lOOKS
excellent appreciation of George Orwell; a perceptive discussion of C.
W. Mills'
Power Elite.
But there is not nearly enough of
it.
There are
also a few pieces in which Rovere attempts to be profound. These tum
out to be merely highfalutin', embarrassing, and confused. What is one
to make of a man who in an essay
On Political Sophistication
says on
the first pages that "In politics, sophistication. . .is a supporting mem–
ber, part of the foundation," only to say four pages later that "It
is
a
curious feature of politics that it corrodes sophistication. . .?"
Rovere's political writing is a prime example of the liblab school
of journalism. It seems that for
him
the more often one employs
formulations like "on the one hand . . . but on the other hand," the
nearer one approaches maturity and wisdom. "In recent years," he says,
''Congressional committees have posed the largest single threat to
[individual] freedom [of conscience];" but on the other hand, Arthur
Miller when refusing to name some people he had met in Communist
circles "was plainly in contempt." Caution is the hallmark of the liblab
journalist. When he writes about Gunnar Myrdal, Rovere refers to him
as "the author of
what
is
often! said to be
the most comprehensive
study ever made of
rac~
relations in the United States." (My emphasis.
L.C.)
It
is,
man it is!
This brings me to the title essay, by far the most interesting but
also the most infuriating in the book.
The American Establishment
ex–
hibits a classical case of political ambivalence. Freud defines ambivalence
as a psychic state in which "the contrasting pair of impulses are de–
veloped in almost the same manner." This is plainly what Rovere suffers
from. He is impressed and perturbed by the fact that a very high
proportion of the political and social elite in contemporary America is
drawn from a relatively small circle of graduates of Eastern colleges, of
members of top law firms and the like. He is concerned about the major
political roles played by a restricted elite composed of the directors of
the Council on Foreign Relations, Foundation Executives, certain Wash–
ington and Harvard intellectuals and so on. But to write seriously
about this would be very disquieting for the liblab conscience; it might
even force it to re-examine some of the basic premises on which it
rests. Hence Rovere chooses another way out; he uses humor to deny
the conflict of values that he cannot face. He reveals some most
interesting facts about the Establishment but then deliberately turns
the whole thing into an elaborate hoax complete with fake footnotes
and outrageously exaggerated and often ludicrous examples, so that
the whole essay turns out to
be
a parody of writing about the elite.
Rovere can continue to have the best of all possible worlds; he has
