About Isabel Rosario Cooper, etc.

[rthstewart]

Lhanae had mentioned this in her review and post, so I thought I'd post a few more thoughts about this about men, women, and information in the story

As to the exchange that occurs in Chapter 14, there is no evidence of such exchanges at all, except... The Irregulars specifically discusses both Dahl's friendship with Drew Pearson, the muckraker, who stores up all this loathsome stuff about people. Dahl was under orders to cultivate the friendship precisely for the purpose of exchanging information.

Further, the British were very, very concerned about Wallace, and the uncomfortable correspondence with “Brother Harmony” and the trip to Galma/Soviet Union were certainly part of why he was dropped from the 1944 Presidential ticket.  Wallace hugely promoted the ideas of a peaceful, free, one world sort of Utopia– a lovely ideal, to be sure, but one that American’s thought was just weird and the British, who were still clinging to their colonial past, rightly feared.   

As to poor Ms. Cooper, the incidents described in the story actually occurred much earlier – the late 1930s, I think.  General MacArthur threatened to sue Pearson for libel and Pearson added Cooper to the list of witnesses.  Cooper, at age 16 (though there is some ambiguity about her age) became MacArthur's mistress when he was stationed in the Philippines.  He is a very controversial figure in Filipino history as Lhanae's points out.   MacArthur brought Cooper to the U.S., put her up in an apartment, dressed her "tea gowns" and bedded her as convenient.  When he wanted to dump her, reportedly, an aide, Dwight Eisenhower (who would become General and President), brought a bag of money to the apartment to get her to leave the U.S., which she never did.    

The story of the young, immigrant mistress so casually brushed aside is a poignant one, and though I don't explore it, it underscores other things at work in the story -- including the Colonel's concern for Agnes and his protection of Susan.  I don't address it, but the Colonel's concerns for Susan and Agnes are very, very real.    

The Irregulars also discusses the cavalier way in which men, including Dahl, treated the women around them.  Women among powerful men were toys and playthings, and were not and did not get in the way of the important things men did together.  Women were a commodity, like a cigar or bottle of Scotch.     

Charles Marsh, the newspaper man (the mentioned but unshown Tarkaan Kidrash in the story) divorced his wife to take up with a 16 year old goddess, Alice.  Marsh promoted and was the mentor to a young Congressman from Texas, Lyndon Johnson, who became Kennedy's Vice President and later President.  Johnson returned Marsh's favor by taking Alice Marsh as his mistress.  The men apparently patched things up, because great men would never let women get in the way of their accomplishment of great things, but the affair also continued.  

I've been a little bit divided about showing the sexual voracious women in the story, and their poaching upon poor Tebbitt.  Tebbitt is based on Dahl and Dahl was, bluntly, a ruinous cad to women.  Tebbitt is a much kinder person than his inspiration, logical because I just didn’t want to write someone so close to Susan who was a true ass, and I figured you didn’t want to read it either.  It actually occurred to me recently, that poor sick Dr. Richard Russell, back in Part 1, is a closer counterpart to Dahl than Tebbitt is in his treatment of women, including his wife.  I adore Richard, but I would never have wanted to be romantically involved with him.  

But, given the milieu, in which Generals take 16 year olds as mistresses and send their aides with bags of money to pay them off, and women are as facelessly unimportant as mass produced baseball cards, I do find my own feelings a bit – divided, I suppose.  I’ve not shown the male counterpart to Lasaraleen, but they are there, and more prevalent and prominent than the women and the Colonel is justifiably concerned for the women in his circle.      In 1942 these powerful, predatory women were outliers, and their morality aside, were accomplished, successful, and doing it in a man’s world.  Politicians like Claire Luce and newspaper women like Cissy Patterson are disturbing, especially when put through the story’s lens of Tashbaan.  But, as an old woman and a feminist who knows what bias looks and feels like, I feel grudging admiration for women who took some for themselves in a male world.  Though in the story I do, in real life, I would not judge them by their sexual appetites alone which are certainly no more extreme than those of the men around them.  I’m not fair to these substantial and complex women in this presentation.  They do prey upon Tebbitt, but for every Tebbitt, they are dozens, hundreds, of girls like Cooper, Susan, and Agnes.