Wooster in Iraq

David Runciman on Orwell’s defences of hypocrisy:

What Kipling and Wodehouse had in common for Orwell was that there was a kind of integrity to their double standards, though of very different kinds. Kipling deliberately concealed something of himself, but did not seek to conceal the truth about the nature of imperial power; Wodehouse exposed himself, and thereby inadvertently exposed something of the double standards of the system of power in which he unthinkingly believed. But it is also true that what rescued Kipling and Wodehouse in Orwell’s eyes was that they did not share the other’s vice. The easiest way to illustrate this is to consider what would have happened if their positions had been reversed. It is inconceivable that if Kipling had found himself in Wodehouse’s position, broadcasting for the Nazis for the sake of a quiet life, then Orwell would have defended him; there was nothing innocent about Kipling, and therefore there was no way of imagining that he might have been self-deceived in such circumstances. Stupidity might just retain its integrity in the face of totalitarianism, but knowingness never could. Equally, it is impossible to imagine Orwell defending a PG Wodehouse view of British imperialism, because there was nothing innocent about imperialism, and political naivety in that context was always culpable. Kipling could write about empire because he was in no sense naive about it; what made Orwell despair of British imperialism was that it was not on the whole staffed by Kiplings, but by Bertie Woosters.

Ditto the invasion of Iraq, which has been brought to you entirely by Woosters, when all we needed was a Kipling.