The joke’s on its last legs, but not forgotten. Whenever there’s a global “conference” on climate change 100 or so “experts,” many of them celebrities, do their part, attend the earnest 9-5 seminars and afterwards the lavish banquets commensurate with their outsized status. When the summit’s over, a secluded airport is jammed with people like Leonardo DiCaprio boarding private jets to film locations, an after-hours tour of the Taj Majal or a vacation on an obscure island with a select group of “besties.” The hypocrisy is so mendacious—and after years of this, that’s not too strong a word—but “memory-holed” until the following year when it starts all over again.
(A minor aside: I’ve yet to see a self-righteous, I’m-doing-this-for-your-kids environmental group mount a campaign to lower the air-conditioning that freezes patrons of movie theaters, supermarkets and drugstore, not to mention the Big City Lights of skyscraper office buildings across the world that remain lit all day and all of the light.)
Could be wrong, but I believe the annual Davos Conference, where a similar—sometimes the same affluent, “influential” people, who live for these junkets—gaggle of Big Thinkers has lost its luster, as it’s elicited (finally!) some soft but “measure” criticism from apostates. But the slew of worldwide retreats, which must bring a lot of revenue to the host city or resort (a tangible benefit, probably the only one), carry on and, as ever, accomplish next to nothing. I recently read a Wall Street Journal essay by Walter Russell Mead, datelined Copenhagen, where he thought Big Thoughts at the annual Democracy Summit. Mead’s okay by me, just another academic/author who, at least for the benefit of readers, worries himself to distraction about the dissolution of “the vital center.”
His conclusion: “Too many democracy advocates today argue that the ignorant and willful popular masses have failed the cause of democracy. This is a cop-out. [I like the shot at The New York Times and what’s left of The Washington Post] It is the elites and the establishments of the democratic world who are failing. In times like these, with war clouds darkening abroad and economic social changes roiling the waters at home, conformity, senility and mediocrity won’t do.”
That’s a pat sentiment—and unoriginal—that sounds sensible to many, but it’s really like one of Bill Clinton’s interminable speeches, where at first listening the platitudes were well-written, delivered with lip-biting passion, and two days later completely forgotten, likely by even Clinton and his speechwriters. Mead isn’t wrong about the threat (and reality) of autocracy around the world, but today’s “tumultuous” global near-reckoning isn’t much different—the concerns and culprits vary—from any single one of the last 60 years. (With a cameo from January 6th, 2020!) It’s a living for people like Mead, called eggheads in the 1950s, and I’d guess they derive immense, head-inflating satisfaction from “doing their part,” when in reality they’re simply speaking and head-nodding with their own well-heeled coterie. No matter, it’s now time to open the summer house in Amagansett or Jackson Hole.
The Democracy Summit in Denmark was just another convention, which occur every week in every profession. A few weeks ago, on a Peninsula Hotel elevator in Manhattan, I was jammed in with seven gregarious fellows, presentably attired (although I felt queasy from one reveler’s brutal cologne), and I asked the alpha dude, “I assume you’re here for a convention.” He laughed, said “yes indeedy” and then made a stupid joke about selling me some long-term life insurance. I swear his party hat wiggled after coming up with that zinger. Another reminded the group about a “meet and greet” cocktail reception at the hotel’s Clement Restaurant in two short hours.
Long ago, I attended a dozen or so weekly newspaper conventions and they were almost always a blast, renewing friendships forged over the years, and finding the best places to eat (someone always had a “tip” about a non-tourist spot), whether it was in Los Angeles, Montreal, Memphis, Boston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Manhattan or San Francisco, to name just several of the venues. These conventions don’t exist anymore, because weekly papers don’t exist (aside from shell operations), but I always circled the date of confab on my wall calendar. I rarely posted at the dull and obvious sessions on journalistic ethics, tips for boosting calendar listings or rump groups seeking to gain a foothold into national advertising. The real action, at least for the “players,” took place during the evenings, when the seeds of newspaper sales were sallied about, the drinking was prodigious, and around one a.m. the same-time-next-year sexual romps took place, for better or worse (but providing next-day ephemeral and catty gossip). And then you flew, or took a train back to your home city, and if smart, put into motion new strategies (learned late at night) to boost revenue.
The photo above, taken at Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel, is of Patty Calhoun (Westword) and Michael Cohen (a nomad publisher, including my first at New York Press) horsing around after drinking 99 beers on the wall.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Helmut Kohl’s a sought-after presence at the Davos Conference; sales of music cassettes peaked; The Rolling Stones tour in Japan for the first time; MCA buys Geffen Records; Dave Grohl joins Nirvana; The Brian Jonestown Massacre is formed; Billy Idol’s “Cradle of Love” is a big hit; The Smashing Pumpkins record Gish; Democrat Tom Foley is Speaker of the House; Driving Miss Daisy wins four Oscars; five college students are murdered in Gainesville, FL; Kristen Stewart is born and Paulette Goddard dies; Dominic Dunne’s An Inconvenient Woman and Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty are published; August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson wins the Drama Pulitzer Prize; and Wayne Grady wins the PGA Championship.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023