BAXBLOG: A few final thoughts on Osama & Obama

First, cable news is like the aftermath of a failed relationship, that awful time when you endlessly masticate the same indigestible facts long after reaching the point where you need to either choke it down or spit it out. I haven't watched 'cable news' for any length of time since CNN's coverage of Desert Storm, but one of our scouts from the bay area was in town with vanload of books and the boss had MSNBC on while we sorted. They had about 15 minutes of material, which was shamelessly abused to fill the five-plus hours it took us to finish the buy.

Second, people are going to feel what they feel about this, what they feel is going to be wildly variable, and pretty much however they react to those feelings is fine. I'm seeing lots of 'tut tutting' about the ethics of celebration, how folk aren't supposed to celebrate because death is always a tragedy, eye for an eye makes everyone blind, etc etc. My personal reaction was muted, but the I live on the West Coast and had very little direct connection to the manifold tragedies of 9/11. In an abstract way I'm glad he paid for his nihilistic campaign, and I don't care that he was likely gunned down in cold blood- what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

While the news didn't make me want to rip off my shirt, climb onto the hood of my Hummer and pound Jaeger from a red, white and blue beer bong then projectile-vomit out my nose onto a picture of Osama, I won't judge- it's a complicated thing. The college kids catching flack from some quarters for their inappropriate response were little kids on that day, and they've grown up surrounded by the decade of madness it unleashed. And when that madness finally engulfed one of its principal authors....well.

Mister Coates puts it more succinctly:

Faced with that level of callous disregard for life, I find it a little difficult to lecture 25-year olds who came of age during this time on their varied reactions. Americans are humans too.

'The Left' is prone to this kind of behavioral scolding. In my personal preferred reality the nation would gather together in sober reflection after Navy SEALs gunned down the bogyman, but on this topic my preferences and the demographic reality of a huge, diverse country do not coincide.

And that's fine.

Driving home last night I passed a solid older woman decorating the fence around her property with little American flags on sticks, the kind kids wave with sparklers during 4th of July parades. She was in a threadbare yellow housedress and fuzzy white slippers, choosing her footing carefully in the brittle scrub, tight lipped, expression serious and reflective, motivation unknowable.

Watching her I experienced a tidal surge of emotion, I don't know why. It'd be an easy tableau to scoff at, an average citizen celebrating a likely assassination with dime store frippery. But the moment I glimpsed felt profound, a human being using the symbols at hand to express their emotions.
And maybe that's what most people are doing with this, the best they can with what they've got.

Judgmental a-hole that I usually am, I can't find it in myself to wag my finger at them.

Oh look- see, I knew i should have posted this up right when I wrote it instead of saving it for a 'weekend' re-write. This guy came along and did the whole thing better.

My youngest students were only eight or nine when the Twin Towers fell nearly a decade ago. Osama Bin Laden has been a bogeyman figure for them, the man behind the plot that made their world (and that of their parents) so much less safe. The years and years in which he eluded justice became a symbol, at least for some, of the limits of American power. While television, movies, and video games featured heroes who could always get the bad guys, in real life the baddest guy alive continued to be out of reach, a phantom reminder of our vulnerability. It’s not surprising that the most impassioned and excited reactions I saw on Facebook and Twitter last night were from my youngest acquaintances. For many of my students, Bin Laden’s death ends a story that has been going on over half their lives.

Postscriptically, there was a flurry of misattributed Twain and MLK quotes flying around in the aftermath of the raid. They were met with the usual vaguely tut-tutting follow up corrections, which in this case seemed to me to miss the point- the source of the quote was much less relevant than the emotion expressed. As with the death of Osama himself, the result largely transcends the details.

But it set me up for a serious belly laugh when this one flashed across the Twitter: