Abstract
It should not have taken a tragedy to dislodge the ceaseless silliness of cable commentators as they prated on about the missing young intern Chandra Levy and the nature of her relationship with California Democrat Gary Condit. For weeks, CNN talk show host Larry King had been running stories on the search for Levy and the possible involvement of the congressman in her disappearance, despite an inconvenient lack of evidence.
Most of King's guests were psychobabblers or law-enforcement second-guessers, but in the immediate run-up to September 11 he interviewed a panel consisting of members of Condit's staff, who argued, unsurprisingly, that they found the congressman to be a nice person. King then spent an hour with the congressman's son, who also proclaimed his father a nice guy. Next was the congressman's daughter–ditto.
I was beginning to imagine the next interview–with the family pets.
“What kind of a master is Gary Condit, anyway?” Larry King would ask in his disarmingly friendly manner. “Woof woof–wooof,” Fido would reply, confidently. “Meow, meow,” Miss Puff would chime in. King would be sure to thank them for coming on his show at such a stressful time in their lives.
If you regard remarks like these as inappropriate to the times, you're probably not alone–and you will want to move on quickly to the more serious articles in the magazine.
For today, a month after the terrorist attack, irony has been declared dead and humor buried amid the rubble of the World Trade Center. Pop songs and advertisements are still being vetted for “suitability,” and the particularly violent inaugural episodes of the usual run of violent new television shows have been put away for a later day.
Here at the Bulletin, however, we see things a little differently. We earn our bread and butter by staring daily at writings on the detailed ins and outs of varied means of mass destruction–and for 55 years this magazine has tried to get more people to take a serious look as well, in the hope that if they do so, they will work to help prevent disasters like September 11.
Along the way, we've learned the importance of making fun–serious fun, sometimes–teasing the self-important, ridiculing the ridiculous, and most critically, trying not to confuse our cause, which we take seriously, with ourselves, which we do not.
We're not going to stop.
Meanwhile, there's some very worthwhile reading in this issue of the magazine. Hugh Gusterson explains how the nuclear establishment has coopted the language of disarmament; U.S. national missile defense is examined by writers in Britain, Belgium, Germany, China, Japan, and Russia; and Boston University's Walter Clemens asks, “Can he do that?” as he tackles the tricky issue of whether a president has the right to single-handledly dump a treaty.
Post-weapons cleanup is the subject of two more articles: Former Bulletin editor Len Ackland notes the progress at Rocky Flats, and journalist Terje Langeland looks at how British Nuclear Fuels became a major U.S. cleanup contractor.