CHATTERING ASSES, VILLAGE VOICE EDITION

The Scrapbook is indebted to Rachel Neumann of the Village Voice, who has done all our heavy lifting for us this week. She organized the lefty tabloid's symposium on the question "Is there an alternative to a military response to the events of September 11?"

For authoritative commentary on that question, the Voice turned to a well-known repository of expertise--"novelists and essayists." With a few exceptions (Christopher "no compromise with theocratic fascism" Hitchens; Ellen "mass murder can't be allowed to go unpunished" Willis; and Paul "we had better defend ourselves" Berman, notably), the Voice's "griots, teachers, and critics" did not acquit themselves honorably. In a smorgasbord of the awful, these stood out:

THICH NHAT HANH, Buddhist monk and author of "Anger:" Face what you think is the cause of your suffering and say: I know you must have suffered a lot in order to have done such a thing to us. Have we contributed to your suffering? If you say this sincerely, it is not a lack of courage but a courageous act.

BARBARA EHRENREICH, author of "Nickel and Dimed:" I don't know how you wage war against one person; it doesn't make sense. I can imagine a commando-type raid to capture bin Laden, then a trial, with evidence, before the World Court. But that would not address the vast global inequalities in which terrorism is ultimately rooted. What is so heartbreaking to me as a feminist is that the strongest response to corporate globalization and U.S. military domination is based on such a violent and misogynist ideology.

SUHEIR HAMMAD, poet: Before any military action is ever taken anywhere, all citizens of the world will recite the pledge below:

"Me, I pledge my allegiance / to the love of all of humanity / and to the aspirations we all share / one species / one blood / one love / one destiny / one love / one destiny / under all manifestations of god / indivisible / with liberty and / medicine and shelter and / food and self-determination and freedom of religion and freedom of expression and freedom of movement and love and justice / for all."

VIVIAN GORNICK, author of "The Situation and the Story:" A military strike? Where? What? When? Above all, against whom? If you hit them in Iraq, they'll re-group in Libya. If you squash them in Libya, they'll rise up in Afghanistan. They have struck us, and in their strike announced: We'd rather die--and take you with us--than go on living in the world you have forced us to occupy. Force will get us nowhere. It is reparations that are owing, not retribution.

DAVID BARSAMIAN, author of "Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting:" It seems there's a double-standard for "Islamic terrorists" who are being tried in public by a cowboy administration. The U.S. is harboring a Haitian death-squad leader, Emmanuel Constant. Should the Haitian air force bomb the U.S.?

Whew! What is so heartbreaking to me as The Scrapbook is the difficulty of meting out justice in such a target-rich environment, and with only a couple of pages at my disposal.

Should the Haitian air force be unleashed on the Village Voice?

MOSQUE MEETING UPDATE

Two weeks ago on this page, we outlined the past activities of several groups, each purporting to represent American Muslims, that were invited to a meeting with President Bush in a Washington, D.C., mosque. Our report was the subject of this back-and-forth at the Oct. 1 White House press briefing:

Question: Was the president made aware before he visited the mosque that three of the organizations that met with him--the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the American Muslim Alliance--have, reports The Weekly Standard, sponsored a speaker who announced that Jews are descended from apes, the Holocaust is denied, and a comparison of Palestinian suicide bombers to American Minutemen? . . .

Mr. Fleischer: A similar question came up at Friday's briefing, as well, about some statements that reportedly were made by some of the people the president met with. And my reaction then is the exact same reaction now. You should never assume that when the president meets with a group for important reasons of meeting with a group that he would ever agree with anything anybody in that group has said. There are often times that the president can meet with people and not share their opinions.

Question: He knew about this, Ari, these people, and what they've said, and met with them?

Mr. Fleischer: As I indicated already, I'll say it again, when the president meets with groups, it's not an indication, of course, that he agrees with everything anybody may have said in that group.

Got that? We "should never assume" that the president of the United States agrees that the Holocaust is a myth simply because he meets with a group that says so. "There are often times that the president can meet with a group but not share their opinions"--you know, "for important reasons of meeting with a group."

We don't for a minute assume the president agrees with any of the ideas described above. We simply wonder if there are any ideas so repellent that someone who sympathizes with them won't be admitted to this White House. And if so, why doesn't Holocaust denial make the list?

LIFE IMITATES THE ONION

The following reportage is taken from the Oct. 4, 2001, San Francisco Chronicle, not the satirical website The Onion:

"Las Vegas--Samantha remembers the killer settling into the crushed red velvet chair, staring blankly up at her while she undulated her hips inches from his face. . . . He didn't look evil, she said. . . . Certainly not like a man who would, just three months later, hijack a jet and smash it into the World Trade Center. . . . To the 29-year-old stripper, Marwan Al-Shehhi simply looked "cheap."

"Some big-man terrorist, huh?" Samantha said this week as she took a breather from the two-dozen lap dances she bestows daily. . . . "He spent about $20 for a quick dance and didn't tip more." She stopped and bit her lip, . . . "I'm glad he's dead with the rest of them, and I don't like feeling something like that," Samantha finally said. "But he wasn't just a bad tipper--he killed people.

CLINTON AS CALIGULA

The most brilliant bit of the week from Andrew Sullivan's andrewsullivan.com, me-zine:

In last Friday's New York Times, an anonymous close friend of Bill Clinton's reflected on the former president's mixed emotions after the WTC Massacre: "He has said there has to be a defining moment in a presidency that really makes a great presidency. He didn't have one." A reader points out how similar these feelings are to another character in history as captured by the Roman historian Suetonius: "He even used openly to deplore the state of his times, because they had been marked by no public disasters, saying that the rule of Augustus had been made famous by the Varus massacre, and that of Tiberius by the collapse of the amphitheatre at Fidenae, while his own was threatened with oblivion because of its prosperity, and every now and then he wished for the destruction of his armies, for famine, pestilence, fires, or a great earthquake." To whom was Suetonius referring? Caligula.

October 15, 2001 - Volume 7, Number 5