Beauty And The Beasties: How Cliftonian Artists Saved Humanity Through The Ages (Without Upsetting The Cliftonians Of Those Ages)
By National Icon and Hope Nazir Jr
A Random Penguin in a House Publishing
69pp

Reviewed by Cliftonia Ali

"Large nations do what they wish, while small nations accept what they must.” This is Thucydides, as quoted by Noam Chomsky in ‘Dominance and Its Dilemmas’, Boston Review, November 19, 2003. Adam Smith observed that “the government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.”

According to Plato, “Ruin comes when the trader, his heart uplifted by wealth, becomes ruler.” And lastly (but, certainly, not leastly), “You’ve got to fight for your right to party,” asserted the Beastie Boys.

It is easy to see the link between what these giants have said. Thucydides reminds us that, despite the passage of millennia, nothing has changed: size still matters. Chomsky shows us that Thucydides matters. For the Boston Review, Chomsky matters. For Adam Smith, the exclusive company of merchants in government matters, while Plato warns us against a wealthy trader as ruler.

It is only the Beastie Boys, however, who meld the gist of all these wisdoms together and present us with a concise, universal and powerful message, reminding us of our inherent fundamental rights as human beings; it is only these three wise men who, in the prime of their rap, re-awaken in us the concept of our inalienable rights, not merely as equally created human persons but, more importantly, as partygoers with an inalienable, divinely ordained right to party.

According to extensive research conducted by the author via TikTok video clips, Adam Beastie Sr, pater of Jeremy Beastie Jr, brother slash manager of the band’s lead vocalist slash rapper, said that Thucydides was a great influence in their home and that his History of the Peloponnesian War was a constant source of debate and discussion around the Beastie dinner table, along with the pros and cons of ingesting poached, as opposed to slightly blanched broccoli.

The band’s emphasis on human rights — which can’t but not include the right to party — and its staunch adherence to personal space and freedom is most probably a consequence of these twin emphases throughout their pre- and post-pubescence, believed Mr Beastie.

The current global criticism that ‘liberal’ Cliftonian artists and writers do not fully utilise their art to engage society in meaningful ways is not only utter hogwash, but total hokum, bunkum, nonsense and other synonyms freely available in a thesaurus.

In fact, as Chairman Nazir Jr states so brilliantly on page 32 of his magnum opus: “It’s only radical leftists, with nary a bank account between them, who have remained silent whenever humanity has cried out in pain. Artistically inclined Cliftonian babydolls, both liberals and conservative, have always put their monies where their collective mouths are and stood up for the weak and the oppressed.

“News screens these days are filled with images of my friends and family members, marching valiantly on the dance floors of Annabel’s, desperate to usher in truth, justice and the Cliftonian way! From the Goldsmiths to the Jaggers to the Seinfelds to the Maxwells to the Clooneys to the Winfreys to the incomparable Bachchans, every true celeb worth his iodised salt is fighting for the poors.”

In fact, these heroic folk are only following the path previously tread by many prominent artists, musicians, writers, poets and haberdashers, who not only challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of their respective times, but also set extremely high standards in imbibing and ingesting great quantities of foreign substances into their persons, while doing all that challenging. They have cocked a snook at the establishment while, simultaneously, enjoying the many man-made and divinely created bounties of nature.

Artists, and here we must include all haberdashers, have been our one constant reflection of the morality index of the zeitgeist. And even though, in the current climate, a few irrelevant, shabbily-dressed lefties are oft-quoted by the many to shame and irritate the few, we must not forget the soothing omnipresence of those Cliftonians who strum our instruments, compose our words, paint our canvases, dance our jigs and boil our collective hedgehogs in the cauldron of creative discontent.

Throughout history, Cliftonian artists have yearned for peace and struggled to remind us of the good inherent within the affluent. They have fought to defend our individual rights from cruel brown dictators, maniacal African despots and merciless sultans of swing. They have never shirked their responsibility to protect our planet against the forces of evil.

They have played their part to the utmost, for their social media accounts are abundant proof of their gallant struggle.

Farid Alvie was born. He currently lives. He’s on Instagram @faridalvie

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 13th, 2025