Stepping from the shadows

The absence of any recent, non-grainy photo of me on the Web has been remedied. A new photo can be seen at the Unofficial LA page. It was taken a couple of weeks ago on the roof garden of an apartment building in New York City. Unfortunately I was having something of a bad hair day, but other than that it’s not a bad photograph.

Also, the first couple of minutes of my speech at the 1994 American Renaissance conference is now available on YouTube. When someone drew my attention to this a few weeks ago, I thought it was the entire hour-long speech and question period, but that is not the case.

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Hannon writes:

Good to see a contemporary photo of you. It makes you look quite British, but not in the suicidal sense of course. Your speaking voice projects a kindness that must have a disarming effect and it is too bad you don’t make the rounds on tv more often. Then again I suspect you regard that forum as an ineffective way to reach thoughtful citizens.

LA replies:

Thanks to Hannon for the nice comments, but I must say it never ceases to fascinate me how different people’s impressions of the same thing can vary.

While I do not have classic Jewish features, it seems to me that I am obviously ethnic, Eastern European, maybe a bit Asiatic in my appearance (a touch of Mongol blood perhaps?). Yet Hannon thinks I look “quite British.”

On Hannon’s other point, I do not at all dismiss mainstream media as a way for right-wingers to reach thoughtful citizens—if one were allowed into the mainstream media and allowed to make real points and given the opportunity to reply to criticisms. This never happens of course. The one exception I can think of in recent years was when Phil Donahue, in the brief return of his TV show in 2003, had on Jared Taylor for a full hour as his only guest. As I discussed here, Donahue hit Taylor with some very unfair zingers, but the main thing was that he provided Taylor with the full opportunity to reply and explain himself.

In any case, Hannon is correct. I need to do more to get myself into mainstream forums.

Adela G. writes:

While I don’t think you look British, just based on the photo, I think most people would conclude you have some British ancestry.

By the way, your photo doesn’t look like you’re having a bad hair day, it just looks like a candid, very dynamic, shot.

Hannon writes:

I see that I should have taken care to clarify what I meant and the replies to my “British” remark force me to do so. What I was going on was my *impression* of the person depicted in the photograph rather than any particular set of features conveyed by it. Such an apparently, err, conservative countenance said “London banker” to me.

LA replies:

What you say is, to me, funny and unexpected. The impression I get of that photo is not that of a banker. But, again, that’s what makes horse races.

But enough about me.

I’m reminded of a New Yorker cartoon in the narcissistic, fitness-crazed 1970s. A man is talking to a woman at a cocktail party: “But enough about my body. Let’s talk about your body.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 01, 2008 01:19 PM | Send