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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
lateagain
Published Letters: 1126 Editor's Choice: 30
Are they crazy? I mean, I know the attention span of the American public is short, but are they kidding here? Four years later, and we're going to start again with the inexorable crawl toward war based on "reports" by the media with no evidence?
I give you Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, the giant Saddam statue--all in addition to the original lie about Iraq being an imminent threat.
The three aforementioned stories all happened at a CRITICAL time, when Bush et al were trying to win the hearts and minds of the people--the American people, that is. I remember so clearly standing in my driveway talking to a conservative friend who was just tremulous with relief about the Jessica Lynch thing. It was as though it justified her original support for the war, which had begun to wane uncomfortably as the deaths piled up and weapons weren't found. Like "Maybe this war really is working out after all.. And just look at that little Jessica Lynch, not to mention the heroic Iraqi who walked all that way!"
Same goes with the other stories. Just in the nick of time to rescue the bewildered, nervous, uncertain war supporters from their sick feeling that maybe they had gotten it all wrong.
The media's prostitution of those stories did untold damage in terms of ensuring support by average Americans for an illegal war.
I sent the following letter to the editor to the Plain Dealer on June 9, 2003:
"The media’s belated interest in the missing weapons of mass destruction strikes me as disingenuous. Who among us actually believed Iraq was an imminent threat to the United Sates? The al-Quaida connection and the exaggerated reports of WMD were transparent rationalizations to go to war. Didn’t we all know that? (Didn’t Paul Wolfowitz admit as much in Vanity Fair?) Whether the real motive was good (humanitarianism, long-term security for democracy) or bad (oil, imperialism, politics), it certainly WASN’T about immediate danger to us. I’m wondering where all these “surprised” journalists were BEFORE the war. Why weren’t they investigating these claims then? My guess is that they succumbed to an acute case of cowardice (read: political correctness) in the face of the nationalistic fever spreading fast in pre-war America. God forbid their patriotism should be assailed. The longer it takes to find the weapons post-war, the “safer” the story becomes, and the louder their interest in this “development.” It’s not just the weapons that have disappeared; independent investigative journalists have gone missing as well."
I had been against the war all along and felt the media had gone missing. I always think it's instructive to look back at what people thought AT THE TIME. When I reread my letter here, I'm reminded that some of us felt suffocated by the patriotic jingoism of the time. Remember the American flags on journalists' lapels? Sickening.
Vollmann's earnest guilt resonates with me, and I respect him for pursuing it to the end. And to the end he does, which is to say without any kind of satisfying resolution at all.
I live in an upper middle class (read: white) suburb of Cleveland, which is btw the poorest big city in the nation these days, and I travel thrice weekly toward town to substitute teach poor kids. I truly love them, but I don't get their parents at all. They are nothing like the parents I know--my friends, my siblings, my colleagues, the parents at my kids' schools. It's just a different culture. Sometimes I feel like "Bill Clinton" in that scene from PRIMARY COLORS where he sits comfortably at an inner city bar and chats with the locals. I say this because I get along famously with everyone I meet at the school; we laugh and share nice moments about their kids. But when I told my friend once that those kindergarteners watch movies that I don't let my 16-year-old see, she wondered why that didn't depress me. It stopped me short b/c I saw a truth in her innocent question: I would indeed have been depressed had I discovered the same to be true of our own suburb's 5-year-olds, but it was not unexpected in the population I teach. "The soft bigotry of low expectations" came to mind.
Sigh.
I liked this:
"I can best conceive of poverty as a series of perceptual categories." Those categories include: invisibility, deformity, unwantedness, dependence, "accident-prone-ness," pain, numbness, estrangement..."
Makes me think of mental illness, mostly.
Which brings to mind my other major experience with the poor, one much closer to home: a couple we're friends with. They're both Ph.D.'s but have worked temp jobs all their lives. They are riddled with mental illnesses (depression, OCD, autism in their kids); their tiny home is filthy; and the chips they carry on their shoulders are more like boulders. They are firmly embedded below the poverty level and they make financial decisions that drive me crazy. But they're smart and cynical and politically savvy, and a conversation with their screwed-up kids is more interesting and stimulating than most adult conversations I'm involved in.
No answers here. But I'm smart enough to know that the work I have done in my life is not distinct enough from that of most poor people to warrant the vast difference in lifestyle.
PS: I found the part about Vollmann's refusal to condemn sexism by fundamentalist Muslims weird and disappointing.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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