Ringing In (My Ears) The New Year: Miners And Letterman

It is the first post of 2006 here at Contratimes, and I am just oozing with contrition. Forgive my absence. It is rude of me to invite you here and not have something to offer.

In the What Was That? category, I am inclined to wonder, through my own personal sorrow, about the entire West Virginia mining tragedy. I have kept my distance, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, from that event, rejecting any suggestion that I am obligated to respond to everything the media offers up; knowing, as I do quite well, that, if I was so obligated, I would instantly be rendered useless. For each news photo, each headline, requires a different intellectual and emotional response. To abuse oneself emotionally by submitting to a barrage of news images of any kind, like some sociopath in "A Clockwork Orange," is to abuse what should be hallowed: the individual's personal control over his or her own thoughts and feelings. So, for me to watch too closely the televised sorrow of inconsolable mining families is perhaps an exercise in voyeurism and masochism, for I can do nothing to help them.

But I must ask: How is it that anyone awaiting news of the fate of a group of loved ones would ring church bells, raise hands in the streets, and praise Jesus on high when learning that 12 of 13 miners survived? What about grief, and some restraint, over the one miner that was ostensibly lost? What about some circumspection, some reserve, some silent sorrow? Hailing God for miracles is fine, but not when God is only miraculous 12 of 13 times. Perhaps one's own loved one is the deceased victim; perhaps the person with whom you are jumping up and down is the one who has lost someone dear to them.

Forgive me for what must sound cold-hearted. It is not. I realize the stress of waiting; the burden of waning hope. I am intimate friends with dread and the fulfillment of rumors of bad news. So I chalk up the premature celebration as so much disorientation, a confusion brought on by stress, sleeplessness, hunger, cold, fear, and the omnipresent and insatiable lust for drama the very presence of the media incites. Cameras scream for drama, for melodrama, for illusion and theater and make-believe. Those of us seasoned in the news business know one adage well: the camera always lies.

*****

You've heard about it, I am sure. It has been played on Good Morning, America. It has been printed in the daily papers: Bill O'Reilly was trashed by David Letterman.

Permit me to reduce Mr. Letterman's comments to the most essential points: He described O'Reilly's pontifications as "60-percent crap." He dismissed O'Reilly as incapable, on moral grounds, of criticizing war-critic Cindy Sheehan because he, O'Reilly, had never lost a loved one on the battlefield. And he asked, rhetorically, why America was involved in Iraq at all.

Of course, Mr. O'Reilly never really stood a chance. Letterman was an ingracious host, interrupting O'Reilly at every turn (O'Reilly can do that on his own show, which is, after all, a debate-driven program).

But here is the problem (remember, I am no O'Reilly fan). To suggest that Mr. O'Reilly cannot criticize a vocal critic of the war merely because he himself has not suffered loss is fallacious. I've never lost a family member in an airplane crash. Does that fact disqualify me from criticizing those grieving parents who believe subsequently that no one should be permitted to fly? I've never lost a limb climbing moving trains. Should I not criticize the amputee encouraging my daughter to join him in adventure-sport's newest trend because I still have two legs and two arms? I've never killed anyone. Does that disqualify me from censuring those who have? You get the picture. David Letterman, and this is perhaps too kind, has offered an argument a child might construct. It is the "who are you?" argument. It is fatuous and forgettable. And yet the audience applauds!

And if Mr. Letterman truly does not understand why Iraq is central to the War on Terror, I must repeat the fact once again: Iraq is central because Osama bin Laden made it central in his fatwa against the US. If any reader refuses to embrace this fact as absolute, if any reader chooses to ignore Mr. bin Laden's fatwa of 1998 (see this essay, or this), that reader chooses to be a child. The only legitimate point of debate is not whether Iraq is central, but whether war was the proper response to that centrality. That is a point worth debating. But anyone who believes Iraq is an irrelevant distraction has chosen intellectual infantilism.

Lastly, by his own admission, Letterman does not watch "The O'Reilly Factor." And yet he receives plaudits from his audience and media colleagues for criticizing a man's performances he has never seen. Intellectual hypocrisy? Who cares. Junior-high school opining? Loud cheers!!

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.