Grim Reader, May 6, 2011: Osama bin Laden, Ernesto Sabato and Yvette Vickers

by Michael Schaffer

MAY 6, 2011 TAGS: OBITS, BIN LADEN ADD A COMMENT

It’s official: Mr. bin Laden is not dead. In a most symbolic gesture in a week heavy on obit-page symbolism, the New York Times officially decided not to use the honorific for its obituary of the terrorist leader. Previous non-misters in the Gray Lady, according to Slate, have included Hitler and Pol Pot; the dishonoring, though, did not include Messrs. Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein or Josef Stalin.

The Times’ style decision on Osama bin Laden’s obit was apparently a last-minute judgment. But although news of Osama’s death was dramatic this week, the Obitosphere gave the sense of having its pieces in the can for quite a while -- probably a wise policy, given the amount of attention focused on hunting him down. The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are among those outlets whose obits bear the bylines of writers who’ve since left the paper; the New York Times version bears the name of someone who predeceased bin Laden.

The wait, though, is well worth it: The long obits, notably the ones in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times (clocking in at 3,600 and 5,300 words, respectively) are as rich as any Grim Reader has read in recent years. Like the shorter pieces elsewhere, the massive obits trace the same baffling arc -- the “scion of one of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest families” who “became the grim apostle of a strain of Islamic radicalism,” according to the Los Angeles Times, or the “merchant prince of Saudi Arabia who founded and led the al-Qaeda Islamist insurgency,” as the Financial Times has it, or the guy “who was born into Saudi riches, only to end up leading a self-declared holy war against the United States,” according to the Washington Post. (Grim Reader almost preferred the non-epic lede in the Wall Street Journal, which simply -- if a bit ethnocentricly -- identifies bin Laden as “the man whose actions defined much of life in America since 9/11.”)

Of course, as the obits themselves note, the bin Laden story is heavy on mythology and short on verifiable facts, which means the coverage is all over the place on same basic details. Osama was either born in 1954 or 1957; he either inherited hundreds of millions from his tycoon father, or was raised in affluent but not extravagant circumstances as a result of his mother’s having been one of the polygamous magnate’s lesser wives; he was either a preternaturally confident kid or something of a misfit among the 54 comparatively cosmopolitan children of Muhammad bin Laden; he was either always devout or -- as unconfirmed rumors repeated in both Timeses suggest -- he sowed some wild oats in the 1970s.

Though there’s some Freudian suggestion that Osama was profoundly affected by his father’s death in 1967, most of the pieces trace his radicalization to two invasions: first, the Soviet assault on Afghanistan, which drew him to help fight in the mountainous nation in the 1980s; and second, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, following which the royal family of Saudi Arabia rejected bin Laden’s offer of help, turning instead to Americans, whose presence in his homeland represented to him a life-altering insult. The two events pointed him on the murderous course to being the world’s most wanted man. “Like President Bush, Bin Laden proclaimed that whoever was not with him was his enemy,” the Los Angeles Times piece concludes (in a juxtaposition that can hardly please the former president). "’These events have divided the world into two camps, the camp of the faithful and the camp of the infidel,’ he said. ‘Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion.’” And, for a time, he seemed to embody the idea that such a defense could be successful.

But some of the coverage has wrinkles that complicate the story. The Financial Times version, for instance, is particularly strong on how the recent Arab spring has changed bin Laden’s position in the Muslim imagination: “He failed. That has been made upliftingly clear by the wave of revolution ripping through the Arab world, led not by jihadis but fomented by young, urban, democratic and often secular civic insurgents.” The New York Times version, likewise, offers telling detail about how the media-savvy Osama was the author of his own legend, right down to the Kalashnikov he carried, supposedly taken from a dead Russian soldier. No one really knows whether bin Laden was the brave combatant he’d claimed to be, or simply the mujaheddin logistics guy described by the C.I.A. And in way, it doesn’t matter: It was the myth of the fighter that helped inspire so much devotion.

On the other hand, the death of a man whose story everyone knew would end in a spectacular death seems to flummox obituarists. Al Jazeera, whose obit plays it fairly straight on the life story, suggests he got the end he wanted: “In his death on May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden kept a promise made in a 2006 audio message,” the piece opens. “Alluding to the United States' hunt for him, the al-Qaeda leader stated his determination to avoid capture: ‘I swear not to die but a free man.’” The Associated Press’ kicker, meanwhile, goes the exact opposite way: “In the end it was not bin Laden who would get the last word. ‘On nights like this one,’ Obama said in announcing bin Laden's death to the world, ‘we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaida's terror: Justice has been done.’”

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A legacy of blood

It’s a week of interesting overseas obits. From Latin America, a pair of anticommunist warriors make the Obitosphere: The Los Angeles Times recalls Rene Emilio Ponce as “the once-powerful army general blamed for one of the most egregious atrocities in El Salvador's civil war, the killing of six Roman Catholic priests.” Ponce blamed the Communists; he was never tried, the subsequently declassified U.S. cables make clear that Washington knew about his wretched record. ... And Orlando Bosch was the Cuban exile acquitted for a 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner, an act that made him a hero among Miami’s exiles but had the U.S. government branding him a terrorist. The New York Times and the Washington Post obits make him sound like a real piece of work: Initially a Castro supporter, he grew disillusioned and fled to the United States, where, the piece notes, he “took a liking to the television show ‘Mission: Impossible,’” the Times says. Before long, he was being arrested for things like towing a torpedo through downtown Miami and shooting a bazooka at a Polish freighter. Repeatedly in trouble with the law, he managed to skate several times thanks to his connections with stateside conservatives.

Redressing wrongs

There is also a pair of people known for trying to look into totalitarian horrors: Ernesto Sabato is hailed by the New York Times as “Argentina’s conscience.” A novelist who the obit says had a stature equal to that of fellow Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges, he led the commission that investigated his country’s “dirty war” against leftists. He “was the last of a generation of Argentinian writers whose moral rectitude in the midst of political chaos gave them an importance far beyond whatever audience their fictional books attracted,” says the Guardian. … And Moshe Landau fled Nazi Germany as a young man, moving to Israel, where he came to lead the Jewish state’s highest court, handing down landmark rulings on things like government censorship. But the obits focus on his role as the presiding judge in the 1961 trial of war criminal Adolph Eichmann. “Landau was committed to maintaining a sense of order and fairness during the trial, even if it meant he sometimes clashed with prosecutors or politicians who saw the trial as an opportunity to educate the world about the Holocaust and boost Israeli nationalism,” a historian tells the Los Angeles Times.

$25 a week

In sports, it’s time for superlative watch: The Associated Press catches the death of Emilio Navarro, believed to be the oldest ex-baseball player. He was 105. In keeping with the custom of obits of oldest living survivors, there’s a telling detail about how different the game is now from when Navarro became the first Puerto Rican in the Negro Leagues: Back then, he made $25 a week. … Meanwhile, the Guardian obit for British boxer Henry Cooper makes it clear how one fleeting moment really can define the career of second-tier athletes: Cooper fought 55 bouts and was the first boxer to be knighted, but the headline still focuses on the fact that he once knocked down (but didn’t defeat) Muhammad Ali. … And there are lots of obits for Erhard Loretan, “only the third mountaineer in history to scale the 14 Himalayan peaks above 8,000 metres,” according to the Telegraph. Among his feats was climbing Everest without extra oxygen. Yes, he died in a climbing accident.

With a pout and a tear

In Hollywood, the Los Angeles Times marks the death of 1930s child star Jackie Cooper, known for his “tousled blond hair, pouty lower lip and ability to cry on camera.” Fun gossip facts: At 13, he dated Judy Garland; at 17, he had a fling with Joan Crawford. After WWII -- and adolescence -- dimmed his star power, he went on to stints as a race-car driver, studio exec, and Emmy-winning TV director.

B-movie plots

Also in Tinseltown -- albeit in a more disturbing corner of it -- the Los Angeles Times runs an obit for Yvette Vickers, 1950s Playboy playmate turned star of campy horror flicks like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Vickers had an affair with Cary Grant and a string of other B-movie roles, but the obit is dominated by the death itself: Her body was mummified, suggesting to cops she’d been dead for a year in her Los Angeles home. Friends said she’d become “paranoid” in recent years.

Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.