The Anchoress

Really - the carrying-on by the left and the press about Iraq and terrorism…it’s all pretty much answered in one sleek and compact column by Melanie Phillips, who is my new heroine, after Fallaci.

Read it, save it, send it around. Teach it to your children, write it on your arm.

Still feel you need a bit more information? Read Stephen Hayes, here and here.

It’s called reality. Sniff. Quaff. A heady brew.

Mark Goldblatt recounts an evening in Manhattan, where he dared to admit he supported President Bush, in a room full of poetry lovers.

It is not farce but tragedy, not only because of the comfortable acquiesence to group-think…but because the poetry is…so very, very bad.

Some of our favorite pictures of the kids are the Halloween pictures - my husband and I always got a lot of pleasure out of inventing their costumes. When Elder Brother was 2 1/2 he was into Alice in Wonderland and wanted to be “the guy who paints the roses red,” so he went out as the 2 1/2 of Hearts, with the body of a playing card, and a paintbrush. When Braveheart was big, Buster wanted to be William Wallace and we learned how to make a kilt and braid a cheap wig.

But deep down, I think these “Invisible Monk” costumes were our favorite creations. I don’t recall who declared they wanted to be “monks with no faces,” but I designed them (5 layers of black tulle renders one invisible, but you can still see out) and my husband stitched them up (he is ever so much more patient than I).

I couldn’t bear to put them in black on Halloween - red satin seemed like much more fun. And quite a few mothers complained that it was truly eerie to open a door to see no face in the hood.

For a time, after Halloween, Buster would put this costume on and stand on the front lawn, gazing at passing cars, just to see their reactions. Thankfully, no one got hurt.

Tired from covering many neighborhoods, the boys rested and I snapped this shot. Elder Brother’s shiner came, I believe, from dust-up with Buster over a video game. Buster, of course, is the little one.

Kids grow up too fast. Wish I’d had more.

Buster is 16, now, and showing all the discipline and thoughtfulness that had been hinted at in his personality since he was born. He is going to be a very fine, responsible man - one with a good sense of humor and fairness - when he is older.

But right now that discipline is being put into the service of correcting what he feels is a mistake of nature.

The problem, you see, is that Buster is cute. Really, really cute. He’s got great hair, nice eyes, a pug nose and the smile of a young Jack Nicholson - the smile is the killer. Nice high cheekbones, and boppy cheeks.

But it all adds up to “cute.” Sally Field cute. Paul McCartney cute. And Buster is not a young man who wants to be cute.

We were driving yesterday and he was bemoaning the fact that he now shaves at 8 AM and has a five o’ clock shadow at 3PM. “And, I’m working out for 90 minutes a day, I’m getting buff, but my face still looks chubby. I have a damn baby face!”

As we were at a red light, I took the opportunity to pinch his adorable cheek. “You don’t really have a baby face,” I consoled, “you’re just cute.”

“I don’t want to be ‘cute,’” he fumed, “I want to be brawny and chisled-looking.”

“Well, you are getting brawny and chisled-looking,” I said, “except in your face. Your face is cute.”

Buster is capable of laughing at himself, and he laughed now, but still, “I don’t want to be cute, dammit, I want to be feared. I want to be fearsome!”

“Believe me,” I said as the light turned green, “you are fearsomely cute.”

He is threatening to grow a full beard, like the Elder Brother. “That won’t work,” I told him. “Elder Brother is handsome, but he has a big face with lots of room for all that facial hair. You will look strange and terrifying with a full beard on your little face. It will be incongruous to see that much cuteness surrounded by whiskers.”

“Strange and terrifying…” he mused. “That’ll do, for now.”

Have I mentioned he wants to be President of the United States, someday?

Michelle Malkin links to a story wherein we read that Norman Mailer, a man who stabbed one of his wives, if you didn’t know, refers to NY Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani as an “Asiatic, feminist . . . two-fer . . . token.”

This reminds me of an incident in the newsrooms of Newsday, about a dozen years ago, when Jimmy Breslin had a temper tantrum and referred to a female student intern, who happened to be Asian-American, as “a slant-eyed, yellow cur!”

Breslin was permitted to apologize and remain on the Newsday staff, where he still vomits up a column once or twice a week and is afforded both a paycheck and some credibility. Mailer - did I mention that he stabbed one of his wives - will in all probability, be permitted to continue his career with only a mild bump, for his bigoted and woman-hating remarks.

Imagine for a moment what sort of hellfire and damnation would be raining down upon a Brit Hume or a William F. Buckley if they’d behaved like this. But…if you’re in the “kool kids klub” of the liberal establishment, you can say or do almost anything, with impunity.

As author Candice Jackson asserts in her new book, here.

UPDATE: In fairness to the NY Times, their editorial - which is favorable toward the new building design - is much more even-handed and less antagonistic than Ouroussoff’s piece, and it can be read here.

***

I can name a number of sniffing leftists who could have written Nicolai Ouroussoff ’s absurd critique of the newly designed Freedom Tower, but only the New York Times (presenting its talking points memo to the rest of the world via the International Herald Tribune) could have published it.

Sounding like he’s wandering through a class-C art gallery in Queens while holding a glass of the wrong white as far away from his wrinkled nose and pursed lips as he possibly can, Ouroussoff’s disdain for the structure is wrapped up in his politics and his pretensions.

“…the project is a monument to a society that has turned its back on any notion of cultural openness.”

Let me just say that most New Yorkers, outside of Ouroussoff’s elitist little enclave would, at precisely this point in his article, curl a lip and say “blow it out your ear, buddy.” They know, as I know, that Ouroussoff’s idea of “cultural openness” begins with the notion that anything American or Western is kitsch and ends with the idea that the nation simply cannot apologize enough to the world for being what it is: the only place Ouroussoff and his friends would ever really want to live, despite their huffing and shudders.

If my good grandmother were alive today she’d say this: “cultural openness, my ass, when was the last time you crossed paths with someone who made $35,000 a year and wasn’t there to fix or install something for your comfort?” Sigh. I miss Granny.

For better or worse, it will be seen by the world as a chilling expression of how the United States is reshaping its identity in a post Sept. 11 context.

Actually…for better or worse, only this man and his friends would find this building a “chilling expression of how the US is reshaping, etc”…MOST people will find it a chilling expression of how terrorism, allowed to flourish for several decades throughout the world, has stolen from us our right to a little wonder and a bit of awe as it demands the supersafe structure. Chelsea Clinton was not the only one to lose the last of her innocences on 9/11. The rest of us can’t look at a skyscraper or the contrail of a soaring airplane with the same sense of glee and enjoyment as we did a decade ago. In a world where people living on an autopilot of hate do not care who they kill or what they destroy, a skyscraper is less a marvel than a target, and a contrail is just a line in the sky.

In its earlier incarnation, for example, the tower’s eastern wall formed a narrow pedestrian alley that became a key entry to the memorial site, leading directly between the proposed Freedom Center complex and the Memorial’s north pool. The alleyway, which was flanked on its other side by the Frank Gehry-designed performing arts center, was fraught with tension; it is now a formless park littered with trees.

I have no idea if Ouroussoff is gay or not, and it is completely irrelevent to me if he is. Gay or straight, this man is SUCH a drama queen. I don’t know how he can breathe with all this clutching and gasping.

Okay, if you were waiting for it (I know I was) here it is: THE OBLIGATORY NAZI IMPLICATION:

But if this is a potentially fascinating work of architecture, it is, sadly, fascinating in the way that Albert Speer’s architectural nightmares were fascinating - as expressions of the values of a particular time and era. The Freedom Tower embodies, in its way, a world shaped by fear.

The Freedom Tower does not “embody…a world shaped by fear.” It embodies a world shaped by unfettered terrorism and responds to the fact that within that world are entirely too many people who weep for the terrorists and wring their hands over how daintily they are handled. Frankly, Mr. Ouroussoff, the Tower embodies the precautions necessary in the world today because of people like you.

And now, the obligatory reference to “empire.”

What the tower evokes, by comparison, are ancient obelisks, blown up to a preposterous scale and clad in heavy sheaths of reinforced glass - an ideal symbol for an empire enthralled with its own power, and unaware that it is fading.

Does Ouroussoff know what “empire” means? If he is suggesting that the US is or longs to be an Empire, he is simply a fool. If he believes that America is “fading,” he is more than a fool, he is so completely insulated from reality that one must pity him. America is fading in comparison to whom, Mr. Ouroussoff? Compared to France, which is being Islamicized at an alarming pace? Compared to Germany, which is economically stagnant? Compared to Italy which is setting up Muslim encampments outside of Rome and Florence as we speak? Compared to Russia which is dying?

I suppose if you spend your life shuttling between Soho and the Hamptons, thence to Martha’s Vineyard, thence to the great European cities, and never converse with anyone who thinks differently from you, you could convince yourself of anything, though.

Absurdly, if the Freedom Tower were reduced by a dozen or so stories and renamed, it would probably no longer be considered such a prime target.

Finally, something about which we can agree. Change the name of the thing.

It announces to terrorists: Don’t attack here - we’re ready for you. Go next door.

Or, you silly man, it says to terrorists, “STOP flying planes into buildings! Give it up, already and do something constructive.”

I might say the same to Mr. Ouroussoff and the rest of the endlessly hectoring, carping and complaining folks at the NY Times.

On a slightly different issue, but in the same vein, James Lileks has some thoughts on the art world and Ground Zero.

Quick! Someone draw a falling body in a tank of urine. Quick! Commission a large mural showing a chimp-footed George W. Bush having relations with a hook-nose forelocked camel who’s eating a Palestinian baby. Get one of those artists who do “installations” to feed Jell-O into a fan to simulate the rain of body parts. Float a Macy’s Parade-sized balloon of Michael Moore in the plaza. Anything. Please, just don’t make it another solemn monument to a grave day. Since many believe the government planned Sept. 11, perhaps the museum could blow itself up twice daily like Old Faithful.

You’ll want to read it all. His last paragraphs are very sobering.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse, typically thoughtful and insightful, feels I am very hard, perhaps too hard, on Nicolai Ouroussoff and the New York Times, and on re-reading it, I think she may be right. (I WAS cranky after being awoken with ear pain when I wrote it, but still, no excuses, this post was a bit too much.) She makes some very good points that I didn’t really want to be generous about - that yes, we do need people to keep up the fight for esthetic values, and that the changes to the tower did warrant comment. I’ll more than grant Ms. Althouse that. I think I am simply so fed up with the tone of snorting disdain coming from the direction of the NY Times, at this point, that I simply have lost any impulse to generosity. If I was hard, well, I think Mr. Ouroussoff was, too. Althouse concedes that some parts of his piece are grating. I’m tired of being grated.

Art in architecture is lovely - the twin towers were, in my opinion, ugly and never approached the loveliness of the Chrysler Building or even the Empire State Building - but by the same token, this new tower is being built in a new age, and - like it or not - architecture and art must be pinned down to realities when human lives are at risk. Anyway, I have edited the text to be a little less combative than it was at 4AM.

That said - upon reflection, I think I am politics-ed out for the day. For the week, maybe.

I don’t know what he’s got against kilts, but the man wants to walk in the Scottish mist and hold hands with his wife. I like.

This is a fair interview with President Bush. From the European press.

In person Mr Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that IT SHAKES ONES FAITH IN THE RELIABILITY OF THE MODERN MEDIA.

Doesn’t it, just, though?

Kinda like what my son Buster observed after watching the DVD 9 Innings from Ground Zero (see Bookshelf). The DVD gives you Bush unfiltered, and Buster turned to me and said, “we never get to see him just as he is, all we ever get is the caricature they want us to believe is him.”

Buster is a smartie.

H/T Polipundit.

UPDATE: Scott Burgess, who lives in London, has some more thoughts on this particular interview, and on the UK perceptions of Bush, in general.

The other night all we kept hearing from the Democrats was how “offended” they were that President Bush dared to imply that Iraq harbored terrorists before 9/11.

They bellyached about a lot more, but you know what I mean.

Lorie Byrd had a revelation upon reading this at Reliapundit

What is so mind boggling to me is that both 9/11 and al Qaeda WERE IN THE ORIGINAL RESOLUTION CONGRESS PASSED TO AUTHORIZE THE WAR. I quote:

Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations; …”

Read the entire post – this excerpt is only the beginning.

UPDATE: SoCalPundit has put up and enormous number of links to the Saddam-terror connections that the Democrats suddenly can’t see. You could spend a day reading them. H/T Hugh Hewitt.

It’s the old story - the Bush administration is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.

Had the troops at Ft. Bragg jumped to their feet in wild applause during President Bush’s speech on Tuesday night, the press would have been all over it - “a Karl Rove set up,” “a campaign speech by a lame-duck president,” “media manipulation.”

The troops did not jump up and cheer and carry on as they always do. So, the NY Times has a problem with THAT, too. The troops must HATE President Bush as much as they do! Gasp!

It’s really getting so tiresome. And predictable. When is the NY Times fee-for op-eds starting up? I’m hoping they’ll soon charge fees for all of their blather, so I never have to read any of it online again.

UPDATE: The good Captain is calling this the dumbest controversy, ever.

The first step in the long process begun with the cries of “Santo” at his funeral.

H/T Michael Dubruiel, who also points us to this rather unsettling piece by Fr. Benedict Groeschel. I think his suggestion at the end is a good one.