Sontag and Said

I've been afraid to look at any right-of-center blogs today for fear of finding some brutish cad trashing Susan Sontag. I felt the same way when Said died last year -- even falling into such despair that I penned a rather disingenuous column for my campus newspaper endorsing a binational state in Israel/Palestine, an idea that Said (and I) could only subscribe to as academics.

How to honor Sontag? An essay praising Al-Jazeera's uninhibited use of grisly footage? Or an essay praising the MSM's squeamishness? Sontag is always described as an "author-activist," but the second part of that label confuses. I guess I've always found her positions too obscure by half. History will decide whether she had a "unique hairstyle" or if it was just that she couldn't decide if she wanted to go with grey or white.

I've also been scanning for obit headlines reading "Sontag Loses Her War With Leukemia" or somesuch. Needless to say, she would have hated that. Check out beatrice.com for some lugubrious kibitzing.