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| Down Under |
| Mark Steyn: Mugged by reality? |
| 2005-07-25 |
| WITH hindsight, the defining encounter of the age was not between Mohammed Atta's jet and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but that between Mohammed Atta and Johnelle Bryant a year earlier. Bryant is an official with the US Department of Agriculture in Florida, and the late Atta had gone to see her about getting a $US650,000 government loan to convert a plane into the world's largest crop-duster. A novel idea. The meeting got off to a rocky start when Atta refused to deal with Bryant because she was but a woman. But, after this unpleasantness had been smoothed out, things went swimmingly. When it was explained to him that, alas, he wouldn't get the 650 grand in cash that day, Atta threatened to cut Bryant's throat. He then pointed to a picture behind her desk showing an aerial view of downtown Washington - the White House, the Pentagon et al - and asked: "How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it?" Fortunately, Bryant's been on the training course and knows an opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one. "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from," she recalled. "I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could." and a quick leap to the end: Hmm. Kennedy appears to be arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance, which is intolerable. Thus the lop-sided valse macabre of our times: the more the Islamists step on our toes, the more we waltz them gaily round the room. I would like to think that the newly fortified Age columnists are representative of the culture's mood, but, if I had to bet, I'd put my money on Kennedy: anyone can be tolerant of the tolerant, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists. Australia's old cultural cringe had a certain market rationality; the new multicultural cringe is pure nihilism. Now go read the whole thing. Steyn is wonderful, as usual. :-) |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #3 A link to a Lefty blog isn't proof that Ms. Bryant's story isn't absolutely true. Tell it to Mark Steyn, anyway. |
| Posted by: Jennie Taliaferro 2005-07-25 23:40 |
| #2 Johnelle Bryant is a fabricator. |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2005-07-25 23:32 |
| #1 LOL. Steyn skewers (impales) a sacred cow of the left, multiculturalism. Thanks T.W. |
| Posted by: John Q. Citizen 2005-07-25 18:33 |