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PEGGY NOONAN
'Everybody's Been Shot'
Americans are exquisitely sensitive--just not to each other.
Friday, January 11, 2002 12:01 a.m.
There's a small but telling scene in Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down"
that contains some dialogue that reverberates, at least for me. In
the spirit of Samuel Johnson, who said man needs more often to be
reminded than instructed, I offer it to all, including myself, who
might benefit from its message.
The movie, as you know, is about the Battle of the Bakara Market in
Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. In the scene, the actor Tom
Sizemore, playing your basic tough-guy U.S. Army Ranger colonel, is
in charge of a small convoy of humvees trying to make its way back to
base under heavy gun and rocket fire. The colonel stops the convoy,
takes in some wounded, tears a dead driver out of a driver's seat,
and barks at a bleeding sergeant who
's standing in shock nearby:
Colonel: Get into that truck and drive.
Sergeant: But I'm shot, Colonel.
Colonel: Everybody's shot, get in and drive.
"Everybody's shot." Those are great metaphoric words.
Let me tell you how they seem to apply metaphorically. An hour before I saw the movie,
I was with friends at lunch, and they filled me in on the latest doings in our beloved
country while I was away. Cornel West is very,
very angry at Larry Summers for suggesting that Prof. West shouldn't essentially
perp-walk his way through the halls of academe. A Secret Service agent--a presidential
Secret Service agent!--had a hissy fit when an airlin
e pilot refused to let him board a plane carrying his gun with dubious paperwork. The
agent is not only threatening a lawsuit, he says he doesn't want money when he wins.
He wants the airline to be forced to give sensitiv
ity training. I thought: I think someone needs sensitivity training all right, but I
don't think it's the airline.
Just after the movie, I picked up Ellis Cose's latest book, "The Envy of the World,"
about the "daunting challenges" that face black men in 21st-century America. I read
and thought, Earth to Ellis: Everyone faces daunting
challenges in 21st-century America.
Because everybody's been shot.
What does that mean? It means something we used to know. It means everyone has it
hard, everyone takes hits, everyone's been fragged, everyone gets tagged, life isn't
easy for anyone.
I turn on morning television and see Rosie O'Donnell referring again to the fact that
her mother died when she was young. This of course is very sad, and Rosie has spoken
of its sadness very often, and with a great whoosh
of self-regard. Her sympathy for her loss made me think, the other day: She doesn't
really know that other people lost their mothers when they were young. She doesn't
really know that some people never even had mothers.
She doesn't know everybody's been shot.
I put on HBO and see their new young poet's show. Young poets--well, they say they're
poets; I guess they're more like performance artists--come on and sort of strut around
a stage and yell, and the more authentic their a
nger seems, the more the audience applauds and hoots. These poets seem attached to
their separateness and in love with their grievance. "I am one angry Lebanese
lesbian," "I am one angry NewYorican mother-lovin' whatever.
" They pour out their pain. But they don't actually seem to be in pain. They all look
like they went to Brown and hang out downtown and have invested fully and happily in
the Misery Industrial Complex. They look like they
want an agent.
They're not old enough or, in spite of Brown, bright enough to know: Everybody's been
shot.
A young friend of a friend is still so depressed by Sept. 11 that school and social
life and going to a show are now out of the question. "I'm staying home. I'm hurting."
I know, I said a few days ago when we talked. But everyone's hurting, I explain. Then
I thought of Tom Sizemore. "Everyone's been shot," I said, "ya gotta get in and drive
anyway."
When I was a child in the old America, people said things like, "It ain't easy." Then
they'd shrug. Or, "Whatta ya want, life ain't easy!" I think people actually sighed
more in those days, issued forth big long sighs tha
t said: Life is hard. There was a sort of general knowledge that each day would not
necessarily be a sleigh ride, and that everyone hits bumps along the way, and some of
them are really hard, and everyone sooner or later
hits them.
But now, more so than in the past, something has grown in our country, grown perhaps
because of good things like psychotherapy and bad things like group-identity politics.
And that something is an increasing tender regard
for one's own sensitivities and quirks and problems and woes--twinned with a growing
insensitivity to everyone else's quirks and problems and woes.
This is not progress. If we became more aware of others instead of demanding that
others be more aware of our needs, we would probably get a better fix on life, a
better perspective, a better sense of everyone's context.
We'd wind up more patient with others, more sympathetic. We could actually wind up
sensitive to someone other than ourselves.
I sound earnest today. I am earnest today. But I will make this more fun. The week
included the story of a congressman, who through no fault of his own, was humiliated,
treated with great insensitivity. I am speaking of J
ohn Dingell, the Democrat from Michigan. Mr. Dingell, as you know, is an important
veteran congressman who has grown used to--how to put it?-- asserting his needs and
seeing to it that they are met.
John Dingell was trying to get on a plane the other day when his artificial hip set
off a magnetometer. He pointed out that it was an artificial hip, and I suspect he
pointed out that he was a member of Congress who does
not fit the prevailing terror profile. But you know what the security guards did? They
took him into a side room, made him take off his pants and wanded him. John Dingell
had to stand there in his underpants proving he wa
sn't carrying a gun.
When the story became public, the secretary of transportation called him and
apologized. Mr. Dingell waved him off and told him it was OK, he understands,
everyone's doing his job.
Now that's someone who knows that everybody's been shot.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Her new book, "When
Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan," is just out from Viking Penguin. You
can buy it here at the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her
column appears Fridays.
Copyright � 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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