Norman Mailer - We Went To War Just To Boost The White Male Ego

Times Online ^ | 04-29-03 | www.hollywood-hero.us

[lisaann8]

Hollywood-Hero - 04-29-03 - This little missive was just too good to pass up -  From the Times Online: 

April 29, 2003

We went to war just to boost the white male ego
By Norman Mailer

With their dominance in sport, at work and at home eroded, Bush thought white American men needed to know they were still good at something. That's where Iraq came in...


Exeunt: lightning and thunder, shock and awe. Dust, ash, fog, fire, smoke, sand, blood, and a good deal of waste now moves to the wings. The stage, however, remains occupied. The question posed at curtain-rise has not been answered. Why did we go to war? If no real weapons of mass destruction are found, the question will keen in pitch.

[El Conservador]

NO!!!

PLEASE, NO!!!

ANYONE BUT MAILER!!!

THIS NEEDS URGENTLY THE SUPERDUPERULTRAMEGABARF ALERT!!!

[Asclepius]

... the question will keen in pitch ...

Who talks like this?

Hair-brained politics aside, this goof-ball used to be an fairly good writer.

[polemikos]

Gee, I thought we went to war to prove the impotence
of psuedo-intellectual writers on the political left.

[Grampa Dave]

What is so funny here, is that many if not most of the Iraqis we fought were whiter than our guys.

Mailer really needs to check into a permanent AA holding tank.

[Paul Atreides]

Angry White Mailer

[Bullish]

Mailer?

Not reading it, bump.

[Pompah]

Normy baby. Shut up and walk toward the light.

The LIGHT Norm, walk toward the LIGHT.

[microgood]

Another Self-Hating White Man. Pathetic.

[Paul Atreides]

Mailer, taking his latest manuscript to the publisher...

[Jorge]

Mailer is delusional.

White men don't need their egos boosted anymore.
They just need places to play with all their cool new toys.

[mc5cents]

Hair-brained politics aside, this goof-ball used to be an fairly good writer.

When was that?

[mc5cents]

Oh, nevermind. I remember it was 1948. He wrote the Naked and the Dead. I have read that one. Not bad. BUT that was 1948!

[SpinyNorman]

Thanks for the dung beetle reference, but I think you are doing a disservice to the beetle comparing it to Mailer.

I wonder which matchbook university Mailer got his psychology degree from? Did he have to draw a cartoon of Bambi to get admitted? So many questions........

[Asclepius]

When was that?

Way, way, way back. The Naked and the Dead is actually an interesting read. Armies of the Night, on the other hand, is one of the singularly worst written books ever. Williams, in a style book entitled 10 Lessons in Clarity and Grace, spends several pages tearing apart a particularly horrible passage; Booth, in an article entitled On Metaphor, describes reading a particularly twisted metaphor at an academic conference--the academics roared with laughter.

I teach English. Can you tell?

[Arpege92]

"When was that?"


I'd say pre-K....at least he had excuse to be totally ignorant back then!

[VRWC_minion]

It worked too.

[atomic conspiracy]

Mailer is now 80 years old, a literary corpse preserved in alcohol, one whose last original thought lies half a century in the past. He is also responsible for one of the most racist screeds of the 1950s, a little essay entitled The White Negro. Of course, Mailer did not realize that it was racist, he was trying to praise what he saw as a lifestyle of indulgence, irresponsibility, and sensuality.

[bayourod]

Now that you mention it, I do feel a little better.

[denydenydeny]

Mailer, on the other hand, proves his manhood by cutting women with knives.