Текст книги "ГУЛаг Палестины"
Автор книги: Лев Гунин
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The letter had been riddled with such errors that, in her view, its author could not possibly have been the writer of Kosinski's
award-winning novels. Over the years she had picked up literary gossip about Kosinski's supposed "ghost writers" and had
decided that such gossip was altogether plausible. In early 1982 she shared her opinion with Navasky, and made him a strange
bet. People well enough situated in America, she bet him, could get away with anything, even if their most shameful secrets were
revealed.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 384)
A second condition which might promote the creation of a great liar
might be an environment which condones or even encourages lying.
Sloan demonstrates that at least Jerzy Kosinski's mother did indeed
provided such an environment, and goes on to describe how such
lying may have originated as a survival tactic. Please note that
Sloan's description of the wartime environment which might have
created a subculture based on lying not only provides an excuse for
habitual lying, but provides also an excuse for greeting with a
measure of skepticism some of the more extreme stories told by
immigrants coming from such a subculture. The situation Sloan
describes below is one in which Jerzy Kosinski's career success has
depended upon his telling stories of his youth which his mother,
Elzbieta Kosinski, would know to be untrue, and with the mother
arrived from Poland to dote on her successful son in New York:
At the same time, there was a dilemma to be resolved. By that time he had regaled the entire Polish emigre circle and much of
Mary Wier's New York society with stories of his catastrophic and solitary adventures during the war – the wandering from village
to village, the dog that had leaped at his heels, the loss of speech, the reunion at the orphanage where he was identified by his
resemblance to this mother and the mark on his rib cage. What if conversation got around to those wartime experiences? What,
God forbid, if someone casually asked her where the adult Kosinskis had been during the war? The question had come up, and
he had managed to get away with vague answers. Sweden, he sometimes said. It was a big country. Some Poles must have
escaped there. Maybe they had gotten there by boat.
The way Kosinski dealt with the situation reveals a great deal about the type of intimacy that existed between mother and son. In
the course of her visit to New York, Elzbieta Kosinski met a good number of people – not only Mary and her friends, but the
Strzetelskis and members of the Polish emigre circle. They made a day trip to Long Island, where Kosinski, Mary, and his mother
spent an afternoon with Ewa Markowska and her family. Instead of shrinking from discussion of his experiences during the war,
Kosinski made a point of bringing the subject up. His mother supported his story in every particular, describing the terrible fears
she had felt for her son. On that point, everyone who met her in New York agreed.
How did he enlist her support? It is interesting to consider what arguments he must have made, if any were needed. The family
had always managed to survive by telling a lie, he might have said. Lies were an essential tool of state; not only Hitler and Stalin,
but all political leaders and all governments lied. It might be Camelot in America, but the Kosinskis were Europeans. Americans
could buy images like the Kennedy marriage and family (even the myth that Kennedy had produced a Pulitzer Prize-winning
book); Americans were innocents, but Europeans – especially worldly Central Europeans like the Kosinskis – knew better.
What was a lie anyway, and what was the truth? The minute after an event took place, it meant different things in the memory of
each individual who had witnessed or experienced it. What was art but lies – enhanced "truth," nature improved upon, whether
visually or in language. Even photographs chose the angle of representation; indeed, photographs, with their implication of
objectivity, were the biggest liars of all. Wasn't that the most basic message of the twentieth century? The truth, whether in art or
in life, was whatever worked best.
Or perhaps it wasn't necessary to make excuses for himself at all. His mother knew what he had been through in actual fact. She
had lived the same history; she was the wife of Moses Lewinkopf, who had survived the Holocaust at whatever cost. She may
have recognized the inner necessity of her son's behavior. She may well have grasped that those half-invented wartime stories
had become an important part of his personal capital.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 171-172)
And here is an even more explicit confirmation of Elzbieta Kosinski supporting
her son's lying – Sloan is describing a letter from Elzbieta Kosinski to her son,
Jerzy, in which she recounts her reactions upon first reading a German
translation of The Painted Bird:
But then, she added, she suffered from the innocence that he was not with them at that time. Writing, of course, in Polish, she
spaced the letters – Y O U W E R E N O T W I T H U S. The double-spacing might well have had the character of emphasis,
but in the context of all that is knowable of the Kosinski family during the occupation, one must conclude that this most remarkable
statement was, instead, delivered with a symbolic wink.
As extraordinary as it might appear, the most satisfactory explanation is that Elzbieta Kosinska had agreed with her son to
maintain, even in their private correspondence, the fiction that he had been separated from them.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 225)
In fact, it would not be too much to say that Kosinski's relationship with his
mother transcended her supporting his lying – it ventured into the pathological:
There is, of course, a powerfully Oedipal undertone to this constellation of affinities [...]. That this is not mere conjecture is made
clear by a conversation Kosinski had with Tadeusz Krauze, who was by then in New York as a graduate student in sociology. To
a shocked Krauze, Kosinski unburdened himself of the revelation that he would like to have sex with his own mother. Before
Krauze could respond, he added, "I would like to give her that pleasure."
Near the beginning of Blind Date, there is an episode in which the protagonist has sex with his own mother. The elderly father
suffers a stroke, and the relationship begins when mother and son both run nude to the telephone to take a call reporting on the
father's condition. After the call, mother and son find themselves in an embrace. They remain lovers for years, the relationship
bounded only by her refusal to undress specifically for her son or to allow him to kiss her on the mouth. As Blind Date is filled with
transparently autobiographical material, the episode dares the reader to believe that it is literally true.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 129-130)
Kosinski's sexual deviance is of insufficient relevance here to describe in detail.
Let us glance at just one more incident, this one having to do with a first date
with Joy Weiss (an incident reminiscent of Kosinski's attempt to debauch his
step-son by taking him on tours of sex clubs, as is recounted in the TV
documentary Sex, Lies, and Jerzy Kosinski):
Toward the end of the meal he suggested that the two of them go to Chateau Nineteen, an S-M parlor with which he seemed to be
quite familiar. She agreed on condition that she not be required to participate or remove her clothes. Once they were there, he
moved comfortably among the patrons, chatting as if at a country-club tea. He was particularly friendly with a man who worked in
the jewelry district, who was busy masturbating as they spoke.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 360-361)
An accumulation of incidents points to the conclusion that Jerzy Kosinski was
irresponsible, immature, impulsive, physically abusive toward women, and
generally reckless with the welfare of others. Below are six character-revealing
incidents which taken collectively might have long ago led Jews to write Jerzy
Kosinski off as unfit for leadership, might have long ago led Jews to conclude
that he was too unstable to be trusted as a Holocaust witness, might have long
ago led Jews to conclude that he should be shunned as someone likely to bring
ruin upon any who associated with him:
First character-revealing incident – how Kosinski attempted to elicit a declaration of love.
Meanwhile, matters had come to a crisis in the affair with Dora Militaru. He insisted that she profess her love for him, and when
she refused, he hit her repeatedly. Dora broke off the affair. Their relationship soon resumed as a friendship – in January he
would grant her his only TV interview, for Italian TV, undertaken within two years of the Village Voice episode – but his physical
assault ended their relationship as lovers.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 391)
Second character-revealing incident – how Kosinski had fun behind the wheel.
On the long straightaway crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge, he opened it up to 120, pure exhilaration for a boy who had been told
always to do things carefully, legally, and correctly. A little farther along they found themselves stuck on a two-lane road behind a
slow driver. As a man who would one day drive Formula One race cars, David was astonished at the fluidity and skill with which
Kosinski finally got around the recalcitrant ahead of him – and entertained mightily when Kosinski then slowed to a crawl and
used those skills to prevent the car from passing him. He was more than a little shocked, however, when Kosinski persisted with
the game in the face of an oncoming truck, causing the other car to run off into a ditch.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 150-151)
Third character-revealing incident – how Kosinski played a little joke on one of his students.
Kosinski looked at the young man severely. "You know, the very first time I saw you I got the feeling you were going to die
young," he said. "In the past twenty years I've had the same feeling about several people and each time I've had it, they died. Of
course, I could be wrong this time."
The young man, who was afraid of being drafted and sent to Vietnam, started to cry.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 287)
Fourth character-revealing incident – how Kosinski exposed Yale students to the intellectual contributions
of the Neo Charles Mansonists.
As part of the class, the Yale undergraduates were required to write about their own deaths. To stimulate their thinking, Kosinski
brought in members of the Process Church of the Final Judgement – a group of Satanists who arrived dressed in gray. They
saw themselves as having some sort of tenuous link with Charles Manson's Helter-Skelter family. Proselytizing in Kosinski's Yale
classroom, they urged the students to "accept and embrace evil within themselves." This notion was uncomfortably close to
Kosinski's own claim to Krystyna Iwaszkiewicz that he could achieve revenge upon his enemies because of a pact with the Devil
[...]. The classroom episode took an unexpected turn when a young Jewish student went off with the Satanists, prompting an
exchange with the student's parents over the pedagogical appropriateness of this classroom activity.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 300-301)
Fifth character-revealing incident – how Kosinski entertained his dining partners.
One day, when the three couples had planned to have dinner in the city, Rose Styron arrived first and was persuaded to be his
accomplice in a prank. Kosinski would hide in his apartment on Seventy-ninth Street, and the others would look for him. They
came, looked, failed to find, and began to grow cross; Sadri was ready for dinner, and didn't find the prank so funny. Kosinski
finally unfolded himself from behind the cabinets in his darkroom.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 262)
Sixth character-revealing incident – what Kosinski did to Marian Javits's dog – from which some might
conclude that Jerzy Kosinski was not only the kind of man that you would not leave alone with your
daughter, and not only the kind of man that you would not leave alone with your son – he was the kind of
man that you would not leave alone with your dog.
Marian Javits, in particular, was charmed by him, and she continued to be his friend even after his stories and eccentricities had
become familiar – this despite the fact that one of his eccentricities had to do with her dog. Lying in bed recovering from a leg
injury received while riding, she was startled when her dog ran furiously across the room, dripping urine. A moment later Kosinski
appeared at the door. Later a friend told her that Kosinski had been observed abusing the dog in a way that would engender such
behavior.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 263)
HOME DISINFORMATION 60 MINUTES 866 hits since 9May98
T.R. Reid Washington Post 9May98 60 Minutes gullibility
The program featured dramatic footage of a drug "mule" said to be smuggling several
million dollars' worth of heroin to London for Colombia's Cali drug cartel. The Guardian
reported, though, that the "mule" actually carried no drugs, that his trip to London was
paid for by the documentary's producers, and that many of the report's dramatic
moments were faked.
The instance of 60 Minutes credulity documented in the T.R. Reid Washington Post
article below occasions the following reflections, some of which demonstrate the
relevance of the article to Ukrainain affairs:
Successful Criminals Do Not Make Public Confessions. The 60 Minutes drug
smuggling broadcast whose title I will assume was The Mule shows individuals who
cooperate in a documentary exposing their own highly lucrative criminal activities
which is an incongruity. Successful criminals do not make public disclosure of their
crimes because this hastens their getting caught. I have discussed this self-evident
principle at length in Impossibilities of a TV documentary – whose focus is an ABC
television Prime Time documentary titled Girls for Sale featuring this same incongruity
of successful criminals disclosing their crimes, in this case the crime of employing
Slavic girls as sex slaves in Israel. One may say, then, that television news
sometimes demonstrates almost childlike insensitivity to incongruity, which is the same
as saying that it demonstrates almost childlike credulity, and that one incongruity
that it appears particularly insensitive to is that of successful criminals making
public confession of their crimes.
Television News Overlooks Many Diverse Incongruities. The earlier 60 Minutes
broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom is similar in that it was loaded with palpable
incongruities, though not the incongruity of criminals publicly confessing their
crimes. For example, while host Morley Safer is describing a pogrom which was supposed
to have taken place in Ukraine in July of 1941, the scene being shown is of bodies
lying on the ground in snow. Multiply this sort of incongruity a hundredfold – I do
not exaggerate – and you create the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom.
The explanation may be different each time. In each case, some explanation of
such incongruities is called for, and in each case the explanation may be different.
In the case of the 60 Minutes story The Mule, the explanation seems to be that a
fraudulent story advanced the career of a documentary filmmaker. In the case of the
ABC TV Prime Time story Girls for Sale, my speculation is that the story was true and
that it advanced Israeli interests. And in the case of the 60 Minutes story The Ugly
Face of Freedom, it is evident that the story was false, my speculation being again
that it advanced Israeli interests.
North American News May be Particularly Susceptible to Corruption. We have
three reasons for suspecting this, two of them coming from Reid's Washington Post
article below: (i) Reid describes London journalism as "furiously competitive" where "a
dozen newspapers and four TV networks regularly investigate – and savage – one
another's reporting" and contrasts this with the United States where "newspapers and TV
networks generally don't go on the attack against the other guy's story." (ii) The
British government's Independent Commission requires TV news to demonstrate "a respect
for truth," whereas in the United States, the accuracy of news reporting is not subject
to any official review. (iii) We see Israel Shahak repeatedly offering the observation
that North American news shows a unique degree of submission to Jewish control, as for
example in the following statement:
The bulk of the organized US Jewish community is totalitarian,
chauvinistic and militaristic in its views. This fact remains
unnoticed by other Americans due to its control of the media, but is
apparent to some Israeli Jews. As long as organized US Jewry remained
united, its control over the media and its political power remained
unchallenged. (Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and
Foreign Policies, Pluto Press, London and Chicago, 1997, p. 139).
CBS News Does Not Investigate Itself. Although an admission from 60 Minutes seems
imminent that its story of The Mule was fraudulent, CBS did not discover this fraud,
and is not undertaking any investigation of its own. Rather, there appear to be a
"series of investigations," possibly all British, including one by Carlton Television
which originally financed and broadcast the documentary, and including a study by the
British government. One may hypothesize, then, that CBS does not place high priority
on the acknowledgement and correction of its own errors, and that it will do so only
when forced to by public disclosure of these errors by some other agency. For this
reason, the acknowledgement by 60 Minutes that its story The Mule was entirely
fraudulent cannot be taken as offering hope that CBS is any closer to acknowledging
that its story The Ugly Face of Freedom was entirely fraudulent.
American Competence Gap? Mention has often been made in the Ukrainian Archive
of the existence of competence gaps as these relate to brain drains and gains. The
observation of a startling degree of credulity in the highest levels of the American
Press constitutes one such competence gap, although in this case it is not a gap that
leads to any brain theft from other nations, as the gap is largely hidden from the
American public. Perhaps the American public has its own competence gap – one in which
the people watching the news are as blind to incongruities as the people who are
broadcasting it.
Below are excerpts only. The complete Washington Post article is purchasable online
from the Washington Post by anyone who cares to first set up an account with the
Washington Post.
Acclaimed Expose Questioned as Hoax
British Drug Documentary Was Featured on "60 Minutes"
By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 9, 1998; Page A01
LONDON, May 8 – That powerful expose on "60 Minutes" last summer about Colombian drug
runners was [...] quite possibly, false.
After a lengthy investigation, London's Guardian newspaper has charged that the
award-winning documentary "The Connection" [...] was essentially fiction.
The program featured dramatic footage of a drug "mule" said to be smuggling several
million dollars' worth of heroin to London for Colombia's Cali drug cartel. The
Guardian reported, though, that the "mule" actually carried no drugs, that his trip to
London was paid for by the documentary's producers, and that many of the report's
dramatic moments were faked.
[...]
When the report was shown on "60 Minutes," CBS reporter Steve Kroft said that the mule
had "no problem" slipping past British customs with the heroin in his stomach.
"Another pound of heroin was on the British streets," the "60 Minutes" report said.
But the Guardian, which says it found the "mule," reports that he actually swallowed
Certs mints, not drugs. It says the flight to London took place six months later, and
was paid for by the filmmaker. And it says the "mule" was actually turned back at
Heathrow because he had a counterfeit passport, and thus never entered Britain.
[...]
The documentary included a highly dramatized segment in which reporters under armed
guard were taken to a remote location for an interview with a figure described as a
high-ranking member of the Cali drug cartel. "60 Minutes" reported de Beaufort had to
travel blindfolded for two days by car to reach the scene of this secret rendezvous.
The Guardian [...] said the secret location was actually the producer's hotel room in
Colombia.
[...]
The British government's watchdog group, the Independent Television Commission, has
launched a study of its own. Unlike the United States, where government has no power
to police the content of news reporting, there are official regulations here requiring
that TV news demonstrate "a respect for truth."
CBS has not undertaken an investigation of its own, but will report to its viewers on
the results of the British investigations [...].
HOME DISINFORMATION 60 MINUTES 1254 hits since 20Oct98
Buzz Bissinger Vanity Fair Sep 1998 Old Liars, young liar
Trouble was, he made things up – sources, quotes, whole stories – in a
breathtaking web of deception that emerged as the most sustained fraud in modern
journalism.
The topic of lying in the media is of central importance on the Ukrainian Archive
because of the frequency with which the media uses the opportunity of reporting on
the Slavic world in general, and on Ukraine in particular, to instead calumniate
them. Three prominent examples are Jerzy Kosinski's career as Jewish-Holocaust
fabulist and Grand Calumniator of Poland, TIME magazine's wallowing girl photograph
of 22Feb93, and Morley Safer's 60 Minutes story The Ugly Face of Freedom, broadcast
over the CBS network on 23Oct94.
From such examples as the above, however, it is difficult to estimate the prevalence
of misinformation and disinformation in the media. It may be the case that
distortion and calumniation are limited to a few topics such as the Slavic world or
Ukraine, and that otherwise the media are responsible, professional, and accurate.
The value of studying the case of Stephen Glass, however, is that it suggests
otherwise – that perhaps the media operate under next to no oversight, that they are
rarely held accountable, and that only egregious lying over a protracted interval
eventually risks discovery and exposure. Had Stephen Glass been just a little less
of a liar, had he more often tempered his lies, more often redirected them from the
powerful to the powerless, he would today not only still be working as a reporter,
but winning prizes. Thus, the example of Stephen Glass serves to demonstrate the
viability of the hypothesis that misinformation and disinformation in the media is
widespread, and that the three examples mentioned above, and the many more documented
throughout the Ukrainian Archive, may not be exceptional deviations at all, but
rather the tip of an iceberg in an industry which is largely unregulated, which is
largely lacking internal mechanisms of quality control, which is responsive not to
truth, but to the dictates of ruling forces.
Another question which may be asked is whether Stephen Glass is the product of some
sub-culture which condones or encourages lying, or which even offers training in
lying.
The following excerpts, then, are from Buzz Bissinger, Shattered Glass, Vanity Fair,
September, 1998, pp. 176-190. The quoted portions are in gray boxes; the headings in
navy blue, however, have been introduced in the UKAR posting, and were not in the
original. I now present to you Stephen Glass largely on the possibility that our new
understanding of Stephen Glass will deepen our existing understanding of other
record-breaking, media-manipulating liars that have been featured on the Ukrainian
Archive, ones such as Yaakov Bleich, Morley Safer, Neal Sher, Elie Wiesel, and Simon
Wiesenthal.
One precondition of exceptional lying may be an intellectual mediocrity which puts a
low ceiling on the success that can be achieved through licit means. Thus, Stephen
Glass, although performing well in high school, began to perform poorly in University,
and when he began work as a reporter, was discovered to not know how to write:
Glass began his studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1990 on a pre-medical
curriculum. According to various accounts, he held his own at the beginning. But
then his grades nose-dived. He apparently flunked one course and barely passed
another, suggesting that he had simply lost interest in being on a pre-med track,
or had done poorly on purpose to shut the door to any future career in medicine.
Glass ultimately majored in anthropology. He reportedly did well in this area of
study, but given his inconsistent performance in pre-med courses, his overall
grade-point average at Penn was hardly distinguished – slightly less than a B.
"His shit wasn't always as together as everyone thought it was," said Matthew
Klein, who roomed with Glass at Penn when he was a senior and Glass a junior.
There were indicators to Klein that Glass was not doing particularly well
academically, but Glass never acknowledged it. "He always said he was doing fine,
doing fine," said Klein. (pp. 185-186)
Those familiar with his early work said he struggled with his writing. His
original drafts were rough, the prose clunky and imprecise. (p. 186)
A second precondition of exceptional lying may be growing up in a subculture which
encourages lying, or merely condones it, or at least does not actively work to
suppress it. The Bissinger article offers us next to no information on this topic, except
for the following brief statement:
Harvard educator Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot spent a good deal of time at Highland
Park High School researching her 1983 book, The Good High School: Portraits of
Character and Culture. She was impressed with the school's stunning academic
programs but noted that values such as character and morality were sometimes
little more than brushstrokes against the relentlessness of achievement. (p. 185)
The first steps on the path to high achievement in lying will, of course, be timid and
cautious, but when the lack of repercussions is discovered, will become bolder:
At first the made-up parts were relatively small. Fictional details were
melded with mostly factual stories. Quotes and vignettes were constructed to add
the edge Kelly seemed to adore. But in the March 31, 1997, issue of The New
Republic, Glass raised the stakes with a report about the Conservative Political
Action Conference. Eight young men, Glass claimed, men with names such as Jason
and Michael, were drinking beer and smoking pot. They went looking for "the
ugliest and loneliest" woman they could find, lured her to their hotel room, and
sexually humiliated her. The piece, almost entirely an invention, was spoken of
with reverence. Subsequent to it, Glass's work began to appear in George, Rolling
Stone, and Harper's.
But challenges to Glass's veracity followed. David A. Keene, chairman of the
American Conservative Union, called Glass "quite a fiction writer" and noted that
the description of the Omni Shoreham room littered with empty bottles from the
mini-bar had a problem. There were no mini-bars in any of the Omni's rooms. (p.
189)
The young liar next discovers, to his amazement, that the exposure, scandal, and
punishment that he feared do not materialize. Questions concerning the veracity of
his work can simply be brushed aside. The chief consequence of his lying is dizzying
success:
At 25, Stephen Glass was the most sought-after young reporter in the nation's
capital, producing knockout articles for magazines ranging from The New Republic
to Rolling Stone. Trouble was, he made things up – sources, quotes, whole stories
– in a breathtaking web of deception that emerged as the most sustained fraud in
modern journalism. (p. 176)
Because this, after all, was Stephen Glass, the compelling wunderkind who had
seeped inside the skins of editors not only at The New Republic but also at
Harper's, George, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and Mother Jones.
This was the Stephen Glass who had so many different writing contracts that his
income this year might well have reached $150,000 (including his $45,000 New
Republic salary). This was the Stephen Glass whose stories had attracted the
attention not just of Random House – his agent was trying to score a book deal
but of several screenwriters. (p. 180)
There arrives a time when the young liar begins to feel himself invincible. He finds
that no matter how big his lie, he is not exposed, and he extrapolates to imagine that
he leads a charmed life and that his good fortune will continue forever. In view of his
perceived impunity, he sees no need to moderate lying, and so he escalates it:
Stephen Glass rode the fast curve of instant ordainment that encircles the
celebrity age of the 90s; his reputation in the incestuous world of Washington
magazine journalism exploded so exponentially after a few of his better-than-true
stories that he could basically write anything and get away with it, regardless of
the fact that his reporting almost always uncovered the near incredible and was
laden with shoddy sourcing. His reports described events which occurred at
nebulous locations, and included quotes from idiosyncratic characters (with no
last names mentioned) whose language suggested the street poetry of Kerouac and
the psychological acuity of Freud. He had an odd, prurient eye for a
