IDIOCY WATCH - Norman Mailer remarks on WTC in Holland

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News - Homefront Preparations : One Thread

New Republic IDIOCY WATCH
Special Norman Mailer Edition


Post date 11.20.01 | Issue date 11.26.01

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


Moderation questions? read the FAQ