Welcome to Hugowood

Of course, the big Newsweek news this week is Sarah Palin's cover photo, apparently filched from Runner's World magazine without their permission. You can see it here - quite unsurprisingly it's stirred up cries of sexism, and not just from the (suddenly sensitive) right. Frankly, I'm as scornful of the pathetic ex-governor as the next sensible person, but I don't think Newsweek's cover is doing the anti-Palin cause any favors. Actually, I see it as part and parcel of Newsweek's increasing tendency to take too strident, crusading, and misguided a tone with its journalism: see also "The Case for Killing Granny," Newsweek's boneheaded cover from several months ago which attempted to discredit the "death panel" crowd by, um, making their case for them (?!). Sold a lot of magazines I'm sure, but I highly doubt it won many fence-sitters to the side of Obamacare (and should that even have been Newsweek's mission in the first place?). Editor Jon Meachum's introductions to each issue also seem to take a frequently holier-than-thou tone, and this is by my count the second Palin cover issue to rather hysterically warn the country against her. If you wanted to turn her fans and quasi-fans even further against the mainstream media and the "liberal elite" (and throw in a few previously sympathetic feminists to boot) you couldn't do a better job if you were a GOP operative.

Well, that's more than enough on that - I only mention it because I went to the site for another link and wound up with a lot of articles on Palin and Newsweek's homemade controversy. The article I was digging for is actually a small piece in an issue from a few weeks ago, which I just read tonight. It's called "Lights! Camera! Revolución!" and it details, with a snide tone, Hugo Chávez's attempts to create a Bolivarian Hollywood, replete with propagandistic entertainments, empty studios, and censorial government boards.

Look, I'm not one who will eagerly step up to Chávez's defense. Despite his egalitarian promises, he seems to be a colossal boor with strong authoritarian tendencies, one too scatterbrained and egotistical to lead his country to the promised land which he himself has promised them. In addition, he's alleged to have decimated Venezuala's cultural scene in a philistinic quest to stamp out "elitism" in the arts.

But - and this is a huge but - he is not a "totalitarian"; not even close. He remains hugely popular and has won several elections. Say what you will about him, note his repression of the press and opposition, and affinity for Castro and Ahmadinejad, but implying he's a dictator is stepping way out of line. Yet this is what Mac Margolis does repeatedly in the Newsweek piece, casually comparing Chávez's homegrown film industry to that of Stalin, Franco, and in the author's words "other 20th-century autocrats he emulates."

This kind of careless language is no light matter given the U.S.'s history in the region. Think the toppling of Guatemalan democracy in the 50s (at the behest of United Fruit), the CIA-fueled bloody coup and violent reign of Pinochet in Chile in the 70s, the illegally-funded war against the Sandinistas (who also won an internationally-monitored election) and the devastating support for a government which facilitated nun-raping, priest-assassinating death squads in El Salvador in the 80s. With that kind of history (to name just a few examples) government and media labelling of an admittedly flawed ruler as dictatorial and now even "totalitarian" are to be regarded with extreme suspicion. How interesting that Newsweek, and the rest of the media, lets loose a lot of excessive liberal yapping on a cultural issue like Sarah Palin's presidential ambitions (despite the fact that even conservatives think - and probably hope - she hasn't a chance) yet they unquestioningly go along with the neoconservative line that Chávez is a "dictator" in the same category as other anti-American despots like Castro, Mussolini, and even Hitler, despite the verifiable fact that he is not.

(This is not the first time I've found a Newsweek article so wrongheaded I had to air my objections. Last winter I criticized Newsweek for another article - this one a tone-deaf, yet highly indicative, piece of cultural criticism looking back on art in the Bush years. Here is my response.)

This post was originally published on The Sun's Not Yellow.

The Muslim Matter (Fort Hood & Maj. Hasan's Religion)

Adam Reilly has an excellent editorial in the most recent Boston Phoenix in which he pretty much manages to articulate everything I've been thinking about the massacre at Fort Hood and the media's reaction. You can read it here.

While Hasan's religion certainly seems to have played a role in the shooting, and it would be foolish for commentators to avoid or deny this (which some have been doing), there's something quite offputting about the way Fox News and other conservative media outlets have been covering the story. Reilly puts his finger on it is this astute piece:

For much of the conservative commentariat, the answer was obvious from the outset: anyone seeking to explain the atrocity Hasan perpetrated, they claimed, can start and end with his faith. Here in Boston, for example, WTKK-FM's Michael Graham teased his afternoon radio talk show by saying of Hasan's motive: "Let's face it: you and I both know the answer." At [Michelle Malkin's website], meanwhile, the author herself situated Hasan in a broader category she'd created six years ago — "Muslim soldiers with attitude"— and reiterated her own previous contention that the Muslim members of the US armed forces constitute a menacing fifth column. (In Malkin's incendiary words: "The Islamist infiltration of our troops is scandalous. Not one more American, soldier or civilian, must be sacrificed at the altar of multiculturalism, diversity, open borders, and tolerance of the murderous 'attitude' of Jihad.")

And then there was Shepard Smith, every liberal's default choice as favorite Fox News personality, who followed a similar line of thinking when he described Hasan's name — without actually saying it — during an interview with US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas on Thursday:

SMITH Senator Hutchison, other news organizations are identifying the shooter. . . . Have you been given a name, and what do you know about this suspect? How much are you able to tell us?
HUTCHINSON I have been given a name, but I would not want to confirm that, because I don't know if this person's family has been identified. . . .
SMITH We've been given a name, as well, and quite frankly, I'm not comfortable going with it till it's given to me by the United States military. . . . But the name tells us a lot, does it not, senator?
HUTCHINSON It does. It does, Shepard. And that's why it's a very sad situation.

He goes on to take some on the left to task for pooh-poohing Hasan's religious beliefs and floating the questionable argument that Hasan's actions were a symptom of PTSD. I think I'm even less comfortable than Reilly with the notion that we can blame PTSD - and by extension the military's justifiably criticized approach to the disorder - for Hasan's behavior. Yes, he counseled many returning vets with no doubt harrowing war stories. But does that constitute "trauma"? Hasan had never served in a war zone; true, he was set to deploy overseas (in a non-combat role) in the near future, but PTSD stands for "post-traumatic stress disorder" not "pre-traumatic stress disorder."

I don't want to dismiss this idea altogether; it is my understanding that there can be secondhand symptoms experienced by someone dealing with a PTSD victim and coming into a similar situation. Yet this type of indirect disorder would have had to play such a minor role in Hasan's overall motivation that to "blame PTSD" seems to trivialize the very real suffering of PTSD victims who have experienced combat and still manage not to murder. Furthermore, Hasan's action appears to have been entirely premeditated - which hardly seems a sign of the kind of blind, furious rage which would characterize the action of a PTSD victim (to my understanding; anyone who knows better please correct me if I'm wrong).

I also can't entirely concur with Reilly's ultimate conclusions. On the one hand, he suggests that the Army do more to deal with religious tensions in the ranks (apparently Hasan felt a conflict between his faith and his duty; and allegations of harassment have surfaced as well). While I agree, I'm not sure this would do much to prevent a future Hasan-like shooting, and the theory that it would seems to give too much credence to the idea that Hasan was in some way indicative of Muslim soldiers, or even Muslim soldiers with conflicts of conscience. (Notions that Reilly elsewhere and thoroughly debunks.)

Finally, I'm not sure that much of anything can result from this incident. Ultimately, religious questions and exposure to PTSD victims aside, Hasan's actions were those of an isolated and dysfunctional individual. The only aspect which may be worth exploring further is his relationship to the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who praised Hasan in the wake of the killing. Even that will probably turn out to be more a case of "like minds" than anything else.

Of course, none of this is going away, as Hasan - it's easy to forget (I have numerous times) - is still alive and will be facing many questions soon enough. Perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion on some of these tangential questions, but in the spirit of inquiry without various agendas getting in the way, most perniciously of those who flirt with (or fully embrace) bigotry and seek to paint Muslim soldiers with a broad brush.

This post was originally published on The Sun's Not Yellow.