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Bernard-Henri Levy — so famous in his native France he's known by his initials — was described on the front page of the L.A. Times in July as a "philosopher, author, journalist, filmmaker, diplomatic envoy, world traveler, political activist and all-around celebrity intellectual." He certainly got the celebrity intellectual treatment this week, sweeping into town under the auspices of The Atlantic magazine, for whom he is retracing the 1830s visit to America by another Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville.
Here in L.A., I'm told, the latter-day de Tocqueville — who is married to French actress Arielle Dombasle — checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel with an entourage that included a translator/assistant, a filmmaker, a cinematographer and a driver. He was hosted at Campanile for a dinner arranged by Steve Wasserman, the editor of the Times Book Review, whose guest list was said to include West Side liberal stalwarts Stanley Sheinbaum and Tom Hayden. By day, Levy and entourage hit the road in a pewter Cadillac for briefings with local thinkers and journalists. My source says Levy met with author D.J. Waldie in suburban Lakewood, toured Venice with The Nation's Marc Cooper, saw South L.A. with civil rights activist Joe Hicks and visited Skid Row with Madeline Janis-Aparicio of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. Somewhere in there he apparently squeezed in a trip to inspect a weight clinic in Glendora. Thursday night, the source says, Levy was scheduled to sit down with actress Sharon Stone before heading to the border in San Diego, then swinging through Las Vegas. (* Another sighting: He also hit the city council chambers on Wednesday, schmoozing on the arm of Kevin Starr, a second source says).
Levy, whose most recent book in English is War, Evil and the End of History, also wrote the controversial "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?", which purported that the Wall Street Journal reporter was murdered for looking into Al Qaeda ties to Pakistani nuclear experts. His Atlantic series, set to begin appearing in the magazine next year, comes with a book deal attached, and a documentary is being shot for French theatrical release as he travels the U.S. When he stopped in Detroit in July on a research trip, the Free Press observed the visit and reported:
"No one paid attention Friday evening when BHL, dressed in a black suit with a white shirt open to his stomach, his longish hair blowing in the wind, power-walked down the middle of Piquette Street in the New Center, intently studying the abandoned auto factories while his assistant, Anika Guntrum, captured his stroll with a video camera."
The Times piece in July, a Column One by Paris bureau chief Sebastian Rotella, wrote of Levy in part:
He's an ardent foe of anti-Americanism, one of the driving forces of intellectual activity in a Europe where it has become fashionable to trash America for such things as the death penalty, fast food and Hollywood movies. Although Levy criticizes President Bush and the Iraq war, he still sees the United States as "a model of democracy, an exemplary democracy.""Anti-Americanism is a horror," Levy said during a recent interview in his study, where books lined the walls and were stacked on the floor. "It is a magnet of the worst. In the entire world, and in France in particular, everything that is the worst in people's heads comes together around anti-Americanism: racism, nationalism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism."
Levy, who is Jewish, also breaks ranks with the European intelligentsia when it comes to Israel. Europe's political and media elite are resolutely pro-Palestinian, he said, and tend to portray Israel, although it is a rare democracy in a region full of strongman regimes, as a dangerous partner of a supposedly imperialistic United States."