Island
Living 53: Which Way to Normal, Jack?
by A. D.
Coleman |
|
Just days after
the destruction of the World Trade Center, our pundits
and politicians starting talking about "finding
closure" and telling us to "get back to
normal." Reminds me, oddly, of a cartoon (probably
from the New Yorker) I saw in the late 1950s. Somewhere
by the road in a desert, an Arab has unrolled his
prayer mat and gotten down on his knees, performing
his morning ritual. A husband-and-wife team of U.S.
tourists in vacation clothes pulls up alongside
him in a sparkling new gas-guzzling rental car.
"Which way to Mecca, Jack?" inquires the
husband.
That gag encapsulates
this country's blithe obliviousness to the rest
of the world, and especially the cultures of the
Middle East and the West's relationship to them.
This was manifested more recently in President Chauncey
Gardener's proposal to initiate a "crusade"
against terrorism. Dubya's seemingly unfeigned astonishment
upon discovering that this word derives from "crux,"
or cross, and has not only an etymology but a history,
and that said history has deeply negative connotations
to anyone whose culture suffered from the empire-building
invasions of proselytizing Christian armies, should
terrify all U.S. citizens. Clearly he wasted no
time studying while at Harvard, and has wasted no
time since. Bush may be nothing more than a figurehead,
but I prefer my figureheads picked from the best
of the herd. (No telling when he might actually
have to make a decision on his own, and that's when
Osama bin Laden will truly have us by the short
hairs.)
Of course, Bush's
"crusade" reference may have been deliberate.
His repeated references to the forces of good versus
the forces of evil make it obvious that he's pursuing
what he conceives of as a religious war. If so,
he doesn't stand alone in his derangement. Prominent
fundamentalist members of the Christian right in
this country promptly declared that feminists, homosexuals,
freethinkers and the American Civil Liberties Union
were to blame for corrupting this nation and bringing
down the vengeance of God on America; another loony
neo-con called for an actual crusade in which we
killed the rulers of Middle-East nations and forcibly
converted their populations to Christianity. We
should probably put these dangerous fanatics in
padded cells, so they don't hurt themselves, and
at the very least must certainly prevent them from
frothing rabidly on radio and television and in
the press and from their pulpits, bully or otherwise,
henceforth. They could have a terrible influence
on little children and on the adult childish, of
whom this nation has no shortage.
Meanwhile, business
took me to PhotoAmericas, a photo festival in Portland,
Oregon. My friend Oop, driving me to the airport,
asked how I felt about flying. I told her that I'd
considered never flying again, but that the only
alternative was to get right back on the winged
horse, so to speak. And, I added, presumably security
measures were now in place to prevent any new attack
on commercial airlines. Yet at Newark International
on the morning of October 3 I showed my picture
ID -- my passport -- only once, when checking my
luggage and getting my ticket at the Northwest Airlines
counter. So I could have simply handed my boarding
passes to someone else whose face and name and ID
would not be verified even one more time before
boarding that plane -- nor even when boarding a
second plane in Detroit after a layover there. I
saw a couple of cops with handguns in the Newark
terminal, and had to take my laptop out of its carrying
case and send it through the X-ray machine by itself.
Otherwise, from a security standpoint it looked
like business as usual.
Portland was
lovely as always -- a sweet little town, with a
terrific quality of life, good food and coffee and
wine, delightful pubs, and great bookstores (especially
Powell's). I could easily learn to love it if I
lived there. They were seeing off a volunteer delegation
of some 900 Portlanders heading to New York during
my stay, just citizens coming to visit and show
support for and good will toward the Big Apple --
that's the kind of place it is. On my end, I got
to hang with a bunch of colleagues I've known for
years, a continent away from Ground Zero, and to
talk shop for awhile -- a much-needed distraction.
The visible presence of National Guard troops with
sidearms in the Portland terminal when I returned
on October 8th proved reassuring, but security was
not noticeably tighter, though by then we'd started
bombing Afghanistan and were, to all intents and
purposes, at war.
So I have to
ask, which way to Normal, Jack? And which way to
Closure? Rich, a fireman of my acquaintance who's
been helping clear the WTC site since the collapse,
estimates that it'll take another six months just
to dig out all the rubble -- which will end up as
the sealer coat on the Fresh Kills landfill. My
proposal: Make that the site for the city's -- for
the world's -- memorial to this disaster. And, once
it's ready for visitors, put the signs for Normal
and Closure on the roads leading up to it. Maybe
someone will actually find them there.
*
Following up
on my previous columns concerning Rudy Giuliani's
obsession with "decency" and his ludicrous
New York City Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission:
Obviously, this crisis trumps all that, and I have
to say that this city couldn't have asked for a
better mayor than Giuliani in its hour of desperate
need. He not only rose to the occasion with courage
and grace and even understated eloquence, but he
redeemed himself in regard to what sometimes seems
borderline racism by pointedly extending his protection
to all the citizens of New York, especially the
Middle Easterners and domestic followers of Islam
among us -- those who were most likely to become
targets of mindless revenge. I'm proud of him; were
he up for reelection, I might even vote for him.
But -- despite
his unfortunate and ill-conceived attempt to capitalize
on his finest hour by having himself appointed Mayor
for Life -- he's not. And whoever takes over for
him has to cope not only with the rebuilding of
New York but with the existence -- and, I hope,
the dismantling -- of that ill-conceived "Decency
Commission." As reported in the New York
Post late in July, New York City Comptroller
and defeated Democratic mayoral candidate Alan G.
Hevesi announced, "There's three things I would
immediately do" if elected. The first two?
"Number one is bring down the barricades [at
City Hall]. Number two is finish off the Decency
Commission." Public Advocate Mark Green has
also pledged to eliminate this commission. I don't
know if Fernando Ferrer has taken a position on
this issue yet, but I urge him to do so. Consider
that also when you vote in November.
And by all means
vote. Without intending to, thousands of people
just died in an ongoing battle over (among other
things) your right to do so. You owe it to them
to step into the voting booth. Casting your ballot,
not waving a flag, is what marks you as a citizen
in this democracy.
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©
Copyright 2001 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved.
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