Happy Anniversary American Spectator!

By Clarice Feldman

By chance I received a last minute invitation to the Fortieth Anniversary party for The American Spectator, held as it turns out on the Fortieth Anniversary of Che Guevara's death.

Unlike some of us, the magazine's founder R. Emmett Tyrell,Jr. is not, he says, upset that Che 's face is plastered everywhere. He says it's now as meaningless to most as the ubiquitous "Smiley" buttons. He remarked that the 2008 election will be the last great electoral battle between the left wing and right wing of the 60's generation.He asserts that the American conservatives have won the political battle of their generation but not the cultural battle.

In wry printed remarks circulated in the program he expanded on his victory statement:

As for the student radicals, they have either grown up or perished of hideous drug overdoses or sexually transmitted diseases. Those radicals who have grown up no longer abominate 'Amrika' but contrive presidential campaigns as 'centrists,' which is to say they ae sidling toward a political center that we conservative intellectuals formulated forty years ago and that President Ronald Reagan ushered in.Oddly enough yesteryear's radicals now sidling toward the American center refer to us as "political extremists' rather than as their political mentors.

T. Boone Pickens responded to John F. Kerry's latest whining about his having been "swiftboated" by offering a million dollars to anyone who could prove wrong anything the Swiftboat Veterans charged about Kerry.

The guest speaker, Tom Wolfe, reminded the audience of the heady days four decades ago when people like Leonard Bernstein, Eli Wallach and Otto Preminger entertained the Black Panthers, then under criminal indictment, contended that the Spectator's article "Living with the Clintons" was a far more influential work than the Watergate writings of Bernstein and Woodward,asserted that intellectuals believe in "a charming aristocracy" to whom they aim their works -- they value what the majority finds incomprehensible -- and explains Hillary Clinton's demonization of her enemies and constant high dudgeon -- moral indignation, he explains, puts you on a platform above the mob.That ,he said ,is also why so many are constantly attacking their own country -- "it's just a fashion" which sets one off from "the mob."

The program ended with the awarding of the Barbara Olson award to my favorite columnist, Charles Krauthammer, who said ,"No one in his right mind gives a speech at 9:30 p.m." and then proceeded to give one which was by turns funny and warm and inspiring, noting as he did that the fact that Al Qaeda is losing is a "signal victory " in the War On Terror and that our enemies in Afghanistan are scattered and in Iraq humiliated.

Here's hoping for forty more years to the Spectator and the entire VRW.