Satanic Verses outcry

Three of the largest American retail chains of any product sold are chains of book stores. The largest has 1200 book stores scattered profitably from Alaska to Florida, from Boston to Los Angeles.

This week, the president of that chain withdrew from the display shelves, but not from sale, a book that had been elaborately publicised and displayed, until the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his astonishing sentence of death against the author of the book which is, of course, 'The Satanic Verses' of Salman Rushdie. In response to the Ayatollah there was here, as in many other countries, an immediate outcry from American authors, from civil libertarians, clerics, the media and a competing uproar from outraged Moslems.

A friend of mine, at the beginning of the week, went off to buy the book from a small local book store which had no connection with the chains. It had not removed the book, it had no new policy about it, it happened to have sold out, but the young salesman had a complaint; 'Our boss doesn't care what happens to us.' Presumably when the reordered books appear, they will be sold and that salesman will still have anxious days and nights.

This, to me, puts in a nutshell the dilemma of the big chains. Authors, commentators, judges, libertarians of all parties may rise, commendably, as they have done and remind us all that suppression of even loathsome literature is not in the democratic tradition or in our law. Some of them talked witheringly about the cowardice of booksellers who bowed before the Ayatollah's edict.

Listening to them, I couldn't help wondering if they, themselves, worked in a bookshop or employed people who did. It would have been brave of Mr Harry Hoffman, the president of the largest chain in the country to declare that all 1200 of his stores would go on displaying and promoting Mr Rushdie's book, but he felt that his bravery would have been flourished at the expense of over 5,000 people who sell his books, not to mention the customers who come to browse.

Two days after he was attacked in print for caving in to the Ayatollah, Mr Hoffman replied in kind. He began by wholeheartedly endorsing the First Amendment which guarantees a free press and which, in all such arguments, is recited like an opening prayer. But noble and necessary as the amendment is, he decided that 'because of the number and seriousness of the threats that are being made against our store personnel and customers, we feel we owe our first allegiance to the safety of our employees and patrons'.

Even so, while he ordered the remaining inventory to be removed, copies could still be sold to any customer who asked for them and by the end of the week, there'd been a complete turnaround. Most book stores, big and little, were back to bold displays of the book. I have to say, too, to the credit of a pack of famous writers that they appeared in a public hall to give readings from 'The Satanic Verses' – provocation, indeed, for any fanatical disciples of the Ayatollah.

Early in the week, there'd been quickly expressed admiration here for the action of the 12 European Community nations in recalling their top diplomats from Tehran. In fact, that was the big front-page story last Tuesday and Sir Geoffrey Howe's picture was the favourite illustration of it because it stressed the point that Britain had gone farther than anybody in withdrawing its entire diplomatic mission.

Inevitably, the promptness and severity of the European Community's action roused Washington to say, 'How about Mr Bush?' Why has he said nothing?' Well, the news roused him too and at a quick press conference held just before he took off for the royal funeral in Tokyo, he said that the Ayatollah's decree was deeply offensive to the norms of civilisation, but, frankly, he didn't know what to do about it. And so far no-one has come up with a solution, short of putting a blanket embargo on the Iranian oil that Europe needs.

The comparative sluggishness of the administration in reacting to the Ayatollah has nothing to do, I believe, with the never-ending anxiety about American hostages or with any reluctance to offend the Ayatollah. The fact is that the Bush administration is hobbled by a most unusual problem, which is that of being weeks, almost months, behind putting together a Bush administration.

Parliamentary countries frequently envy the American tradition which, after the election of a new chief executive, allows the new man not 24 hours, but the better part of three months to assemble his team. Of course, there's one snag in the American system which doesn't stop the free flow of one parliament into another, there's no such thing here as a shadow Cabinet and can't be in a system in which the chief executive – here, the president – lives and has his being separated from the legislature.

In other words, the president doesn't live and work in the Senate and the House and when he comes to pick his Cabinet, he invariably chooses men and women who have never been in the Senate or the House, or even elected to public office.

Even so, each party has its experts there on everything from foreign policy to small business and they're always in close touch with men involved in those specialties in private life. But, usually, by the end of January, not only the Cabinet is in place, but the assistant secretaries and under-secretaries who will put together their own staffs and begin to run their departments. It has not been done. There was no assistant secretary for East Asian affairs to go along with Mr Bush to Japan and China.

And suppose, suppose things got bad in the Middle East or the Gulf and that Mr Bush decided to take, as we now cautiously say, direct action, that would bring in quicker than anybody the Secretary of Defense. But, incredibly, there isn't a Secretary of Defense because of the time it has taken the FBI to finish its several investigations of the life and times of Mr Bush's choice, his nominee, Mr John Tower.

I can't remember a time when a president's choice for a Cabinet post has been held up at such ridiculous length – two months, instead of two days – by the committee responsible for confirming him, in this case, the Senate Armed Services Committee. It all started with one gossip – an active, far-right conservative who came before the committee and said that several times he'd seen Mr Tower drunk. Of course, as a witness before a congressional committee, he didn't use such crude and manly language, he said, I quote, 'There have been encounters on several occasions with Mr Tower in a condition lacking in sobriety'.

From that first, mealy-mouthed charge, which has not been confirmed by any other witness, the FBI was then asked to look into rumours of – dreadful, but now required word – womanising, the circumstances of Mr Tower's two divorces, his behaviour in Geneva when he was negotiating arms reduction three and four years ago, as well as, which is really relevant, his financial dealings as a private consultant with arms' contractors who are most likely to have to do business with the Pentagon, and on and on. All together, interviews with over 300 people and the FBI's docket now running to thousands of pages.

Finally, the Senate Armed Services Committee had, presumably, digested this gargantuan record and on Thursday evening it voted. It turned Mr Tower down, the nine Republicans voting to approve, the eleven Democrats to reject. It's a great pity, I think, that it was a straight partisan vote, which is very rare, because it implies that the pressure of party loyalty paralyses a man's ability to reach an independent judgement.

Well, unless Mr Tower asks to have his name withdrawn, the question will go next week to the whole Senate for a, no doubt, unholy debate. It's ironical that the main drag on Mr Bush's work as a Cabinet maker is his insistence on a new, high standard of ethics for his men just after he'd failed to check on the going ethics of several men he'd already appointed.

The most embarrassing example is that of the man who is to be the ethical policeman of his administration, his legal counsel, Mr Boyden Gray. It took a humble – not so humble, a very smart – newspaper man to discover that Mr Gray was the chairman of the board of a communications company doing a $500 million business. Mr Gray was appalled to hear that this was wrong in a high government servant, inconceivably dumb in its chief ethics enforcer. 'Oh dear,' said Mr Gray. He resigned as chairman of the board and hastily put his holdings in a blind trust.

Well, as an end piece, I think I ought to give you an up-to-date report – what am I saying? – a state-of-the-art report on one section of American society. It's from the University of Illinois and it took two years to do. Four hundred and eighty students, aged ten to fourteen, were given beepers which went off every two hours or so. They were asked to say what they were up to at that moment, doing, thinking, not doing. The result, 20,000 musings about the real life of ten- to fourteen-year-old – just what you've always wanted to know!

Biggest surprise, they are not besotted with music. Boys and girls listen for no more than 1.8 hours a week. They don't much care for television. They do six to seven hours homework a week and – this is the big news – they don't like it. The great discovery, however, was boys spent more time doing odd jobs. Girls did more cooking and cleaning. And this was evidently a disappointment to the lady in charge of the project. She sighed, 'We're still treating kids in the expectation they will become traditional men and women'.

Ah, so!

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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