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May 10 - By now, you've been repulsed by the disgusting, offensive pictures. Repeated viewing has seared these images into your appalled consciousness. And worse, America's core values have been put on display for the entire world, fueling yet again the notion that our self-professed integrity is a sham.
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The reaction to Major League Baseball's "Spider Man 2" promo plan was, predictably, outrage. For an entire news cycle, it seemed as if there was no other story in the country. Everyone from former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent to former relevant person Ralph Nader rose in such anger that the plan was scrapped. The pristine bases would be preserved for another day. The purity of the game was safe for the time being.
And the "Spider Man" base story was gone as quickly as it arrived. But I would submit to you that the "Spider Man" story is not an isolated incident. It is, in fact, the latest "New Coke" moment in our national culture.
The lesson of that "New Coke" moment was not that a grassroots movement could topple a world power. No, for me, the lesson was that the only indecency that could spur Americans to action was an attack on a beverage. If Coca-Cola had announced that 15,000 babies in Rwanda had died during the field testing of the New Coke formula, the resulting outrage might have consisted of a letter from Amnesty International and an editorial in the New York Times. But take away our soda pop? Le deluge!
How much have we really changed? Last week's "Spider Man" incident is this generation's "New Coke"--a cause celebre that allows us to feel good about ourselves. But while we were patting ourselves on the back for being on the "right" side of baseball's crass commercialism, we've allowed ourselves to ignore everything else. Sure, we could see through baseball's attempt to sell its own purity for a few million bucks, but this isn't just about baseball, it's about America. Lately, it's become clear that America's central value is that our values are not that central. They can be discarded, replaced, re-written or sold based on circumstance. In fact, virtually all of our so-called American values are under attack by...Americans:
We shut down an Iraqi newspaper because it opposed our occupation too vehemently. Freedom of the press exists so long as the press writes nice things about America.
We say we believe in artistic freedom, but we don't even flinch when we hear that Disney has decided not to distribute Michael Moore's new film that is critical of President Bush. (The incident exposed anew the myth of "liberal Hollywood"; Disney is one of the biggest entertainment companies--and one of the most conservative).
We have discarded protections guaranteed under the Geneva Convention to some of our prisoners being held in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Protecting prisoners' rights is only an American value when the prisoners are Americans.
We conveniently forget that an American is innocent until proven guilty. It's been illustrative to watch conservatives pillory Brandon Mayfield, that Oregon lawyer who was arrested last week after Spanish authorities claimed that a fingerprint had been found on a bag linked to the March train bombings in Madrid. Not only was Mayfield arrested on flimsy evidence, but the right-wing smear campaign was swift. His wife, after all, is a Muslim! And he once represented a terror suspect in an unrelated child custody case! He has a beard! And he prays to Allah, not Jesus! Forget "innocent until proven guilty." Isn't it also an American value that American citizens should not be arrested and held indefinitely without being charged?
Which brings us, alas, to the pictures of grinning American soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at Saddam Hussein's notorious gulag, Abu Ghraib. In the aftermath, President Bush said the abuse was "not the America I know" and that most Americans were appalled at the pictures. I think the president should get out more. Appalled? Not if you read the commentary written by some of the president's supporters.
Yes, of course, there is widespread agreement that the scandal was un-American. And then wait for the "but"--as in "...but no one apologizes when Americans are abused" or "...but what happened at Abu Ghraib wasn't really so bad" or "...but the media is making a mountain out of a molehill."
"But let's not lose our heads over it..." wrote syndicated columnist David Limbaugh. "I'm not so anxious to apologize to the 'victims' themselves, who would probably have enjoyed eating our intestines for lunch well before the incident...This is war. Let's quit pretending it's some kind of pristine chess match."
"What a few coalition troops did...was certainly not torture," wrote Gordon Bishop on the conservative Web site EtherZone.
"Abu Ghraib [is] not the worst atrocities committed in war," wrote Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. "Indeed, they pale in comparison with what Arab insurgents have done..."
"When it comes to pure chutzpah, the reaction in the Arab world is second to none," wrote the conservative Washington Times in an editorial. "Arab governments and institutions routinely looked the other way when Saddam Hussein murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis over several decades and said nothing...Now they're indignant over the allegations of mistreatment of Iraqis by American soldiers."
Yes, millions of Americans were appalled by the Abu Ghraib images, but millions of Americans were not. My father the conservative, for example, didn't even bother to offer lip service to how appalling the pictures were, launching into his "but." "Let's put this in perspective. It doesn't even compare to what the Arabs do to us, like destroying the World Trade Center, hanging four bodies off that bridge," he said. (Note to Air America: See? You really need to hire me and him for that father-son radio show, if only so your listeners can get a weekly primer in how the enemy thinks!).
That's the state of our so-called "American values" during this current "New Coke" moment. We can summon up anger about "Spider Man 2" ads, but we can't seem to get that upset about Abu Ghraib (Major League Baseball withdrew its plan, but we can't even get a resignation from the Secretary of Defense!).
Above all, the backlash to Abu Ghraib shows that we have sold out our most important value: The notion that we live by higher standards.
Loathe as I am to favorably quote a presidential candidate--because all they ever say is platitudes like "Yes, America can!" and "I'm going to create jobs"--John Kerry said it best this week: "America wasn't put here to dominate the world. We have a higher calling: to lead it."
We're not supposed to be the country that says, "Sure, we did some bad things, but not as bad as what they do to us." They aren't occupying us and telling us to accept their values. We're occupying them and telling them to accept our values.
And the worst thing is, we don't even have any values--except, perhaps, the inalienable right to drink our favorite soda.
Gersh Kuntzman is Brooklyn Bureau Chief of the New York Post. His website is http://www.gersh.tv
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