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What the hell were we thinking?
I do not know who Damian Penny is, but (as linked by Instapundit) I notice that he is wishing that we here at Salon go bankrupt, because he is very upset that we chose to publish our readers' responses to Damien Cave's piece on "Forbidden Thoughts on 9/11," and that we published it on the anniversary of 9/11. "What... the... Hell... were... they... thinking?!?" asks Mr. Penny.
We were thinking precisely this: That an orthodoxy has coalesced around 9/11, and that one good role of journalism is to puncture orthodoxies. That the range of human response to 9/11 was a lot wider than that reflected in the media orgy of 9/11 retrospectives. And that it's probably a lot healthier to air such responses than to pretend that they don't exist.
We published a lot of stories on the anniversary of 9/11 (there's a list of about two dozen here). This was just one of them. Irreverent? Sure. You don't call them "forbidden thoughts" for nothing. We've also published our share of serious remembrances, of sensitive looks back, and of articles that fully respect the enormity of the crimes committed on that day. That we chose not to drape our entire issue of 9/11 in a sanctimonious, monotone blanket of enforced "respect" seems to have riled some people and cheered others. I guess we're used to that. In the piece I linked to below, Simon Schama talked about the "pious hush" the administration is using to "bestow on its adventurism the odour of sanctity." Breaking that hush seems to me to be valuable, even patriotic.
Sorry you disagree, Mr. Penny. That's what democracy is all about. We're free to publish stuff you don't like and you're entirely free not to like it -- and as an editor I'm certainly interested in why you don't like it.
But before you wish that Salon goes bankrupt, may I ask how you pay your bills, and how you'd feel if someone wished the same on the source of your livelihood? When did political disagreement turn into a license to wish that your opponents lose their jobs, or worse (cf. Ann Coulter's comment, "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building")? Good night.
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Iraq invasion timing, redux
OK, there's been a great discussion in this blog's comments over my post about the apparent contradiction between the urgency of the Iraqi threat, as painted by Cheney et al., and the administration's willingness to let the whole project slide in August because it's a bad time to "market a new product" and Bush was on vacation. Here, and over on Instapundit, I'm hearing the suggestion that the delay was really about weather -- the hot summer is a bad time to go on the offensive in the desert.
Could well be. But if that's the case, it's been a pretty big secret from the American people. I mean, why doesn't the administration just say so? "The president has decided that we're going after Iraq but he's going to do it at the best time, strategically." But that's not what the administration said this summer. The president said nothing and his lieutenants said contradictory things -- and that, as I wrote in this piece, it left a total vacuum in the public debate.
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More must read
Brad DeLong pens a "Platonic Dialogue on Eldred v. Ashcroft", considering how the Supreme Court might rule on the case challenging Congress's extension of the length of copyrights. Conclusion:
| | The court won't overturn the copyright extension. They won't use the chainsaw. But they will take the chainsaw out of the garage and make sure its fuel tank is full. Its opinion will mean, "Congress, there are some limits, somewhere, to your copyright power." It will mean, "Disney, you've bought your last copyright extension." It will mean, "Congress, next time find someone more serious than Sonny Bono to lead the issue." It will mean, "We're not going to tell you where the line is exactly -- that would be dicta, and we hate dicta, except when we don't -- but we are telling you that if you move to extend copyright again, you first need to ask yourselves the Clint Eastwood question: 'Do you feel lucky?'" |
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Must read
Simon Schama -- the writer/historian whose lectures remain one of my most vivid memories from college days -- writes in the Guardian about 9/11 one year on. Choice quote:
| | Apparently, the dead are owed another war. But they are not. What they are owed is a good, stand-up, bruising row over the fate of America; just who determines it and for what end? The first and greatest weapon a democracy has for its own defence is the assumption of common equity; of shared sacrifice. That was what got us through the Blitz. It is, however, otherwise in oligarchic America. Those who are most eager to put young American lives on the line happen to be precisely those who have been greediest for the spoils. |
Postscript: I see Joe Conason has also chosen to link to this today (hadn't read his column before I posted). But hey, he chose a different passage to excerpt.
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