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...
Uh, Mailer ... to modify a quote from someone much more intelligent than you: the idea is not to die for our ideas, but to let the other poor dumb murderous _______ die for theirs.
Funny Mailer should say that, hurting himself with his own words. OUR WORLD TRADE CENTER COLLAPSED. What a maroon. Economists thought our economy would be doomed if something like that happened. We rebounded with such unity, it is making Mailer physically sick. LET ME FIND HIM, AND I'LL WAVE A FLAG IN HIS FACE. He'd probably need a straight jacket.
WELL SAID!
I was a teenager when I saw Bork get borked with the gleeful help of the media. I thought they couldn't sink any lower than that. But I was wrong becasue I was in college when the Thomas hearings occured and then I thought- surely it couldn't get any worse than this!? But then I witnessed 8 years of toadying, lying, covering up, and sycophancy (indeed even media- white house cooperation on spreading propaganda and lies) the likes of which I literally compare to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.
I learned that literally nothing is beneath the mainstream media when it comes to attacking the right and defending and advancing the agenda of the Left.
I developed a thick skin and a good sense of humor about it all. I just pity them now for they are so pathetic and comical. Besides, the mainstream liberal media is on it's last legs. Buck up.
Herein lies the source of his madness its simple hatred of country.
Here at FreeRepbulic we are not short on criticism, decent or contrary opinion. But our criticism is of policy and men, never of country. There is a big difference between criticizing your country and criticizing the people who are running it. Liberals can't seem to comprehend the difference or more likely they do and the foundations of liberty are what they truly hate.
Norm, I for one hope you never return. If by chance you do, it is my sincere hope that the US Customs Service provides you with a complete body cavity search (hard and deep). Perhaps they will recover your medulla oblongata.
In March 1949, New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel played host to one of the strangest gatherings in American history. Less than four years after Allied troops had liberated Hitler's concentration camps, 800 prominent literary and artistic figures congregated in the Waldorf to call for peace at any price with Stalin, whose own gulag had just been restocked with victims of his latest purge. Americans, including Lillian Hellman, Aaron Copland, Arthur Miller, and a young Norman Mailer, joined with European and Soviet delegates to repudiate "US warmongering." Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich told the delegates that "a small clique of hatemongers" was preparing a global conflagration; he urged progressive artists to struggle against the new "Fascists'' who were seeking world domination. American panelists echoed the Russian composer's fear of a new conflict. Playwright Clifford Odets denounced the ``enemies of Man'' and claimed the United States had been agitated into ``a state of holy terror'' by fraudulent reports of Soviet aggression; composer Copland declared "the present policies of the American Government will lead inevitably into a third world war."
The Waldorf conference marked another step in the Communist Information Bureau's (Cominform) campaign to shape Western opinion. A series of Soviet-sponsored cultural conferences beginning in September 1948 called for world peace and denounced the policies of the Truman administration. The conference at the Waldorf-Astoria, however, was the first to convene in a Western country and, not coincidentally, was also the first to meet organized and articulate opposition.
(The opposition included Sidney Hook and Mary McCarthy who organized an anti-Stalin conference.)
Yeah, Norm, we're ready to die for our ideas. Unlike you, we believe in the goodness of this country as opposed to the Stalinist shitholes you obviously think are superior.
I think where Norman goes wrong is that he fails to recognize that we are a nation at war. We don't look like it with just a few thousand people on the ground and Afghanistan subdued, but apparently this "brilliant" playwright failed to process the lines in Bush "the moron"'s war speak explaining that this was a war like no other, fought on many levels an often with few conventional military signatures. "Odious" displays of anger and patriotism have always been an integral part in every successful war, but I guess that if you still don't get the fact that we are at war, it doesn't make any sense at all.
I suppose it's true that there's an "acceptable" level of terrorism beyond 9/11 that people could live with. I suppose we could take two maybe three of these a year and maintain our economy and culture. But again, why accept "acceptable" when we're winning the war to defeat it almost entirely?
Norman suggests that our "arrogant and vain" ideas of liberty and justice for all are "dangerous", warning that "every American has to ask himself, 'Am I willing to die for my ideas'". I suggest that every human ask himself if he's willing to die for his ideas. And in Norman's case, is he willing to die for the idea of tolerating fascism, injustice and international terrorism all the way up to the point of some barely "acceptable level" from a people about to go nuclear?
ROTFLMAO! Many thanks!
Frank was an idiot. But, unlike good 'ol Norm, he was a patriotic idiot.
Frank Burns eats worms!
LVM
(I guess it's not so funny when it's a liberal . . . eh, Kilborn?)
Or is he a dip?
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