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The Sontag Award
The Weekly Standard ^ | October 22, 2001 | Peter Berkowitz

Posted on 10/27/2001 6:48:43 PM PDT by gcruse

 This week's Sontag Awardee (the London Review of Books) and Books in Brief.

 THE SONTAG AWARD

 This week's winner is the London Review of Books, which asked its regular writers for commentary on the
 terrorist attack against the United States. The result is an extraordinary tissue of political hatred, intellectual
 vulgarity, and moral incapacity. The entire issue belongs in a museum, under glass, as the definitive display of
 ideology's triumph over thought and the archetypal example of thinkers unable to think in any new way, even
 with the horror in front of them of 6,000 dead.

 So, Mary Beard writes, "However tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming." Terry Eagleton adds,
 "There is no conscious hypocrisy in believing yourself the great bastion of freedom while...embargoing Iraqi
 children to death and being in effect a one-party state." Fredric Jameson, Michael Rogin, Richard Rorty, Edward
 Said, Michael Wood--one thinker after another in a parade of thoughtlessness.

 But three of the commentaries are particularly astonishing, if only for their source. What could possess
 Thomas Laqueur to assert that "On the scale of evil the New York bombings are sadly not so extraordinary and
 our Government has been responsible for many that are probably worse"?

 The Yale literary critic David Bromwich used to be a subtle reader of poetry, but now he writes with incredible
 intellectual vulgarity that patriotism and religious belief are to blame for the recent attacks: "Terrorism, religious
 orthodoxy, and nationalism of all kinds (insurgent as well as established) have become in our time
 inseparable companions: those who apologize for one thereby take on their conscience the crimes of the rest."
 

 Finally, there is Eric Foner, the Columbia historian, who has placed himself beyond the pale with a
 commentary that begins: "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the
 apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House."

 Perhaps the London Review of Books has done us a favor, for we will never have to take any of these writers
 seriously again.

 

 --Peter Berkowitz
 

 October 22, 2001 - Volume 7, Number 6


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS:
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1 posted on 10/27/2001 6:48:43 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: gcruse
Let the camps be built, and let the roundups begin.
2 posted on 10/27/2001 6:53:14 PM PDT by Illbay
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To: gcruse
Hmmmm. Why are we bombing Afghanistan, when the London Review of Books is unscathed?

And Yale, and Columbia.

3 posted on 10/27/2001 6:54:19 PM PDT by dighton
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To: gcruse; veronica; beowolf; Sabramerican; Lent; angelo; boston_liberty; EaglesUpForever...
Sontag award?
4 posted on 10/27/2001 6:59:21 PM PDT by dennisw
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To: dighton
Whatever happened to the Snowdens of yesteryear?
5 posted on 10/27/2001 7:00:40 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: gcruse
Didn't Andrew Sullivan start this practice on his weblog (of giving out "awards" for ridiculous statements or actions)? Or has the Weekly Standard been doing this for a long time now?
6 posted on 10/27/2001 7:02:35 PM PDT by xm177e2
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To: gcruse
Sontag is one of those folks who is famous just for being famous.

Except Sontag has one distinguishing characteristic - she has "Pepe le Pew" hair.

7 posted on 10/27/2001 7:09:25 PM PDT by Senator Pardek
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To: gcruse
Ask the Soldier in White.
9 posted on 10/27/2001 7:15:20 PM PDT by BRO68
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Comment #10 Removed by Moderator

To: gcruse
The Left plays to the only audience it's ever cared about: the fashionable dinner party set. Everyone striving for shock-value leadership so that when they get together they can say, "yes, it's so important to SAY these things", and they can hmmm, and hummm and shake their heads knowingly and secretly envy each other ("why didn't I say that FIRST").

One of their great heroes and fashionable mass-murderers Chairman Mao said, "a revolution isn't a dinner party", . Today's Leftists in the west have turned that saying on its head. In fact, in the west, revolution can best be understood as fashionable dinner-party one-upsmanship. In the west, revolution serves the dinner party.

11 posted on 10/27/2001 7:16:35 PM PDT by samtheman
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To: dennisw; veronica; beowolf; Sabramerican; Lent; angelo; boston_liberty; EaglesUpForever; JMJ333...
Your attention is cordially
directed to the source of the
controversy.

11 September

12 posted on 10/27/2001 7:17:41 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: LLAN-DDEUSANT; Illbay
Your hatred of normalcy has blinded you to sarcasm.
13 posted on 10/27/2001 7:18:26 PM PDT by Senator Pardek
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To: Illbay
And who will pay for it

We could hold a FReepathon...

where will they be

Someplace in Africa, they've got a lot of room over there

who will replace the 6 millions Moslems in this country who are largely gainfully employed?

REAL, WHITE AMERICANS!

We are going into a recession anyways as it is.

We can sell off all the Muslims' stuff after we deport them.

(please this whole post was sarcasm)

14 posted on 10/27/2001 7:23:19 PM PDT by xm177e2
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To: Illbay; LLAN-DDEUSANT
D'OH! I flagged the wrong person to the last post.
15 posted on 10/27/2001 7:23:47 PM PDT by xm177e2
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To: LLAN-DDEUSANT
And who will pay for it, and where will they be, and who will replace the 6 millions Moslems in this country who are largely gainfully employed?

First off, show me where you get 6 million Moslems in this country.

Second, who will replace them? Anyone!

16 posted on 10/27/2001 7:28:52 PM PDT by jackbill
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To: Senator Pardek
I WAS being sarcastic. I can understand the impulse to say "round 'em all up and throw 'em in the klink," but I know it would be wrong.

Sort of like being a happily married man, but still having fantasies about that nubile young thing you see every day at the gym.

17 posted on 10/27/2001 7:30:40 PM PDT by Illbay
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To: samtheman
That was the most cogent dissection of the Left that I've ever heard! May I quote you, oh Exalted Sam?
18 posted on 10/27/2001 7:31:40 PM PDT by The Right Stuff
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Comment #19 Removed by Moderator

Comment #20 Removed by Moderator


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