Kumbaya Watch: Kingsolver, Again
The latest in foolish commentary.

By Ross Douthat
October 16, 2001 9:20 a.m.

hen last we checked in on Barbara Kingsolver, the ever-so-noted novelist, essayist, and would-be political commentator, she was complaining in the San Francisco Chronicle that "the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder." Two weeks later, America is no closer to becoming a police state, and Kingsolver's fears of looming "fascism" seem just as hysterical as when they were first voiced. Undeterred, she has briskly shifted gears, turning her gimlet eye away from the domestic front and toward the fertile fields of U.S. foreign policy.

Here are a few pearls of her Kissinger-like wisdom, culled from Kingsolver's October 14 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. "It is not naive," she writes, "to propose alternatives to war. We could be the kindest nation on Earth, inside and out ... I'd like an end to corporate welfare so we could put that money into ending homelessness ... I would like a humane health-care system organized along the lines of Canada's. I'd like the efficient public-transit system of Paris in my city, thank you. I'd like us to consume energy at the modest level that Europeans do ... If this were the face we showed the world, and the model we helped bring about elsewhere, I expect we could get along with a military budget the size of Iceland's."

What, you didn't realize the link between affordable mass transit and world peace? Well, that's why we've got Barbara Kingsolver.

And as for those scattered extremists who aren't won over by our energy efficiency, soup kitchens, socialized medicine, and clean government — well, Miss Metternich has the answer to that difficulty as well. You see, "uncivilized criminals are still held accountable through civilized institutions; we abolished stoning long ago. The World Court and the entire Muslim world stand ready to judge Osama bin Laden and his accessories. If we were to put a few billion dollars into food, health care and education instead of bombs, you can bet we'd win over enough friends to find out where he's hiding."

That's right — give the Taliban the money necessary to educate their citizens (especially their female citizens, one supposes), and they'll happily turn over every last terrorist. Or maybe we can just have the world court send a squad car or two over to Afghanistan to pick him up.

But before we get swept away by Kingsolver's global vision of peace, love, and "efficient public transit," we should remember that she is, first and foremost, a creative writer. So spare a thought, if you please, for this noted novelist's choice of simile to describe America's war on terrorism:

I feel like I'm standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming at each other, "He started it!" and throwing rocks that keep taking out another eye, another tooth. I keep looking around for somebody's mother to come on the scene saying, "Boys! Boys! Who started it cannot possibly be the issue here. People are getting hurt."

I am somebody's mother, so I will say that now: The issue is, people are getting hurt."

To which Kumbaya Watch can only reply, we're glad she's not our mother.