The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    The conservative way with death

    By Flavius on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 8:23am |

    Do you remember the 1984 movie The Verdict: Paul Newman, James Mason, Charlotte Rampling? Opens with Newman a down-at-the-heels Boston attorney, attending a wake in a funeral home, probably in Southie. He leans over to say a consoling word to the grieving widow. And presses his business card into her hand. In case she wants to sue someone. He's angrily ejected for this tasteless intrusion.

    The mourners are unpretentious, lower class, but they know how you behave after a  death. There are some things that aren't done. Some activities that are OK at other times are briefly suspended.

    Now do you also remember the spring of 1993. The Wall Street Journal published almost daily stories making allegations  about a White House aide, Vince Forster. His diary reveals that he found this intolerable. He shot himself.

    This gave rise to a whole new line of talk- radio attack on Hillary, but that's another story. The one that caught my attention was that of the Journal. There was an obvious course for it to follow:  a brief editorial saying they were sad to learn of Forster's death and  wished to offer condolences to his family.

    They didn't.

    Instead they editorialized saying that they didn't regret their coverage. I'm not sure what they wrote subsequently, since that was the last edition of the Journal I ever read.

    The world wasn't created yesterday. There are certain ways of behaving that we've learned are appropriate.  For everyone: powerful newspapers, bloggers, presidential candidates. You violate them at your risk. The risk of showing that you just don't get it.  

    Candidate Romney's reaction to the Middle East riots was probably excusable. He spoke before we had learned of Ambassador Stephen's death. But the subsequent attempts by (some) Republicans to immediately turn even that into the basis for an attack on Obama (see Norm Coleman last night on the News Hour) were indefensible.

    Comments

    The man responsible for the film that sparked the violence feels no remorse. He has lied about his true identity and may have lied to the film's cast about the intent of the film. The film creator is a man without a soul, just like Mitt Romney.


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 8:55am

    Republican Senator John Kyl criticized the tweet sent out 6 hours before the attack (attempting to prevent violence), as the equivalent of a woman apologizing for a rape. Kyl is another man without a soul.

    The Wall Street Journal editorial page, in typical fashion, backs Romney's critique. (linked via TPM because WSJ is behind a firewall).


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 9:10am

    [Note: my comment has nothing to do with Romney, who just tried to make some ignorant partisan comments to try to soak advantage out of a bad situation]

    As this seems a followup to our discussion, I'll bite.

    Was it wrong to question or attack Bush in the wake of 9/11? Did that in any way demean the dead?

    Can you question the policy or even the chief executive without offending the victims?

    Can you question the policy without it being a visceral attack on the President?

    Since the White House started preparing for a "retaliation" strike on Saddam Hussein that same day, how long would it be proper to remain silent?

    Isn't it normal that we question policies when a crisis hits? If there's no crisis, we just go on as before. And sadly, often a "crisis" means someone died. So if not then, when?

    Michael Moore wrote a book after Colombine - wasn't that an appropriate way to respond to a tragic incident involving the spread of guns? Wasn't it reassuring to do something to try to prevent a similar tragedy ever happening again? If you don't use people's outrage (appropriately) in time of sadness and suffering, when can you get them engaged enough to act? Not after Virginia Tech, not after Aurora...


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 10:00am

    Another question:

    If you get outraged before you even know the facts of something that happened, aren't you acting just like crowds rioting over the lastest supposed smear of Islam? Or the folks that started talking about militant Islamic suspects the day after the Oklahoma city bombing?

    I didn't know that Michael Moore published a book on Columbine the day after it happened, what an amazing feat.

    The point: right now, I myself would be strongly criticizing a president who jumped to conclusions about who the perps and friendlies were in the Libya case.

    You are convoluting the criticism of your last blog jumping to conclusions with other criticisms you've had in the past of Obama administration policy; they are not one and the same. You are fighting a straw man by doing that. Some of us may be quite willing to criticize what the Obama administration does in this situation once we have a better idea about what actually happened there. In the meantime, it's more like this: thank god Mitt and or PeraclesPlease, and their knee-jerk judgments and reactions, aren't handling the situation.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 11:08am

    How is it you can come away with meaning from a 9-page fluff piece, but can't read a 5-paragraph diary without getting it all twisted?

    1) The Muslim world got its panties in a wad over a weird privately funded offensive movie and started protesting US embassies. We know that. It's fact. There are videos. It's not unusual. They've done it time and again, such as Danish cartoons that an Imam used to incite.

    2) The particular incident happened in Benghazi, home to the recently lauded world-famous freedom fighters. Ignoring the deaths, the aggrieved protests of the masses show they still don't grok "free speech". So it's ironic. Same with Egypt - free speech to overthrow Mubarak, but not to make a stupid offensive film.

    3) Except #2 isn't 100% complete - there are certainly Egyptians and Libyans rolling their eyes at these events. Secular Libyans and women did well in June elections. But we still need to acknowledge there's a conflict between those in the Arab Spring with more modern and those with more traditional views. We know some are batshit crazy, like the Benghazis who kidnapped Bulgarian nurses, and the well-armed insurgents still roaming the desert.

    4) Which isn't a criticism of Obama, whatever muddled thoughts you carry in your head. My criticism back then was not about his actions - I'm agnostic. It's about tying our actions to a Mideast policy (such as "will we overthrow Syria the same way, and why?"). If it promotes democracy and we can codify it so it doesn't just encourage China to overthrow democracies under the same pretense, great. If it just leads to revolutions where oil, but apathy where not, I'm not interested.

    5) So there was no criticism of Obama here, to reiterate. Embassies release calming messages to avert crisis. I don't even care if they fudge the truth. I don't care if the White House contradicts State contradicts BBC. Whatever - cool the irrational heads, and get back to work in parliament and the courts, not freaking in the streets.

    6) Oh yes, there was criticism on the suicide at Gitmo on Monday - it is a little hypocritical to be hyperventilating about the madness of their crowds when we've got some madness in our judicial system. If the 2 incidents hadn't happened on sequential days, I probably wouldn't have brought it up. But still doesn't say Obama did anything wrong in Libya. And it sounds like Stevens was doing a great job in Libya.

    7) And then there was the Libyan blaming the US, Qaddafi supporters, etc. but not their lack of preparedness in defending the consulate during a flashpoint. If there hadn't been hundreds of Libyans killed by these insurgent groups in previous months, I might give him a pass - but in this case, he shares responsibility for being unprepared for what's commonplace.

    So, where's my "knee-jerk judgments and reactions"? Something I'm going to regret tomorrow?


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 11:34am

    To your first point, given the weaponry used and the date of the attack, it is not clear that this was a spontaneous attack by a random group of locals.


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 12:25pm

    It was a fairly spontaneous protest at the consulate, much like other protests at embassies around the region.

    Whether the protest was hijacked/infiltrated by Qaddafi supporters, Al Qaeda or other insurgents doesn't change the authentic outrage among citizens.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 1:21pm

    How the protest started may change impressions a lot. If people went out to do a loud, but just vocal protest, that is free speech. If people using free speech were hijacked by an organized group who turned out to be armed, things change markedly. The people who may have been used were duped.

    We need more facts.


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 1:29pm

    The Libyans are suggesting this was a well planned two-prong atttack.


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 3:09pm

    People are always duped. What do you call going out to protest an anonymous low-budget insulting movie no one's seen made in a far away land? Sanity?


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 3:34pm


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 3:36pm

    Here in the US people protested "The Last Temptation of Christ" even if it wasn't playing in their city. People in the US held events for Russia's "Pussy Riot". The trigger for protest  does not have to be local.


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 4:03pm

    You've written:

    It was a fairly spontaneous protest at the consulate, much like other protests at embassies around the region.

    You don't know that, you have no way of knowing this, you continue to insist you have all the facts. You don't.


    by tmccarthy0 on Fri, 09/14/2012 - 8:52am

    I know enough. It's easy to draw a crowd of Muslims to a US embassy to express outrage. It's happened time and again worldwide. 

    Are they manipulated? Sure. Are you manipulated? Sure. Doesn't change my analysis.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 09/14/2012 - 10:07am

    Speaking of conservative way with death, this bit with Monica Crowley on Fox has to be seen to be believed - condemning Obama for "overthrowing key US ally Moammar Qaddafi".

    While Qaddafi was sometimes an ally of convenience, this is crazy. And of course these conservative crazies want to conflate a few embassy protests with a threat to US existence.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 09/13/2012 - 11:07am

    Probably yours is the last comment so as the originator of this post I'll come in again and write something.

    A mark of being civilized is to respect death . And to do that by temporarily acting differently from  normal.  Not taking advantage of the grieving widow;  temporarily suspending judgement on the deceased : nil nisi  bonum.

    For how long? Dunno. For a while . Justice Powell said he couldn't define pornography but he knew it when he saw it. Same with death. The funeral's meats shouldn't coldly furnish forth the wedding breakfast.

    Why? Because it's what's been done for a long time.

     

     


    by Flavius on Fri, 09/14/2012 - 5:21am

    It's peculiar, because I don't think I said anything negative about the deceased - quite the opposite. And often as part of mourning we try to make sense of the death, either to understand and place our feelings for those who've died, or draw lessons so they won't have died in vain. 

    Ambassador Stevens spent years trying to do something positive with Libya and lost his life doing so - in some ways he succeeded, but it's fragile. Isn't that worth discussing?


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 09/14/2012 - 5:30am

    I agree you didn't write anything disrespectful about Stevens.


    by Flavius on Fri, 09/14/2012 - 10:21am