Norman Mailer used to be an actual writer and thinker. Some of his prose in the past has been peerless, if, to my taste, overly-swaggering. But his recent piece in the Times of London gives hackery a bad name. His theory is that this country went to war in Iraq for the sole reason of appeasing the battered ego of the white American male. For Mailer, the symbol of the WAM is the military. But isn’t the military actually one of the most racially integrated institutions in American life? At one point, presumably after having written half the column, this dawns on Mailer. But he carries on nonetheless. Ironically lamenting the rise of ethnic minorities in many parts of the culture, Mailer argues that
the good white American male still had the Armed Forces. If blacks and Hispanics were numerous there, still they were not a majority, and the officer corps, (if the TV was a reliable witness), suggested that the percentage of white men increased as one rose in rank to the higher officers. Moreover, we had knock-out tank echelons, Super-Marines, and-one magical ace in the hole – the best air force that ever existed. If we cannot find our machismo anywhere else, we can certainly settle in on the interface between combat and technology. Let me then advance the offensive suggestion that this may have been one of the cardinal reasons we went looking for war.
Yes, it is offensive, in as much as it is offensively stupid. Mailer also ignores the other obvious facet of the new military: the presence of women. So apart from the fact that the military is a showcase for feminism and racial integration, it’s a symbol of white male supremacy? Does no-one even edit this drivel?
The Dish 