Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals

by vladmorariu

Recently I laid my eye on one chapter of Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals (note for the Romanian readers, translated in 2 editions at the Humanitas Printing House, that should show something… ; but anyway, you can download it for free from gigapedia.com, you just need to create an account ). I had the misfortune of reading the chapter dedicated to the intellectual of which Johnson manifests the greatest contempt, namely Bertolt Brecht, about who, says Johnson ” I have striven, in this account, to find something to be said in Brecht’s favour. But apart from the fact that he always worked very hard-and sent food parcels to people in Europe during and just after the war (but this may have been Weigel’s doing)-there is nothing to be said for him. He is the only intellectual among those I have studied who appears to be without a sole redeeming feature. “

Now, I cannot find the right means to express the sickness I felt when reading that chapter. It was not that this sickness had as its origin a presumed turn-of-the-mind  facing the historical truth (I should reckon that I was a bit surprised, although i have always suspected some of Brechts’ choices), but it was the style in which it was written – impardonable, I think – and the writer’s pleasure of providing spicy details from Brecht’s personal life. And even if one might agree that Brecht was morally vicious, Johnson would still not be entitled to perform the kind of symbolical rape he is up to which is specific to scandal magazines or tabloids (again for the Romanian readers, a kind of much stylized OTV).

So curious about who the author is, I googled his name, to find out that he is a right wing catholic conservative, former adviser of Margaret Thatcher, famous for re-writing histories…the right-wing way. But look also on what I have found. That will be funny to read and reflect on those who gospel the contemporary morals. (find the home-site at http://www.salon.com/media/1998/05/28media.html)

T H E_.R I S E_.A N D_.F A L L_.O F
_______Paul “Spanker” Johnson

THE RIGHT-WING HISTORIAN’S LONGTIME MISTRESS DEALS HIM THE UNKINDEST WHACK OF ALL.

- – - – - – - – - -

BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

There is almost no English surname, however ancient and dignified, that cannot be instantly improved by the prefix “Spanker.” So deeply is the habit and culture of corporal punishment imbricated with the national psyche that whole shelves of specialist literature, to say nothing of entire racks of newspapers and magazines, are regularly devoted to the subject. A decade or so ago, I outed the barking Tory pamphleteer Paul Johnson as an enthusiast or votary of this cult. For evidence, I had no more to go upon than certain suggestive and repetitive elements in his “work.”

So it was decidedly invigorating to learn, in the dog days of mid-May, that he had been exposed by his mistress of 11 years, the writer Gloria Stewart, as a spankee:

“Paul loved to be spanked and it was a big part of our relationship. I had to tell him he was a very naughty boy.”

A pretty easy task (the second bit, I mean). Johnson has made a career as an especially bilious and persecuting moralizer. His disgraceful book “Intellectuals,” a foul-minded assault on the Enlightenment, laid a feverish stress on the private lives of secular and rationalist intellectuals. Rousseau was not only “vain, egotistical and quarrelsome,” but he “enjoyed being spanked on his bare bottom.” Ibsen “would not expose his sexual organ even for the purpose of medical examination. Was there something wrong with it — or did he think there was?” I don’t need to draw you a picture: With sermonizers like this it’s just a matter of setting one’s watch. Give it just a little time and — presto! We open the tabloids to see their withered haunches bared to the slipper, and the haggard remnants of their Johnsons exposed to the cruel light of day. (Oxford English Dictionary: Johnson. A common surname, used in low slang to designate: a)The penis. b) A man who is kept by a prostitute or prostitutes; a ponce.)

Stewart unmasked Spanker Johnson to the tabloids because she could not bear to read another word of his “family values” tripe in the press. As recently as March, interviewed by Jacob Weisberg for the New York Times Magazine, he had claimed to be an advisor to the late Princess Diana. “Don’t commit adultery,” he said, was his “chief advice” to the divine one. When various Tory MPs were found in a trouser-free condition not long ago, Johnson predicted the ruin of the state and said that adultery, especially when committed by those who opposed it in public, should be severely punished.

But here’s the bizarre thing. Johnson is not just a cult figure wherever two or three spankers are gathered together. He is an adored object of the American Right. Norman Podhoretz loved “Intellectuals.” Nixon used to send out Johnson volumes for Christmas. Oliver North was once overcome with admiration at seeing William Casey read a whole Johnson on a plane flight. Dan Quayle kept a copy of Johnson’s awful “Modern Times” by him, and employed it as a prop against those who accused him of being no great reader. (When pressed for an exegesis of its content, he announced contentedly that it was “a very good historical book about history.”) To be fair to Quayle, “Modern Times” is almost technically unreadable. And so is Johnson’s most recent extrusion, “A History of the American People.” Of this pseudo-scholarly atrocity — slavery a mere blip, the New Deal a monstrous tyranny, Watergate a liberal conspiracy, Reagan the summa of statesmanship — Newt Gingrich has stepped forward in the Weekly Standard to announce it as “perhaps (sic) the most important history of the American people in our generation.” And Steve Forbes, in the Wall Street Journal, terms it “a magnificent achievement.” And neither of them, I feel confident, agrees with Johnson’s grand, risk-taking, entrepreneurial claim that Thomas Edison invented the telephone.

Perhaps there is an element of anti-American self-hatred involved: a surreptitious contempt for American freedom and democracy and a slavish need for approval from a Brit Spanker? (On meeting James Baldwin, Johnson once famously said: “I’m not unaware of prejudice. If you’re born like me, red-haired and left-handed and Catholic, you know exactly what prejudice is.” Baldwin’s impassivity on that occasion did him credit.) But perhaps, also, there is a bodice-ripping Right that hides behind the mild visage of Steve Forbes. So, since Johnson’s “novels” are now remaindered beyond recall, I consider it my stern duty to give you a flavor of his magnificent and sweeping style. Here’s an extract from “Merrie England,” where the blurb promises “cabinet ministers and ponces”:

Felix Appleby, dressed for the office, sat on the edge of Lady Titty Ross’s rumpled four-poster bed, his eyes anchored firmly on the ample cleavage displayed by her negligee… “There, you don’t see a pair like that every day, do you darling?”

And here’s another, from “Left of Center”:

Henry found his gaze straying to her round and rosy bottom, which rose and fell gently to the rhythm of her breathing. What to do? Henry pondered in the doorway. … “There’s nothing more calculated, old man, to excite a woman than a good hard slap on her behind. None of your playful taps, mind. A real stinger. They come up foaming at the mouth.”

Dora’s bottom invited him. Here was his chance, at one blow, to reassume his masculine, paramount role in their relationship. Draining his glass and setting it down decisively on the dressing table, he advanced purposefully over Dora’s sleeping form and brought his hand down with tremendous force.

It’s both satisfying and unsatisfying that Spanker Johnson is now, conclusively and forever, a figure of ridicule and contempt. He ought also to be remembered for his bigotry and spite and bullying. (And maybe for an accidental tincture of literary prescience: One light smack and he “comes up foaming at the mouth.”) But not all the perfumes of Araby can sweeten that spanking hand; nay, not all the genius of the Pfizer Corporation can make this Johnson rise again.
SALON | May 28, 1998

Christopher Hitchens is a regular contributor to Salon.