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- Excerpted from Mary Riddell’s column in The Observer Sunday, 9/23/2001
- Madeleine Bunting writes (read her entire article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,557001,00.html):
- And, as expected, there were women who reacted as the terrorists intended, according to Maureen Doud in “From Botox to Botulism." http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/columns/index.html
- Excerpts from Jimmy Breslin on the Bush Speech, September 23, 2001. Read the entire piece at: http://www.truthout.com/0629.Breslin.Bush.htm
TESTOSTERONE UBER ALLES
We are beginning to see women making a comeback on the national media now that a few weeks have passed since the terrorist attacks. For awhile there, the networks, raging with talks of war and revenge, showed us mostly the face and language of men, devoid of the female face and pronoun. Of course. What do women know of war? “It’s a guy thing.”
The Observer 's polling confirms women as the skeptics of a war devised, controlled and reported by men. Only two in 10 of us would support massive air strikes, and almost half don't endorse surgical ones. A mere 8 per cent have full confidence in Bush, and 83 per cent are against giving him unconditional support…
We watched as the gauntlets were thrown down from both sides. We marveled at how thought and logic were tossed aside as easily as ping-pong balls. We saw and heard the thumping of manly chests mingled with their excited cries of “WAR.” Machines of war were described with near holy adoration as statistics of their killing abilities were joyously enumerated.
Men all over the world raised their collective fists; strutted and stomped to mark their supremacy. Our leaders (all male) vowed that we were at war with any country and people who did not allow them to invade their lands looking for those they decided were terrorists. (National Security Advisor, Condi Rice was not allowed at the initial war planning meetings. Days later, she was allowed to give carefully scripted administrative positions to the press. “War planning is guy stuff.”)
“Now women, unwittingly, find themselves one of the causes of the conflict. Yet, we are not its chief protagonists -- decisions are being made for and about us.”
This
“war is just a sport and we’ll kick butt” attitude was not held by all
men. There were many, especially veterans, that reacted like most women
did, with their brains instead of their hormones. These people were not
swayed by the government’s rhetorical rush headlong into war. They knew
what war really means.
Once people got beyond the media hype that insisted Dubya had joined the exalted rank of public speakers like Lincoln, Kennedy and Churchill, messages from cooler heads came through.
I was going along with George Bush the Younger's speech the other night, marveling at his sudden command of the moment, even while knowing that somebody had written the speech for him. Then he did something that caused my memory to jump. That was the moment when he held out the badge of George Howard, a Port Authority cop from Hicksville who died in the catastrophe. The cop's mother, Arlene, had given Bush the badge. Bush said, "Some will carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever. And I will carry this... It is my reminder of lives that ended and a task that does not end." He held Howard's badge up in the palm of his hand.And I was back on a cool October day in 1988 in Christ the King High School on Metropolitan Avenue in Middle Village and George Bush the Elder was on the stage holding up officer Edward Byrne's badge. Byrne had been killed in Jamaica. Byrne's father had given Bush the son's badge. Bush was running for president against Michael Dukakis. "Dukakis wouldn't understand the grief of a dead cop's mother," he said. "This helps define the man I'm running against. He doesn't understand police. I do."
…I detested the cheap move when Bush the Elder made it first at Christ the King, and I detested it the other night when Bush the Younger departed from his valid attempt at loftiness in time of high danger and reverted to the cheap know-nothing who had brayed that he wanted this bin Laden dead or alive. Just in the hours before the speech, he was talking someplace in Washington and he stumbled and mispronounced and mangled his own tongue. Lord, this is the dumbest we've ever had, you thought. Then at night, with a speech written for him and rehearsed for long hours and that he read from a prompter, he was comforting and nearly inspiring. Still, the speech was more about money than dead Americans. At times, it sounded as if the nation had its wallet stolen instead of being bombed. Efforts to be compared to Winston Churchill were like a series of insults. It was as if Churchill had told the world that Britain would fight on the trading floors and bank vaults and portfolios. Copyright © 2001, Newsday
It is imperative that all thinking women and men listen carefully to the way the Cheney/Bush administration is setting the stage for the elections coming up in ’02 and ’04. Already, Dubya is carefully framing the POSITIVE Congressional response to the present emergency to make it appear that when they object to his proposals they are being unAmerican. Already he is indoctrinating the American electorate to see OPPOSITION to his proposals as hindering the war effort.
He is making many speeches that are being televised nationally. First he praises the congressional leaders both Democratic and Republican for their support. Then he characterizes that support as being what loyal Americans always do, that is, put their country ahead of politics. It may be clever politics but it is also very dirty pool to make a national emergency serve a political advantage.
