Friday, March 31, 2006

Return from Stockholm


Well, after nearly 3 months in captivity, it didn't take much more than 3 hours after Jill Carroll spoke of her ordeal for John Podhoretz, writer for the National Review, the quintessential conservative rag, to write the following:

"It’s wonderful that she’s free, but after watching someone who was a hostage for three months say on television she was well-treated because she wasn’t beaten or killed — while being dressed in the garb of a modest Muslim woman rather than the non-Muslim woman she actually is — I expect there will be some Stockholm Syndrome talk in the coming days."

Now I don't doubt Podhoretz feels it's wonderful you've been released from your tremendous ordeal, but he's obviously disturbed by your coming back to freedom wearing the garb of a "modest Muslim woman". Well, I don't find that quite as appalling as he in that you dressed like that prior to your kidnapping. We know this, because the press showed us the photos.

But Podhoretz is also upset because you claim you were treated well by your captors (because you weren't "beaten or killed"--did you really say that Jill?) and I almost get the feeling he'd feel better if they had roughed you up a little bit. Or maybe they did rough you up and he wishes you just wouldn't lie about it. He thinks you have that Stockholm Syndrome, you know, a psychological response a hostage sometimes gets by developing a loyalty to their kidnappers despite apparent danger they placed you in.

But what if you weren't lying? What if you were treated well by your captors? After all, your journalism only tried to advocate their side of this horrendous unfolding story. Maybe your Muslim abductors weren't the wild madmen in the treatment of you that Podhoretz needs them to be for his conservative readership. After all, there's been a lot of lives and treasure invested to subdue these crazed barbarians.

Or, maybe like you, Dada's just suffering from a little Stockholm Syndrome too?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stockholm Syndrome seems to me more like something Bush is suffering after all this time in captivity of his patrician upbringing, followed by his total embrasure of all things jesus & don't forget the shadowy puppetmaster himself, Cheney. Unfortunately, after we "release" him, I don't see him comin back down to real life "cryin at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation", do you? He's already identified too much with his "captors". D.K.

Anonymous said...

And what is Podhoretz' problem? The same points he used to deride Carroll's stmnt she was well-treated, which he snidely thinks is a misstatement because not being beaten or killed is not akin to being well-treated, he says ... well, these seem to be the same criteria being used by Rumsfeld to define our treatment of GITMO prisoners; i.e. they are being well-treated because they're not being beaten or killed. So what is his point? Or is that too many conflicting thoughts to hold in his pea-brain? D.K.

Anonymous said...

oh, the mighty conflict that must be going on on Podheretz's brain as he contemplates the ease with which Jill Carroll developed "Stockholm Syndrome" while the "well-treated" prisoners at Gitmo don't seem to be as susceptible

easier, I suppose, for the narrow-minded to just chalk it up to a character flaw in Ms. Carroll...