The culture of passivity

[a_majoor]

From Mark Steyn. His observation about the drone at the funeral is incorrect, in my opinion, but the rest is very thought provoking:

http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20060917-094111-6114r

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Droning toward sensitivity
By Mark Steyn
Published September 18, 2006

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Much the September 11, 2001, anniversary coverage struck me as distastefully tasteful. On the morning of Sept. 12, I was pumping gas just off Interstate 91 in Vermont and picked up the Valley News. Its lead headline covered the annual roll call of the dead -- or, as the alliterative editor put it, "Litany of the lost." That would be a grand entry for "Litany of the Lame," an anthology of the all-time worst headlines. September 11 wasn't a shipwreck: the dead weren't "lost": They were murdered.
 
So I skipped that story. Underneath was something headlined "Half a decade gone by, a reporter still cannot comprehend why." Well, in that case maybe you shouldn't be in the reporting business. After half a decade, it's not that hard to "comprehend": Osama bin Laden issued a declaration of war and then his agents carried out a big attack. He talked the talk, his boys walked the walk. If you need to flesh it out a bit, you could go to the library and look up a book.

But, of course, that's not what the headline means: Instead, it's "incomprehensible" in the sense, that to persons of a certain mushily "progressive" disposition, all such acts are "incomprehensible," all violence is "senseless." Unfortunately, it made perfect sense to the perpetrators. That is what the headline writer finds hard to "comprehend" -- or, rather, doesn't wish to comprehend.

The piece itself was categorized as "Reflection" -- dread word. No self-respecting newspaper should be running "reflections" anywhere upfront of Section G Page 27, and certainly not on Page One. But it has exactly the kind of self-regarding pseudosophistication the American media love. The proper tone for September 11 commemorations is to be sad about all the dead -- "the lost" -- but in a very generalized soft-focus way. Not a lot of specifics about the lost, and certainly not too many quotes from those final phone calls from the passengers to their families, like Peter Hanson's last words before Flight 175 hit the World Trade Center: "Don't worry, Dad. If it happens, it will be very fast." That might risk getting readers worked up, especially if they see the flight manifest:

    "Peter Hanson, Massachusetts
    "Susan Hanson, Massachusetts
    "Christine Hanson, 2, Massachusetts"

No, best to stick to a limpidly fey, tastefully mopey, enervatedly passive prose style that suggests nothing very much can be done about the incomprehensible lost. This tasteful passivity is the default mode of the age: Five years ago it was striking, even in the immediate aftermath, how many radio and TV trailers for blood drives and other relief efforts could only bring themselves over the soupy music track to refer vaguely to "the tragic events," as if any formulation more robust might prove controversial.

Passivity is far slyer and more lethal than rabid Bush hatred. Say what you like about the left-wing kooks, but they can still get a good hate on. Sure, they hate President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Halliburton and Fox News and Rush Limbaugh rather than Saddam Hussein and the jihadists. But at least they can still muster primal emotions.

Every morning I wake up to a gazillion e-mails from fellows wishing me ill, usually beginning by calling me a "chickenhawk" followed by a generous smattering of words I can only print here peppered with asterisks, and usually ending with pledges to come round and shove various items in a particular part of my anatomy. There's so much shipping to go there I ought to get Dubai Ports World in to run it.

The foaming leftie routine seems to be a tough sell to a general audience. I see that, a mere three weeks after I guest-hosted for Rush, the widely acclaimed and even more widely unlistened-to Air America is going belly up. Coincidence? You be the judge. But I doubt the "liberal" radio network would be kaput if anti-Bush fever were about to sweep the Democrats to power this November. I think I said a few months back that the Dems would be waking up to their usual biennial Wednesday morning after the Tuesday night before, and I'll stick with that.

But there's more to the national discourse than party politics. And, whoever wins or loses, the cult of feebly tasteful passivity rolls on regardless. As part of National Review's fifth anniversary observances, James Lileks wrote the following:

"If September 11 had really changed us, there'd be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there's a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don't. And we don't seem interested in asking why."

Ray Nagin, New Orleans' Mayor Culpa, is a buffoon but he nevertheless had a point when he scoffed at the ongoing hole in the ground in Lower Manhattan. And whatever fills it will never include those "stern stone eagles". The best we can hope for is that the Saudi-funded Islamic Outreach Center will only take up a third of the site. But in our hearts we know whatever memorial eventually stands on the spot will be rubbish -- tasteful rubbish, but rubbish all the same.

Last year, I criticized the Flight 93 memorial, the "Crescent of Embrace," whose very title is a parodic masterpiece of note-perfect, generically effete, huggy-weepy blather. In return I received a ton of protests noting that the families of the Flight 93 heroes had "approved" the design. All that demonstrates, I think, is how thoroughly constrained our society is within its own crescent of embrace: The cult of passivity has insinuated itself deep into our bones. Behind those "Imagine Peace" stickers lies a terrible failure to imagine.

At what point does a society become simply too genteel to wage war? We're like those apocryphal Victorian matrons who covered the legs of their pianos. Acts of war against America have to be draped in bathetic music and uncomprehending reflections and crescents of embrace.

We fight tastefully, too. Last week one of America's unmanned drones could have killed 200 Taliban bigshots but they were attending a funeral and we apparently have a policy of not killing anybody near cemeteries out of sensitivity. (interpolation: there are lots of good reasons not to have fired on the "funeral party", including preserving secrecy, lack of solid intelligence or the fact that the drone does not carry heavy weaponry and it might not have been possible to do the job)

So even our unmanned drones are obliged to behave with sensitivity. But then these days the very soundtrack to our society is, so to speak, an unmanned drone.

Mark Steyn is the senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc. Publications, senior North American columnist for Britain's Telegraph Group, North American editor for the Spectator, and a nationally syndicated columnist.
   
   
© Mark Steyn, 2005

 

[Good2Golf]

+1

 

[paracowboy]

seems apropos

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

 

[Blackadder1916]

Yes, the column was thought provoking.  However, I don’t think that I had the thoughts or reached the conclusion that the author wishes me to reach.

After reading the first three paragraphs of Mr Steyn's column, I was initially heartened that someone was speaking out on the poor use of language and absence of style that is commonly found in current newspapers and, unfortunately, most everywhere else. As I continued reading I was disappointed to find that the columnist was using the occasion to express his personal political point of view.  I wasn't surprised though, because that is what a columnist does, if he is (as I suspected) a political commentator.  Mr Steyn's name was faintly familiar.  Well not really, but I don't want to admit to myself and others that, while I may have read some of his other work, I generally do not pay much attention to the identity and background of the many out there who have made careers of "shouting in public".

I don't know why I paid more than cursory attention to this.  Perhaps it was a_majoor's highlighting of certain sentences and the inclusion of his interpretation of the drone episode (to which I agree), but I reread it several times.  Actually I had to; it's not great writing.  As I sat here formulating my impression of this piece, several thoughts ran through my mind.  I was required to do a little (google) research in order to satisfy my curiosity. 

Who is Mark Steyn?  A Canadian - good! Got his start in journalism in the UK as a theatre critic.  Huh?  Maybe that's his previous work I read.  Okay, I like live theatre (it’s like political debates, except with more talented performers and better music and dance) and am lucky enough to have seen a few productions in the West End. 

Why does Mr Steyn include Rush Limbaugh with President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld?  The last three are men of gravitas and whose actions affect the lives of Americans and a lot of people in the rest of the world; Mr Limbaugh is, well..., Mr Limbaugh.  Perhaps he was feeling generous towards the man whose radio program he recently hosted (in Mr Limbaugh's absence).   And frankly, I do not care what others (or Mr Steyn) wish to stick in any part of his anatomy.

Is he insinuating that the editors of the Valley News are left wing kooks and hate the principals of the current US administration?  What sort of paper is the Valley News and what drivel are they writing in Vermont?  Unfortunately, on-line, I am unable to read everything that is printed in the Valley News, especially the editorials and columns.  To do that I have to subscribe and as much as I am tempted, it 'ain't gonna happen' just for this.  What I was able to access left me with the impression that the Valley News was a good regional newspaper with some reasonable local talent. 

I was able to review the front-page of the issue referenced in Mr Steyn's column. http://www.vnews.com/09122006/09122006.htm  I read the article that Mr Steyn said he skipped.  Litany of the Lost -  http://www.vnews.com/09122006/09122006.htm   It is a wire service piece (Associated Press) that is written in the usual style of those agencies.  It was adequate for its purpose, and I was interested by the references to the additional events/incidents that occurred on this day.  I was unable to access the article he said he did read, "Half a Decade Later...."

What struck me first about the 12 Sep 06 front-page were the two articles that were above or in larger headlines than Litany of the Lost…’Double Kidney Exchange to Take Place at Hitchcock Memorial’ and ‘Valley Bus Service Gets $2.9 Million’.

Why would these articles, in the opinion of the Valley News editor, be more important than coverage of 9/11 memorial ceremonies?  Is this the culture of passivity to which Mr Steyn refers or is he expecting daily front-page headlines in small local newspapers to trumpet a continuing call to arms?  I always thought that was the purpose of the editorial page and columnists who spin opinions for a dollar.  Or do the residents of the ‘Upper Valley’ have lives, like so many others, that do not revolve solely around the events of that tragic day and its continuing commemoration, even though the cost is very real to many in that region  http://www.vnews.com/war/2222542.htm .

 

[squealiox]

i wish mark steyn would just come right out and admit that he did a little dance of joy on sept. 11. he's been using it to showcase his cluelessness ever since.
in fact, you can almost hear the little twerp drooling in this article he wrote in the national post two days after 911:

Or perhaps -- and, just for the record, I mean this entirely seriously -- the U.S. should exercise an admittedly broad definition of the international right of hot pursuit and send forces across the border to track down the terrorist cells that operate out of Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and elsewhere.

isn't there a word for people who advocate armed incursions against their own country?
how anyone can take steyn (or the hysterical teenage girl who writes under that pen name) seriously after that is a mystery to me.

 

[North Star]

Last week, when drinking with a friend, I was asked "have we been so feminized as a society that when someone attacks us, we have to constanly second-guess ourselves about striking back?"

Here's an idea for a memorial - an eagle devouring a snake in its claws.