Sometimes you have to laugh (or if you’re Henryk Grynberg, sneer) at decadent Westerners who have never experienced totalitarianism. In Gazeta Wyborcza (May 6th) a page (actually, many pages) is given over to the threat to democracy posed by ignoramuses Andrzej Lepper and Roman Giertych, the coalition partners. Some choice quotes from Lepper and Giertych are also given (Giertych, in particular, seems rather unbalanced when he gets to the subject of foreign affairs).

Fortunately there is some bracing intellectual comment at hand. On the facing page is an article entitled “Polish Stuffiness” by Tomasz Wołek, head of a television station (showing tonight: “Bodily Sanctions, erotic film, USA 2001, starring Jacklyn Lick”). The sub-head runs: “Observing today’s anti-intelligentsia campaigns I have the impression of a mental smog arising before me, smearing successive stretches of public space, polluting our spiritual lives.” Three paragraphs in comes the bit that degenerate Westerners just won’t understand:

I regard General Franco … as one of the most outstanding statesmen of the twentieth century, as a politician who saved Spain from the threat of communism, while eluding Hitler’s snare and in the long term lead his impoverished country to relative wealth, simultaneously opening the way to democracy.

At least there’s nothing stuffy about Jacklyn Lick.