9/11 again

Dick Cavett doesn't think much of all this 9/11 brouhaha in the media, and I am inclined to agree, though this is the tenth-year anniversay, which might call for greater notice. One does hope that we might cool it when it comes to the 11th, 12th year and so on, maybe doing something bigger for the 20th year. However, if this is the pattern, maybe we should follow it with the other big historical events, such as winning World War II or getting out of Vietnam, or when the Constitution was ratified, though after a hundred years, I can see cooling it down to 25-year celebrations.

Let more of our history have such vitality in our cultural memory. 9/11 was historic and it's not exactly dead history, I understand, but it can seem odd that we should be so focused on it, as though this macabre case of mass murder is what most defines us as a people and a culture, and I hope that's not true. The more likely outcome, of course, is that we will grow tired of 9/11 eventually and then just forget about it, like everything else.

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Have you, perchance, decided — as I have — not to spend the weekend re-wallowing in 9/11 with the media? Aside from allowing Saint Rudolph, former tenant of Gracie Mansion, to trumpet once again his self-inflated heroism on that nightmare day, the worst feature of this relentlessly repeated carnival of bitter sights and memories is that it glamorizes the terrorists.

How they must enjoy tuning into our festival of their spectacular accomplishments, cheering when the second plane hits and high-fiving when the falling towers are given full-color international showcasing for the tenth time.

Who wants this? Surveys show people want to forget it, or at least not have it thrust down their throats from all over the dial annually. It can’t have to do with that nauseating buzz-word “closure.” There is no closure to great tragedies. Ask the woman on a call-in show who said how she resents all this ballyhooing every year of the worst day of her life: “My mother died there that day. I’m forced to go through her funeral again every year.”

-- Dick Cavett at The New York Times

9/11 again

Dick Cavett doesn't think much of all this 9/11 brouhaha in the media, and I am inclined to agree, though this is the tenth-year anniversay, which might call for greater notice. One does hope that we might cool it when it comes to the 11th, 12th year and so on, maybe doing something bigger for the 20th year. However, if this is the pattern, maybe we should follow it with the other big historical events, such as winning World War II or getting out of Vietnam, or when the Constitution was ratified, though after a hundred years, I can see cooling it down to 25-year celebrations.

Let more of our history have such vitality in our cultural memory. 9/11 was historic and it's not exactly dead history, I understand, but it can seem odd that we should be so focused on it, as though this macabre case of mass murder is what most defines us as a people and a culture, and I hope that's not true. The more likely outcome, of course, is that we will grow tired of 9/11 eventually and then just forget about it, like everything else.

_ _ _

Have you, perchance, decided — as I have — not to spend the weekend re-wallowing in 9/11 with the media? Aside from allowing Saint Rudolph, former tenant of Gracie Mansion, to trumpet once again his self-inflated heroism on that nightmare day, the worst feature of this relentlessly repeated carnival of bitter sights and memories is that it glamorizes the terrorists.

How they must enjoy tuning into our festival of their spectacular accomplishments, cheering when the second plane hits and high-fiving when the falling towers are given full-color international showcasing for the tenth time.

Who wants this? Surveys show people want to forget it, or at least not have it thrust down their throats from all over the dial annually. It can’t have to do with that nauseating buzz-word “closure.” There is no closure to great tragedies. Ask the woman on a call-in show who said how she resents all this ballyhooing every year of the worst day of her life: “My mother died there that day. I’m forced to go through her funeral again every year.”

-- Dick Cavett at The New York Times

Women's Greater Erotic Capital

Here is a feminist thinker trying to bring back a little more realism into the quagire of feminist thought and political correctness. And bear in mind that Ms. Hakim is a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics; we are talking way above Naomi Wolf territory in the brains department.

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In a typically razor-sharp exchange of dialogue which establishes – yet again – that The Simpsons provides the most coruscating illumination of contemporary mores, Lisa says to her grade school teacher that "Good looks don't really matter", to which Ms Hoover replies: "Nonsense, that's just something ugly people tell their children." Stripping away the layers of irony from this statement we can reveal the central premise of Catherine Hakim's book, which is that not only do looks matter, but that they should matter a great deal more. Furthermore, the people who tell young people – and in particular young women – that their beauty and sex appeal are of little importance are themselves ugly, if not physically then at least morally. For, as Hakim sees it, it is an "unholy alliance" of wannabe patriarchs, religious fundamentalists and radical feminists who have – in Anglo-Saxon countries especially – acted to devalue what she terms "erotic capital". In Hakim's estimation, for all young women, and in particular those who are without other benefits – financial, intellectual, situational – an entirely legitimate form of self-advancement should consist in their getting the best out of – if you'll forgive the pun – their assets.

-- Will Self for The Guardian

Women's Greater Erotic Capital

Here is a feminist thinker trying to bring back a little more realism into the quagire of feminist thought and political correctness. And bear in mind that Ms. Hakim is a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics; we are talking way above Naomi Wolf territory in the brains department.

_ _ _

In a typically razor-sharp exchange of dialogue which establishes – yet again – that The Simpsons provides the most coruscating illumination of contemporary mores, Lisa says to her grade school teacher that "Good looks don't really matter", to which Ms Hoover replies: "Nonsense, that's just something ugly people tell their children." Stripping away the layers of irony from this statement we can reveal the central premise of Catherine Hakim's book, which is that not only do looks matter, but that they should matter a great deal more. Furthermore, the people who tell young people – and in particular young women – that their beauty and sex appeal are of little importance are themselves ugly, if not physically then at least morally. For, as Hakim sees it, it is an "unholy alliance" of wannabe patriarchs, religious fundamentalists and radical feminists who have – in Anglo-Saxon countries especially – acted to devalue what she terms "erotic capital". In Hakim's estimation, for all young women, and in particular those who are without other benefits – financial, intellectual, situational – an entirely legitimate form of self-advancement should consist in their getting the best out of – if you'll forgive the pun – their assets.

-- Will Self for The Guardian