The triumph of American values

After 11 September America knows who the enemy is, says Mark Steyn. There can be no more polite fictions. Moral clarity and the Bush doctrine of pre-emption now govern world affairs

New Hampshire

September 11 was the day everything changed. Everyone said so, and some still do. This Wednesday, CBS’s special commemoration will be called ‘The Day That Changed America’. Fox, slightly less passive, has gone with ‘The Day America Changed’. But the best proof that nothing has changed are the networks’ day-that-everything-changed specials themselves. The other day I warned against the Dianafication of 11 September. But I was too late. Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Connie Chung and the rest of the all-star sob-sisters will be out in force with full supporting saccharine piano accompaniment. The most disturbing footage – the planes slicing through the building, 200 people jumping to their deaths, the thud of bodies landing on the lobby roof – will not be shown. The networks have decided our anger needs to be managed. It’s a very 10 September commemoration of 11 September.

Much of the stuff that was alleged to have ‘changed’ never did except in the mind of addlepated media gurus: Irony is dead! Columnists wrote columns about it. And TV producers put vox-pops together with folks who agreed there was no irony to be found. And then people wrote columns ironically commenting on the irony-is-dead TV items. And, pretty soon, irony had snuck back in. And, before you know it, the pneumatic widow Anna Nicole Smith got her own reality show on MTV.