The horrors of 9/11, homicide bombings in the Middle East, and most recently the D.C. sniper, force the question of evil.  In a recent article, Edward Rothstein has shown that a huge turning point in how intellectuals respond to evil occurred with the great Lisbon earthquake on 1 November 1755, when both the loss of life and damaged property were unbearable.  What added significance to this horror was that it occurred in the middle of the 18th century, the century of the Enlightenment.  The world was now scientifically intelligible and philosophers were asking ethical questions through the grid of reason.  Natural and moral evil were now wedded together in an effort to explain how and why evil occurs.  In the 20th century, the Holocaust and now 9/11 have raised similar questions.  As I am writing this, a “shooter” in the Washington D.C. area (and surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia) has shot 11 people (killing 9 of the11).  This is monstrous, random evil.  Why is this occurring?  How should we think about evil, especially as it relates to this sniper?

• First, in a demented sort of way, this sniper has experienced multiple rewards for his pathological behavior.  As he is rewarded, he is edged on to do more.  Let me explain.  In this post 9/11 atmosphere in America, this sniper benefits from the fear and unease that already exist in America.  As Tom Friedman has observed, “This shooter seems to get his thrills from seeing the fear in the eyes of the survivors—after he randomly kills his victims as if they were deer.  And, like bin Laden, this shooter is a loser who combines evil, cunning, technical prowess, a world stage and a willingness to kill everyday people doing everyday things to magnify that fear.”  Further, this shooter is contributing to America’s steady erosion of a sense of security, “our sense that while the world may be crazy, and we can always crawl into our American cocoon, our sense that ‘over here’ we are safe, even if ‘over there’ dragons live.”  Finally, he obviously thrives on media attention.  The attention he is receives makes him feel powerful.  He was characterized by officials and public leaders as “cowardly,” “mean-spirited,” “inhumane,” and “senseless.”  As Harvey Goldstein has observed, “Far from chastening the killer, these challenges to his manhood make him even more determined to show us who’s in charge: him.”  The news media contribute to the situation simply by paying too much attention to him.  Ever since the OJ Simpson trial, competition among media outlets has created an obsession with finding “experts” to theorize about his motives, his profile and his attributes.  This further gratifies the killer and further bolsters his arrogance.

• Second, the shooter seems to be an equal opportunity sniper.  He has shot men and women, blacks and whites, young and old.  Who does this person hate enough to kill?  The answer seems to be everyone.  His impersonal brutality is what is so perplexing.  Last Tuesday, one of the “experts” on a news program stated that “He is playing God.”  The next day, police found a tarot card at the scene of a shooting in Prince George’s County, Maryland, with the words, “Dear policeman, I am God.”  This reveals his level of power.  He thinks he is in total control, not the police.  In one sense, he is correct.  No one knows how and where he will strike next.  He taunts; he chides; and he manipulates.  He is a megalomaniac who delights in killing for sport.  And the media delights in this.  The ubiquitous camera arrives at the scene of the crime almost as soon as it occurs, and everyone, including the sniper, gets a good, long look at the carnage.  Reality is that this assassin is using popular culture to his advantage and thereby increasing the fear factor among the populace.  We will learn much from this tragedy as a culture but I fear that we will also see more of this kind of thing.  This is a psychopathic culture that feeds on death, the love of death and the cause of death.  This is a new form of terrorism, not emanating from the Middle East or Islam but emanating from within our own culture.  There is probably no more powerful sign of the breakdown of rule of law, order and security than what is occurring in and around our nation’s capital.

See Friedman’s editorial in the Sunday New York Times (13 October 2002), Rothstein’s article in the Sunday New York Times (5 October 2002), and Goldstein’s article in The Washington Post (13 October 2002).

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THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AND POLITICS

Last week the Nobel Peace prize was awarded to former president Jimmy Carter.  He had been nominated virtually every year since 1978, when he brokered the Camp David accord between Egypt’s Anwar el-Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin.  The unusual nature of the award for Carter was that it included a clear criticism of the current president, George W. Bush.  The five-member panel which makes the award, is usually secretive.  But its citation of Jimmy Carter has a barely veiled reference to President Bush’s aggressive diplomacy towards Iraq.  In announcing the award, the chairman, Gunnar Berge, said the clause that referred to President Bush “must be interpreted as a criticism of the position of the administration currently sitting in the US towards Iraq” and agreed when asked if it was meant as a “kick in the leg” to the Bush White House (the Norwegian equivalent of a slap in the face).  How should we think about this?

This is rather unusual, if not unprecedented, on behalf of the Nobel committee.  Two committee members did distance themselves from Berge’s remarks.  But as Irwin Abrams of Antioch College and author of a history of the Nobel Prize suggested, “I can’t remember anything like this happening in Oslo.”  The peace prize has been used in the past to send messages—but usually to totalitarian regimes.  In 1984 the award went to Desmond Tutu, which was an affront to the apartheid regime of South Africa.  In 1983 it went to Lech Walesa, an affront to communist Poland.  In 1991, it went to Aung San Suu Kyi, an affront to dictatorial Burma.  This year’s prize and subsequent criticism of President Bush is hardly comparable to these totalitarian dictatorships of the past.  It is an example of ideology trumping the meaning of a worthy prize.  It would be interesting to know if Carter was purposely chosen as a slap at Bush, or if the committee genuinely chose Carter and then decided to criticize Bush.  In short, we are witnessing the politicization of the Nobel Peace prize.  The committee used Jimmy Carter to criticize President Bush and thereby cheapened the prize.  The committee also distracted from the good, solid reason why Carter deserved the prize in the first place—his lifelong commitment to peace.  They trivialized the prize and ended up diminishing its significance; and that is most sad!

See the article in The New York Times, “Week in Review,” (13 October 2002). p. 3 and Richard Cohen, The Washington Post (15 October 2002). 

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AMERICAN CULTURE: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Evaluating American culture and discerning its heartbeat remains one of the primary goals of this program, “Issues in Perspective.”  There are some good things happening, some bad things and some ugly things: 

• First, the Good.  The number of movies I see in a given year you can count on one hand and you would still have some fingers left to count.  But over Labor Day weekend, my wife and I saw “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”  It is a hilarious story of ethnic courtship and marriage.  Anyone of any ethnic background can identify with the characters in this movie.  With the exception of one brief scene, it is a wholesome movie with a redeeming story line and good actors.  We heard about it through word of mouth.  I have yet to see one advertisement for the film, nor have I seen any print advertisements.  It has been extraordinarily successful because people have enjoyed it and told others about it.  It is an example of a film that should teach Hollywood a lesson.  Make a low budget film (in this case $5 million) with a great story line; don’t spend much on advertising because that it is a good story will be advertisement enough.  I do not have much time for Hollywood but this film gives me a glimmer of hope that perhaps there are still some independent film companies that can occasionally do something of redeeming value for the American movie industry.

• Second, the Bad.  The Emmy-award-winning TV program, “The West Wing,” has just begun its fourth season on NBC.  It is really a good drama but its political ideology is the “bad” part.  It is arguably left-wing on the cultural and partisan issues of our day.  Those who represent the Christian faith, who represent a family-values character or who represent opposition to homosexuality are depicted as boobs and nerds.  The creator and chief writer of the program, Aaron Sorkin, has been frank about using the program for political effect.  And that political effect is decidedly left-wing!  Because Josiah Bartlet is so clearly a Clinton-like figure, in the words of John Leo, “In large and small ways, Sorkin is supplanting the real Clinton presidency with a fantasy version of what might have been.  The refurbished Clinton does not cut corners, sell pardons, or take polls to figure out what to do.  He has no trouble keeping his pants on during office hours.  Here, somewhat late, is a President Clinton we can trust.”  “The West Wing” is a one-sided view of Washington as seen from a one-party town—Hollywood.  It is decidedly unfair and biased in a smooth, attractive and subtle manner.  See Leo’s article in US News and World Report (7 October 2002).

• Third, the Ugly.  The poet laureate of New Jersey is somewhat of an honorary post that pays $10,000 a year.  But the position has some symbolic value and it also carries some authority.  The current holder of that honor, Amiri Baraka, recently read and published a poem entitled “Somebody Blew Up America.”  In this poem he asked, “Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed, Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day, Why did Sharon stay away?”  This ugly lie that Israeli and Jews got advance warning of the 9/11 attack is propaganda emanating from the Middle East (specifically a Lebanese Radio station) that is thoroughly anti-Semitic.  At first everyone, including the “New York Times,” argued that this is his free speech right to spread such lies.  But he is the poet laureate of New Jersey and is supported by state tax money.  This is not a free speech issue.  He serves a legitimate post and that post bears some civic obligation.  Baraka’s poem is not responsible and it is not legitimate.  He should be dismissed or the legislature should abolish the position.  Promoting ugly anti-Semitism is not the role of a state’s poet laureate.

See Richard Cohen, The Washington Post (8 October 2002).

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