Washington — The other day Paul Gigot, the editorial page
editor of the invaluable Wall Street Journal, wrote a very
informative
report from Iraq’s holy city of Najaf. He wrote in part that
things are not going as badly over there for us as most of the
other journalists seem to think. He wrote that not as many Iraqis
hate us for liberating them from killers, torturers, and thieves as
is reported in the rest of the press. He wrote that a particularly
pungent piece in the Washington Post headlined “Rumors
Spark Iraqi Protests As Pentagon Official Stops By” was based on
the protest of a single cleric, residing in the holy city of Najaf.
Most of the rest of the Najafians — if that is the term for the
indigenes — did not share the excitable cleric’s sour humor.
Gigot’s piece got me to thinking. One of my thoughts was: why in
all of America, a country many times the size of Iraq, do we not
have any holy cities? Not even the Southern Baptists have been able
to create a holy city. I suppose the Mormons believe they have at
least one holy city, but the rest of the country appears not to
share their enthusiasm. If America did have a holy city, which
would we settle on?
I suspect New York would win the liberals’ nod, at least prior
to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s crackdown on squeegee men. Or possibly
Hollywood, California, would get their accolade. It is, after all,
their present cultural capital, their Florence, their Athens. I am
told the liberals love those Hollywood “action movies” showing
busty women in tight-fitting military garb, pistols on their hips,
grenades hanging from the bodices, as they beat the living
daylights out of flabby white men and various creatures from outer
space. The creatures are so bizarre in their physiological
components that Darwin if he saw them would laugh — and Darwin was
not a very giggly fellow. They have eyes and ears that serve no
imaginable purpose, and appendages that seem useless, and warts,
and tails and skin might make any dermatologist a millionaire.
There are other cities that come to mind. For decades now
Americans have been listening to rock and roll, or is it rock &
roll? Some Americans become very intellectual about this art form,
and I would not want to betray an ignorance here that might
encourage some 55-year-old lifetime subscriber to Rolling
Stone into thinking me musically illiterate. At any rate, rock
is a major element in American culture, and so a good prospect for
the appellation holy city might be Cleveland, Ohio. The rock
cognoscenti will tell you that Cleveland is home to the Rock &
Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. In fact the building in which rock
has been enthroned is an architectural masterpiece. Moreover it
boasts many facilities for the elderly and disabled, for rock stars
age earlier than the rest of us and the rigors of their lifestyle
have a lot of them hobbling around on walkers.
Being a native of Chicago, I would like to see this Midwestern
colossus termed a holy city, but in all honesty not even many
Chicagoans would relish their town being raised the eminence of
“holy city.” There is its mafia past. Two generations of the Daley
Machine in city hall make the sanctification of Chicago unlikely;
and the Rev Jesse Jackson claims to live there, complete with
mistresses and his funny money operations. Then too Chicagoans
relish the reputation of their city as being a “tough town.” If we
were to raise it to the level of holy city we might get beaten
up.
So deciding on an American holy city is not an easy task. Yet
looking back on American history I think we can all agree that
America’s best candidate for the designation “holy city” is
Washington, D.C. Liberals have since FDR’s day seen Washington as
the great magic wand capable of righting all wrongs and succoring
the nation’s teeming masses of indigents. Quite possibly liberals
admire Washington even more than they admire Hollywood in all of
its intellectual splendor. Conservatives of a patriotic stripe
remember Washington for the monuments and for the Pentagon and the
Central Intelligence Agency. Among the politically alive, only
Americans of strict libertarian rigor are without reverence for our
nation’s capital, but then one cannot imagine a libertarian
accepting any city as holy.
So here is my recommendation. Henceforth let us consider
Washington our holy city. If we are insistent enough journalists
from such prestigious Arab media outlets as al-Jazeera will have to
speak of “the holy city of Washington.” Imagine the headlines:
“Bush Returns to the Holy City of Washington.” Or an al-Jazeera
reporter might begin an on-the-scene television report with “I
traveled into the holy city of Washington last night to….”
This holy city business can cut both ways.
