Aftermath of 911
From the ashes of Sept. 1 1 arise the manly virtues.
Friday, October 12, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT
A few weeks ago I wrote a column called "God Is Back, " about how,
within a day of the events of Sept. 1 1, my city was awash in religious
imagery—prayer cards, statues of saints. It all culminated, in a way, in
the discovery of the steel-girder cross that emerged last week from
the wreckage--unbent, unbroken, unmelted, perfectly proportioned
and duly blessed by a Catholic friar on the request of the rescue
workers, who seemed to see meaning in the cross's existence. So do I.
My son, a teenager, finds this hilarious, as does one of my best friends.
They have teased me, to my delight, but I have told them, "Boys, this
whole story is about good and evil, about the clash of good and evil."
If you are of a certain cast of mind, it is of course meaningful that the
face of the Evil One seemed to emerge with a roar from the furnace
that was Tower One. You have seen the Associated Press photo, and
the photos that followed: the evil face roared out of the building with
an ugly howl--and then in a snap of the fingers it lost form and force
and disappeared. If you are of a certain cast of mind it is of course
meaningful that the cross, which to those of its faith is imperishable,
did not disappear. It was not crushed by the millions of tons of
concrete that crashed down upon it, did not melt in the furnace. It
rose from the rubble, still there, intact.
For the ignorant, the superstitious and me (and maybe you), the face
of the Evil One was revealed, and died; for the ignorant, the
superstitious and me (and maybe you), the cross survived. This is how
God speaks to us. He is saying, "I am." He is saying, "I am here. " He is
saying, "And the force of all the evil of all the world will not bury
me."
I believe this quite literally. But then I am experiencing Sept. I I not as
a political event but as a spiritual event.
And, of course, a cultural one, which gets me to my topic.
It is not only that God is back, but that men are back. A certain style
of manliness is once again being honored and celebrated in our
country since Sept. 11. You might say it suddenly emerged from the
rubble of the past quarter century, and emerged when a certain kind
of man came forth to get our great country out of the fix it was in.
I am speaking of masculine men, men who push things and pull things
and haul things and build things, men who charge up the stairs in a
hundred pounds of gear and tell everyone else where to go to be
safe. Men who are welders, who do construction, men who are cops
and firemen. They are all of them, one way or another, the men who
put the fire out, the men who are digging the rubble out, and the men
who will build whatever takes its place.
And their style is back in style. We are experiencing a new respect for
their old-fashioned masculinity, a new respect for physical courage,
for strength and for the willingness to use both for the good of
others.
You didn't have to be a fireman to be one of the manly men of Sept.
11. Those businessmen on flight 93, which was supposed to hit
Washington, the businessmen who didn't live by their hands or their
backs but who found out what was happening to their country, said
goodbye to the people they loved, snapped the cell phone shut and
said, "Let's roll." Those were tough men, the ones who forced that
plane down in Pennsylvania. They were tough, brave guys.
Let me tell you when I first realized what rm saying. On Friday, Sept.
14, I went with friends down to the staging area on the West Side
Highway where all the trucks filled with guys coming off a 12-hour
shift at ground zero would pass by. They were tough, rough men, the
grunts of the city—construction workers and electrical workers and
cops and emergency medical worker and firemen.
I joined a group that was just standing there as the truck convoys
went by. And all we did was cheer. We all wanted to do some kind of
volunteer work but there was nothing left to do, so we stood and
cheered those who were doing. The trucks would go by and we'd
cheer and wave and shout "God bless you!" and "We love you!" We
waved flags and signs, clapped and threw kisses, and we meant it: We
loved these men. And as the workers would go by--they would wave to us
from their trucks and buses, and smile and nod--I realized that a lot
of them were men who hadn 't been applauded since the day they
danced to their song with their bride at the wedding.
And suddenly I looked around me at all of us who were cheering. And
saw who we were. Investment bankers! Orthodontists! Magazine
editors! In my group, a lawyer, a columnist and a writer. We had been
the kings and queens of the city, respected professional in a city that
respects its professional class. And this night we were nobody. We
were so useless, all we could do was applaud the somebodies, the
workers who, unlike us, had not been applauded much in their lives.
And now they were saving our city.
I turned to my friend and said, "I have seen the grunts of New York
become kings and queens of the City." I was so moved and, oddly I
guess, grateful. Because they'd always been the people who ran the
place, who kept it going, they •d just never been given their due. But
now--"And the last shall be first"--we were making up for it.
It may seem that I am really talking about class--the professional
classes have a new appreciation for the working class men of Lodi,
N.J., or Astoria, Queens. But what I'm attempting to talk about is
actual manliness, which often seems tied up with class issues, as they
say, but isn 't always by any means the same thing.
Here's what I •m trying to say: Once about 10 years ago there was a
story—you have read it in your local tabloid, or a supermarket
tabloid like the National Enquirer--about an American man and woman
who were on their honeymoon in Australia or New Zealand. They
were swirnming in the ocean, the water chest-high. From nowhere
came a shark. The shark went straight for the woman, opened its
jaws. Do you know what the man did? He punched the shark in the
head. He punched it and punched it again. He did not do brilliant
commentary on the shark, he did not share his sensitive feelings about
the shark, he did not make wry observations about the shark, he
punched the shark in the head. So the shark let go of his wife and
went straight for him. And it killed him. The wife survived to tell the
story of what her husband had done. He had tried to deck the shark. I
told my friends: That's what a wonderful man is, a man who will try
to deck the shark.
I don't know what the guy did for a living, but he had a very
old-fashioned sense of what it is to be a man, and I think that sense is
coming back into style because of who saved us on Sept. I I, and that
is very good for our country.
Why? Well, manliness wins wars. Strength and guts plus brains and
spirit wins wars. But also, you know what follows manliness? The
gentleman. The return of manliness will bring a return of
gentlemanliness, for a simple reason: masculine men are almost by
definition gentlemen. Example: If you 're a woman and you go to a
faculty meeting at an Ivy League University you 'II have to fight with a
male intellectual for a chair, but I assure you that if you go to a
Knights of Columbus Hall, the men inside (cops, firemen, insurance
agents) will rise to offer you a seat. Because they are manly men, and
gentlemen.
It is hard to be a man. I am certain of it; to be a man in this world is
not easy. I know you are thinking, But it's not easy to be a woman, and you are so
right. But women get to complain and make others feel bad about
their plight. Men have to suck it up. Good men suck it up and remain
good-natured, constructive and helpful; less-good men become the
kind of men who are spoofed on "The Man Show"--babe-watching,
dope-smoking nihilists. (Nihilism is not manly, it is the last refuge of
sissies.)
I should discuss how manliness and its brother, gentlemanliness, went
out of style. I know, because I was there. In fact, I may have done it. I
remember exactly when: It was in the mid-'70s, and I was in my
mid-20s, and a big, nice, middle-aged man got up from his seat to help
me haul a big piece of luggage into the overhead luggage space on a
plane. I was a feminist, and knew our rules and rants. "I can do it
myself, " I snapped.
It was important that he know women are strong. It was even more
important, it turns out, that I know I was a jackass, but I didn •t. I
embarrassed a nice man who was attempting to help a lady. I wasn 't
lady enough to let him. I bet he never offered to help a lady again. I
bet he became an intellectual, or a writer, and not a good man like a
fireman or a businessman who says, "Let's roll."
But perhaps it wasn 't just me. I was there in America, as a child, when
John Wayne was a hero, and a symbol of American manliness. He was
strong, and silent. And I was there in America when they killed John
Wayne by a thousand cuts. A lot of people killed him—not only
feminists but peaceniks, leftists, intellectuals, others. You could even
say it was Woody Allen who did it, through laughter and an endearing
admission of his own nervousness and fear. He made nervousness and
fearfulness the admired style. He made not being able to deck the
shark, but doing the funniest commentary on not decking the shark,
seem. . cool.
But when we killed John Wayne, you know who we were left with.
We were left with John Wayne's friendly-antagonist sidekick in the
old John Ford movies, Ban-y Fitzgerald. The small, nervous, gossiping
neighborhood commentator Barry Fitzgerald, who wanted to talk
about everything and do nothing.
This was not progress. It was not improvement.
I missed John Wayne.
But now I think ... he's back. I think he returned on Sept. 11. I think
he ran up the stairs, threw the kid over his back like a sack of
potatoes, came back down and shoveled rubble. I think he's in
Afghanistan now, saying, with his slow swagger and simmering
silence, "Yer in a whole lotta trouble now, Osama-boy. "
I think he's back in style. And none too soon.
Welcome back, Duke.
And once again: Thank you, men of Sept. 11.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Her new book,
"When Character Was King: A
Story of Ronald Reagan," will be published by Viking Penguin this fall. Her col-
umn appears Fridays.
