Brie Press

Mackubin Thomas Owens, writing of the anti-American press - by which is meant the American press - reminds us of a story we used to know: "The moderator of a panel ... offered a hypothetical scenario: In wartime, you are invited to accompany an enemy unit that says it will prove that an ally of the United States is committing atrocities. While accompanying the enemy patrol, you find yourself in the midst of preparations for an ambush that may very well cause the death of Americans. Do you try to warn the Americans?

"After hesitating, Jennings replied that he would try to warn the Americans. But Wallace responded that he would regard it as just another story and that he would not feel a 'higher duty' to warn the Americans. Col. Connell watched this exchange in what can only be described as a cold rage. When asked to comment, Col. Connell said of Wallace, 'I feel utter contempt. ... They’re not Americans. They’re just journalists.'"

Jennings and Wallace. That's half of the MSM Mount Rushmore. But whereas the Right wants its heroes to be carved from harder stuff, these figures are fashioned from butter ... or rather brie. Brie: a mold-ripened whitish French cheese with a soft pale yellow center. There's nothing really definite about it, is there. But to make the image accurate, it'd have to be some sort of toxic mold, that works its poison secretly, destroying houses and killing families. Yes, I think the analogy works.

I've discussed enough already in these pages my inchoate theories about disloyalty. Generally my self-expressions tend simply to exclamations of dismay and anger. Occasionally I depart from sarcasm and attempt something meaningful, but I'm sure my insight is not profound. I have a simple formula that answers questions regarding criminal behavior. Why do they do it? Because they give themselves permission to do it. Drive-by shootings, and home invasions, and raping old ladies and molesting children? Why? Because they convince themselves, these criminals, that in their world it is allowed. The victims deserve it, or they aren't human the way the perpetrator is, or it's revenge against the world, or some other rationalization. Even if they're honest enough to just admit that they're evil, they suppose somehow that being evil is right.

So what is it about the twisted pose of Mr. Wallace, that allows him through his untoward and uncharacteristic silence to be complicit in the deaths of American soldiers? He was a Navy officer in WW II, and he certainly would not have been silent had he known of some Japanese ambush. Something in the last 60 plus years has changed, then, in the mind or heart of Mr. Wallace. It's not simply the specific enemy we fight now, contrasted to the enemy of that distant day. The lives of US soldiers are not less valuable now than in the past, and the enemy of today is no more and no less precious in the sight of God than at any other time. Is it then that he is a journalist? He did after all frame his answer in that context, of "neutral" (read "amoral") observer.

I believe that is his rationalization - the permission he gives himself to do what normative American values would count as reprehensible and loathsome. Col. Connell spoke with the voice of the countless myriads of fallen patriots spanning every age and culture, who would if they had the power rise from their graves and fall as a single man upon Mr. Wallace, and work an outrage on him more primitive than words can describe. For Mr. Wallace has unmoored himself from the protection of the country he occupies, and he has the effrontery to suppose that his aloofness from the most fundamental of human loyalties is a kind of integrity. He imagines, somehow, that his powers of observation and his ability to annunciate his opinions elevate him above the obligations of a citizen. As if the principles embodied in the Constitution were more valuable than the lives those principles are meant to protect.

Col. Connell was more eloquent in his three words of conclusion than all my many paragraphs could ever be. They’re just journalists. There’s something in the term journalist, some subtlety of meaning, some implied alliance to the inhuman, some hint of an allegiance to the inimical and envious eyeing of our planet by Martian invaders … something so unspeakably unfaithful in the idea that one should forsake all human obligations simply so that one might repeat later what one has seen. It is beyond my capacity to characterize. It is a nonpereil, a sui generis, that stands only for what it is, and stands for nothing else.

Well, I’m going to lapse into inarticulate and repetitive rage if I continue. I’ll have to take a moment to collect myself. Maybe I’ll go stretch my legs. Maybe I’ll do the NY Times crossword puzzle. Maybe I’ll make myself a toasted brie sandwich and watch CNN. Maybe I’ll go assist in the ongoing alien invasion. Maybe I’ll go rape an old lady or molest a child. Who knows what I’ll do. Sometimes I get so tired of living by rules. Sometimes I just want to give myself permission to do whatever pops into my head. Sometimes I think I’m God.

J