Famous and Good Intermediate Clowns - 09 February 2001

I don't know if it will mean much to many listeners anymore if I say that once in a great while I feel I must clean out my WC Fields filing system, which is a closet full of old scripts, magazine cuttings or clippings, abandoned books, film notes, browned-off newspapers, theatre stubs - stuff.

If you've never heard of WC Fields may I quickly say he was paunchy, squint-eyed, balloon-nosed cynic - an old motion picture comic, right out of the old vaudeville.

He stayed memorable long after he'd gone for one or two deathless remarks he made along the way.

He was devoted, as much as to anything or anybody, to the bottle and once after shooting a scene he looked around for a beaker of pineapple juice he'd been drinking and roared: "Somebody's been putting pineapple juice in my pineapple juice."

"A man who hates dogs and children can't be all bad."

Odd I should think of him so sharply - I could go on and on but I won't - when I think of all the famous and good intermediate clowns - but his cynicism was, I do believe, truer to the America he lived in than what Florence King, the queen of cynics, today calls the Republic of Nice.

WC Fields's general line of advice to getting on in life was simple and determined: "Never give a sucker an even break."

Well of course I couldn't help recalling with actual affection this famous rogue when I remembered how once he went to his coat closet to take out his top coat, opened the door and immediately bowed and cringed, squeaking in terror, before an avalanche of hats, papers, cardboard boxes, shoes, walking sticks, scarves and finally a hailstorm of golf balls.

He told a friend about the shock of this experience and the friend said: "It must have been hell."

"It was worse," he said, "than Philadelphia" (where he was born).

Well I visit, only about once a year, this haven for stacked-away stuff I don't know what to do with but things have got so bad that the first thing that toppled out on to me was a small file of newspaper clippings from last October.

I must have stuck them there in a trance for the big surprise was to discover how right it was, how poetic, that they should forgetfully have been put away with files and magazines and news clippings from very, very long ago because believe it or not they read like memoranda from another world, a different America from the one we left way back there in October.

Here was the former President, Mr Clinton - who, by the way, with his smaller balloon red nose looks like a handsome WC Fields - Mr Clinton, going on in a smiling rhapsody about the wonderful America we're living in - the eight million new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate in history, the practically invisible inflation, the soaring economy and how much money he would spend, if he could, on the homeless, the disabled, on having the best schools in the world - it was always "we're going to have the best schools in the world" - no mention ever that America ranks 19th in the world, behind several Third World countries in science and mathematics.

The other candidate Governor Bush, in these clippings at least, was described as amiable but new to it all, saying though he just would like to see halfway decent schools everywhere.

But his main aim was a massive tax cut which all the polls showed nobody was much interested in and President Clinton would veto a tax cut anyway. Even Mr Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, was against it.

And then here is the fretful face and hoarse voice of the Democrats' candidate for the presidency, Mr Gore - remember him? - singing a very different, a very strange tune.

He was going on about the terrible plight of the people, the poor people, as against the lavish life of the rich - those malefactors of great wealth. He would give his all to work and slave for you, the people.

This sounded in tone and pathos like a Franklin Roosevelt campaign speech in the depth of the Great Depression.

Whose economy could he be talking about and at what period?

No wonder Mr Gore blew the election. Most of the best pollsters privately thought he could have won it handsomely if he'd sung Clinton's tune.

Didn't take a moment's hesitation to throw out all this stuff, both Clinton's pride in the leaping economy and everybody's belief, except Mr Gore, that we were in a second Coolidge prosperity.

Having stuffed a lot of the old, mouldy files back in the old closet I now turned to today's paper and a new world.

Imagine, just about the first word to come out of the White House from President Bush was a warning note that the American economy was declining and might be moving into a recession - something must be done and soon.

Manufacturing - a vital symptom of economic health - was beginning to droop, so President Bush started singing his well-worn song, which all through the campaign had mocked: A massive tax cut.

But now too the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr Greenspan, the wizard of Wall Street, was called on and hastily cut the interest rate - again - and joined - wait for it - the leaders of the Democrats in both Houses saying - sure, quite right, of course, the proper medicine is a tax cut - if not quite as big as President Bush would like. A responsible tax cut.

When we weren't worrying in this brand new America over the economy, we had the strange, unprecedented news out of California that the seventh biggest economy in the world was in a spot of trouble all its own.

As the long-time result of the fumbled act of deregulation California was actually running out of power - of electricity - buying desperately on the open market.

Came the unbelievable day when we saw cuts in power in Northern California taking the form of switching off the traffic lights in San Francisco - a brilliant idea which produced gridlock and chaos for one and all.

I don't think it was tried again but the governor of California was deeply worried, along with everybody from power plants to lighting companies to big hospitals to restaurants to the hundred thousand or more of the state's farmers and their irrigation equipment.

The governor appealed to President Bush, who must have startled him by saying: "It's California's problem to solve, you go ahead and if the rest of the country's affected we may help in the long run."

This was a novel and hurtful response to Californians, who ever since Roosevelt and the New Deal have leaned heavily Democratic and, as one blunt journalist said, have come to look on Washington as a milch cow with a hundred teats.

In such a crisis anyway they certainly had learned, in the Clinton years, to rely on Big Daddy.

But President Bush is of the party that doesn't believe Washington is the fount of all benevolence and aid and succour. He wants the states and local communities and even churches to do more by way of caring for the poor, the homeless, the jobless.

In a word we are back to Thomas Jefferson and "the less central government the better" doctrine, as practised by Ronald Reagan. Old-time Democrats and the baby boomer generation can't believe it.

Next thing on the menu: A likely strike of the four main airlines. If it happens - April is the set date - the president of the biggest airline says the nation will simply come to a stop.

President Bush commented yes, it would have a harmful effect, but he was leaving it to the National Mediation Board to work with the airline chiefs, the mechanics, pilots, stewards - all the threatening strikers - but the White House isn't getting into it just yet and hopes it won't have to.

Another nasty figure that has been allowed to hover in the background since the United Nations was banished from his presence is that of Saddam Hussein.

President Bush himself brought up his name in his first week by reminding a questioner that if Saddam was seen to be making weapons of mass destruction - which the administration is pretty sure he is - then, said Mr Bush, we're going to have to deal with him.

He said no more but much of the working time of Colin Powell, the new secretary of state, has been taken up with the how and when to deal with him.

Saddam has apparently launched a new campaign of baiting and tantalising the United States by inviting foreign ambassadors to Baghdad to watch parades and admire the splendour and the fearlessness of his newly-refurbished and strengthened Republican Guard.

He also performed a galling masterpiece of hypocrisy by offering a great sum of money in direct aid to the homeless children of the United States.

This was publicised, along with a heartrending reminder that his own children are starving by the thousands because of America's and the UN's hardhearted policy of maintaining sanctions.

Incidentally everybody, not least Washington, is thoroughly aware that the sanctions are being side-stepped or nullified by the great revenue Saddam is hauling in from the sale of his oil.

Saddam in fact is becoming such an embarrassing nuisance that most people wish he would just go away.

Well one man who does not expect him to go away is President Bush who has called him, second only to Bin Laden, the greatest single threat to the national security of the United States.

Any ordinary American approaching the White House today has a gross reminder of this and of the author of the Oklahoma bombing when they discover for the first time in 200 years the main street on which the White House stands, Pennsylvania Avenue, is sealed off with barriers at both ends and closed, at all times, to traffic.

In spite of this visible reminder of an atrocity and such scary incidents as a man shooting in the White House grounds President Bush is determined to maintain the regular democratic ceremony of opening the White House to daily tours for you and me and Tom and Dick and Harry.

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