Great impact of attacks on America

BBC News (via DRUDGE Report) ^ | 2-5-02 | Norman Mailer

[vannrox]

Great impact of attacks on America

Norman Mailer says 11 September was "larger than the atom bomb". In a Newsnight interview, he tells Kirsty Wark how the aftermath of the attacks has affected America.

Mr Mailer believes people will be writing about 11 September for a long time. He has written about the horrors of war in Vietnam, and served in the US army during World War II.

But, he believes that nothing compares in magnitude to the attacks on New York and Washington. This includes the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which ended the Second World War.

Norman Mailer was one of the major US writers of the twentieth century, and came to prominence following his debut book "The Naked and the Dead" which drew on his experience in the Pacific during World War Two.

Cultural changes

He spoke to Kirsty Wark following a special investigation by Newsnight reporter Madeleine Holt. She travelled to America to discover whether there has been a cultural shift since 11 September.

Allah is a concept that is absolutely foreign to Americans

Norman Mailer

Newsnight found that the University of California in Los Angeles had set up fifty courses on "Perspectives on September 11th." All 700 places on the courses have been taken.

Norman Mailer is not surprised that people are looking for answers. "The key element in it is that Allah is a concept that is absolutely foreign to Americans," he says.

He believes that there is a great divide coming across the world. But the Americans do not know who their enemy is. "What are we unifying against? The point is that's what makes me nervous," he says.

He argues that World War II was a definable war. The allies were unified against Hitler.

But in this war, the US were able to take out the Taleban quickly. But now they do not know who they are fighting. He goes on to say it could take on huge siginificance because half the world is Islamic.

Evil

Mr Mailer believes that this is the reason that George Bush speaks in terms of an axis of evil. He is highly critical of the President's political rhetoric.

"The fact is I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes," he says.

He tells Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark that America takes solace from having an evil enemy.

Mr Mailer says, "If you're half-evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil."

Kirsty Wark's interview with Norman Mailer appeared on Newsnight's 4 February edition.

[vannrox]

A good read.

[tallhappy]

Norman Mailer was one of the major US writers of the twentieth century...

Dream on.

"Good read", that's a good one.

[exmarine]

Who really cares what Norman Mailer thinks. I sure don't.

[Interesting Times]

"The fact is I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes," he says.

Mailer was never very bright, but this is pathetic even for him...

[ecomcon]

Norman Mailer can bite me. Sounds like another hippy generation icon mumbling on about how there is no right, no wrong no up, no down, no heaven, no hell, all paths are equal, moral relavism.

In my view, the legacy his world view has left us is a smoldering ground zero. This is our ground zero, Mr. Mailer, right here, in New York, not in Japan..

If we continue to listen to farting blowhards like Mr. Mailer, (Walter Cronkite also comes to mind) apparently one without the tools to make moral distinctions, unable to call anything evil except America; if we continue to treat these people like wise mentors, or sages, we are truly fools.

[F16Fighter]

Mailer should stick to trolling jails for material to prop up his boring and inconsequential literary career instead of giving us his crummy, way-past-his-prime two cents.

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Dream on. --- AMEN!

[My Identity]

Mr Mailer says, "If you're half-evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil."

One point repeated constantly in the liberal press is how the U.S. is somehow at fault, how the rest of the world looks at us as the source of evil, the great satan, ad nauseum. What they never do is point out any specific U.S. action that is wrong, (or at least any action by a Demo President ;-). This is guilt by proxy. If a billion people think we're guilty, we must be. Of course, the fact that they got their inaccurate news from the self-same press or that the U.S. is obliged to act in its own self-interest or that the despotic and corrupt regimes in other parts of the world have some role in the conditions of their people, or that it is impossible for the U.S. to keep all the world's people happy...this never gets mentioned or acknowledged.

Here Mailer, not quite having the guts to say it directly, implies that the U.S. is "half evil." And because he uses an implication, he doesn't have to support his contention. What an evil dirt bag.

MI

[Justice]

Mailer is a true socialist.

Nowadays you can easily identify the socialists. They are the ones who cringe at the use of the word "evil".

[John O]

Cool! no one has said it yet (as of post 8)

Norman Mailer is evil! (he is a liberal after all)

I don't get to be first very often!

God Save America (Please)

[Savage Beast]

mailer's assessment of the enormous significance of the present situation may be correct. it is an event of epic proportions--the collision of Western Civiliation with the rest of the world. it may be more important than hiroshima and nagasaki. Whether or not mailer's charge that the concept of Allah, imcomprehensible to the American mind, is at the basis of the conflict, is correct i do not know. i certainly do not agree with mailer that the u.s. is in part evil; that's just plain stupid. But mailer's appraisal of the situation warrants consideration.

[Savage Beast]

Black hawk Down is an excellent movie. i had the feeling that i might have been watching a battle of the Trojan War or the peloponnesian war or some other highly decisive historical event. i do not think that mailer's evaluation of the magnitude of what is happening is unrealistic at all.

[Pharmboy]

I don't get any great insights from Norman here. It was a major event? It has forever changed things? My goodness, every local airhead, blow-dried news anchor figured that out by the evening of 9-11.

Any guy who stabs his wife and also works real hard for the release of a murderer just because the perp has a talent for putting a few sentences together is a complete (and dangerous) maroon.

[ppaul]

"The fact is I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes," he says.

The fact is, I don't trust a man who doesn't recognize evil for what it is.
When I was in college, one of the most frustrating things, when studying politics, history, or international relations, was the professors' and other academics' never mentioning evil as a major ingredient in inexplicably heinous atrocities in the world - i.e.: the Holocaust, the "Killing Fields" in Cambodia, Stalin's forced starvation of millions in Ukraine, etc. - as if evil is not a term to be used by learned scholars - that there has to be some "empirical" answer. Thank God for George Bush not mincing words and not ignoring the reality of evil.

:

[Savage Beast]

Even a clock that's not working is right twice a... Even a blind hog can turn up a nugget once in a... Even a moron can... ...oh, nevermind.