Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Not quite a Beatles reunion, but cool nonetheless



Instead of John and Paul, we'll have to make do with Bob and Andy -- Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom, that is.  

Without any ado, after years of a rift whose cause no one really knows (only because the principals have never come clean about it and nobody seems to have cared to ask them), Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom have apparently buried the hatchet.  For readers who wish to read my thoughts on the matter of the longstanding rift, see this page of links.  

The first sign of this sudden and welcome rapprochement was approximately a couple of weeks ago, when out of the blue, Spencer featured a Bostom article on Jihad Watch.  After an achingly long winter of silence between them, punctuated only by oblique jabs of acrimony, Jihad Watch readers were greeted with an unforeseen thaw, with its attendant melting and sprinkling rivulets of cordiality in full bloom now this week, as Spencer treated his readers to an in-depth videotaped interview and discussion with his old friend and colleague.

During the hour they converse, Spencer frequently encourages Bostom to expound at length and in fascinating detail about the lionized scholar of Islamic history, Bernard Lewis, and by extension, the sorry state of Academe with regard to that subject.

And Andrew Bostom has a lot to say on the subject.  Indeed, he has so many thousands of relevant facts jockeying for place in the space between his nimble brain and his tongue, one almost senses he can barely get them out in orderly fashion; almost as though he knows he doesn't have the time, even in the span of an hour, to explicate and do justice to the full complications of the horror of Islam and the nightmare of our Western myopia of that horror -- all the more grotesque when that myopia exudes from a remarkably erudite scholar, the focus of the discussion, Bernard Lewis (age 96 and still going strong), who is steeped in knowledge about that horror and thus has had no coherent excuse for his tendencies toward apologeticism.

Bostom's recurring theme, of the intellectual/psychological schizophrenia of Lewis, epitomizes in a searingly acute nutshell the Stockholm Syndrome schizophrenia of the whole West with regard to its most familiar perennial Bully and Enemy who has traumatized her for 1,300 years -- but about whom, like the battered wife with two black eyes, two broken ribs, and bruises and cuts up and down her back who continues to defend and make excuses for her abusive husband, she remains hip-deep in that River of Egypt.

§ § §

Whether it was a matter of money, lawyers or Yoko, nobody knows.  I'm just glad they're back together again.  The danger of Islam is too important for two talents like Bob and Andy to indulge the mysterious grudge they had against each other for so long.

9 comments:

Ben said...

This "reunion has not come entirely out of the blue - back in November, Bostom posted the following on his blog:

"Sadly, with distressing frequency, inadvertent misunderstandings cause avoidable, damaging collisions even among friends and compatriots who are aligned against the maleficent forces of resurgent Islam, Jihad and Sharia. The horrific news from the Middle East makes it imperative to set aside minor cavils and perceived slights and unite for our common goals and ideals.

"In the true spirit of restoration, epitomized by The David Horowitz Freedom Center’s annual Restoration Weekend, Robert Spencer and I reconciled our all too acrimonious misunderstandings for which I acknowledge my share of culpability."

Still prettty cryptic, but I share your gratitude that the pair of them are now able to work alongside them once more.

In my view, Bostom's superb research skills and resourcefulness, coupled with Pam Geller's passion and event-organising credentials and Spencer's presentation and erudition really make for an unbeatable team.

Hesperado said...

Ben, thanks for that information. I confess I don't keep up with Bostom's blog as liturgically as I do Spencer's. And in addition to Bostom's description being cryptic, we had nothing as far as I know from Spencer.

Anonymous said...

Good luck to Bostom. Spencer and Geller take rather too easy offense.

Egghead

Hesperado said...

True, Egghead.

Baron Bodissey and Dymphna seem to have skins thinner and dispositions pricklier even than Spencer and Geller, it seems (though the latter may certainly indulge in more skullduggery behind the scenes). Take a look at the childishly hypersensitive trigger-happy treatment of me by Dymphna on the GOV comments thread to her article "Habemus Papam!"

Anonymous said...

Just read it. Prickly indeed.

Of course, considering that I am one loyal devotee of cultural Marxism being the bogeyman to whom you refer, it is a good thing that I think that you are quite brilliant and that I have a great sense of humor (two unrelated items, of course). Ha!

Where's the rest of the Cervantes that you promised me?! :)

Egghead

Hesperado said...

Thanks Egghead, that damned Cervantes essay is like a thorn in my side because I know how important it is, but I also know how much sheer labor it will entail to disentangle. It probably won't happen, unfortunately, until late summer. But you never know. There have been quite a few gigantic essays that for a long time it felt like I was never going to get around doing, but eventually I did, and I can look back at them with a nice sense of accomplishment, and hope (my 3-part essay on the theory of Evolution; my essay on Massignon and the Islamic conquest of Byzantium; my lengthy review of Andy Garcia's movie The Lost City; my essay on the obscure monastic text of an obscure Desert monk named Jacob, Ubi es, bene es; and a couple of others).

Anonymous said...

Yes, but what if you were run over by a bus? How would we ever learn of Cervantes then?

Egghead

Hesperado said...

I'll make sure not to cross the road whenever any bus is even a mile away. :)

Anonymous said...

Good! :) Egghead