PEGGY NOONAN
Welcome Back, Duke
From the ashes of Sept. 11 arise the manly virtues.
Friday, October 12, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT
A few weeks ago I wrote a column called "[54]God Is Back," about how,
within a day of the events of Sept. 11, my city was awash in religious
imagery--prayer cards, statues of saints. It all culminated, in a way,
in the discovery of the steel-girder cross that emerged last week from
the wreckage--unbent, unbroken, unmelted, perfectly proportioned and
duly blessed by a Catholic friar on the request of the rescue workers,
who seemed to see meaning in the cross's existence. So do I.
My son, a teenager, finds this hilarious, as does one of my best
friends. They have teased me, to my delight, but I have told them,
"Boys, this whole story is about good and evil, about the clash of
good and evil." If you are of a certain cast of mind, it is of course
meaningful that the face of the Evil One seemed to emerge with a roar
from the furnace that was Tower One. You have seen the Associated
Press photo, and the photos that followed: the evil face roared out of
the building with an ugly howl--and then in a snap of the fingers it
lost form and force and disappeared. If you are of a certain cast of
mind it is of course meaningful that the cross, which to those of its
faith is imperishable, did not disappear. It was not crushed by the
millions of tons of concrete that crashed down upon it, did not melt
in the furnace. It rose from the rubble, still there, intact.
For the ignorant, the superstitious and me (and maybe you), the face
of the Evil One was revealed, and died; for the ignorant, the
superstitious and me (and maybe you), the cross survived. This is how
God speaks to us. He is saying, "I am." He is saying, "I am here." He
is saying, "And the force of all the evil of all the world will not
bury me."
I believe this quite literally. But then I am experiencing Sept. 11
not as a political event but as a spiritual event.
And, of course, a cultural one, which gets me to my topic.
It is not only that God is back, but that men are back. A certain
style of manliness is once again being honored and celebrated in our
country since Sept. 11. You might say it suddenly emerged from the
rubble of the past quarter century, and emerged when a certain kind of
man came forth to get our great country out of the fix it was in.
I am speaking of masculine men, men who push things and pull things
and haul things and build things, men who charge up the stairs in a
hundred pounds of gear and tell everyone else where to go to be safe.
Men who are welders, who do construction, men who are cops and
firemen. They are all of them, one way or another, the men who put the
fire out, the men who are digging the rubble out, and the men who will
build whatever takes its place.
And their style is back in style. We are experiencing a new respect
for their old-fashioned masculinity, a new respect for physical
courage, for strength and for the willingness to use both for the good
of others.
You didn't have to be a fireman to be one of the manly men of Sept.
11. Those businessmen on flight 93, which was supposed to hit
Washington, the businessmen who didn't live by their hands or their
backs but who found out what was happening to their country, said
goodbye to the people they loved, snapped the cell phone shut and
said, "Let's roll." Those were tough men, the ones who forced that
plane down in Pennsylvania. They were tough, brave guys.
Let me tell you when I first realized what I'm saying. On Friday,
Sept. 14, I went with friends down to the staging area on the West
Side Highway where all the trucks filled with guys coming off a
12-hour shift at ground zero would pass by. They were tough, rough
men, the grunts of the city--construction workers and electrical
workers and cops and emergency medical worker and firemen.
I joined a group that was just standing there as the truck convoys
went by. And all we did was cheer. We all wanted to do some kind of
volunteer work but there was nothing left to do, so we stood and
cheered those who were doing. The trucks would go by and we'd cheer
and wave and shout "God bless you!" and "We love you!" We waved flags
and signs, clapped and threw kisses, and we meant it: We loved these
men. And as the workers would go by--they would wave to us from their
trucks and buses, and smile and nod--I realized that a lot of them
were men who hadn't been applauded since the day they danced to their
song with their bride at the wedding.
And suddenly I looked around me at all of us who were cheering. And
saw who we were. Investment bankers! Orthodontists! Magazine editors!
In my group, a lawyer, a columnist and a writer. We had been the kings
and queens of the city, respected professional in a city that respects
its professional class. And this night we were nobody. We were so
useless, all we could do was applaud the somebodies, the workers who,
unlike us, had not been applauded much in their lives.
And now they were saving our city.
I turned to my friend and said, "I have seen the grunts of New York
become kings and queens of the City." I was so moved and, oddly I
guess, grateful. Because they'd always been the people who ran the
place, who kept it going, they'd just never been given their due. But
now--"And the last shall be first"--we were making up for it.
It may seem that I am really talking about class--the professional
classes have a new appreciation for the working class men of Lodi,
N.J., or Astoria, Queens. But what I'm attempting to talk about is
actual manliness, which often seems tied up with class issues, as they
say, but isn't always by any means the same thing.
Here's what I'm trying to say: Once about 10 years ago there was a
story--you might have read it in your local tabloid, or a supermarket
tabloid like the National Enquirer--about an American man and woman
who were on their honeymoon in Australia or New Zealand. They were
swimming in the ocean, the water chest-high. From nowhere came a
shark. The shark went straight for the woman, opened its jaws. Do you
know what the man did? He punched the shark in the head. He punched it
and punched it again. He did not do brilliant commentary on the shark,
he did not share his sensitive feelings about the shark, he did not
make wry observations about the shark, he punched the shark in the
head. So the shark let go of his wife and went straight for him. And
it killed him. The wife survived to tell the story of what her husband
had done. He had tried to deck the shark. I told my friends: That's
what a wonderful man is, a man who will try to deck the shark.
I don't know what the guy did for a living, but he had a very
old-fashioned sense of what it is to be a man, and I think that sense
is coming back into style because of who saved us on Sept. 11, and
that is very good for our country.
Why? Well, manliness wins wars. Strength and guts plus brains and
spirit wins wars. But also, you know what follows manliness? The
gentleman. The return of manliness will bring a return of
gentlemanliness, for a simple reason: masculine men are almost by
definition gentlemen. Example: If you're a woman and you go to a
faculty meeting at an Ivy League University you'll have to fight with
a male intellectual for a chair, but I assure you that if you go to a
Knights of Columbus Hall, the men inside (cops, firemen, insurance
agents) will rise to offer you a seat. Because they are manly men, and
gentlemen.
It is hard to be a man. I am certain of it; to be a man in this world
is not easy. I know you are thinking, But it's not easy to be a woman,
and you are so right. But women get to complain and make others feel
bad about their plight. Men have to suck it up. Good men suck it up
and remain good-natured, constructive and helpful; less-good men
become the kind of men who are spoofed on "The Man
Show"--babe-watching, dope-smoking nihilists. (Nihilism is not manly,
it is the last refuge of sissies.)
I should discuss how manliness and its brother, gentlemanliness, went
out of style. I know, because I was there. In fact, I may have done
it. I remember exactly when: It was in the mid-'70s, and I was in my
mid-20s, and a big, nice, middle-aged man got up from his seat to help
me haul a big piece of luggage into the overhead luggage space on a
plane. I was a feminist, and knew our rules and rants. "I can do it
myself," I snapped.
It was important that he know women are strong. It was even more
important, it turns out, that I know I was a jackass, but I didn't. I
embarrassed a nice man who was attempting to help a lady. I wasn't
lady enough to let him. I bet he never offered to help a lady again. I
bet he became an intellectual, or a writer, and not a good man like a
fireman or a businessman who says, "Let's roll."
But perhaps it wasn't just me. I was there in America, as a child,
when John Wayne was a hero, and a symbol of American manliness. He was
strong, and silent. And I was there in America when they killed John
Wayne by a thousand cuts. A lot of people killed him--not only
feminists but peaceniks, leftists, intellectuals, others. You could
even say it was Woody Allen who did it, through laughter and an
endearing admission of his own nervousness and fear. He made
nervousness and fearfulness the admired style. He made not being able
to deck the shark, but doing the funniest commentary on not decking
the shark, seem . . . cool.
But when we killed John Wayne, you know who we were left with. We were
left with John Wayne's friendly-antagonist sidekick in the old John
Ford movies, Barry Fitzgerald. The small, nervous, gossiping
neighborhood commentator Barry Fitzgerald, who wanted to talk about
everything and do nothing.
This was not progress. It was not improvement.
I missed John Wayne.
But now I think . . . he's back. I think he returned on Sept. 11. I
think he ran up the stairs, threw the kid over his back like a sack of
potatoes, came back down and shoveled rubble. I think he's in
Afghanistan now, saying, with his slow swagger and simmering silence,
"Yer in a whole lotta trouble now, Osama-boy."
I think he's back in style. And none too soon.
Welcome back, Duke.
And once again: Thank you, men of Sept. 11.
opinionjournal.com
tom watson tosiwmee |
