Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

Re: your comparison of Bush’s and Clinton’s lies. While you very appropriately pointed out the similarities between the two equivocators, the differences are just as instructive.

Clinton is the more intelligent, calculating, and verbally acrobatic of the two presidents, and he knew damn well that he was splitting hairs when he denied having sex with Monica Lewinsky.  Somehow, I don’t see Bush’s remarks about torture in quite the same light.  They are just as disconnected from the facts as Clinton’s were, and probably have far more serious, long-term consequences than Clinton’s sleazy evasions.  But Bush does not have a black belt in semantics like Clinton did ; he isn’t fudging facts, calculating consequences, chopping logic, or coolly hedging his bets based on the probability of having to defend his statement in court at some future date.  I wish that were all he was doing.  Instead, the man actually believes his own lies.  He  is seriously deluded and appears to be suffering from a god complex that allows him to shout things into and out of existence, ignore or violate existing laws, and ultimately be accountable only to himself.

A shrewd liar or someone in complete denial? In a president, I think I prefer the former.

This year, I almost decided this would be my last summer in Ptown. I’ve been coming here for seventeen years; every year it gets a little harder to transplant two adults and two beagles for two months or so to the end of a wharf at the last curve of a peninsular question-mark. If Al Gore’s right, my property won’t outlast me; a rise in sea-levels of a few inches would put my place under-water. And then I get here, and slowly, the real world flakes off, and the harbor seduces again; and I realize that my attachment to this place is some kind of gift I have no right to refuse. If I have a home, it is somewhere out here. It’s where I want my ashes spread when I die, out in the farthest moors where the first Englishmen first encountered America, and where they rightly decided to move on in search of more permanent ground.

So we’ll pack up today, and drive home for ten hours and leave the tides and skies and dunes and freaks behind again. How not to feel sad? This place has a safe transience to it: a sand-bar created by thousands of years of mere tides, on which a crew of us hang out each summer, a gaggle of different equals, with dirty feet and faded clothes and the occasional tattered boa. It couldn’t be more different than Washington, D.C.. Which is the point, I guess. It’s an elsewhere that makes somewhere endurable: a little, translucent heaven on a darkening, serious earth.

A reader writes:

I don’t have a link, youtube or picture for you, just a personal anecdote.

I was on London’s Oxford Street this lunchtime. Coming out of the tube station was a group of men, maybe half a dozen in total, carrying placards that proclaimed "9/11 was an inside job!" and things of that nature.

My initial reaction was mild annoyance, but then I thought about the possiblity of men walking down the busiest shopping street of Riyadh, Tehran or Saddam-era Baghdad accusing their governments of such massive atrocities.

There will be many tributes this day, and rightly so. But the fact that a group of people are allowed to walk down a London street saying the most hateful and offensive things, without violent reaction by the people, without imprisonment by the state, speaks volumes of the moral superiority of Western values over the barabarity of Islamism.

And it’s a real-life reminder of how freedom is the best tribute of all.

Hence my celebration today. Because we still can say what we think. Because freedom is still ours’ – if we do no succumb to the temptation to surrender it for a false sense of security.

A reader writes:

I am a black American woman, born into a family of Democrat civil rights activists.
On this fifth anniversary of 9/11. I am filled with many mixed emotions. That day was our worst, and our best in many ways. We were a nation united for a shining moment. But it seems it was fleeting. I am moved when I hear our anthem. And yes, hearing the Buckingham Palace band stirred in me fierce feelings of love for my country and our British allies.
The last time I felt such strong flutters in my chest … was the student protest in Tiannamen Square. As they linked arms, they were singing. When I realized what they were singing, I wept. The song? ‘We Shall Overcome’.

And we shall.

The Dutch defender of free speech, Pim Fortuyn, was assassinated for his stance on Islamist intolerance in the Netherlands. Here’s how he saw things:

"I don’t hate Islam … It’s a bit like those old Reformed Protestants. The Reformed lie all the time. And why is that? Because they have norms and values that are so high that you can’t humanly maintain them … Then look at the Netherlands. In what country could an electoral leader of such a large movement as mine be openly homosexual? How wonderful that that’s possible. That’s something that one can be proud of. And I’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much."

"Annihilating the author may make the Leader happy, but there is no fear of death when it is for the sake of freedom and respect for human rights. The "game of death" began a long time before today. It is not possible to block the flood of freedom by criminal acts. Be assured that the horizon of freedom will open and the children of the land of Iran will witness, in the not so distant future, a government that is obliged to respect human rights.," – Akbar Ganji, Iranian dissident, predicting a future in which religious fascism will not govern the great civilization of Persia.

A reader writes:

What, did bin Laden actually think he’d ever change the way New Yorkers live and act?  Did he think we wouldn’t dust ourselves off and get back on our feet?  If he did, well, chalk it up as another miserable failure on his part. He obviously doesn’t know New Yorkers. He didn’t stop the annual Gay Pride Parade. He didn’t stop the annual Mermaid Parade (where women can, uh, "choose not to wear the veil"). And he sure hasn’t changed the daily routine of everyone’s favorite feathered denizen of 5th Ave, Pale Male.

If you’re gay, Jewish, or a free woman, you can always go for a walk in New York City and enjoy the day. It’ll make bin Laden furious.

Here’s a link to the interactive website. "We’re Not Afraid," set up after the London bombings to express ordinary people’s resistance to the psychology of terrorism. And here’s an image I love:

"JAHANNEM, OUTER DARKNESS‚Äî The hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon expressed confusion and surprise Monday to find themselves in the lowest plane of Na’ar, Islam’s Hell.

"I was promised I would spend eternity in Paradise, being fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins in a tree-lined garden, if only I would fly the airplane into one of the Twin Towers," said Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, between attempts to vomit up the wasps, hornets, and live coals infesting his stomach. "But instead, I am fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit. Is this to be my reward for destroying the enemies of my faith?"

The rest of Atta’s words turned to raw-throated shrieks, as a tusked, asp-tongued demon burst his eyeballs and drank the fluid that ran down his face," – from the Onion, September 26, 2001.