Thursday, November 19, 2015

West of Eden: Note on Paris

Paris s'éveille.
Jay Inslee for president.

I've felt really uncomfortable trying to make a statement about the Paris attacks themselves, for simple reasons—what do I have to say that's not being said by everybody?—and complex ones, like a kind of shame that I got so emotionally tied up to this and so comparatively indifferent to the 43 killed and hundreds injured by suicide bombers in a Beirut Shi'ite neighborhood around the same time, or the 224 innocent Russian holidaymakers blown up in the air over Sinai last month, and so on and so on, and yet not really, because Paris is personal (I've probably spent a total of two weeks there in my entire life, in four or five visits, last time 25 years ago, but it was instantly the city I fell physically in love with, and it's always been my home-in-books). And ain't I sensitive-and-sophisticated? (It's not about you, Yas.)

And then I'm so afraid of slipping into the tone of a Daily News headline—that trembling indignation when somebody weak hurts somebody powerful and you compete with the Post over who can find the most violent way of calling the attacker a monster, as if that were somehow a courageous and surprising opinion—yes, the attackers were monsters, and?... But on the other hand #NotAllDailyNewsHeadlines.

Looking for an example of a typical jowl-shaking Daily News front page, and wouldn't you know it, I ended up finding a really great one instead, yesterday's, speaking pointed truth to power, and in fairness to the News I had to share it.

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