It's been a while since I spent "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney." 60 Minutes isn't a big draw in Israel (a lot of us are still bitter about Bob Simon's Middle East coverage), and we barely get one station on our TV. But now that it's available in podcast form, I have renewed my acquaintance with Andy, Morley… actually, they're the only old-timers left. Little did I expect that a three-minute segment—which, on the face of it, had nothing to do with Israel or the Jewish word—would set me off.
However, last night's Rooney Rant wasn't about typewriters, unleaded gas, or these new-fangled cordless phones. No, it was about Memorial Day, and the fact that no one really honors the memory of America's fallen anymore. Opined Andy:
"Because I was in the Army during World War II, I have more to remember on Memorial Day than most of you. I had good friends who were killed… I wish we could dedicate Memorial Day, not to the memory of those who have died at war, but to the idea of saving the lives of the young people who are going to die in the future if we don’t find some new way - some new religion maybe - that takes war out of our lives. That would be a Memorial Day worth celebrating."
On the CBS website, this has aroused a lot of comment, including a Jehovah's Witness who ventured that he had that "new religion" Andy was looking for; he was so excited that he posted the same comment ten times, rattling off a long series of biblical quotes, starting with the famous "swords-into-ploughshares" vision of Yeshayahu (Isaiah 2:2-4). The fuller version is actually in Mikha (Micah 4:1-5), but that's another podcast ("Know Your Navi," Episodes #20 and #36). I'll point out that in both cases, justice is a prerequisite for peace. (Also, the good Witness excised the part about Zion and Jerusalem; I guess Watchtower readers are post-Zionists.)
Still, the offensive part about Andy's peace was not his messianic vision, but his historical myopia. It's simply sad that he is so out of touch. A full diatribe about the meaning of Memorial Day, without one mention of the fact that America is currently in two wars, with over 4,000 fatalities and many more whose lives will never be the same? Somehow, Korea & Vietnam don't deserve a mention either. Of course, this was a piece about the personal effect of war, and Andy was in the Big One, but it was spoken to the entire nation, and to ignore the fallen of the past 60 years is unacceptable. He even vaguely refers to "young people who are going to die in the future"—how about young people who are dying the present?
Now, this piece was not exactly fresh, but it wasn't ancient history either. It was broadcast originally in 2005, over two years after the invasion of Iraq. Someone at CBS News decided it was time to dust it off and show it again, and why not? It fits into the Western worldview: World War II was the last good war, the last one with heroes in it. Fighting Nazis is something we can all root for; even Indiana Jones used to do that. It's old-fashioned, something we can cast in granite and think about two days a year. But now we live in an enlightened world, one which has a global body to settle disputes, sitting across from a wall inscribed with that hoary passage from "old religion." War is passé; all we need to do is "take [it] out of our lives." A lot of Israeli intellectuals agree, cheering the signing of every empty agreement, breaking out the champagne for every meaningless negotiation, dancing in the streets when more land is ceded for more... what was that formula again?
The problem is that the fight against totalitarianism is still being fought. The ideology has morphed from fascism to Communism to fundamentalism, but it's still claiming lives around the world, especially in our little corner of the world. The war against it cannot be fought solely on a battlefield, but if we start our ploughshare production before the other side has laid aside its swords, if we put peace before justice, we'll end up with neither. Andy, take it from a citizen of a country that still has a draft, that adds to its running list of casualties every year: memorial days aren't the exclusive property of the Greatest Generation. The sacrifices that democracy's defenders have made and continue to make are worth celebrating right now.
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