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| Sullivan on Sontag |
| 2001-10-19 |
SONTAG HEDGES: David Talbot's interview with Susan Sontag, conducted, so far as I can tell, on his knees, starts with a preposterous amount of throat clearing and excuse making and silly swipes at alleged "censorship." These pampered journalists, who have never seen a moment of real censorship in their lives, and who have marginalized conservative voices for their entire careers in their own organs and field of influence, take the occasion of the massacre of thousands of their fellow citizens to worry about themselves - and preen self-righteously at the same time. Then there's the sheer pretentiousness of it all. I'm particularly fond of Talbot's use of the word "texts" to discuss Sontag's works. (I'm not the first weblogger to notice this). Not books; not pieces; not articles; not essays - but "texts." Ooooh. That must mean she's a real intellectual. The silver lining is that Sontag has now stated her belief in the notion that we are indeed confronting a jihad and that there can be no compromise with these murderers. But the rest of the interview completely belies this view. Item one: if there is no negotiating with these killers, what do we do? According to Sontag, we don't bomb. The Taliban soldiers are just "a lot of kids." We don't even drop food packages, which, in her eyes, are a cover for an unholy war. In fact, you can read this interview again to see whether she has any practical recommendations for our response, and you will come up empty. Like Katha Pollitt, she has absolutely nothing to say, except that we all need to read the latest "text" by Stanley Hoffmann in the New York Review of Books. I'm sorry, but this is self-parody. Her only practical recommendations are that we should stop military action against the Taliban and urge a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Gee, that will terrify the terrorists. They won't dare murder us again after that. She dismisses out of hand the notion that the anthrax attacks could be the work of al Qaeda. She refers to them as "what I think are 99 percent certain to be just domestic copycat crazies on their own war path." Why does she have such certainty? No reason given. When you're that brilliant, why bother with reasons? She further complains that the media has "censored" pictures of grisly horror at the WTC site because it would demoralize the people. Is she kidding? Pictures of severed hands and tangled limbs would not demoralize this country. It would enrage this country. If such pictures have been held back, it is out of respect for the dead and their families, and precisely in order to restrain possible anger. That piece of loopy judgment alone should tell us all we need to know about what planet Sontag is living on. Throughout it all, she denigrates the Brits for their support of the United States and calls president Bush "ridiculous." No, Ms Sontag. It is you who are ridiculous. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |