Curious choice of venue

Submitted by Norman Levitt (United States), Sep 28, 2002 at 22:42

I have subscribed to your list because, among other reasons, the loudest voices to be heard on campus, so far as the middle east is concerned, are usually not the wisest. That said, however, the transcript of your debate, such as it was, with Zunes hardly provided very much insight. Frankly, it looked, on the page, like a ridiculous setup, with Zunes very much the victim of a bellowing fool--the role that Mr. Hannity has eagerly embraced. If the goal is to get the academic community and, more broadly, the "intelligentsia," to think about the Islamic world and its hostility towards our culture with less sentimentality and more realism, exhibitions of arrant dingbattery like that apparent in the posted transcript sure as hell won't do the job. It would be far better to concede that Zunes and those who speak in like terms have a serious point to make, while demonstrating that it is nonetheless rather foolish, in historical terms, to overlook the deep-rooted nastiness that so often directs human affairs. Zunes and those who agree with him are too quick to assume that a simple "mea culpa" will set everything to rights. But Hannity's mindless yapping--and, to be frank, your own propensity to interrupt your opponent after insisting that he shouldn't interrupt you--make Zunes look like a martyr on behalf of humane wisdom.

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