Every once in awhile, in the spirit of “know thy enemy,” you
have to brace yourself and take a peek inside the fetid mind of an
influential defeat-nik. “Enter, if you will,” as Rod Serling might
have said, “the head of one James Wolcott.” Wolcott is an
uber-pompous contributing editor to Vanity Fair, where
rumor has it you’re fired on the spot if you’re caught drinking
your organic Earl Grey with pinkie not fully extended. He’s the
author of a book attacking the right-wing mass
media, and was an opponent of the war in Iraq probably before Bush
conceived it.
Wolcott also has an uber-pompous blog, to which he recently
posted “Headhunters,” declaring there’s a
veritable Internet epidemic of warmongers literally calling for the
heads of those whose only crime is to hold hands in a circle and
sing “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” He admits he
sparked an angry backlash in an earlier blog post by calling Daniel Pipes “a patronizing little
s[—]t.” (Crude, but at least not pompous.)
Nevertheless, having stirred up the readership at Little Green
Footballs, he refers to them not as a hornet’s nest or some such
but rather a “disorganized Nuremberg Rally.” Apparently nobody
informed him that labeling your critics Nazis went out of fashion
at about the same time as narrow neck ties.
He then quotes from one of the comments left on the LGF site:
“May he [i.e., me] be kidnapped by ‘insurgents’ in Iraq then appear
on an ugly net broadcast. I wonder, if in the moment before the
knife started sawing into his fleshy neck if he might rethink his
opinions on the global war on terrorism.”
Repeatedly Wolcott invokes what he calls “the Daniel Pearl
treatment” and “Daniel Pearl’s martyrdom,” as if Pearl — killed in
Pakistan — were the only person ever to lose his head to a
terrorist. Wolcott would not acknowledge a single
decapitation in Iraq. Yet every reference to such beheadings that
Wolcott was able to scrape up (Three — the one above, one from a
blogger, and one from a baseball player’s
wife)
clearly referred to Iraq and to death by beheading,
whereas Pearl was killed first and decapitated later.
In supporting your country’s war efforts, it’s quite logical to
invoke dastardly actions of the enemy. Historically those actions
have been grossly exaggerated or fabricated. In this case,
exaggeration is not only superfluous it’s essentially impossible.
While taking their lunch breaks from blowing up civilians they do
saw through necks with knives. And yes, there are websites where —
if your tastes run that way — you can witness their horrendous
handiwork.
Is Wolcott’s real objection that it’s unfair to use the
terrorists’ acts against them? Then our fleshy-necked friend who so
quickly applies the Nazi label to others puts himself in the same
camp as Holocaust deniers.
If his objection is that the decapitation stuff seems a bit
crude, perhaps it’s because sawing off a living person’s head is
also a bit crude. In addition to showing the monstrousness of the
enemy, what Wolcott’s “headhunters” are saying is: “I’ll bet you
wouldn’t like it if this were done to you” and chances are Wolcott
wouldn’t, insofar as it might interfere with his next
wine-and-cheese party at the Ritz.
Towards the end of his blog, perhaps realizing that three
beheading mentions do not an epidemic make, Wolcott invokes my
blog entry regarding Cindy (“Fame! I want to
live forever!”) Sheehan’s threat to tie herself to the White House fence
to protest the 2,000th death of an American serviceman in Iraq.
Whereupon I commented: “Leave her there and maybe the crows will do
the world a favor and eat her tongue out.”
It was meant as dark humor, written in the knowledge that
Sheehan would engage in no such action, thereby providing crows no
such opportunity. (She didn’t; they didn’t.) I did realize some
people would be foolish enough to think I was serious, but I didn’t
think somebody would not only pretend I was serious but compare
losing a tongue to losing a head simply because it fit his
theme.
I should have. After all, these are the people who
compare forcing detainees at Guantanamo Bay to
listen to loud rap music to the horrors of the German concentration
camps and the Soviets Gulags. (In and of itself a form of Holocaust
denial, to equate being gassed or starved to death with having to
listen to bad tunes.)
So what are we to make of this Wolcott who makes war on alleged
warmongers? He is offended that somebody might suggest he mentally
put himself in the place of an Iraqi terrorist victim, yet he
refuses to acknowledge there have been such victims. There was
Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and that was the end of it.
So there’s your look into the mind of the enemy on the home
front. You might find those decapitation videos to be less
nauseating.
