He's been drinking with Harold Pinter. Maybe they'll get in a fight over something stupid and both wind up in the tank.

What's interesting here is that the common cry of the left is that the army is made up mostly of poor minorities.

So now it's made up mostly of white males?

The man is an ass. I saw him speak in 1972. He argued against abortion or birth control on the basis that one would sacrifice the gift of the existential gamble that is life...or some such garbage. Just one of the many trails of rubbish he has left in his sorry career. I never could understand why a person is considered to have an opinion worth quoting on the basis of a talent for writing fiction. He (like Gore Vidal) is simply another silly, self-absorbed celebrity.

What is the idiot babbling about? He must be really old these days. Must be senile.

CT

Old Norman's indulging himself in a bit of projection.

Who is Norman Mailer?

Someone should introduce him to Thumper.

What's with his bizarre fixation on race? Plus he admits to being uninformed: "If the TV was a reliable witness." What the hell? Sad the British provide a stage for the irrelevant opinions of this buffoon.

Sad, sad exercise of dying intellect. It's a good thing I have old man Mailer to explain away my miserable existence, not!

What a wagon load of fertilizer!

White men needed something to look up to? I thought it was to distract non-whites from their problems, according to your fellow-travelling crowd?

The Roman Catholic Church is a "bastion of the erstwhile American faith"? And the US is "unwilling" to take it on? Norm, old fellow, the pedophilia scandal has also been a big problem in Australia, France, and other places: and the Church is in court even as you spout.

"Be it said that the Administration knew something a good many of us did not — it knew that we had a very good, perhaps even an extraordinarily good, if essentially untested, group of Armed Forces, a skilled, disciplined, well-motivated military, career-focused and run by a field-rank and general staff who were intelligent, articulate, and considerably less corrupt than any other power group in America."
Norm, if you did not know this you must not have read a newspaper or listened to a radio since 1922. And perhaps you have not noticed the skin tones of Powell, Rice, a number of generals...

"Our good people on high would rush to claim that our putative foe possessed a nuclear threat. Along the way, they presented President Saddam Hussein as the closet architect of 9/11."
Oh dear. The most that was said about 9/11/1 was that the Hussein regime aided and abetted while adding that the two could not stand each other up close. And that nukes might be under development, as they were in 91 and 98. And that chemical weapons might have disappeared from view but very little documentation of destruction was given. And...

"For better or worse, the women’s movement had had its breakthrough successes and the old, easy white male ego had withered in the glare."
Ah, I see, we did not want to see women in schools or wearing the clothing of their choice or being able to go to the rmarket without a male relative or drive cars... No, we were going to fight to STOP all of that!

"We white men were now left with ...the World-Wide Wrestling Federation — remnants and orts of a once-great and glorious centrality...." - a bit of a slip there? Bring back boxing? Bull-fighting? All for "WE" white men?

Norm, meet Noam. The two of you can go watch "Bowling for Columbine", you make a lovely couple.

My Dad said to me: "Son, as you walk back past the barn yard, you'll see a jackass there. When he brays at you ... don't answer him!"

Was Norman braying?

Do I keep coming in and out of an alternative reality?

Crackpots like Mailer depend on your not being able to remember past his last exacrable screed. Mailer rep was built on, let me see, could it be? Yeah, that's the ticket! A tome about the glories of ...WAR! (Oh, and something else about a firing squad in Utah) The good ol' war, where Blacks were janitors rather than officers. Maybe, just maybe, Bob Crawford is right. Norman is talking about his own silly desires. After all, he is white, isn't he?

Ask Norman about Jack Abbott. Back in 70's (or early 80's) Norm applied his deep insight to an imprisoned violent criminal who had done some writing in the jailhouse. Norm liked the writing. Norm mounted hue/cry media campaign to have Abbott sprung, under Norm acting as probation officer, so Norm could make Jack write and publish, and teach middle America doofus-culture the truth about political prisons in USA. Jack is free a few weeks when a waiter, a young kid 25 I think, made him mad at the restaurant where Jack was dining. Jack follows kid to back area, stabs him in stomach, kid dies. Jack goes back to prison. Norm apologizes to world. Kid's family stays permanently ruined. Kid stays permanently dead. Jack is forgotten. Norm "moves on" to other projects. End of story, alas.

P.S. Norm's "apology" took the form of literary essay, which Norm sold on the market. Whole affair good career move for Norm, made him more real, gave him that street cred he craves. Dead kid died for Norm's greater glory, but, no problem, just some kid, probably didn't even speak French, besides, no Leftist Intellectual worth his salt worries about details, their ideas are always getting people killed, so what, there's plenty of proletariates around, whats a few dead or alive in the big picture, big deal.

Thanks for noting this article, it is a lovely essay, it made me laugh a lot. Nobody takes Norman Mailer seriously as a commentator. He is good at what he does. He writes fiction. He makes up stuff to create an alternate reality with enough truth in it to catch you.

Ignore it if you want, but what sticks with me is the question why did we go to war. I really don't know the answer. I'm glad we did.

I remember that polls showed that like 75% of Americans believed Saddan was involved in 9/11. Also 75% believed Saddam was close to having nucleur weapons. Without ever actually lying, Bush encouraged us to believe these things, which the administration knew to be untrue.

A 4/25 ABC news article says the administration purposefully misled the American people. I guess misled our Coalition allies as well. The real reason for the war was less specific. To quote the article:

" The Bush administration felt that a new start was needed in the Middle East and that Iraq was the place to show that it is democracy — not terrorism — that offers hope." That is a good enough reason for me. It makes sense too.

Marc, I have to ask you--and I've read lots of your comments, you are good, for sure--but, are you under any sort medical treatment for bipolar disorder?

Yeah Norman...but we run the boardrooms and the great companies of the world....the others just play for our enhoyment! ---CAESER (Italian white man)

If the shoe fits. . .what's the matter too close to the bone for y'all. . . This is good writing and good sarcasm. All you conservs and neo-conservs don't seem to have any problem when the mighty Rush is being sarcastic. . .Here he comes to save the day. . . Oh you Dudley Do Rights. . .stew in it.

Sorry Phil, You need better material than that to "bait the bear". Better luck next time.

whitecollar redneck is right, Phil assumes we actually read the Mailer piece...which I for one didn't, as I knew what it was going to say even before the author did. No trick to it, read a few leftist statements, one on "evil America" and one on "How Stupid Conservatives Are", and presto, you know everything they have to say. After that, you never need to exert much effort beyond a quick scan, if you're interested in seeing how the latest news has been fixed-to-fit.

Norman's irrelavance is the true issue here. This article was more of "Look at me! Over here! Hey where did everyone go?" He is no longer controversial or provocative. Merely old, sad, and disconnected.

Buddy I assume you mean I am hard to label. I hope I am. 9/11 was something new, and many have changed to integrate it into their world view. In fact I am not interested in anybody who spouts their old ideas and adds 9/11 I told you so. Many Dems and Repubs changed dramatically. Remember how isolationist Bush was? Only one anti-war Dem candidate, amazing!

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (Click here should you choose to sign out.)

As you post your comment, please mind our simple comment policy: we welcome all perspectives, but require that comments be both civil and respectful. We also ask that you avoid the extensive use of profanity, racist terms (neither of which we consider civil or respectful), and other boorish language.

We reserve the right to delete any comment, and to prohibit you from commenting on this site, if we feel you have broached this policy. As a courtesy, we will first send you an email noting a violation so you understand the boundaries. This will occur only once, however, and should we ban you from our comment forums we expect that ban to be permanent.

We also will frown upon those who suggest that we ban other individuals for voicing unpopular opinions, should those opinions be voiced in a civil and respectful manner. The point of our comment threads is to provide a forum for spirited though civil and respectful discourse … it is not to provide a forum in which everyone will agree with your point of view.

If you can live by these rules, welcome aboard. If not, then we’re sorry it didn’t work out, and thanks for visiting The Command Post.

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: