Gary Kamiya, executive editor of Salon, should have had a hunch he was going to stir up some controversy, but he wrote what he was thinking anyway.
On April 11, just two days after Saddam Hussein’s government was driven from Baghdad, Kamiya wrote a provocative article about Iraqi “liberation” and the celebrating going on in Baghdad’s streets.
Under the headline, “Liberation Day: Even Those Opposed to the War Should Celebrate a Shining Moment in the History of Freedom — the Fall of Saddam Hussein,” Kamiya said we should rejoice in the fall of Hussein, whom he described as “a truly evil man.”
“[A]ll of us, on the left and the right, Democrats and Republicans, America-lovers and America-haters, Syrians and Kuwaitis and Israelis and Palestinians, owe it to our common humanity to stop, put aside — not forever — our doubts and our grief and our future fears, and for one deep moment, celebrate,” Kamiya wrote.
But he added a dangerous confession. “I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong,” Kamiya acknowledged. “Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I’m not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings. Some of this is merely the result of pettiness — ignoble resentment, partisan hackdom, the desire to be proved right and to prove the likes of Rumsfeld wrong, irritation with the sanitizing, myth-making American media.”
To be fair, when reading the entire piece and the context in which it was written, Kamiya acknowledges guilt from these feelings and ultimately seems to reject the temptation to root for disaster.
Fairness and context, however, were not on the minds of Salon’s critics, who are plentiful in light of the online magazine’s consistently liberal perspective. Most of the rabidly right-wing press took Kamiya’s inflammatory confession and used it to bolster their claims that the left embraces a treasonous philosophy. Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly, in particular, launched into an on-air tirade, calling Kamiya a “fanatic” who had “no place in the public arena” and who should “think about moving to Costa Rica.”
As much as I love Salon, I have to believe Kamiya should have known his remarks would be inflammatory, to say the least. If the right wing becomes enraged with John Kerry for joking about the need for “regime change” in the U.S., it’s safe to assume they’ll really blow a gasket for admitting that you “secretly wished for things to go wrong” with the war. Even I found Kamiya’s comments fairly disturbing, and I’m certainly no right-winger.
Nevertheless, Kamiya has a right to be provocative and the conservatives have a right to hate him for his beliefs.
The problem, if there is an actual problem, is that people interested in the Kamiya controversy are only hearing part of the debate. When the conservatives in the media, on Fox News and elsewhere, blast the Salon article, they’re only giving their readers/viewers a part of a complex story. Salon, meanwhile, is putting its spin in the other direction.
After labeling Kamiya a lunatic for his ideas, Bill O’Reilly invited Salon’s editor onto the show to “discuss” the controversy so everyone could hear a free exchange of ideas from both sides. Yeah right, a free exchange on Fox News.
Kamiya isn’t a fool, he’s seen the show and knows full well what happens to guests who put up too much of a fight. They’re interrupted, ridiculed, shouted down, and ultimately unplugged — O’Reilly routinely shuts off the guests’ microphone if they stand up to the host too forcefully. With this in mind, Kamiya declined the invitation to appear on the program.
But today, the editors of Salon offered a different kind of resolution and I think it warrants attention.
“[W]e hereby invite O’Reilly to debate Kamiya, one-on-one, via e-mail,” Salon’s editors said. “Let the unedited exchange become part of the public record on the Net. Let O’Reilly leave the home-turf advantage of his studios. Let’s see how he fares when he can’t simply yank the mike from a guest who disagrees with him too articulately.”
I think this is a great idea that should be done more often. Slate, for example, has a monthly feature called “Dialogues.” The feature invites two prominent figures in a given area to debate, via email, a controversy in a week-long exchange of correspondence. The readers get to read both sides, in full, without the shouting and interruptions that have become a staple of television and radio “discussions.” (Here’s a recent example of a Slate “Dialogue” over the connections between Iraq and state-sponsored terrorism.)
This method gives people a chance to think their arguments through and explain their points without fear of being cut off for a commercial break. The reader gets to hear more than just soundbites and the participants get to finish their thoughts. Everyone wins.
Will O’Reilly take Salon up on the challenge? I doubt it. On his program, O’Reilly is king. He need not tolerate dissent or questions, nor does he feel the need to explain himself. When O’Reilly delivers the gospel to his admirers, complexities and nuances are irrelevant. I’d be terribly surprised to see him engage in a legitimate debate with a man he considers a “fanatic,” but if he takes Salon up on the offer, I’ll let you know.
One more thing, in case you’re interested. Salon, which generally restricts content to its subscribers, is allowing anyone to read the original Kamiya article that started this controversy in the first place.