In Disaster’s Aftermath, Once-Cocky Media Culture
Disses the Age of Irony : ‘Editors and writers predict that the prevailing sensibility of celebrity
idolatry and self-conscious knowingness will dissolve. Says Vanity Fair editor Graydon
Carter: “Things that were considered fringe and frivolous are going to disappear.” ‘ Inside How long will this post-frivolity last, d’you think?
And how long will bipartisanship and polite avoidance of dissent in Washington last, while we’re on the subject? The Washington editor of the libertarian Reason says not long:
If grief is bipartisan, however, action is inherently political. Everyone agrees that the perpetrators must pay and that we have to prevent such attacks in the future, but beyond that nothing is certain.
Whom should we attack, and how? How are we going to fix the obviously flawed security systems we have in place? How are we going to pay for it, and what civil liberties are we willing to sacrifice? How do you conduct foreign policy in a places vehemently opposed to U.S. actions and interests?
When the candlelight vigils are over and the camouflaged humvees are gone, people on opposite ends of the political spectrum will answer these questions in fundamentally different ways. How the nation resolves those differences may well be the true legacy of September 11, 2001.
And, from the Washington Post:
A host of suspicions and resentments make it likely, said many Democrats, that the fractiousness that has defined modern politics could soon reappear.
Democrats, and even some Republicans, have expressed concern that the necessity to give broad powers to the White House could go too far, robbing what they said was Congress’s constitutional authority to appropriate money and hold the administration accountable for policy decisions it makes to meet the crisis.
On a less philosophical plane, there is already private grousing about intelligence briefings — considered by some lawmakers to be inadequate — about the attacks and Bush’s intentions for responding. And while virtually every Democrat is publicly expressing support for Bush, there is considerable not-for-attribution criticism among lawmakers and political operatives about the sense of command he has conveyed in public performances.
