Posted on 09/09/2002 8:39:47 AM PDT by SBeck
Mourning As A Performing Art
Migraine Television Home Columns
September 9--Were going to do it, I know we are. Were about to celebrate Bin Ladens Victory Day. By all indications, it will be a media circus, like when Princess Di dida grand battle in the ratings wars. Well wallow in mawkishness, and whimper, and humiliate ourselves. Watch. There will be manufactured solemnity, factitious reverence, sorrow by Disney, and an unremitting ooze of therapy. Heaven help us, well probably get in touch with our feelings, and Heal. Maybe booths will sell cotton candy.
Its embarrassing.
I suppose I have a bad attitude about the upcoming festivities. On my office wall is a row of magazine covers I shot for Soldier of Fortune in a previous life as a freelance photojournalist. One of them (November, 1983, written as Rick Venable) shows Marines coming ashore in Beirut, the lead guy carrying an M-203. I spent a week or two with those guys, patrolling downtown and suchlike. Shortly afterward, the truck bomb arrived. Moslem terrorists. Two hundred forty-one dead.
America didnt do anything about those killings, then or later. There was no carnival of mourning on the anniversary. I guess the networks forgot. What do you suppose? As for dead Marines, who cared? After all, they didnt go to Princeton, and you never saw them in pricey booze chutes in Manhattan.
Judging by appearances, the forthcoming coverage will be appalling both in quantity and moral fraudulence. The ad agencies, I have read, are pondering what tone to use on September 11. It is a delicate question. The trick is to gull the rubes without disturbing their sensibilities. (Singing toilet paper may not be just the thing. Unless it sang a dignified dirge maybe. Mining the dead for ad revenue is harder that it might seem.)
The Moslem world is going to love every minute of it. In fact, I see in the Washington Times that they are going to have anti-American rallies in London to celebrate the great day. How convenient, they must think: The Americans are going to crawl for us. Ill give you odds bin Laden is comfortable somewhere, probably in Saudi Arabia, laughing and laughing and laughing. I would be.
Maybe hes not really in Saudi. Maybe hes in Vail, waiting for good powder. But he aint been caught. I tell you, hes one slick A-rab. I dont like the guy. Id shoot him if I could, and poke holes in his towel. I have to respect the sucker, though. He changed the United States forever. Were going to be a scared security state for all time, with the cops reading our email. The home of the free, land of the brave.
I assume, subject to correction by events, that well have every television truck on earth at Ground Zero, and the rest at the Pentagon. There will be endless tributes to the Hallowed Dead, who will be treated as saints crossed with Joan of Arc. Actually of course they were just people who happened to be at work on the wrong day. Being hit by an airliner is no more heroic or tragic than being run over by a dump truck. This is the age of Oprah Consciousness, though. Well have contrived tears from televised airheads who didnt know the dead and dont care about them.
People get mad if you say it, but, fact is, we got stomped. One raghead with a few subordinate loons took down the Trade Center, turned us into a docile police state, made us spend billions bombing peasants in Afghanistan without issue, frightened us into letting our airlines go into bankruptcy, and now we have Homeland Security, which makes flying so unpleasant that most of us will take trains. The best we could do now is just to shut up. Naw. Were gonna wave it around on prime time. Well let everybody watch it again.
Time was, this wouldnt have happened. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we squashed them. When the Nazis attacked us, we invaded. But that was before Oprah Consciousness. Now the Moslems kill a few thousand people in New York, and the President immediately goes to a mosque. Dont you love it?
After Pearl Harbor, did Roosevelt go to a Shinto temple?
The whole thing is surreal. We cant even admit who did it.
Quiz: What people have been consistently kicking our teeth in for decades? Chippewas? Latvians? Tibetan monks? Or Moslems?
It was the Iroquois who took over our embassy in Tehran and make fools of us for months, until Jimmy Carter sent in that comic-opera rescue team and independently made fools of us. Isnt that what you remember? Iroquois?
The Norwegians blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut, right? Damn those Norwegians. The Cole? The Starke? Presbyterians did it. Im sure of it.
Is there no limit to our absurdity? (No. The question was rhetorical.) We all know who the terrorists are, but we wont even search Moslems because that would be discrimination. We wont arm pilots because guns are, Squeeeeak! so fwightening. We take away fingernail clippers as deadly weapons. This is the country that stormed Iwo?
It gets sillier. Were going to wage an international crusade against terrorism, yet we throw little boys out of school for drawing pictures of soldiers, and we dont let them play dodgeball because its so violent. The earth must be laughing.
A pretty good rule of diplomacy might be that you shouldnt huff and puff if you arent going to back it up. Its undignified. It invites more trouble. The Towers went down, and we huffed. Grrr, woof. Bush said fiercely that we were going to make terrorists everywhere wish they had never been born. For at least two weeks everybody was solidarified and America was on the march and companies sold Instant Patriotism kits, with a little flag for the aerial and a bumper sticker. Bow-wow-wow. Wurf.
And then we fizzled. We bombed Afghanistan some, but I cant see that it did much. We sound as though we may do something unpleasant to Iraq. I guess thatll get rid of terrorism. Well see. Its hard to know what were going to do. These days wars are declared by the president, not congress.
Ill root for us, but bet on them. The Moslems have got our number. They have the momentum. They appear to rely on what is becoming an international formula for defeating the United States: Dont give the Yanks a point target, and draw the war out until they get bored. Do you reckon its working?
The family of a GI KIA gets around 6 grand! I lament the dead from 9-11 as much as anyone, but there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with THAT picture.
Worth repeating.
Yep. Nail on the head stuff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.