Time To Ridicule

A reader writes:

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for doing to Bin Laden what should have been done long ago: ridiculing him.

He is a despicable low-life criminal who should have been arrested and put on trial ages ago. Instead, the Bush administration and the entire Fox News Fear Factory turned him into a large-than-life villain, and let him escape with impunity.

Now the Giulianis and Hewitts run around doing his work for him by terrorizing Americans, spreading fear instead of confidence, pretending that Bin Laden's pipe dreams of world domination should frighten Americans into giving up our civil liberties.

Now, more than ever, we need an FDR moment: we must turn our backs on fear, and live free and unafraid. When the West faced a truly existential threat from Hitler, we didn't spend our time terrorizing ourselves into a frenzy. We knew that confidence, humility and good cheer are far more valuable.

And so is ridicule. FDR knew it, and so did someone from your side of the pond: Spike Jones. Your piece on Bin Laden's beard is an excellent entry into the distinguished genre that brought us "Right in Der Führer's Face". Satire and ridicule: this is what we should have been doing for the last six years! (And if he ever does read your piece, your calm, unafraid reference to your husband will be the sharpest twist of the knife for him.) A free, confident, and unafraid West, will not abandon the liberties and values of the West to any tyrant or thug, foreign or domestic.