Smoke Signals
Seeing God in the Towers, and not.

September 24, 2001 8:20 a.m.

mericans who toil in the comedy industry have pointed out that they're very much adrift these days, and the slightest review of their post-911 work proves them right. It's hard to be consistently funny in the best of times, and these days no one feels like joking around. While gallows humor pleasingly mocks death, once death is in the room the comedy ends. Irony — the first refuge of the exhausted joke writer, television wise guy, and the would-be sophisticate — is far too frivolous for these times.

Because more attacks are expected, one can reasonably assume that our enemies, while not destroying the American spirit, have gravely wounded our sense of humor. Fortunately, there are other forms of entertaining public discourse. One can spend hours being shocked, amazed, and amused by pronouncements on What This All Means. To no surprise, these explanations tend to reflect personal biases. The smoke that continues to rise from the New York rubble is not only the shadow of an act of war, but also an ink blot subject to diverse interpretations.

Two of the nation's premier clowns, the Reverends Robertson and Falwell, have not let down their audiences. As is well known, both are under the impression that God was inspired to lift His protective shield because of issues with the ACLU, organized homosexuality, and the abortion industry. Meanwhile, other clerics tell us, Satan rang up the hijackers (in Satan's inscrutable way) and sent them on their way. The only way innocents could have escaped this Celestial event, it seems, was to have called in sick or missed the bus.

After receiving a spirited lashing, Robertson and Falwell attempted to beat a cowardly retreat via the usual routes: Quotes were allegedly taken out of context; Robertson didn't really understand what was being said at the time, etc. The portly Falwell might have enjoyed better success with the Twinkie defense, while Robertson could have got off by merely pleading insanity. Yet the fact is, both seem to favor Old Testament lessons in which Divine displeasure resulted in the unleashing of enemies. Had Dim and Jerry been on Jesus's staff, one imagines they would have argued that the poor adulteress be permitted to perish beneath a hail of stones.

It is hard to know the mind of God, one feels safe in saying, though most Americans, including deeply religious ones (a rapidly expanding category) assume He takes no part in the mass extermination of innocent people. Why allow this to happen? Only the childish in faith expect God to stick His finger in the barrels of unrighteous guns or deploy heart attacks against hijackers. Of course, some of us have been listening to the children so long we started believing them.

Other commentators see far different messages in the smoke. Virginia Postrel, who bills herself as a Dynamist, has offered her public views on the nature of the heroes aboard Flight 93. Their willingness to apparently crash the plane, she says, was based on characteristics easily divined: "The entire passenger rebellion challenges every assumption of the neoconservative view of American decadence. First, it happened. Regular guys on business trips overpowered hijackers and saved their fellow Americans from a fourth disastrous hit. And not only were these men of action technology executives — and a high-tech p.r. guy! — but Bingham was gay." Summing up, Postrel tells us these brave men were "The kind of leaders nourished by an entrepreneurial economy in which merit is more important than hierarchy or background. Not obedient Organization Men."

No doubt due to deadline pressures, or perhaps due to a distaste for religious belief, Postrel seems to have overlooked the apparent fact that Todd Beaman, who appears to have lead the rebellion, likely found far more inspiration for his heroism in Christianity than his professional affiliation. As has now been revealed, Beaman attended Wheaton College, a Christian school whose temperament was not long ago reflected in a debate over changing the school's team name from the Crusaders to the Prayer Warriors. During a phone conversation with an operator prior to ordering his compatriots to "Let's roll" against the hijackers, he asked her to recite with him Psalm 23. Apparently, it never crossed his mind to recite from Atlas Shrugged.

A somewhat similar view was offered by Claudia Rosett, the excellent Wall Street Journal columnist, who explained that Americans have responded so nobly to this disaster because we are tied to each other in a great materialistic matrix. "Americans are no more intrinsically virtuous than Russians, or Arabs, or Chinese or any other group on the planet," she explained. "What does make us different is that we enjoy a system of free markets and democracy in which almost everyone — to get ahead — has incentives to contribute to the common good. Even the most selfish and bigoted among us stand to profit by supplying something that others value. We grow up bathed in evidence that even people we don't like may have much to offer that we prize. And, especially in times of trouble, this makes it a lot easier to love each other."

One imagines that all those dead firemen and cops were motivated by more powerful forces; indeed, dispatches from Manhattan are very short on passages about survivors seeking guidance and comfort in the writings of Adam Smith. Instead, they're immersed in Holy Writ — and perhaps wondering why God allows his ground crew to include clowns. Must have something to do with tolerance, though that's only a very biased guess.