Article

2004-12-28 -Short Attention Span Theater-

Author Susan Sontag Dies - Blue States Grieve

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Posted by Frank G 2004-12-28 13:40|| || Front Page|| [11132 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Bill Moyers is have a bummer of a month.

Posted by Anonymoose 2004-12-28 1:51:58 PM|| 2004-12-28 1:51:58 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 Bill Moyers, the editorial board of The Nation, the English department of any given college or university...it just makes me warm all over. Hopefully Yasser Arafat is banging her in hell.

Posted by Jonathan 2004-12-28 2:11:27 PM|| [http://www.workaround.blogspot.com] 2004-12-28 2:11:27 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 Hopefully Yasser Arafat is banging her in hell.

That's a pretty hateful statement, Jonathan. And tell me, in your vocabulary, is getting "banged" a punishment, a gift or somehow both?

Posted by Jules 187 2004-12-28 2:18:51 PM|| 2004-12-28 2:18:51 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 by Yasser? You've seen his mug.... if that's a gift, I'd have to refuse, thanky

Posted by Frank G 2004-12-28 2:21:29 PM|| 2004-12-28 2:21:29 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 We could think of Susan Sontag as a traitor. But she was more than that. She had a direct responsabilit in the Cambodian genocide and in the massacres perpetrated by the North-Vietnamese. She was criminial against humankind.

Posted by JFM 2004-12-28 3:23:25 PM|| 2004-12-28 3:23:25 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Reminds me a joke one of my girlfiends told me. I will americanize and actualize it.

Bill Clinton dies and goes to hell. There the devil tells: "For our most distinguished guests we allow them to choose their punishment". After seeing people being roasted, impaled, whipped he sees a room where Yasser Arafat is banging Angelina Jolie. Clinton tells the devil he wants that. Then the devil says: "For Bill Clinton same punishment than for Angelina Jolie".

Posted by JFM 2004-12-28 3:34:54 PM|| 2004-12-28 3:34:54 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Grew up in Tucson, eh? That explains a lot....

Posted by Desert Blondie 2004-12-28 3:56:42 PM|| 2004-12-28 3:56:42 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Says here she was an "essayist". I think that's beautiful people for, "writer that doesn't sell many books, but thinks like we do". Kinda like "humorist" is "comedian that isn't funny, but thinks like we do".
Either way, I never got the big deal.

Posted by tu3031 2004-12-28 4:55:03 PM|| 2004-12-28 4:55:03 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 LOL JFM. Very ummmm.... Gallic. :)

Posted by Shipman 2004-12-28 5:00:02 PM|| 2004-12-28 5:00:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 That's a pretty hateful statement, Jonathan.

Couldn't be any more hateful than some of the appalling things spouted by people at the more extreme end of her political stripe. :)

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2004-12-28 5:08:55 PM|| 2004-12-28 5:08:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Another MSM leading light burns out. Good riddance.

Funny to hear her described as an "activist." Perhaps I'm misinformed but I thought activists were people who actually spent a great deal of time agitating for very specific social or legislative changes.

This woman's major claim to fame was on essay on "camp"-- y'know, Batman, drag shows, etc. What specific social change did this woman suffer on behalf of?

Posted by lex 2004-12-28 5:57:13 PM|| 2004-12-28 5:57:13 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 ULULULULULU!!! Good news. That was one fugly dude.

Posted by BH 2004-12-28 6:56:52 PM|| 2004-12-28 6:56:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Published in the New Yorker By Susan Sontag in the aftermath of 9/11. Draw your own conclusions:

The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous
drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And 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. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards.

Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our
spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic president who assures us that America stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature
democracy.

Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative
one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracyâwhich entails disagreement, which promotes candor--has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us to understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. "Our country is strong", we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be.

Susan Sontag, The New Yorker, September 24, 2001

Posted by AJackson 2004-12-28 6:57:52 PM|| 2004-12-28 6:57:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 "She's dead, Jim"

good

Posted by Frank G 2004-12-28 7:02:14 PM|| 2004-12-28 7:02:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Sontag once wrote that "the white race is the cancer of human history."

Posted by Frank G 2004-12-28 7:20:03 PM|| 2004-12-28 7:20:03 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 That explains why her condemnation of GWB was on C-Span today even though it was recorded in April 2003.

Posted by 3dc 2004-12-28 10:11:30 PM|| 2004-12-28 10:11:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 Trying not to speak ill of the dead. But good riddance you rotten bitch.

Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-12-28 10:12:20 PM|| [http://www.slhess.com] 2004-12-28 10:12:20 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 She's the Alfred Rosenberg of the modern Left. Good riddance.

It would be amusing to have her meet Arafat in Hell. "So, babe. Can you yelp like a hyena?"

Posted by jackal 2004-12-28 10:15:18 PM|| [http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2004-12-28 10:15:18 PM|| Front Page Top

#19

Susan Sontag, one of America's most influential intellectuals, internationally renowned for the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and her ardent activism in the cause of human rights

my sitting place.

Posted by Korora 2004-12-28 11:33:43 PM|| [http://basementburrow.blogspot.com] 2004-12-28 11:33:43 PM|| Front Page Top

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