The Maureen Dowd Narrative

Richard Fernandez considers the difference between reality and perception.

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran’s forces were no match for Saddam Hussein’s professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child’s neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.

At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. “In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. “Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”

Who needs an APOBS when you’ve got willpower like that? None of this matters because as Maureen Dowd probably knows, facts depicting non-Western ‘brutality’ don’t count at all in stories. Nobody is interested in them. Now talk about a guy handling a Koran without gloves and you have a war crime. That’s what is meant by narratives. Speaking of narratives, the one word which neither Burton nor the White House have used with respect to the “humanitarian flotillas” is that they are a type human shield tactic. Like the Nazis and the Soviets and the Ayatollah, Hamas figures that if you send enough human shields into the Israeli blockade the inevitable collision will clear a path through which all kinds of goodies can eventually flow through to Hamas. That’s as plain as day, as is the actual fact that the “human shield” tactic is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. But you have to establish that to the public, creative the narrative as it were. Since the media knows it won’t sell, why bother to talk about it....

Perhaps Maureen Dowd is right. From long experience, she may have come to believe that nothing matters except appearances. The storyline, the dek, the masthead, the narrative — these are the atomic bombs of the 21st century. Call a person a ‘peace activist’ and though he might be Charles Manson himself, an aura of sanctity descends upon him. Call a flotilla humanitarian for long enough, even though the humanitarian goods they deliver are themselves refused by the recipients unless imbued with political content, and the flotilla becomes humanitarian. “Hamas officials on Wednesday refused to allow into the Gaza Strip 21 truckloads of humanitarian aid that had been offloaded from the Gaza-bound flotilla ships currently docked at Ashdod Port, until ‘all’ of those detained in Monday’s naval raid were released.” It’s all in the labeling. What’s inside the can is irrelevant. The goods are spoiled anyhow; they’ve been touched by Jewish hands.

Once upon a time “making a difference” meant changing reality. It meant winning actual victories, making actual things, saving actual lives. Today it means changing the narrative, altering perceptions, hiding brutality, or better yet, convincing the audience that brutality happens only when the dramatic cues come on. Dowd ends on this note:

This president has made it clear that he’s not comfortable outside whatever domain he’s defined. But unless he wants his story to be marred by a pattern of passivity, detachment, acquiescence and compromise, he’d better seize control of the story line of his White House years. Woe-is-me is not an attractive narrative.

Is it a sane thought?