MORE SUSAN SONTAG

From Democracy Now:

MODERATOR: Why is it that in the United States the writers, the poets, novelists, playwrights do not speak out on socio-political issue as they arise, and why are the writers in the United States in this extraordinary time of crisis so silent?

SUSAN SONTAG: Well, at the risk of sounding like Michael Moore, I do ask myself every day what happened to my country? I think there has been some incredible takeover that precedes the Bush administration the current really radical takeover of our government. These are really a bunch of radicals. This is not old-style republicanism, such as it was. I think there's been a kind of demoralization of the culture, a dumbing-down of the culture, and an extraordinary ascendancy of materialistic and anti-idealistic values. The conversation among writers that takes place in the last 20 years is for the most part just like the conversation of any other professional people on the make. They could just as well be advertising executives or businesspeople, or anything else. They talk about income and they talk about the comforts or lack of comforts of their personal lives, and -- but that's a kind of -- if I think back on my own life, the single most amazing phenomenon is the discrediting of idealism. And that was a gradual process. You can call it the triumph of consumerism. You can call it a lot of things, but I think now very few people in comparison -- that's not just a question of writers; it's a question of people. Very few people have the nerve to stand up for moral principles or have a sense of the right of criticism that's part of our national culture.

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