The Art Forger a Good Mystery, but No Masterpiece

THE ART FORGER

By B.A. Shapiro

Algonquin Books ISBN: 978-1616201326

·      * * ½

Barbara Shapiro certainly knows a juicy topic when she sees it and, in New England, they don’t get much juicier than the 1990 heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Thieves, disguised as Boston policemen, talked their way into the Stewart after hours, subdued two night watchmen, and made off with 13 masterpieces valued at over $500 million, including works from Manet, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas. Twenty-three years later, the Gardner robbery is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of our time. In March of 2013, the Boston Globe revealed that investigators have turned attention again to one of the guards on duty (though he’s passed two lie detector tests). Thus far, every trail has gone cold or led to a dead end.

Shapiro’s delicious hook is to assume that one of the paintings has surfaced, one by Degas titled After the Bath. (No such work exists; this is Shapiro’s invention based on a famed series of bathers that Degas did paint.) Collector Aiden Markel secretly has the work, which he has secured through some very shady contacts and double-dealing, and wants to enlist artist Claire Roth in a dangerous scheme that she’s told will restore the painting to the Gardner, put much-needed money into her starving artist’s pocket, and lead to a one-woman gallery show of her own. The question is, who can be trusted?

Claire certainly needs a break. She was once the paramour of art world sensation Isaac Cullion, a former whiz kid who hasn’t had an idea in years. Out of love, Roth paints a work upon which Cullion signed his own name. It took the art world by storm and resurrected Cullion’s reputation. Alas, Cullion left Claire for another woman before committing suicide, and her insistence that she actually painted Cullion’s masterpiece is rejected by “experts” and viewed as a contributing factor in Cullion’s death. So say that Claire’s reputation is mud is an understatement. Years later she pays the rent by teaching classes at a local juvenile lockup, and by copying masterpieces for one of those companies will sell you a reproduction of a Degas for a few hundred bucks. Claire is more than good at this task—she’s convincing.

The real action starts when Markel asks Claire to copy After the Bath—from the original. Her task is nothing less than forgery; she needs to convince world art experts that her work is that of Degas, so everything must check out—the age of the canvas, the chemistry of the pigments she uses, and every single brush stroke. There is no margin for error. The canvas?  A Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier that happens to be exactly the right size and is such a minor work that no one will ever miss it, so Claire’s first job is to strip it. It’s also the first of a whole lot of improbable “coincidences” in the novel. Meissonier was once considered an important classicist, hence obliterating one of his works isn’t likely. Another convenient invention is Amelia, Isabella Stewart Gardner’s niece and secret confidant. No such person ever existed, but never mind….

Claire begins to have serious misgivings about the brushwork of the alleged Degas and begins to wonder if she’s copying a copy of a copy. (How meta!) I will not spoil the mystery with any more detail. It’s a pretty good yarn, actually, even when aspects of it spill into Dan Brown territory. It’s probably best if you consume this book the way you might a beach novel, though I recommend you keep an iPad handy to find images of real art works mentioned, as these will supplement your enjoyment.

Shapiro isn’t a great stylist and she’s definitely guilty of contrivances that make sense only within the questionable logic systems she has constructed. If you think too much, you’ll wonder why an artist no one ever heard of knows more about one of the world’s most famous painters than art experts. You may also find Claire Roth too immature, too insecure, and too inexperienced to be part of such an elaborate ruse. And you’ll certainly wonder why all of her friends act as if they are college sophomores rather than adults in their 30s and 40s. But, as I said, try not to ask these questions. If you’re one of those readers that can simply immerse yourself in a thorny who-dunnit, Shapiro’s novel is a cut above those knock-‘em-out potboilers you find in the ten for a buck remainder bins.

You may also acquire a bit of art history knowledge along the way, be overcome by a sudden desire to visit the Gardner, and gain respect for the pure painters who crank out copies of masterpieces to go above living-room sofas across the land. It also reminds us that the wildly eccentric Gardner needs a fictional treatment of her own. All of these are good things, “good” being an adjective I’d also apply to Shapiro’s novel. It’s no Degas, but it’s not a bad Meissonier.—Rob Weir

Hors Satan: Masterpiece or Rubbish?

HORS SATAN (Outside Satan.)

Directed by Bruno Dumont

3B Productions 110mins, in French with English subtitles (one nude/sex scene.)

No stars or 5 stars? (* * *)

Bruno Dumont is best known for religious fables that make absolutely no concessions to a popular audience. His previous picture, Hadewijch, centered on a religious novice so devout, she was thrown out of her convent. His current work is even more extreme. Set in a bleak, thinly populated, haunting corner of Pas de Calais near Boulogne, where a ragged ascetic figure played by David Dewaele, resembles the student who played Christ in Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St Matthew. He trawls the desolate countryside bordering the nearby beach - a mix of wild tangled undergrowth, twisted bending trees and blank sand. He sleeps rough in this isolated area in what looks like the remains of a building where just a small 90deg brick corner is left. Fed by local families, he stops for silent prayers gazing over the shimmering horizons towards the sea. He kills two people: the abusive father of Elle, a teenage girl played by Alexandra Lematre and a forest guard played by Christophe Bon who had bothered the same girl. He also refuses the sexual advances of the teenage girl but makes love to a stray back-packer, Juliette Bacquet who then appears, at orgasm, to enter a state of ecstasy.

The film appears to be dealing with notions of the closeness of the sacred and demonic, the idea that good and evil, the Christ-like and the Satanic, are different sides of the same coin. The dialogue is minimal and there’s no music – all sound is natural: wind, rain, footsteps, voices and cries. But maybe Dumont has other things in mind. There are many problems with this film. Heavily resembling Pasolini’s and Antonioni’s work, it’s not an easy ride. Its Bresson-like silences, the crawling camerawork over the wild landscape, and the slowness in reaching any conclusions ensure that viewers will have to pay sharp attention.  It could be a masterpiece; it could also be utter drivel. In the end, I suspect there are elements of each. Some reviewers have noted Dumont’s seeming lack of empathy with the people in the village. Other complaints concern the main character’s aloof behavior. Some criticism is off base and reflect desires for a comprehensive study that are not borne out by the film’s overarching aesthetics. Did viewers expect the villagers to hold dinner parties? This isn’t a Hollywood thriller or a stifling romantic-comedy and it’s a sure thing it will not get released at a mall near you! To catch it you’ll need to track down an independent cinema, a college film series, or wait for its DVD release. Or you could jet off to London, where it seems to be doing better box office than other places. --Lloyd Cellus

Ben Bedford: Skilled Songwriter of Moving Tales

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BEN BEDFORD

What We Lost

Waterbug 111

* * * *

What is it about the Midwest that causes songwriters and storytellers to crop up like late summer wheat? Illini Ben Bedford knows how to tell and retell great stories; he also knows that the bittersweet ones pack the biggest wallop. Or, as he puts it on “Cloudless,” my favorite track from his latest album, “A fallen angel sings the sweetest song.” The eponymous title track of What We Lost is the album’s central theme, but Bedford gives us far more than a melancholy collection of regret songs. In his subtle narratives, loss inspires search, and it yields things we never expected to find. On “Fallen,” it’s two riverboat men who drift into forbidden love; on “Empty Sky”–said to be partly autobiographical–it’s a latter-day Adam and Eve who find plenty of happiness after their metaphorical expulsion from Eden.

The reedy-voiced Bedford also pays tribute to past mentors. The poet Vachel Lindsay is the subject of “Vachel,” which is part dirge, part tribute, and part life lesson wrapped in the deliberate pacing and stripped down instrumentation of early Leonard Cohen. “Fire in His Bones,” which honors delta blues artist Charlie Patton (c. 1887-1934), is incongruously (but touchingly) rendered in acoustic folk style. Bedford is capable of country blues, though, as he showcases on “John the Baptist,” a song that sounds like something Greg Brown needs to add to his repertoire. In true Bedford style, John the Baptist’s message is ambiguous; he’s an inspiration, but he’s a fanatic akin to a TV evangelist. He may have even been crazy but–as Bedford sings–“a madman’s truth is still the truth.” The problem is that “truth” sometimes lies buried (“Cahokia”), or lost in a maze of injustice (“The Ballad of Harlington Wood,” a post Pine Ridge shootout song). Bedford appropriately ends his crisp ten-track collection with “Guinevere is Sleeping.” What do we make of Guinevere? Check out the myriad legend cycles before you decide. Maybe she’s just the flaxen-haired innocence into whose eyes we all long to gaze.

There’s some excellent songwriting on this album. I suppose the music wears the “folk” label, but there are also very tasteful Nashville production values, and Bedford mixes styles enough to keep the music from wearing a groove into our expectations. I get the feeling we’ll be hearing a lot more of this man’s songs.--Rob Weir

Chris Bourque: Big Dreams, Small Body

Take a good look at Chris Bourque in his Bruins sweater. Unless some team gets very, very desperate, it’s the last time you’ll see the diminutive left-winger in an NHL jersey. Chris Bourque is a symbol of all that is hopeful and deceptive about our modern culture of celebrity. He’s a small (by NHL standards) man encouraged to hold dreams that were too big.

He is, by most accounts, a very nice young man–just what one would expect as the son of NHL Hall of Famer Ray Bourque. The paterfamilias was one of the classiest guys to ever lace on skates–the sort you rooted for even if you weren’t a Bruins fan (which I did, though I’m not!). Ray, who played in the NHL from 1979 to 2011, was an overachiever who used his brain to compensate for a relative lack of physical brawn. In his playing days he was 5’11” and weighed 220 pounds–a bit too much weight that frame. If one of the league’s monsters–a Jagr or a Lemieux, for instance–trapped Ray Bourque in the corner, they could outmuscle him; if one of the speedsters caught him in open ice, they could beat him to the net. The thing was, though, Bourque was so smart that he was almost never caught in the wrong place.

When you grow up in La Belle Province (Québec) with an old man like Ray, you’ve got skates on your feet before you can walk. Two of Ray’s sons, Chris and Ryan, have followed NHL dreams, and that path is where the stardust got in their eyes. Not that they shouldn’t try–everybody should give their dreams a test drive, but they should also know when to it’s time to either shift into high gear, or full over to the curb. They should also have an alternative route planned.

As it turns out, I’ve seen Chris Bourque play for quite a long time. He’s just 27, but he left Boston University–where I saw him play–after a single season to turn pro. He should have gotten a degree. I have also seen Chris Bourque in parts of seven American Hockey League seasons. He was a very popular player for the Hershey Bears, the farm club of the Washington Capitals. Fans loved him for the same reason they loved him at BU–he can absolutely fly down an open sheet of ice. But, when push meets shove, Bourque has never been able to shove back. That’s because nature cheated him.

When the Bruins plucked Bourque from the Capitals in time for this year’s abbreviated season, the Boston media went into hyperbolic overdrive–odd for a guy who, on February 2, scored just his second NHL goal. Bruins fans, of course, wanted Chris to succeed. What could be cooler than having the son of one of the best players in franchise history? And therein lies two problems. The first is the burden of a famous name–one that led a kid to pursue a path whose odds were long instead of having a good backup plan. The odds were long for the second major reason: Chris Bourque is too small to excel in pro hockey. The Boston Globe listed Bourque as 6’ and I want that reporter to be the one pouring the whiskey next time I’m at the bar! Bourque is a generous 5’8” and looks to be less than his stated 180 pounds. What I saw in the AHL was a guy with speed who got pummeled all over the ice. Give CB some space, and he could bury the puck, but professional defensemen (like his old man) are trained not to allow a lot of space on the ice. Today’s NHL is much bigger than it was even in Ray’s time; goal scoring is more a matter of muscle-and-grind than 40-foot slap shots. When I watched Bourque at Hershey, I was baffled by the fan love. He was frequently outmuscled that, were I the coach, he’d have been a fourth liner, if he played at all. If you play on the wing, you have two major jobs: keep opposing wingers from going past you–which he had trouble doing–and scoring. Bourque’s best AHL season was last year, at Hershey, where he scored 27 goals against players mostly less experienced than he. Put another way, he’s no Martin St. Louis, who is the same size, but with the upper body strength to routinely score 30+ goals per season in the NHL, not the minor leagues. What the Bruins saw in Chris Bourque confounds all logic.

On March 1, the boom lowered, and Chris Bourque was placed on waivers. He went unclaimed and is now toiling for still another AHL team: the Providence Bruins. It’s hard to imagine that he’ll get another shot at the NHL. So, at age 27, what does one do? Bourque might be an AHL roster filler for another year or two, or maybe he can catch on with a Swiss or Russian team for a time, but then what? The Bruins foolishly gave him a two-year $1.1 million contract, but only part of that is guaranteed if he doesn’t make it back to the NHL. I hope Bourque invests well–like in completing his education. His hockey career has been stardust, not stardom. And I hope his 5’9” younger brother Ryan has been paying attention.

Lichtenstein Book on Walmart Alarms

This blog seldom runs academic reviews, but given Sylvia Burwell's nomination for OMB, this is timely. 

The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business. By Nelson Lichtenstein. New York: Picador, 2010. 978-0-312-42968-3

Walmart is a company Americans either love or hate. Nelson Lichtenstein’s updated exposé gives considerably more rationale for loathing. His is such a damning portrayal that it ventures onto terrain generally reserved for conspiracy theorists. There’s an important difference, though–Lichtenstein’s evisceration is based on reams of evidence, not preference.

The story of Sam Walton’s enterprise is steeped in folksy creation myths as spurious as that of Abner Doubleday’s invention of baseball. Walmart has been, from the start, a blend of innovation and reactionary politics. Walton was, indeed, a small-town Arkansas boy, but one more akin to the 1920s moralists that precipitated the Scopes Trial. He was an evangelical Christian who loathed urbanites and was stirred by an autocratic desire to Bentonville the planet. Lichtenstein gives grudging admiration for Walton’s business acumen and credits him for revolutionizing retail logistics, but he insists that we also see Walton as a right-winger obsessed with routing demons he felt imperiled his world: unions, liberals, grassroots democracy, cities, and regulatory government.

When Walmart left its Ozarks birthplace in Bentonville, Arkansas, it spread to towns of under 10,000 before tackling urban areas with restorative and proselytizing zeal. Even though it has integrated its operations with China’s manufacturing sector, Walmart’s unchanged goal is to make the world like Bentonville, not promote global understanding. As Lichtenstein notes, the company’s team-building rituals and customer loyalty programs retain an evangelical flair that smacks of cultism.

Lichtenstein raises bigger questions. If Walmart is the modern-day equivalent of Frank Norris’s Octopus, how did it get that way, and how did it build such a loyal following?  Walton’s fixation on low costs is a standard feature of capitalism; in that regard, Bentonville is little different from past Yankee traders, southern plantation owners, or cut-rate retailers such as Butler Brothers, Mammoth Mart, or K-Mart. It took the stagflation of the 1970s and the anti-worker policies of the 1980s for Walton to put bigger plans in motion. Give Walton credit; he was “in love with logistics” (47) and understood how the humble bar code could restructure business. As one executive put it, Walmart became more of “distribution business” than a retailer. (48) It eliminated wholesalers and replaced them with a supply chain that directly tied manufacturers to distribution centers–not supply and demand, rather “supply and command.” (69) The rising empire was sustained through a “corporate culture” built upon “family, faith, and small-town sentimentality that coexists… with a world of transnational commerce, employment insecurity and poverty-level wages.” (70) It also has “more sticks than carrots,” (102) perfect for rooting out deviation or disloyalty.  

Lichtenstein echoes critics such as Robert Greenwald and Charles Fishman, who also reveal that Walmart’s retail model rests upon the necessity of bending vendors to its will, even if vendors go bankrupt in the process. It is equally imperative that wages be kept low. There are few tricks Walmart hasn’t used, or labor laws it hasn’t violated. It also uses propaganda to convince employees of company benevolence, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It touts endless “opportunities” for “associates,” though almost none attain them. Turnover is both expected and preferred. And heaven help the manager deemed too generous with his–almost always “his”–associates. External enemies help, and Walmart slanders labor unions in ways that make mockery of the Wagner Act. The firm spends little on employees, but it spends a fortune to keep unions at bay.

Does Walmart create jobs? Yes and no. In many states, Walmart’s low wages take more out economies–in uninsured health costs and public services–than it adds in wages or taxes. It gets way with this because it uses “its size and sophistication to leverage its political influence” (268). Walmart is fond of far-right officials, but it has also had the Clintons in its hip pocket. Mostly it uses its octopus-like might to decimate competition, from mom-and-pop stores to grocery chains. It manipulates sales taxes, gets sweetheart property tax deals, uses “self-interested philanthropy” (277), and drives its trucks through every regulatory loophole opened since the 1980s.

Any cause for optimism? Refreshingly, Lichtenstein does not attack consumerism. As he puts it, there’s nothing inherently wrong with stuffing one’s house with a “a bunch of inexpensive stuff.” (338) Instead, Lichtenstein thinks Walmart is on the cusp of imperial overreach. It hasn’t done well in Europe–and pulled out of Germany altogether–and has faced stiff opposition in North America. It wins far more battles than it loses, but the campaigns take a toll. Ironically, it also faces competition from others that followed suit and likewise “churn their workforce, whipsaw their vendors, and have turned retirement pay and health provisions into a financial lottery for millions of workers.” (339) Those very millions make the Walmart model unsustainable in the long run. One employer notes that paying higher wages isn’t “altruism. It is good business.” (336) It doesn’t matter how low your prices are if nobody has the money to buy your products.

The wildcard, Lichtenstein notes, is not labor unions–the United Food and Commercial Workers has pretty much surrendered–but politics. He’s open to the charge of being naive in trusting modern Democrats to smack down Walmart*, but he’s probably right that structural adjustment and new ground rules are inevitable. In essence, the retail revolutionaries must pay the hidden costs they have incurred, or the lights will go out–even in Bentonville.

*Lichtenstein wrote this book long before the emergence of Sylvia Burwell as OMB nominee. One suspects he'd dial back some of this optimism. 

Robert E. Weir

University of Massachusetts Amherst   

Walmart's Hand on the US Budget: Thanks (for nothing) Barack!

 

No wonder liberals are so easy to lampoon. Can you imagine the donning of sackcloth and ashes that would have occurred if George W. Bush had announced that his new budget director was a Walmart executive? Hands would be wringing from Beverly Hills to Cambridge, MA. But I guess it’s okay when Barack Obama does it, because I’ve heard nary a peep over his nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell to succeed Jacob Lew as head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the agency that develops the president’s budget and evaluates the effectiveness of executive branch programs.

To be fair, Burwell has only headed the Walmart Foundation since 2010. Prior to then, she the president of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program. She was briefly the chief operating officer for the Gates Foundation, but she bolted to Walmart when she was passed over for the CEO’s position. She also has some OMB experience; she worked with the agency under–you guessed it–Bill “Bentonville” Clinton. It’s hard not to see the Clintons’ fingerprints all over Obama’s choice to let her head the OMB.

Let’s cut through some major backpedaling. Surely Burwell’s nomination is fine because she headed Walmart’s charitable arm, not its retail wing. No, it’s not. The Walmart Foundation appears to be the nation’s largest corporate charity–until you parse it. By total giving, maybe, but remember that Walmart is the world’s largest retailer and, worldwide, its revenue stream is second only to Dutch Royal Shell. One would expect someone with more revenue to give more in absolute terms, but if we adjust for size, Walmart is as cheap and shoddy as the goods it sells. It gives a parsimonious .5% of pretax profits to charity, about half of what its retail competitors give, and cheapskate stuff by the standards of small fry such as Ben and Jerry’s, the Body Shop, and Patagonia, which give 10% upfront. The corporate average is around 5.0%. Walmart’s largess works out to about $25,000 per store–hardly Santa Claus numbers.

Who gets the dough is also less than meets the eye. Walmart occasionally does the right thing. It outshined the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina. But let’s not get carried away; that was an anomaly–and it happened before Burwell came aboard. All charitable donations must be approved by Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, and its list of approved donors breaks down into benign groups such as the Red Cross, and those that list rightward: the Salvation Army, evangelical churches, youth ministries, abstinence programs, and rightwing think tanks and non-profits such the Cato Institute, the Evergreen Freedom Institution, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Right to Work Defense Foundation. Walmart also spends much more freely on non-deductible efforts such as Republican PACs, antiunion campaigns, and the tawdry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that sandbagged John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid. All of this is to say that Walmart is about as charitable as an executioner granting a last cigarette to the man he’s about to shoot. Stay tuned for Wednesday’s column to see why Walmart takes more out the economy than it ever puts back.

Walmart is what’s wrong with the American economy, not part of the fix. Liberals need to take the stars from their eyes and realize that Obama is not on their side; he’s as big a fake as Bill Clinton (who ought to play the Wizard of Oz in the new movie). Liberals–and those of us who’ve moved beyond them–should stop pretending that Barack Obama is the next coming of Martin Luther King, and vigorously oppose Sylvia Burwell’s appointment to the OMB. Force Obama to appoint someone to the OMB post that will write a budget that puts workers first–a task that can’t be accomplished by putting a sheen of respectability on a corporation that exploits them.  

Note to John Kerry: Just Walk Away from Syria

Note to John Kerry: Any US role in the Syrian conflict will end badly.

A quote and two questions… The quote comes from Salim Idris, the self-styled chief of staff for Syrian opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar Assad: “We don’t want food and drink, and we don’t want bandages. When we’re wounded, it’s time to die. The only thing we want is weapons.” He openly mocked President Obama, who has offered $60 million in non-lethal aid to the Syrian rebels. Now the questions: How many secretaries of state does it take to make up a collective train wreck? Will John Kerry be the next engineer to hurtle toward derailment? Let’s hope not. Step one in avoiding this is for President Obama to put the money back in the treasury. Step two is for Secretary of State Kerry to smile before the TV cameras after that is done and say things such as, “Syrians need to work out their destiny independently of Western interference.”

Alas, odds are long that either of these things will happen. It’s hard to resist several myths that persist despite all evidence to the contrary. The first of these is the adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Assad is a bad man—make no mistake about that—but it is absolute conceit to think that his enemies are friends of the United States. It’s always very tempting to think we can make friends of enemies. It runs counter to two powerful national myths—the belief that the world lusts to become just like the United States, and the belief that America only wants to help the rest of the world.

America gets into trouble when it acts like the world wants what it has—including democracy. We want to believe, which is why the public is still bottle-fed fantasies of “Arab spring,” as if a thousand ballots are about to spring in the dessert and usher forth republicanism, equality, and human rights. Here’s the reality of the Middle East: it’s a quagmire becoming a nightmare. Democracy? Where? Egypt? Yemen? Libya? (How’d that Benghazi situation work out?) Yet American policymakers continue to act as if “progress” is being made toward “liberating” the peoples of the Middle East. It leads to absolute stupidity on occasion. Such as pretending that Saudi sheiks have a better human rights record than Bashar Assad; such as intelligent people tricked into thinking there may be moderates within Hezbollah with whom they can negotiate. (Reality: Hezbollah is a more dangerous terrorist group than Al-Qaida.) And don’t get me started on those who think that an independent Palestine would actually be a viable nation-state. (If Israel ever did close the borders the way it is accused of doing, Palestine would starve to death.)  The Middle East is where Sunnis kill Shiites, everyone hates the Kurds, non-Muslims are unwelcome, and anarchy prevails with such tenacity that some group you’ve never heard of this week is likely to control vast swaths of an erstwhile nation-state next week. A dispassionate observer might conclude that anti-Semitism is the only shared value in the region.

But forget Middle Eastern history; let’s examine our own. If we’ve learned little else in the last five decades we should see that the Marshall Plan—aid plus covert activity to weaken rebellions--may have worked in postwar Europe, but it sure doesn’t work in the Middle East. The United States hasn’t been very successful in nation-building for a very long time. It has, alas, been very successful at making bad situations worse. Think back to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The U.S. covertly aided a group of “freedom fighters” there called the Mujahedeen. They got rid of the Soviets alright, and then morphed into the Taliban. One of its leaders was a Saudi exile named Osama bin Laden who, of course, headed Al-Qaida. And didn’t Reagan, Clinton, and the two Bushes do a great job by playing Iran and Iraq off against each other. We gave Saddam Hussein weapons to help him against Iran—a sworn enemy since 1979, but a place in which the US has meddled since the Eisenhower years. Somehow, Reagan was actually stupid enough to think that if we sold weapons to Iran to help it fight the very Saddam to whom we had previously armed, Iran would be grateful enough to help secure the release of U.S. hostages held in Lebanon. Note to all future presidents: If a nation’s leaders refer to your nation as the “Great Satan,” gratitude is unlikely. Assistance is even less so.

It’s equally unlikely that anything happening in Syria these days will yield good results. Consider the comments of Mouaz al-Khatid, the man who desperately wants to take Assad’s place as Syria’s leader. He complains that the West worries more about “the length of the fighters’ beards” than of Assad’s massacres. And well it should. The very idea that supporting the lesser of two monsters somehow yields a purring kitten when the fighting stops, is foolish. The more probable result is that Syria’s new government will contain a radical Islamic majority contemptuous of the United States. Syria is on the path to theocracy, not democracy, and is better positioned to devolve to the 12^th century than vault into the 21^st. The only question is whether it becomes antagonistic to the U.S. with or without U.S. cash and weaponry. Syrians won’t love us; they’ll just be better armed. Note to John Kerry: Don’t be a chump like your predecessors. Just walk away, with your hand over your wallet.