the Times reviews a critic

doug mcgill dougmcgill at yahoo.com
Fri Nov 15 09:29:32 PST 2002


Not to mention, the Times assigned this piece to the lady who normally reviews novels and has virtually no interest or background in political writing. So the assignment was in itself a slap on the book and its ideas. (I'm a former NYT staff reporter and worked on the culture desk with MK for four years.)

Doug McGill www.mcgillreport.com

--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [Don't know if this book is any good, but MK's
> reactions to serious
> criticism of the U.S. sort of proves Hertsgaard's
> point.]
>
> New York Times - November 15, 2002
>
>
> BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'THE EAGLE'S SHADOW'
>
> Americans and Those in the World Who Resent Them
> By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> THE EAGLE'S SHADOW
> Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World
> By Mark Hertsgaard
> 236 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $23.
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> Six years before the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the
> scholar Benjamin
> R. Barber wrote a provocative and in some ways very
> prescient book,
> "Jihad vs. McWorld," which explored the growing
> post-cold-war
> tensions between secular consumerist capitalism and
> religious and
> ethnic fundamentalism; between the Americanized
> global marketplace
> and tribal movements virulently opposed to
> modernity.
> Advertisement
>
> The subtitle of Mark Hertsgaard's new book, "The
> Eagle's Shadow" -
> "Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World" -
> suggests that the
> author is going to take up where Mr. Barber left
> off, exploring the
> envy, worship and rage that America elicits abroad.
> But while Mr.
> Hertsgaard lifts some of Mr. Barber's ideas about
> the Americanization
> of global pop culture and the resentment it incurs,
> he neither
> delivers on his promise to explore "how we look to
> the rest of the
> world" nor communicates to foreigners "why America
> and Americans are
> the way we are."
>
> Instead, he has written a hectoring, fuzzy-minded
> book that devolves
> into an angry personal rant about what the author
> thinks is wrong
> about America: we are treated to long-winded and
> poorly reasoned
> diatribes about the presidential election of 2000,
> the inequality
> between rich and poor in the United States, and what
> the author
> describes as our hypocritical backing of
> "treacherous dictatorships
> that serve our perceived interests."
>
> Although Mr. Hertsgaard, a writer who is a
> contributor to National
> Public Radio, says he has spent 20 years living and
> traveling abroad
> through some 30 countries, his interviews with
> foreigners are
> sparsely sprinkled through this book. And they are
> thoroughly random
> in nature: a London cabbie here, a couple of South
> African teenagers
> there; a Japanese art historian in one chapter, an
> Egyptian salesman
> in another.
>
> Instead of seriously probing people's thoughts about
> America, he
> settles for making his own clichéd generalizations.
> "Americans are
> friendly but boorish, clever but shallow, prosperous
> but lonely," he
> says of foreigners' perceptions of the United
> States. "They are
> drowning in material possessions but poor in family,
> friends, and
> community. They are oddly moralistic; they seem to
> find sex shameful
> but violence beautiful. Above all, they live to work
> rather than work
> to live." A few pages later, he adds that we are
> "vulgar yet devout,
> modern yet old-fashioned, self-righteous yet
> rootless."
>
> There are many significant issues raised in this
> book, from the
> consequences of America's accelerating exportation
> of pop culture to
> its current proclivity for unilateral action. But
> the valid points
> that Mr. Hertsgaard wants to make about such matters
> are smothered by
> his penchant for overstatement and outright
> distortion - and his
> consequent unreliability as an observer.
>
> Indeed "The Eagle's Shadow" is filled with dubious
> generalizations
> and outrageous assertions. Mr. Hertsgaard writes
> that "our democracy
> is an embarrassment to the word, a den of entrenched
> bureaucrats and
> legal bribery." He writes that "our media are a
> disgrace to the
> hallowed concept of freedom of the press," that they
> "may as well be
> a formal part of the government, for all the
> critical distance they
> usually maintain." And he compares America's bombing
> of Dresden
> during World War II to the terrorist attacks of
> Sept. 11, arguing
> that both acts "pursued military or political
> objectives by killing
> vast numbers of civilians."
>
> "When we are ready to face facts again," he argues,
> "we may see that
> our country was in crisis before bin Laden's bombers
> set off on their
> mission of hate. Politically, we live in a democracy
> that barely
> deserves the name."
>
> Mr. Hertsgaard's skills as a logician turn out to be
> as poor as his
> skills as a political commentator. He suggests that
> the country's
> current economic woes are the result of a drop in
> consumer spending
> that reflects a post-9/11 "turning away from
> self-indulgence and
> material things" - never mind the drop in the stock
> market or rising
> unemployment. And he writes that "achieving economic
> justice in
> America is an imposing challenge, but no more
> imposing than the
> Wizard of Oz's command that Dorothy and her
> compatriots bring him the
> broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West" - never
> mind that Oz's
> command is that of a humbug who simply wants to send
> Dorothy and her
> friends off on a wild goose chase.
>
> Not surprisingly, the writing in "The Eagle's
> Shadow" proves as
> flabby as its arguments. Mr. Hertsgaard exhorts us
> to "fight to
> restore fairness and fiber to our democracy" -
> Grape-Nuts, anyone? -
> and he concludes this embarrassing book with a
> dreamy vision that
> equates the United States with a lava-spewing
> mountain. "If volcanoes
> can be beautiful as well as deadly," he writes, "why
> can't America be
> wise as well as powerful, generous as well as rich,
> magnanimous as
> well as proud?"
>

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