love and Majesty" [January] reminded me of when, in March 1954, the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth and her consort, Philip, were on a tumultuous first-time tour of Australia to meet and greet Her Majesty's fans Down Under. I was a very junior reporter for the local Adelaide Advertiser at the time. The word was out that, based on some kind of rumored reputation, frisky Philip was possibly planning to wander off late one night to catch action that was not on the official agenda. My job was to surreptitiously station myself at the gates of the lieutenant governor's residence with the goal of catching and reporting on whatever might happen. I spent the hours on my cold, fruitless watch chatting with the guards. Alas, the only "incident" occurred at about three A.M., when a messenger came outside to request that one of the squad-car officers drive off to procure a hot-water bottle for warming the royal buns in the chilly Adelaide autumn.

MORE FROM THE V.F. MAILBAG

J^F hankyouthankyouthankyou!" I write Jean and Dave Christensen, I from Bellingham, Washington. "No fragrance ads in the January 2012 issue ... Again, thank you." Suresuresure. Again, sure.

Michael Dolan, of Washington, D.C., says he doesn't "know from where in my local grocery store Todd S. Purdum ["One Nation, Under Anns"] tried calling" (Purdum wrote, "When you go to the neighborhood Safeway in Bethesda, Maryland, you can't make a cellphone call, because the store is across the street from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and all service is blocked"). Dolan says he tried it and got through fine twice, "including one call from the eerie weird zone by the milk case."

Kurt Andersen's "You Say You Want a Devolution?" is "the lament of a jaded old fogy," writes Tom Scarlett, of Rockville, Maryland, and from Maplewood, New Jersey, Helena Holgersson-Shorter confirms her "hunch that such a ridiculously myopic article about the stasis of American cultural evolution could only have been written by a baby-boomer-aged

white man (redundantly) wearing glasses." On the other hand: "Bravo, Kurt Andersen! I've been remarking [about] this for years!" So says Edward Piha, of Sao Paulo, Brazil; we're checking on his age, race, and ophthalmic situation. "I found [Andersen's] statement 'Lady Gaga has replaced Madonna' quite groundless, annoying, and blasphemous," writes Edmund Camacho, from Corner Brook, Newfoundland, in the process providing the Mailbag with a segue into some Gaga-mail.

"I have just read in your new edition that the person Lady Gaga will also be presented in a kind-of-naked manner. I am wondering why you have to do this." The correspondent, Dr. Tobias Bauknecht, of Bonn, Germany, remains a fan of the magazine but is baffled by our naked-manner-presentation decision. "I am sure you have your reasons," he acknowledges, not unkindly.

Finally, Adrienne Smithson writes from Auckland, New Zealand: "Just wanted to communicate how much I am enjoying reading 'One Nation, Under Arms.' I haven't even finished yet and felt the need to praise it!" (Tune in to the April Mailbag for the exciting conclusion!)

DUNCAN HOLMES Delta, British Columbia

1 WANT TO POINT OUT that Sally Bedell Smith downplays the blood ties between Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip. As Smith states, the couple share Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as great-great-grandparents. But they also share yet other grandparents. The royal pair are related through the Danish royal family, too—King Christian IX and Queen Louise are Elizabeth's great-great-grandparents and Philip's great-grandparents.

RICHARD HARRIS Brussels, Belgium

IN THE RICK OF TIME

I AM SITTING in complete shock after reading Bryan Burrough's article in your January issue ["Rick Perry Has Three Strikes Against Him"]. I knew the Republican presidential candidate was ill-equipped and not the smartest of the pack, but the information Burrough gathered is enough to make one realize that democracy should be spelled democrazy. That this man, without an iota of quality, brainpower, or character, was considered the anointed one for even one second is absolute proof that we are in more trouble in this country now than ever before. The worst part about Governor Perry-yes, worse even than the "crotch" caper, his anti-women stuff, the corruption—to me, a Democrat, is that he was once one, too.

SUSAN SILVER New York. New York

AS A RELATIVELY NEW RESIDENT of Texas, I didn't know a lot about Governor Rick Perry's background before reading Bryan Burrough's article. But now, having read it, I'm scared to death of the guy. There is a lot of power and money behind his campaign that has enabled him to continue in this race far longer than he might have otherwise.

One thing that Burrough does not mention, however, is the terrible impact Perry has had on social services in Texas, ranking it close to last in terms of what a U.S. state does for its citizens.

NANCY ANACKER Selma, Texas

THE LADY IS A CHAMP

WELL, CONSIDER ME HAPPY! A mere 20 pages away from the splayed, contorted, supine body of Gaga stands a real Lady— Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of PBS's Masterpiece Theatre series ["VF. Portrait," by Andrew Davies, January], With a quartercentury of good taste and tact behind her, this gifted class act has managed to wangle "Downton Abbey," which I believe is the finest drama ever created for television, into production. While most of us are familiar with the critically acclaimed series, her most interesting work is hidden away in the archives: Reckless, the 1998 ultimate menage a trois, with Robson Green, Francesca Annis, and Michael Kitchen; 1990's Traffik, which beats, hands down, the later, flashy Hollywood production; and, of course, Body & Soul, aired in 1994, in which a bare-breasted but elegantly appointed young actress, Kristin Scott Thomas, gives real meaning to frontal nudity. Ms. Eaton has always been way ahead of her time, employing cutting-edge drama that puts to shame the often insipid and ill-conceived output from Hollywood.

MARJIE KARGMAN Brookline, Massachusetts

STOCK DIPS AND PINK SLIPS

"THE BOOK OF JOBS," by Joseph E. Stiglitz [January], ought to be required reading for every person, young and old, in America and elsewhere, since hardly anyone knows much about—much less understands the nature of our current economic problems, although nearly everyone has opinions about them.

The productivity improvements and offshoring Stiglitz refers to—not to mention the widening wage gap—were led and fed mostly by the venture capitalists and billionaires of Silicon Valley, not by the fund managers and bankers of Wall Street. And it's those very same "improvements" that are enabling companies to rake in more cash than ever with fewer employees than before.

Indeed, the private sector, particularly the service sector, will likely be shedding still more jobs—perhaps as many as tens of millions of them—in the not too distant future as uses (i.e., commercial applications) for robots and artificial intelligence are found, implemented, and ultimately accepted by a society with little or no understanding of the negative effects caused by such technologies.

MARK W. LEHNHOFF Santa Rosa. California

JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ'S ARTICLE on the Great Depression and today's financial crisis has some progressive insights but is sadly lacking in wisdom. It is true that a structural shift from agriculture to manufacturing hit hard in the 1930s, and this was mitigated by agricultural price supports, something no economist supported because they raised prices on food for poor people. Yet, so important and successful were these supports in stabilizing rural incomes against structural economic change that they have been maintained to the present. The recent decline in subsidies has been accompanied by a doubling of food imports in the last 10 years. However, agricultural depression by itself was not the "cause" of the Depression, which lay in mis distribution of income and predatory foreign-trade regimes (with France in the 1920s manipulating its currency prices the way China does today).

THE VF.COM LETTER BOX

VF.com photographer Justin Bishop and blogger Juli Weiner spent the dead of winter in Des Moines, Iowa, the St. Barth's of America's heartland. Despite the destination, the nature of the trip was, unbelievably, not pleasure but business: they were there to chronicle the birth—and the messy, Rick Santorumcentric afterbirth—of the 2012 Republican primary season and to eventually produce what Ryan Sutton, Bloomberg News food critic, called via Twitter "the first and probably last Vanity Fair essay on Pizza Ranch versus Pizza Hut."

Two clarifications: one, the Letter Box prefers pizza whose provenance is neither hut nor ranch; and, two, coverage actually commenced at the Memphis International Airport, where Weiner waited for a connecting flight to Iowa several barbecue-stained chairs away from New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson. In a blog post, Weiner reported that she and Abramson are both reading Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding.

Again over Twitter, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer approved of their serendipitous literary selection. "Good for them," he wrote. "One of the best books I read this year." Michael Roston, a Web producer at The New York Times, tweeted that the Abramson/airport scoop is "the most important piece of Iowa campaign reportage of the week." Unfortunately, all sarcasm has been lost and can be reclaimed at Delta baggage services.

It was the first of two (2) 77/uos-rclated exclusives from Iowa: VF.com also reported that Abramson and Gray Lady op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd wore matching maxi skirts at a New Year's Eve party in Des Moines. We posted a regretful correction the next day after Dowd, who had read the post, revealed that Abramson was wearing a dress that stopped at the knee. "Please write that Dowd was wearing the same clothes as another person in every post from now on. ('Same purse as Mike Allen' &c.)," Jim Newell, of Gawker, suggested. Done! The Letter Box can exclusively report that both Weiner and Dowd were wearing frowns.

It is also true that the "global war" finally put an end to the Depression, but not because of the G.I. Bill, as Stiglitz implies— a point disproved in our own time by Germany, which neglects higher education but is growing faster, has stronger employment statistics, and has a large trade surplus. The global war gave us full employment, rising incomes, progressive taxation to limit the power of the rich, and rationed consumption, which reconstituted the American middle class in just four years. The same could be done today with a forced savings plan, import restrictions, support for manufacturing, progressive taxation, and mass employment projects such as planting billions of trees, installing solar collectors on nearly every public building, securing the borders, and rebuilding infrastructure.

GEORGE HOOPER Chicago, Illinois

JOSEPH E. STIGUTZ RESPONDS: The aim of the article is to provide a theory of recessions'—

what causes them, why it is that recovery from the Depression was so difficult and took so long, and why the same may be true today.

I explained that W.W. II was important not just because of the increase in demand (government spending j but because it facilitated restructuring of the economy. It induced movement of people from the rural areas and into the cities, from farming and into industry. The G.I. Bill was important because it both provided the education necessary for this restructuring and helped reduce the inequality, which had peaked in the years btfore the Great Depression.

The implications for today are clear: policies that promote structural shift and reduce the intolerable levels of inequality are what is again required. To move people out of manufacturing and into the service economy will require, for instance, training of workers to fit the needs of a modern service-led economy. To reduce inequality will require both more progressive tax and expenditure policies and legal and regulatory frameworks that are more sensitive to their longrun implications for inequality—the 2005 bankruptcy law is an example of a step in the wrong direction.

The spirit of the letters embodies one of the main points in my article: while the reforms in the banking sector are both welcome and insufficient, the excessive focus on that sector is misguided—there are real, underlying problems that have to be addressed. And unfortunately, many cf the policies, such as austerity, being advocated by the right risk exacerbating these underlying problems.

COURAGE OF CONTAINMENT

TODD S. PURDUM, in his otherwise excellent piece about George F. Kennan and the transformation of the United States into a hyper-militarized national-security state ["One Nation, Under Arms," January], makes one serious error when he attributes the Cold War to "Stalinist Russia's repudiation of postwar agreements with Washington." Stalin abided by the bulk of his postwar agreements and hoped to maintain friendly relations with the West. The Cold War was not inevitable, and its origins were much more complex, as we show in our upcoming documentary film series, "The Untold History of the United States." Even Churchill, that arch Cold Warrior, later admitted, "Stalin never broke his word to me." For the American people, understanding that period, which propelled the U.S. so rapidly down the road to empire, is absolutely crucial if we are ever to dismantle the military-industrial complex that Purdum so insightfully describes.

OLIVER STONE Los Angeles. California PETER KUZNICK Bethesda, Maryland

THE EXTRAORDINARY ARTICLE by Todd S. Purdum is the clearest, most compelling description I have ever encountered of exactly what has happened to America in my now 70-year life span. The American Republic has been replaced by the National Security State, with the traditional forms of government still in place but with real power now concentrated beyond the control of Congress, outside the bounds of the Constitution, and even apart from the presidency itself. Purdum correctly observes that President Eisenhower's warning about this potential threat to our democracy had, in fact, already become a full-blown reality. I submit that John F. Kennedy, in his shift toward ending the Cold War rather than winning it, became the first credible threat to those hidden forces.

DON CLARK Arvin, California

Letters to the editor should be sent electronically with the writer's name, address, and daytime phone number to letters@vf.com. All requests for back issues should be sent to subscriptions© vf.com. All other queries should be sent to vfmail@vf.com. The magazine reserves the right to edit submissions, which may be published or otherwise used in any medium. All submissions become the property of Vanity Fair.