"...(T)hey're (President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld) getting out there and they're beating this drum, to drown out, as they did in 2002, to drown out other -- in that case it was Enron. Now we have another situation, so it's this war on terror, boom, boom, boom. Drown out the reality of what's really happening." -- Sean Penn, on Larry King Live September 14, 2006
"Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America." -- Rosie O'Donnell, on The View September 12, 2006
"The NBC television network is still making up its mind about whether it will allow pop star Madonna to stage a mock crucifixion on its airwaves as part of her upcoming prime-time concert special." -- Reuters News Service September 19, 2006
The Bruce Springsteen song to which this blog's title and my last posted referred continues to be the soundtrack of my life to and from work, in spite of Blair's heartfelt recommendation I upgrade to Classic Soul Ballads by Time Life. I have decided the lyrics about the bomb preparation and suicide/homicide bombing in a "crowded marketplace" are dishonest by omission. Granted, it would have been difficult to include "nails and ball bearings" in the line about what gets put into the backpack, in part because that would be too many words and in part because it makes the scene less sympathetic. Nevertheless, nails and ball bearings are symbols of terror's devotion to maximizing suffering and pain and death, so leaving them out omits a critical element of the event.
Hezbollah’s “spiritual” head, Hassan Nasrallah gave voice to the terrorists' rationale for such actions when he said: “The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death.” In Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, those who "love death" hide among civilians because they know those who "love life" get more outraged over innocent civilian deaths than the fact that terrorists are fighting from behind civilians in the first place. They are right, which worries me, because they might be right about winning this war, too.
Yet I can't get too upset about musicians', actors' and authors' disdain for the War on Terror. They are, after all, artists, and their "calling" is to point to that which is beautiful and transcendant through their words, their music and their acting. War is a horror which only a madman would seek or desire, so it is an easy target for those devoted to beauty. [How mocking the crucifixion is either beautiful or transcendant I cannot fathom, but imagine the bloodshed and violence that will erupt throughout the United States once Rosie's imagined "radical Christians" take to the streets.]
And yet we cannot hide from the fact that we live in a time of war that was, as our President has said, "begun on the timing and terms of others". By "others" he meant madmen who hate life, I say, uneasily...
