New Republic
IDIOCY WATCH
Special Norman
Mailer Edition
Post
date 11.20.01 | Issue date 11.26.01 |
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With humankind altogether hyperlinked, how
is it that there are still people who do not
expect to be overheard? Perhaps Norman Mailer
thought that a shabby outburst delivered in
the Netherlands and covered (it appears) only
by NRC Handelsblad, the leading Dutch
newspaper, would escape the attention of his
fellow countrymen. Well, no such luck. So we
are less than delighted to report--no, we are
delighted to report it, since it confirms our
long-standing sense of the essential meretriciousness
of this man's mind--that Mailer addressed the
following observations to an audience at the
Cross Border Festival in Amsterdam on October
29 (because these comments were translated from
English to Dutch, then back to English, they
may vary from the originals): "The WTC was not
just an architectural monstrosity, but also
terrible for people who didn't work there, for
it said to all those people: 'If you can't work
up here, boy, you're out of it.' That's why
I'm sure that if those towers had been destroyed
without loss of life, a lot of people would
have cheered. Everything wrong with America
led to the point where the country built that
tower of Babel, which consequently had to be
destroyed." Had to be destroyed: 5,000
deaths were just the collateral damage of a
perfectly understandable act of social and architectural
criticism. And Mailer continued: "And then came
the next shock. We had to realize that the people
that did this were brilliant. It showed that
the ego we could hold up until September 10
was inadequate." It does not come as a surprise
to discover that Mailer regards the conflict
between Al Qaeda and the United States as a
duel of egos. The tough guy has always viewed
history as a dick thing. And he continued: "Americans
can't admit that you need courage to do such
a thing. For that might be misunderstood. The
key thing is that we in America are convinced
that it was blind, mad fanatics who didn't know
what they were doing. But what if those perpetrators
were right and we were not? We have long ago
lost the capability to take a calm look at the
enormity of our enemy's position." Again the
confusion of right with enormity. In what sense,
though, are thousands of innocent and incinerated
people "wrong"? And does Norman Mailer really
believe that the perpetrators may have been
"right"? Nothing in his long career of stupid
and indecent extenuations of other people's
pain rules out the possibility that he believes
it. But the fearless American writer should
not sneak around to the far corners of the world
to express his bold views. He should make his
dissent at home, where it matters, and where
it can get his name into a lot of newspapers
that the people who lunch at the Four Seasons
can read.
-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001