The Weekly Standard J. Bottum
| "If the word 'cowardly' is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others." |
The Weekly Standard's way of recognizing inanity by intellectuals and artists in the wake of the terrorist attacks--goes, of course, to the essayist and novelist Susan Sontag for her note in the Sept. 24 issue of the New Yorker. She managed, in the space of only 460 words, to score every possible point. There was the shtick of deliberately saying something outrageous: "If the word 'cowardly' is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others." There was the moral equivalence in which the attacked are blamed along with the attackers: "How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq?" There was the willful obtuseness in moral reasoning with which she defined "courage" as "a morally neutral virtue." And finally, there was the use of the occasion to indulge old political grievances: "Everything is not O.K. . . . We have a robotic president." |