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CounterPunch
February
6, 2003
Peggy Noonan, Space Case
Boom Bye-Bye:
the Manufacture of Tragedy
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
Peggy Noonan loves nothing so much as an official
tragedy to contextualize , and this weekend's shuttle disaster
-- never mind what you may have read at WashingtonPost.com about
the shuttle landing safely, those internet sites are not reliable
-- gave her ample opportunity.
In "The
Days of Miracle and Wonder", Noonan appropriates Paul
Simon lyrics to discuss yet another "searing reminder of
American heroism." Ironic, is it not, that heroism as defined
by the Columbia incident and 9/11 means that you end up dead?
Never mind that the Israeli wasn't explicitly American; US taxpayers
paid so much of his salary throughout his career that we have
at least a proprietary interest in the Colonel.
Enough of all that, for now, anyway.
Because Noonan has what amounts to tenure in the corporate press,
she can write a fragmentary reverie about Saturday's events and
have it pass as the official version of acceptable grief. Noonan
described Bush's "blunt words" as "explicitly
God based", because his speechwriter stuck in some quote
from the Book of Isaiah to impart gravitas. Mr. Bush's "thoughtstream",
to hear the former Reagan speechwriter tell it, leads "straight
to the spiritual"
Yep, Peggy, he's Jesus with a security
clearance. Wasn't Bush the governor of Texas who mistook executions
for sitcoms? The puppet gets up and reads some canned mush about
why "mankind is led into the darkness", and we're supposed
to squint until we see an actual statesman behind the microphone?
Peggy, please.
Noonan's piece isn't simply a well-rehearsed
gushing about Bush's innate spirituality, however. She intends
-- or WSJ intends for her to -- provide a definitive reaction
to what essentially is a media tragedy. The Columbia may have
exploded, but NASA didn't undercut newscasts with mawkish strings.
That was Fox News. The US puts a military full-court press on
the rest of the world, with all the death and destruction that
implies, and rather than address the issues of expansion and
empire honestly, we're supposed to be transfixed by manufactured
tragedy.
Noonan alludes to the idea of tragedy
being served up when she discusses the 1986 Challenger disaster.
She describes "schoolchildren across the country were watching
the Challenger go up, they were watching on TV sets and in auditoriums,
because Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, was on
the flight. The children saw it all. It was supposed to be part
of American schoolchildren learning about space, that's why the
schools were showing it live. It was a learning tool. . . and
the children learned more than anyone would have expected."
About bravery, about the "everyday courage of astronauts.
. . all the Americans doing big and dangerous things in the world--members
of the armed forces, cops and firemen, doctors in public hospitals
in hard places."
The children indeed learned more than
they expected that day in 1986, Peggy. I was in eighth grade
just then, and remember all the Challenger jokes being told by
all of us who weren't deaf-mutes. You might remember them as
well; if not, I'm sure they're on the Internet. There was an
impromptu assembly a week after the disaster about the "inappropriateness"
of such jokes; though it was allowed that they were defense mechanisms,
they were of course beyond the pale.
People assumed that the jokes were defense
mechanisms against the tragic loss of those brave souls, or whatever
the phrase of the day was. Looking back, though, I think they
represented people internalizing lessons about their relationship
to government. Those folks in uniforms, however heroic they seem
at the time, end up dead. For a moment of ephemeral glory before
the media cycle is finished churning their bodies and souls within
its gaping maw.
All the corpses are forgotten eventually,
Peggy. The original Challenger crew. The corpses who died for
stalemate in Korea and Vietnam. Those who have met their ends
in Afghanistan, liberating the pipeline route from those who
live on it. Those who are about to meet their ends; those poor
bastards who signed up for this government's war against evil,
who had no clue it was all smoke and mirrors.
Anthony Gancarski, author of UNFORTUNATE INCIDENTS [2001, Diversity
Inc.], accepts email at Anthony.Gancarski@attbi.com.
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February
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