Word: binning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...order to try to define the (terrifying) ordinariness of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi bureaucrat who helped manage Hitler's killing machine. Each age, it may be, gets its own appropriate evil. A centerless bureaucrat, for example, to run the Nazi regime's program of industrial extermination. In the videotape, bin Laden seems to radiate--if that is the word--a different sort of banality: the unexpected ordinariness of his awfulness...
...madman? No. An evil genius? Part of the deflation is an atmosphere of ineffable near-stupidity. The recollected premonitions in dreams about soccer teams made up of airplane pilots, for example. Stupidity is evil's dimwit half-brother. It dawns on you as you watch the tape that bin Laden may be like one of those not quite bright real-life hoods who strut around with the Godfather movies unreeling in their minds, the theme music playing in their inner ears; Al Pacino has given them the dialogue, a myth of themselves. Bin Laden is the John Gotti of jihad...
What will be the consequence of such innocence? Baudelaire said evil's shrewdest trick is to persuade us that it does not exist. Does bin Laden confirm the existence of evil? Or the stupid ordinariness of awfulness? Both, I'd say. One of the consequences of 9/11 has been to revive, so to speak, the belief in evil. Evil is hard to define, but it's there all right. It's like pornography: you know it when...
Every week TIME writers and editors chat on AOL about the news. This week we talk about Osama bin Laden's performance in his infamous videotape and Will Smith's role as Muhammad Ali. Go to AOL, Keyword: Live...
Editor-at-large MICHAEL ELLIOTT snagged the plum assignment this week of examining one of the most eagerly anticipated bits of video in recent memory, featuring Osama bin Laden. Elliott explores what the tape tells us about bin Laden--and writes about the future of al-Qaeda. Chat with him about the tales of the tape on Tuesday...