Posted on 09/06/2002 12:40:56 PM PDT by Brian Mosely
XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX FRIDAY SEPT 06, 2002 20:32:09 UTC XXXXX
[Filed by Matt Drudge in Germany]
NORMAN MAILER DECLARES: 'AMERICA IS SO VAIN'
**Exclusive**
In an 8,000 word polemic to be published in this weekend's London SUNDAY TIMES [9/8/02], Norman Mailer sounds what he hopes to be a "wake up call for America," the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
The legendary Mailer rips the United States, calling it "so big, so powerful, and so vain..." and warns "every American has to ask himself, 'Am I ready to die for my ideas?'"
DRUDGE can reveal more of the coming rant, which is sure to ignite controversy on both shores.
Mailer writes:
"This century is going to be the most awesome of all centuries to contemplate - there is a real question whether human kind will get to the end of it... America's so big, so powerful, and so vain, ... I get angry when I see it being less than it can be.
"The British have a love of their country that is profound. They can revile it, tell dirty stories about it. But deep down their patriotism is deep. In America we're playing musical chairs - don't get caught without a flag or you're out of the game. Why do we need all this reaffirmation? It's as if we're a three hundred pound man who's seven feet tall, superbly shaped, absolutely powerful, and every three minutes he's got to reaffirm the fact that his arm pits have a wonderful odor. We don't need compulsive, self-serving patriotism. It's odious...
"When you have a great country it's your duty to be critical of it so it can become even greater...
"Culturally, emotionally America is growing more loutish, arrogant, and vain.
"I detest this totally promiscuous patriotism. Wave a little flag and become a good person? Ugly.
"If we have a depression or fall into desperate economic times, I don't know what's going to hold the country together...
"There's just too much anger here, too much ruptured vanity, too much shock, too much identity crisis. And worst of all, too much patriotism. Patriotism in a country that's failing has a logical tendency to turn fascistic...
"Let's suppose ten people are killed by a small bomb on a street corner in some city in America. The first thing to understand is that there are 280 million Americans. So, there's one chance in 28 million you're going to be one of those people. By such heartless means of calculation, the 3000 deaths in the Twin Towers came approximately to one mortality for every 90,000 Americans. Your chances of dying if you drive a car are one in 7,000 each year. We seem perfectly ready to put up with automobile statistics. I fear I am ready to say there is a tolerable level to terror...
"One of the things I've always found least attractive about Tony Blair was his toadyish attitude toward Clinton...
"Clinton made a point of surrounding himself with people who might be 90% as intelligent as himself, but never his equal. Bush is smart enough to know that he couldn't possibly do the same, or the country would be run by morons."
Developing...
Mailer's first book, "The Naked and the Dead," came out in 1948. I have to think it's semi-autobiographical, seeing as how he served as a rifleman for two years in the Phillipines.
Lefty, brilliant (if misguided), and quite vain.
Yes I am. But would not expect you or your kind to understand that.
Disgusting heartless Sophistry! To compare auto accident fatalities to 9/11 is the act of an immature malicious smart ass school boy. 2500 Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor. I guess we shouldn't have got hysterical about that (but even here there was a key distinction- the Japs attacked us with their military and they attacked a military target- not civilians- their primary goal wasn't to kill people to just kill people!)
This guy has so much blood on his hands from his past stances that I will not even read his screed. He is an embarassment to himslef and this nation.
Of course Mailer detests America: he has been irrelevant for nearly 30 years. It is his vanity that is so embarrassing.
And what is the Sunday Times thinking? This is like calling up John Ritter for a comment on the state of the network sitcom....
The joke is old. Find some new material!
Mailer is so transparent while he bends over and plays Hoover next Monica in the lap of Clinton. His hatred for this nation and the people in it is so thick that you can spread it with a trowel.
I keep hearing bad jokes; Garry Trudeau keeps trying to defend his hatred as he spews it in "Doonsbury"; Julian Bond doesn't even pretend any more - he just shows his hatred at the NAACP convention, just before smiling in your face later.
Peter Jennings practically jumps up and down in his anchor chair when he thinks he's got something over on the Administration; and Woody Harrelson just needs to find someone who gives a damn. Maybe once he gets laid, he'll shut up for awhile.
Ah well...let me climb down off my soapbox...
If I'm not mistaken, they're still trotting out Arthur Miller.
But promiscuous sex is okay, right?
Another pompous East coast "intellectual." His books are awful - it seems these types are only impressed with themselves. I've never thought Mailer was a good author.
And I've about had it with these pseudo-intellectual putting down Bush. If Gore was elected then we'd have a moron leading the country.
For people in those towers that day, the chance of death was one in 3! Did this idiot see people jumping 1000 feet to their deaths? Does he equate random accidents with intentional homicide? Where in the hell did this intellectual midget get the reputation of being some sort of deep thinker?
Stay in England with your Fabian friends Mailer. Just stay away if the Stars and Stripes are so damn revolting to you.
Mailer is still crazy after all these years.
I swear I am getting so sick of these people! When oh when will people start to realize that this 60s hippy-style of rebellion is old and redundant and no longer cool?
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