The White Man Unburdened
From our archives. The following essay by Norman Mailer was published in July 2003 issue of The New York Review of Books. We reprint it today - the day of his passing - November 10th 2007.
Exeunt: lightning and thunder, shock and awe. Dust, ash, fog, fire, smoke, sand, blood, and a good deal of waste now move to the wings. The stage, however, remains occupied. The question posed at curtain-rise has not been answered. Why did we go to war? If no real weapons of mass destruction are found, the question will keen in pitch.Or, if some weapons are uncovered in Iraq, it is likely that even more have been moved to new hiding places beyond the Iraqi border. Should horrific events take place, we can count on a predictable response: “Good, honest, innocent Americans died today because of evil al-Qaeda terrorists.” Yes, we will hear the President’s voice before he even utters such words. (For those of us who are not happy with George W. Bush, we may as well recognize that living with him in the Oval Office is like being married to a mate who always says exactly what you know in advance he or she is going to say, which helps to account for why more than half of America now appears to love him.)
The key question remains-why did we go to war? It is not yet answered. The host of responses has already produced a cognitive stew. But the most painful single ingredient at the moment is, of course, the discovery of the graves. We have relieved the world of a monster who killed untold numbers, mega-numbers, of victims. Nowhere is any emphasis put upon the fact that many of the bodies were of the Shiites of southern Iraq who have been decimated repeatedly in the last twelve years for daring to rebel against Saddam in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War. Of course, we were the ones who encouraged them to revolt in the first place, and then failed to help them. Why? There may have been an ongoing argument in the first Bush administration which was finally won by those who believed that a Shiite victory over Saddam could result in a host of Iraqi imams who might make common cause with the Iranian ayatollahs, Shiites joining with Shiites! Today, from the point of view of the remaining Iraqi Shiites, it would be hard for us to prove to them that they were not the victims of a double cross. So they may look upon the graves that we congratulate ourselves for having liberated as sepulchral voices calling out from their tombs-asking us to take a share of the blame. Which, of course, we will not.
Yes, our guilt for a great part of those bodies remains a large subtext and Saddam was creating mass graves all through the 1970s and 1980s. He killed Communists en masse in the 1970s, which didn’t bother us a bit. Then he slaughtered tens of thousands of Iraqis during the war with Iran-a time when we supported him. A horde of those newly discovered graves go back to that period. Of course, real killers never look back.
The administration, however, was concerned only with how best to expedite the war. They hastened to look for many a justifiable reason. The Iraqis were a nuclear threat; they were teeming with weapons of mass destruction; they were working closely with al-Qaeda; they had even been the dirty geniuses behind 9/11. The reasons offered to the American public proved skimpy, unverifiable, and void of the realpolitik of our need to get a choke-hold on the Middle East for many a reason more than Israel- Palestine. We had to sell the war on false pretenses.
The intensity of the falsification could best be seen as a reflection of the enormous damage 9/11 has brought to America’s morale, particularly the core-the corporation. All the organization people high and low, managers, division heads, secretaries, salesmen, accountants, market specialists, all that congeries of corporate office American, plus all who had relatives, friends, or classmates who worked in the Twin Towers-the shock traveled into the fundament of the American psyche. And the American working class identified with the warriors who were lost fighting that blaze, the firemen and the police, all instantly ennobled.
It was a political bonanza for Bush provided he could deliver an appropriate sense of revenge to the millions-or is it the tens of millions?-who identified directly with those incinerated in the Twin Towers. When Osama bin Laden failed to be captured by the posses we sent to Afghanistan, Bush was thrust back to ongoing domestic problems that did not give any immediate suggestion that they could prove solution-friendly. The economy was sinking, the market was down, and some classic bastions of American faith (corporate integrity, the FBI, and the Catholic Church-to cite but three) had each suffered a separate and grievous loss of face. Increasing joblessness was undermining national morale. Since our administration was conceivably not ready to tackle any one of the serious problems looming before them that did not involve enriching the top, it was natural for the administration to feel an impulse to move into larger ventures, thrusts into the empyrean-war! We could say we went to war because we very much needed a successful war as a species of psychic rejuvenation. Any major excuse would do-nuclear threat, terrorist nests, weapons of mass destruction-we could always make the final claim that we were liberating the Iraqis. Who could argue with that? One could not. One could only ask: What will the cost be to our democracy?
Be it said that the administration knew something a good many of us did not-it knew that we had a very good, perhaps even an extraordinarily good, if essentially untested, group of armed forces, a skilled, disciplined, well-motivated military, career-focused and run by a field-rank and general staff who were intelligent, articulate, and considerably less corrupt than any other power cohort in America.
In such a pass, how could the White House fail to use them? They would prove quintessential morale-builders to a core element of American life-those tens of millions of Americans who had been spiritually wounded by 9/11. They could also serve an even larger group, which had once been near to 50 percent of the population, and remained key to the President’s political footing. This group had taken a real beating. As a matter of collective ego, the good average white American male had had very little to nourish his morale since the job market had gone bad, nothing, in fact, unless he happened to be a member of the armed forces. There, it was certainly different. The armed forces had become the paradigmatic equal of a great young athlete looking to test his true size. Could it be that there was a bozo out in the boondocks who was made to order, and his name was Iraq? Iraq had a tough rep, but not much was left to him inside. A dream opponent. A desert war is designed for an air force whose state-of-the-art is comparable in perfection to a top-flight fashion model on a runway. Yes, we would liberate the Iraqis.
So we went ahead against all obstacles-of which the UN was the first. Wantonly, shamelessly, proudly, exuberantly, at least one half of our prodigiously divided America could hardly wait for the new war. We understood that our television was going to be terrific. And it was. Sanitized but terrific-which is, after all, exactly what network and good cable television are supposed to be.
And there were other factors for using our military skills, minor but significant: these reasons return us to the ongoing malaise of the white American male. He had been taking a daily drubbing over the last thirty years. For better or worse, the women’s movement has had its breakthrough successes and the old, easy white male ego has withered in the glare. Even the consolation of rooting for his team on TV had been skewed. For many, there was now measurably less reward in watching sports than there used to be, a clear and declarable loss. The great white stars of yesteryear were for the most part gone, gone in football, in basketball, in boxing, and half gone in baseball. Black genius now prevailed in all these sports (and the Hispanics were coming up fast; even the Asians were beginning to make their mark). We white men were now left with half of tennis (at least its male half), and might also point to ice hockey, skiing, soccer, golf (with the notable exception of the Tiger), as well as lacrosse, track, swimming, and the World Wrestling Federation-remnants of a once great and glorious white athletic centrality.
Of course, there were sports fans who loved the stars on their favorite teams without regard to race. Sometimes, they even liked black athletes the most. Such white men tended to be liberals. They were no use to Bush. He needed to take care of his more immediate constituency. If he had a covert strength, it was his knowledge of the unspoken things that bothered American white men the most-just those matters they were not always ready to admit to themselves. The first was that people hipped on sports can get overaddicted to victory. Sports, the corporate ethic (advertising), and the American flag had become a go-for-the-win triumvirate that had developed many psychic connections with the military.
After all, war was, with all else, the most dramatic and serious extrapolation of sports. The concept of victory could be seen by some as the noblest species of profit in union with patriotism. So Bush knew that a big victory in an easy war would work for the good white American male. If blacks and Hispanics were representative of their share of the population in the enlisted ranks, still they were not a majority, and the faces of the officer corps (as seen on the tube) suggested that the percentage of white men increased as one rose in rank to field and general officers. Moreover, we had knockout tank echelons, Super-Marines, and-one magical ace in the hole-the best air force that ever existed. If we could not find our machismo anywhere else, we could certainly count on the interface between combat and technology. Let me then advance the offensive suggestion that this may have been one of the covert but real reasons we went looking for war. We knew we were likely to be good at it.
In the course, however, of all the quick events of the last few months, our military passed through a transmogrification. Indeed, it was one hellion of a morph. We went, willy-nilly, from a potentially great athlete to serving as an emergency intern required to operate at high speed on an awfully sick patient full of frustration, outrage, and violence. Now in the last month, even as the patient is getting stitched up somewhat, a new and troubling question arises: Have any fresh medicines been developed to deal with what seem to be teeming infections? Do we really know how to treat livid suppurations? Or would it be better to just keep trusting our great American luck, our faith in our divinely protected can-do luck? We are, by custom, gung-ho. If these suppurations prove to be unmanageable, or just too time-consuming, may we not leave them behind? We could move on to the next venue. Syria, we might declare in our best John Wayne voice: You can run, but you can’t hide. Saudi Arabia, you overrated tank of blubber, do you need us more than ever? And Iran, watch it, we have eyes for you. You could be a real meal. Because when we fight, we feel good, we are ready to go, and then go some more. We have had a taste. Why, there’s a basketful of billions to be made in the Middle East just so long as we can stay ahead of the trillions of debts that are coming after us back home.
Be it said: the motives that lead to a nation’s major historical acts can probably rise no higher than the spiritual understanding of its leadership. While George W. may not know as much as he believes he knows about the dispositions of God’s blessing, he is driving us at high speed all the same-this man at the wheel whose most legitimate boast might be that he knew how to parlay the part-ownership of a major-league baseball team into a gubernatorial win in Texas. And-shall we ever forget?-was catapulted, by legal finesse and finagling, into a now-tainted but still almighty hymn: Hail to the Chief!
No, we will rise no higher than the spiritual understanding of our leadership. And now that the ardor of victory has begun to cool, some will see how it is flawed. For we are victim once again of all those advertising sciences that depend on mendacity and manipulation. We have been gulled about the real reasons for this war, tweaked and poked by some of the best button-pushers around to believe that we won a noble and necessary contest when, in fact, the opponent was a hollowed-out palooka whose monstrosities were ebbing into old age.
Perhaps he was not that old. Perhaps Saddam made a decision to go underground with as much wealth as he had spirited away, and would fund al-Qaeda or some extension of it in a collaboration of sorts with Osama bin Laden-a new underground team, the Incompatible Terrorist Twins. That is a hypothesis as mad as the world we are beginning to live in.
Democracy, more than any other political system, depends on a modicum of honesty. Ultimately, it is much at the mercy of a leader who has never been embarrassed by himself. What is to be said of a man who spent two years in the Air Force of the National Guard (as a way of not having to go to Vietnam) and proceeded-like many another spoiled and wealthy father’s son-not to bother to show up for duty in his second year of service? Most of us have episodes in our youth that can cause us shame on reflection. It is a mark of maturation that we do not try to profit from our early lacks and vices but do our best to learn from them. Bush proceeded, however, to turn his declaration of the Iraqi campaign’s end into a mighty fashion show. He chose-this overnight clone of Honest Abe-to arrive on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on an S-3B Viking jet that came in with a dramatic tail-hook landing. The carrier was easily within helicopter range of San Diego but G.W. would not have been able to show himself in flight regalia, and so would not have been able to demonstrate how well he wore the uniform he had not honored. Jack Kennedy, a war hero, was always in civvies while he was commander in chief. So was General Eisenhower. George W. Bush, who might, if he had been entirely on his own, have made a world-class male model (since he never takes an awkward photograph), proceeded to tote the flight helmet and sport the flight suit. There he was for the photo-op looking like one more great guy among the great guys. Let us hope that our democracy will survive these nonstop foulings of the nest.
© 2007 The New York Review of Books
Our democracy has been further fouled by torture, murder, kidnapping, spying, etc., since Mailer wrote those words.
“Milton ! thou shoudst be living at this hour :
England hath need of thee : she is a fen
Of stagnant waters : altar, sword, and pen…”
as Wordsworth wrote and as true of Mailer’s America
At least Mailer did not have to stuff a bunch of grapes down his crotch. He had a real pair, which is only what Dumya could ever dream of.
First Kurt, now Norman Mailer.
There will be Vonneguts and Mailers from the Iraq Slaughter generation, and hopefully, after that, no need to chronicle the inane futility of war.
War is not futile, so please stop saying that! It enriches many!
“War is not futile, so please stop saying that! It enriches many!”
Riches are futile.
None of the notices mention his neglected political masterpiece “St. George and the Godfather,” which mentions none other than Roger Ailes, the inventor of the contemporary political convention & his contributions to Nixon’s ‘72 campaign — and contains the most exact description of Nixon with all his twitches and twists that I’ve ever read.
Nor did they mention his hilarious poker faced appearance on “Gilmore Girls” a couple of years ago, as he was interviewed by his son in the Dragonfly dining room . . .
In my view Mailer makes two key points, the first relates to the loss of male power to the growth of the woman’s movement; and the second to the way that sports are used as a basis for shaping “the victory mentality” that then is projected into the “theater” of combat.
What I find objectionable is the way this fine writer works with unproven suppositions. Making the conjecture, for instance, that Saddam might have funded Bin Laden shows where he bought into the corporate view of war as offered by MSM, rather than investigating the true antipathy between these two persons and their life philosophies.
Perhaps he makes mundane generalizations that seem utterly banal to me as a means of reaching an audience that is not as informed as those of us privileged with a variety of news sources and robust intellectual inquiry in this forum?
I find the essay too mired in suppositions to hold real depth or profound merit.
American’s - welcome to Israeli reality for decades.
Sioux Rose—I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think it is hard for mamy if not most,Mailer included, to escape the paradigm of the male perspective. Mailer’s piece while extremely well-written seemed to work too hard at creating plausible explanations for something some of us felt from the getgo was monstrous and hideous in its hipocracy and deceptions.
Some of us simply have had our worst fears and suspicions confirmed as the occupation drags on and the bloodshed and destruction continues. But even in my worst nightmare, I never dreamed how difficult it would be to effect profound change of this vile policy. I thought surely by now, no one would be suggesting it must continue. What an optimist I am.
Have you read The Chalice and the Blade? It’s not new but it sure puts so much of this into a framework that makes so much sense.
What makes a great national novelist is that he has his finger right on the pulse of his country, its culture and the psyche of its people. Mailer went one better; he embodied the surly, casually confident, but strangely unreflective for all of its obvious self-obsession, animal soul of his generation of American men.
These times call for a new and very different conception of what it means to be a man. Norman’s time has passed, and now, so has he. I shall miss him. Sleep well.
There’s a little ambiguity there, but I think Mailer raised the Hussein/Bin Laden connection only as a preposterous hypothetical.
Sorry to speak ill of the dead but how this blowhard could pen this tedious exigesis without once mentioning the world “oil” is beyond me.
Yes he said the Hussein/bin laden connection was a “supposition as mad as the world we are beginning to live in”
this was 2003… The thing he said in a interview that I will always remember was he defined existentialism as something like “faceing the unknown in life with courage” . Or something like that. It works for me.
I don’t think it matters that he didn’t repeat the what everybody says about Oil …it is more than about just oil… it will be about Water too and just money from War…He said: “The reasons offered to the American public proved skimpy, unverifiable, and void of the realpolitik of our need to get a choke-hold on the Middle East for many a reason more than Israel- Palestine. We had to sell the war on false pretenses.”
As I read Mailer’s piece I thought of a controversy that has recently emerged here in Toronto. Ambulance crews and firemen have been putting “support our troops” stickers on ambulances and fire trucks. It has been pointed out that this is an inappropriate politicization of vehicles that belong to all members of the public, regardless of whether or not they support the party currently in power in Ottawa. Everybody knows that “Support our troops” means “Support Canada’s participation in the occupation of Afghanistan”, and it also means “Vote for the Conservative Party of Canada”. In addition to the stickers, emergency crews have been staging displays of “support” for the bodies of dead Canadian soldiers as they are transported on local highways after having been flown in to a local airport from Afghanistan, standing at attention on overpasses and saluting as the vehicles bearing the corpses pass below.
I have never seen a non-White paramedic or fireman in Toronto or anywhere else in Canada. And I have never seen a firewoman of any colour. That would not be extraordinary if Toronto were 90% White. But Toronto is over 40% non-White and over 50% female. Interestingly, all races and both sexes are well-represented in the police department – and police vehicles do NOT sport “support our troops” stickers (though policemen participate in the “highway of heroes” tributes). But the ambulance crews and (especially) the fire department remain as male as a Turkish café and as white as winter.
The firemen and paramedics are cheering for “our troops” as if they were a sports team or a White heavyweight boxer. Mailer’s article is very much to the point.
Mark Marshall
Toronto
I take issue with one segment of the article in which Mr. Mailer describes the pre-Iraq disaster military as “extraordinarily good”. It was nothing of the sort and the problem, I felt, was with the officer corps!What most Americans don’t know about the military is that it is ripe with nepotism, especially in the commisioned ranks, and managed very poorly…then and now! There was absolutely no professionalism that I saw, but rather a system that promoted ass kissing and back-stabbing of the worst sort! Everybody seemed to be mired in perpetual adolescence(a childish “bully jock” mentality if you will)! You can have the most wonderful technology on your side, but trust me, it’s advantages will be negated if you have a bunch of dolts operating and managing it! I can’t believe there hasn’t been any widespread “fragging” in this war…perhaps we’re just not hearing about it!My opinion of the military is that it is nothing but a large welfare program for all involved…I don’t give a shit if I get attacked for writing what I did either, it needs to be said! As our illustrious Commander-in-Chief said “Bring it on”!
Lions marched about by the lambs, Partymariner?
Yep, he wrestled with the causes. Somewhat in the dark due to lack’o light in symbolic analyst nation.
“…when he shook it and he rang like silver,
He shook it and he shined like gold,
He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby.
Well bless my soul.
He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby
Well bless my soul, what’s wrong with me?”
Outta ye ole morphic field yesterday popped the clearest recollection of the ‘68 march. Hey, I was not right in front’o the bayonets.
Yep, flagrant travelin on the court gets me down. Yep, the mounds’er too close for those fast balls.
Might sound crazy but, word, have your kids check out “Surf’s Up!. Hero’s black AND white.
Go with the Ground Luminosity, Norman.
Many of the previous comments here miss the mark completely: the heart of the matter that Mailer has skewered with the arrow of his insight. To quote Mailer: “more than half of America now appears to love him.” This was written back in 2003, when most Americans - including some of you perhaps - were still waving flags like toy nazis, blubbering about 9/11, and cheering on America’s divine right to dismember other people’s children from 30,000 feet in the sky.
It is so easy - and conveniently distancing - to say “it was all about oil”. How many Americans in 2003 owned a gas station, or were trading in oil futures, or owned a Houston oil refinery? Why then were so many supporting this transparently vicious sociopath of a president and his blood-soaked fantasies? Mailer has it right.
There is water, there is oil - and then there is blood. Mailer has drilled deeper than the oil into the fatal sickness that is in the very blood of this nation. George Bush could not have invaded Iraq and murdered 100s-of-thousands of innocent people all by himself. It took the kind of fantasy-sickened nation that Norman Mailer spent a lifetime diagnosing and denouncing to empower this psychopath. It doesn’t surprise me that many still shrink to hear Mailer’s prophecies. It will not end with the passing of oil, nor of George Bush. What was it that Norman mailer said about democracy and truth? Read his essay again. It’s all there.
This Has been a great talk on Veterens Day ….We are Lucky to be livin ,,,,I just Saw Cheney give a speech and lectured us on democracy and about how he Dodged the draft and Saved us all from Sudden Deah and losing our Well God I bet he sneered at the UNKOWN SOLDIER when he layed the wreath,,,,, It is torture to watch Darth in ACtion…..
WHYZOWL: Your analysis is a good one. As a female who always saw through the neocons and knew the call to war was fraudulent–from that first speech after 911 twisting justice to MEAN vengeance, the rat was let loose… I dislike the casual voice of male dominance that speaks through Mailer as if it reflects the singular worldview, and I think it takes as real and true a great many subliminal presumptions. These ultimately speak to and about what PARTYMARINER defined as, “be mired in perpetual adolescence(a childish “bully jock” mentality if you will.”
The thrall set over sports becomes the language of enemies and victors, weak and strong and it’s exceedingly useful to pump up testosterone and use it as the human fuel supply line for endless wars. Sorry, this writer never has spoken for me or people of a higher sentience.
Sorry, I Think Mailer said that better then you did
You’ve hit Mailer right on the nose, Siouxrose (to use the appropriate metaphor). Norman’s singular obsession — and certainly the one that suffuses this essay — has always been the state of the White Male Tribe. His supposed antagonism to Geedubya is no more than his sense that Bush the Younger isn’t really a fitting Tribal Chieftain — i.e., that he’s a phony.
A key phrase in his essay is “we will rise no higher than the spiritual understanding of our leadership. So true. What he cannot acknowledge or, perhaps, see — being very much a loyal member of the tribe — is that tribalism is the exact opposite of the Enlightenment values on which our democracy, cultural vitality, and freedom depends.
George W. Bush is leading us into a new Dark Age. He represents a Western civilizational regression, a reaffirmation of the Dark Ages characteristic elevation of faith and authority over reason. Mailer can’t even see that, he’s so concerned about whether or not Whitey can soothe his poor, bruised ego with a good, stiff dose of military triumphalism.
In short, he’s an animal, and thus perfectly representative of the dominant ethos of our culture. We, however, must for the first time become fully hu-men, or the unchecked energies of the animal side of our natures will inevitably lead us to our destruction.
“Mailer can’t even see that, he’s so concerned about whether or not Whitey can soothe his poor, bruised ego with a good, stiff dose of military triumphalism.”
I thought he was theorizing that desire for such a dose might be the motive/end sought by entering into war and by war-rationalizing.
Now that he is gone you can sacrifice him to your Enlightenmnet,
Nothing can stand in your way now. Mailer can not talk back to you brave ones because the great defender of Bush (Mailer) is gone.
One of the worst things about dyin is the balme you get for the worlds troubles.
I hope you are Happy now.
“Mailer can’t even see that, he’s so concerned about whether or not Whitey can soothe his poor, bruised ego with a good, stiff dose of military triumphalism.”
I thought he was theorizing that desire for such a dose might be the motive/end sought by entering into war and by war-rationalizing.
________________________________
Precisely my point, Bushwa Blues. I think Mailer is essentially validating that motivation, as when Secretary of State John Hay referred to the Spanish American War as a “splendid little war.”
He may in fact be criticizing it, but his critique is so rarified and indirect as to be lost on the average reader. On the other hand, his descriptions of the rewards of, and need for, a military adventure of some, of any, sort, roil with most vivid and exciting language he can muster-and that ain’t bean bag.
“And now that the ardor of victory has begun to cool, some will see how it is flawed. For we are victim once again of all those advertising sciences that depend on mendacity and manipulation.”
Indirect?
Norman Mailer was brilliant, and your president, george w bush, is an assh-le.
Whyzowl, when you said Bush the Younger, didn’t you mean Bush the Lessor?
“… we will rise no higher than the spiritual understanding of our leadership.”
I find this point (which is stated twice) profound. It is disturbing and makes me sad. The sadness comes from looking at the candidates for president who are criss-crossing the country. The few who have a reasonably high “spiritual understanding” are not out in front. Some of those few are bending to the pressure of the military-industrial complex.
I’m not talking about religion, but about the sense of oneness and connectedness that comes from realizing our place in relationship to all other beings; from living a life of love and compassion rather than greed and addiction to power.
That statement sounds like it’s from the true blue democracy camp, but as much as we like democracy how do we know that in the cosmic sense it’s true? Take democracy itself. I used to think it was hammered out by a bunch of well connected Greeks. Now according to Thom Hartmann it might have been derived to an equal extent by trial and error Saxon tribal “law” [he didn’t say exactly equal]. Things never stop blowing my mind. How do we know “the offscouring” don’t drag the rich young rulers along…ever so slowly?
After hearing the 91 T Gross interview (again?) I can see that when Mailer died…my memory may have tended to gloss a bit, even though I still appreciate to the utmost his statement re half the writers on newpapers can’t write. Why he will be one of the only ones left standing in his own opinion…that seems more questionable.
In his defense he worked with what he could lay hold of in terms of the causes of war (wonder if knew any heavy PR consultants who filled him in on the then state of the art). It goes farther than what he worked with though. On the Nazis one can at least read Jung. On death as social purpose, William Stringfellow and Rene Girard [it was WS’s phrase]. Even Girard has nothing definitive re the phenomenon of our current foes, as of the Le Monde interview anyway (insightful as it is). I am an infant in my attempt to understand the causes. The knowledge of good and evil isn’t panning out (for me).
Foreign policy and it’s consequences seems simpler. Must have unconsciously repressed my intention to read Ghost Wars until now. Kucinich was right…all along.
Does that Nation article mean Nichols is actually for Biden?
Kind of reminds me of Chris Hedges’ “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” copyrighted: 2002.
The irony of this title. Another liberal website totally ignoring the completely hateful misogynist Mailer was, and how in fact this infused his writing. (See Johann Hari on this in the UK Independent).
Now, if Mailer had said black people — not women — were ‘lowly creatures that should be caged,’ maybe that might stain his reputation. But no, since he was talking about women, and was an attempted murderer of his own pregnant wife, and the Great White Male American Author, no liberal website will touch it.
Hypocrisy never enters the picture when your alleged heroes are so few– and so useless.
Yes, well, the stabbing was untidy. But, it didn’t happen all that often and less felonious lapses into periodic misogyny are well within the curve and sorta forgivable, particularly for the brooding, intellectual artist-writer genre. More particularly, when they are showboating for literary effect… and it sells! Mailer did not earn his fame as a humanitarian. (substitute “bones” for “fame” if you prefer)
Mailer won acclaim as a brilliant author. He traveled with Americans from the Great Generation through the War Babies, the Boomers, gen X’ers and whatever we call our latest cohort of whiners … saw us through 5 or 6 wars, 10 or 11 presidents, and all the attendent booms, crashes and movements … always harboring the promise of some great writing to enlighten, challenge and/or entertain us. Mailer delivered on that promise, not always but often.
This is why we like and respect Norman Mailer. It’s not about his personal values or frailties, nor to focus on some bleak period of his earlier life but is about his craft and the way he chose to present it and the way he endured. There’s no hypocrisy here!
Notsonaive, that’s a better book [by Chris Hedges] to leaf through when I end up at B&N for expresso…than the one I’d otherwise drag over to the table and then drag back. Have three Chomsky tomes including Hegemony-or, but sometimes Chomsky cannot get my motor turned over. Thanks.
Annika, watch out for the 8-track “victimization” loop…as discussed by Christopher Lasch.
I think the war-causes are something deeper, and I assume you do too. Can’t make this link work, but supposedly it reads in part as follows…
“It was enough to make you vomit all over your new denim jacket.
The Gap has been caught using child labor in an Indian sweatshop,
and not just child labor — child slaves.
As extensively reported on the news, the children, some as young as
10, were worked 16 hour days, fed bowls of mosquito-covered rice,
and forced to sleep on a roof and use over-flowing latrines. Those
who slowed down were beaten with rubber pipes and the ones who cried
had oily cloths stuffed in their mouths.”
PS: To perhaps get to the page in question try this below, or search “Ehrenreich” and “Gap” at the Huffington Post main page.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/