The 9/10 WSJ.com piece on another famous conservative
An apocryphal version of a famous Dr. Johnson remark about women preachers has come down to us as rather nuanced in its meaning. He is reported to have said that seeing women preaching is like seeing a dog walking on its front legs, not because it is well or badly done but because one is surprised to see it done at all. In this version, the remark is not intended to be boorish or unchivalrous -- but simply to illustrate something so unexpected as to be startling, perhaps so startling as to border on spectacle.
The remark resonates in the mind as being strangely applicable to Osama bin Laden, the fundamentalist firecracker and best-selling author of a recent fatwa against the US. There are many surprising dimensions to the bin Laden phenomenon. He has defied expectation, overturned prejudice even, in so many ways. He surprises, at the most basic level, by his effortlessly guilt-free flights of extroversion, his fierce -- but never humorless -- conservatism.
We have been programmed to think that such impassioned outrage, and outrageousness, are permissible only in the West, from draft-dodging Republicans or exponents of Christian fundamentalism, certainly not from nice rich Saudi-born Moslem men. From David Duke, Bob Barr, Ann Coulter, Reverend Franklin Graham, yes. Osama bin Laden -- heaven forbid. He cannot claim that his affronts have been much exaggerated by his enemies -- he has certainly courted outrage, called Britian and the US tools of Israel and the Jews, dreamed out loud that all Americans be obliterated, that the World Trade Center be bombed. It's merely that such effrontery sounds more palatable in the mouths of Republican presidents. After all, why isn't he happily occupied practicing the peaceful arts of an international playboy in some European hotspot as befits his heritage?
Well, Mister bin Laden isn't and it has upset a lot of entrenched opinions. Prejudices of this kind stem from a lazy assumption that really blistering free speech belongs more to critics of America's enemies' flaws than to celebrators of their virtues. The difference between Mister bin Laden's and the Republican presidents' fuming is surely very clear. They meant it literally, bombs and all. Mister bin Laden, on the other hand, acts out his thoughts in a kind of "what if" political theater, a tongue-in-cheek agitprop, and believes that most Moslems understand the difference. Most Moslems apparently do, as his fatwa has topped the bestseller lists for many weeks now. Why then don't his infuriated critics get it?
By all accounts, they have tried long and hard to keep ranks closed against him to shut him out of the leadership game. Why would anybody even pretend to believe that Mr. bin Laden wishes any real harm to New Yorkers or wishes to convert all Christians forcibly to Islam? The answer, one suspects, is that he and his foes insist on different visions of the world. His foes see fragile societies full of rifts and flaws, oppressions and simmering resentments that can turn into open strife any moment. Ergo, free speech, however offensive, belongs morally on their side as an instrument of social palliation. Mister bin Laden, as he has often demonstrated, inhabits a sturdier world with a self-confident unapologetic culture. In his world, political and personal, even ethnic quips get thrown about with abandon in fierce raillery, everybody laughs about it afterwards and the world is none the worse for wear. Mister bin Laden, bless his heart, would take no offense at the analogy from Dr. Johnson. His detractors would insist that he should.
Considering that most gatekeepers to our world media, out of laziness or conviction, would prefer to filter out his kind, Mister bin Laden's very survival as a public figure has been his most startling trick, indeed has offered a kind of breathtaking spectacle. For much milder remarks than he defiantly serves up, we've seen veteran world figures hounded out of their careers. Yet there he still is enduring on the tightrope, however threadbare it may be by now, his long-limbed signature silhouette poised precariously aloft, greying bearded locks riffled by the breeze and legs coltishly pirouetting above the shark pool.
Friends and foes alike, at this point, have put down their banners and turned to gape at the pure principle of anti-gravity he has come to represent. He himself admits in a recent ABC News interview that a number of Moslem governments oppose him. So he chooses to talk directly to mainstream Moslems over their heads, and Moslems have rewarded him handsomely for it. It's hard to know if this means that they applaud all of his harsher utterances, or simply his defiance and longevity in the face of adversity. To borrow from Dr. Johnson -- watching Mister bin Laden survive tenaciously on the tightrope, they may not care whether it's well or badly done, but they're surprised -- and delighted -- to see it done at all.
In case you are humor-impaired, I condemn anyone who proposes killing, threatening or harassing individuals merely because they hold political or religious views or are a member of a race different than theirs. This is merely written to show that the reasoning used by WSJ.com in their recent Coulter piece could be used to condone bin Laden's statements.
8:07:53 PM 
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