Oliver Stone – Don't Gel Too Soon

Carrying our Burden: The Military and the Rest of Us

NOTE; From my archives (one of my first posts) August 8, 2006

The National Military Families Association is an old client of mine and today I'm meeting their former CEO for lunch. She and I had hoped to use her site and some of the "women's" content sites to begin to bridge the chasm between military and non-military families. Who if not the women would be capable of that? I had just read Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, a wonderful book about West Point and leadership so was particularly interested in removing the stereotypes and isolation suffered by the military in my formative, actively anti-war youth. We were unable to interest most of the women's sites into doing anything without payment though; it was quite sad.

When I think of 9/11 and of the Iraq War – and remember how my parents used to talk about the "GIs" and their position in the world during World War II, it's particularly unfortunate that we now have a "military class" that is separate from the rest of us in so many ways – and whose parents and children were also likely to be military — so much so that we're worlds apart. Today Oliver Stone told the Washington Post that he thought combat experience "softens you, if anything. It makes you more aware of human frailty and vulnerability. It doesn't make you a coward, but it does teach you. " Yet, as he noted in this interview, none of our current political leaders has any combat experience at all. I know we need to end this division, but I have two sons and what seems sensible in the abstract is horrifying in the concrete. I have many friends whose kids have gone to live in Israel, for example, and they seem to accept the fact of their sons' military obligation with equinimity but I don't know if I could. And I"m not sure if it's the scars of Vietnam and even more recent futile endeavors or rank selfishness on my part…. More later.

9/11 AND ART

One of my favorite books is William Gibson’s PATTERN RECOGNITION. It’s the story of a "cool hunter" named Cayce Pollard . Her job is to help worldwide companies evaluate their logos and design for "coolness ." She’s a gypsy, finding Pilates studios in the cities she visits and completely engaging the reader (at least this one.) Behind her quite remarkable self, however, lies her grief of the loss of her father in lower Manhattan on September 11. It’s a shadow that haunts all the elegant activity, spectacular writing and remarkable plot lines that are part of any Gibson work. Published in 2003, it was one of the early novels dealing with the horrors of that day in 2001.

There have been several since then, as well as, in the past year, three movies including Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. IMDB lists 11 altogether, not counting Stone’s new film. Apparently, at least to those I know who’ve seen them, several of these films are pretty good.

Last night I finished a book saved, in its last chapters, by that terrible time. THE EMPEROR’S CHILDREN, by Claire Messud, got spectacular reviews — front page in the Sunday Times Book Review — and sounded great. What it is is a kind of lesser BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES about lefties living on the West Side (the Beresford is on the cover — not too subtle, right?), their offspring and several other 30-somethings who went to Brown. The whole point of its 431 pages is to reveal the phony side of the lives of the politically correct with their Central Park West apartments, their kids – haunted by parental successes they can’t match, and the rest of the crew ten years out of college and aimless. It’s all OK – but not great. Then, in the middle of a serious act of betrayal by Grand Old Man liberal and a friend of his daughter, two planes hit the World Trade Center — right outside the window of her apartment. Everything that felt so false for all those pages is rendered just as superficial as we thought it was.

I’m not sure it’s enough for me – maybe if I hadn’t lived 20 years on that very West Side and admired many of those people myself – all the while realizing that maybe many of them weren’t who I wanted them to be, it would make more sense. I’m not sure why the book irritated me so and maybe that makes it better than I’m telling you it is – but it’s in my head and it’s making me mad. Can someone else can help me figure out why?

Military Americans and the Rest of Us

REPOSTED FROM VOX – 8/08:
The National Military Families Association is an old client of mine and today I’m meeting their former CEO for lunch. She and I had hoped to use her site and some of the “women’s” content sites to begin to bridge the chasm between military and non-military families. Who if not the women would be capable of that? I had just read Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, a wonderful book about West Point and leadership so was particularly interested in removing the stereotypes and isolation suffered by the military in my formative, actively anti-war youth.

We were unable to interest most of the women’s sites into doing anything without payment though; it was quite sad. When I think of 9/11 and of the Iraq War – and remember how my parents used to talk about the “GIs” and their position in the world during World War II, it’s particularly unfortunate that we now have a “military class” that is separate from the rest of us in so many ways – and whose parents and children were also likely to be military — so much so that we’re worlds apart.

Today Oliver Stone told the Washington Post that he thought combat experience “softens you, if anything. It makes you more aware of human frailty and vulnerability. It doesn’t make you a coward, but it does teach you. ” Yet, as he noted in this interview, none of our current political leaders has any combat experience at all.

I know we need to end this division, but I have two sons and what seems sensible in the abstract is horrifying in the concrete. I have many friends whose kids have gone to live in Israel, for example, and they seem to accept the fact of their sons’ military obligation with equinimity but I don’t know if I could. And I”m not sure if it’s the scars of Vietnam and even more recent futile endeavors or rank selfishness on my part….

More later.