The Best of Tomdispatch: Susan Sontag
[NOTE: Today begins a week-plus-long look back at some of the best pieces from 2003, the first year of Tomdispatch on-line. In response to letters from readers, I often comment that Tomdispatch is "the sideline-that-ate-my-life." Starting as a periodic email sent out to a dozen or so friends and relatives in early November, 2001, it has (with only the addition of part-time researcher Nick Turse) expanded exponentially (as I haven't) into whatever it is today. Being 60 years old -- at least twice the age of most of the people I deal with in the on-line world -- I only know that it's probably not a blog. Rebecca Solnit sometimes claims that it's a "virtual wire service," but I prefer not to define it at all. As it happens, however, my non-sideline life as a book editor continues in a parallel universe. Right now, I need a brief chance to wrap my brain around an editing project and I thought it might be an opportunit! y, given the thousands of new readers who have become regulars at Tomdispatch in the last year and a half, to offer a feast of the most enduring pieces I posted back when. Each will be reposted with a new introduction by me, each (with the exception of today's) with a new comment -- in one case almost long enough to be a piece in its own right -- by the author. The five I'll be reposting in this way were among the earliest "Tomgrams" I sent out. (The "Tomgram" was originally a joke -- from the days when this was still an e-list and friends of a friend of mine used to say, whenever my emails hit their e-mailbox, "Look, another Tomgram…") In any case, I hope that those of you who weren't Tomdispatch readers in 2003, will enjoy this week of "classic" Tomgrams, and those of you who were will meet a few old friends. What could be better?]
Tomdispatch was a nameless e-list send-out for over a year before Ham Fish of the Nation Institute -- bless the man -- called me one day and offered to put it up at the Institute's site and support it on-line. In its early email days, while it was still developing from a modest compilation of dissenting pieces (already published out there in the news ether) into the mix of commentaries and original "tomgrams" of the present moment, people -- to my amazement -- began emailing me and asking to be added to my e-list. I never did anything promotional. It just didn't occur to me. Among those who jumped on early -- and at the time I found this both flattering and unbelievably encouraging -- was Susan Sontag. I had, of course, read and admired her work for years. Still, her arrival and continuing interest were a small boon.
I never met her but we exchanged emails from time to time. At some point, she asked if I might be interested in posting a speech she had given, accepting an award in honor of Ishai Menuchin and the Israeli refusniks, those soldiers who had bravely refused duty in the Occupied Territories.
I wrote at the time that her speech focused on what it "means to resist, to refuse your service to your own state, to oppose the mainstream opinions of your own society, and while it is directed at the situation in Israel today, it is -- and clearly was meant to be -- no less applicable to our own situation, to a country that ‘has made patriotism equivalent to consensus.' As you might expect of Sontag, it is clear-eyed as to the grim nature of our present moment and what it means to resist when success is hardly at hand, no less in sight -- and yet, for me at least (and I hope for all of you), it also offers a modicum of hope and a sense of heart."
Today, her speech seems (sadly perhaps) not less, but more relevant for Americans. It has, of course, Sontag's hallmark -- a sharp honesty, a willingness to consider a difficult subject in all its complexity and to state just what she saw, even when that might prove unpopular indeed. If you want to experience her willingness to do just this, go back and read her comments in the New Yorker magazine right after 9/11 for which she was roundly excoriated by a unified chorus of commentators.
She wrote in part:
"Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy -- which entails disagreement, which promotes candor -- has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. 'Our country is strong,' we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be."
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
Tomdispatch was a nameless e-list send-out for over a year before Ham Fish of the Nation Institute -- bless the man -- called me one day and offered to put it up at the Institute's site and support it on-line. In its early email days, while it was still developing from a modest compilation of dissenting pieces (already published out there in the news ether) into the mix of commentaries and original "tomgrams" of the present moment, people -- to my amazement -- began emailing me and asking to be added to my e-list. I never did anything promotional. It just didn't occur to me. Among those who jumped on early -- and at the time I found this both flattering and unbelievably encouraging -- was Susan Sontag. I had, of course, read and admired her work for years. Still, her arrival and continuing interest were a small boon.
I never met her but we exchanged emails from time to time. At some point, she asked if I might be interested in posting a speech she had given, accepting an award in honor of Ishai Menuchin and the Israeli refusniks, those soldiers who had bravely refused duty in the Occupied Territories.
I wrote at the time that her speech focused on what it "means to resist, to refuse your service to your own state, to oppose the mainstream opinions of your own society, and while it is directed at the situation in Israel today, it is -- and clearly was meant to be -- no less applicable to our own situation, to a country that ‘has made patriotism equivalent to consensus.' As you might expect of Sontag, it is clear-eyed as to the grim nature of our present moment and what it means to resist when success is hardly at hand, no less in sight -- and yet, for me at least (and I hope for all of you), it also offers a modicum of hope and a sense of heart."
Today, her speech seems (sadly perhaps) not less, but more relevant for Americans. It has, of course, Sontag's hallmark -- a sharp honesty, a willingness to consider a difficult subject in all its complexity and to state just what she saw, even when that might prove unpopular indeed. If you want to experience her willingness to do just this, go back and read her comments in the New Yorker magazine right after 9/11 for which she was roundly excoriated by a unified chorus of commentators.
She wrote in part:
"Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy -- which entails disagreement, which promotes candor -- has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. 'Our country is strong,' we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be."
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 4:34 AM
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