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Daniel and David Bell

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from: Daniel Bell

Foreign Entanglements

Posted Monday, Dec. 13, 1999, at 3:44 PM ET

Dear David:

Nice point about the lack of scandals in the American press, at least the major papers we read. We were abroad for a month in September and October, but I do not recall the American press featuring the story of Newt Gingrich's divorce case, and the revelation that he had a mistress for almost as long--or was it longer?--than Bill Clinton was succored by Monica Lewinsky. Could it be that there are fewer scandals, or is it that the Times and the Washington Post feel that they have gone overboard in the last few years?

By contrast, almost all the newspapers in England and Germany and Belgium and Spain and Italy--let alone Russia--are full of stories about scandal and corruption, and some of these make the American stories, including Ken Starr, pale by comparison. What is extraordinary is how scantily this is written about in the American press.

Take the story in England that has been running for the past two weeks and more--the revelation that Jeffrey Archer, the famous novelist and a Tory parliamentary whip, who had announced his Conservative candidacy for the mayor of London, was shown to have lied and covered up a liaison with a prostitute a dozen years ago. The News of the World, a paper that specializes in sleaze, had paid Archer's friend Ted Francis 14,000 pounds to reveal that he had given Archer a false alibi in 1987, when the Daily Star accused Archer of marital infidelity with a prostitute, Monica Couglan. Francis disclosed that Archer had persuaded him to write a letter to Lord Archer's lawyers falsely stating that they had had dinner that night, and Archer had altered his diary to show a meeting. Archer had sued the Daily Star and won a million pounds in the libel case. Now Archer is disgraced and faces the prospect of even going to jail for perjury and conspiracy. William Hague, the Tory leader, has egg all over his face.

In Germany, it has now been charged that Helmut Kohl had secret campaign funding accounts. All this emerged from an investigation of a million-deutsche-mark cash donation to the Christian Democratic Party by a Canadian arms dealer, Krakheinz Schreiber.

The most vehement accusations have been surfacing in Belgium. There is new speculation that Andre Cools, the former deputy prime minister who was shot dead in 1991 as he left his mistress's flat in Liege, was about to expose corruption in his party. A trial in Brussels had convicted Willy Claes and two other ex-ministers in the Walloon and Flemish socialist parties of channeling bribes to party funds into their own bank accounts.

I suppose where these stories merge with the American scene--leaving out the other sex scandals, such as Robin Cook, the British foreign secretary, being forced by Tony Blair to choose between his mistress and his wife, as he was at an airport ready to fly off with his mistress (and he finally chose her, leaving his wife, later, to write a bitter newspaper account of their life)--is with the problem of campaign funding. We have had detailed exposés of the Clinton Lincoln-bedroom sales, but nothing as lurid as the European tales. But one last note, the failure of the American press to give much play to these stories. Is it that these names are unfamiliar to American readers? Yet Jeffrey Archer's novels, such as First Among Equals, and I think you have probably read them all, for relaxation--have sold extremely well here. So why has the American press, or even Slate for that matter, neglected this reportage?

Love,
Dad

P.S.. If we had "newsbreaks" in this correspondence, I would report the headline in a London Times story last month: "Bishop's Wife Runs Away With a Vicar." The title, of course, would be, as Trollope might say, "There will always be an England."

the breakfast table
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from: Daniel Bell

Foreign Entanglements

Posted Monday, Dec. 13, 1999, at 3:44 PM ET
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Daniel Bell is professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard and the author of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, which was recently re-issued (click hereto buy it). David Bell, Daniel's son, teaches history at Johns Hopkins University, and is the author of the forthcoming The National and the Sacred: Religion and the Origins of Nationalism in France.
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