O. J. Hussein
by Roland Barphe,
founder of l'Organisation Uni du Film Original Québécois (l'OUFOq), editor of Excressences, and director of media studies at the Polyvalente de St-Tite
As usual, discussion of an important public has been futile, thanks to commentators' refusal to consider semiotics. The issue to which I am referring is the failure of the United States to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The chief competing contentions – that 1) Iraq does too have weapons of mass destruction and 2) that president Bush and prime minister Blair were lying – are both unpersuasive.
Viewed semiotically, the invasion of Iraq bears close resemblance to that grand old American tradition, the lynch mob. The accusers present "evidence" of a sordid crime, then skip the time-consuming formality of a trial by stringing the supposed malefactor up.
Americans have graduated to a stage of moral development which does not countenance lynching, but they retain a cultural habit of rushing to judgment. Let us consider the trial of O. J. Simpson.
I have no idea whether O. J. Simpson committed murder or not. All I know is that the Los Angeles District Attorney's office had no better idea of his guilt than I do, but went ahead and charged him anyway. Their moral certainty that Simpson was guilty blinded them to the inadequacy of their evidence. It should have been obvious that the suspicious gloves wouldn't fit Simpson, but they had him try them on anyway. They were so sure of Simpson's guilt that they were sure the gloves would fit, no matter how small they looked.
The semiotic interest in Simpson's trial came from seeing which symbolic factor would predominate. Traditionally, rich Americans are acquitted of murder and attempted murder – Cullen Davis and Claus von Bulow come to mind. You may recall that Cullen Davis was also acquitted of taking out a hit on a judge because the jury didn't believe a rich man was capable of such a crime. Money is virtuous. Black Americans, though, are convicted of murder and attempted murder. Black people have never been widely viewed as virtuous by their fellow Americans. Simpson, though, was both rich and black, so the question was which factor would predominate.
Well, I still don't know. One cannot generalize from a single instance. It does appear that wealth predominated. If Simpson had been poor I suspect he would have been convicted, no matter how the jury was constituted and no matter how poor the evidence was, but the rich Simpson's success may simply be the result of his being able to hire good lawyers. I doubt that a poor man represented by a public defender would have been able to present the crucial expert evidence about the rates at which blood dries on gloves.
What I do know is that the district attorney's office botched the case by being too certain of its evidence. We see the same tendency in Iraq. Many people believe that president Bush and prime minister Blair lied about the evidence, but I find it hard to believe that they would perpetrate a lie which would be found out so easily (I don't find it impossible to believe, but I do find it difficult). The American presentation to the UN of questionable and even exploded "evidence" which was promptly exposed suggests that the highest decisionmaking circles of the mightiest nation on earth had been subverted by crippling moral fervour. The ready acceptance of this questionable evidence by the quality American press suggests that the same crippling moral fervour was widespread in the United States.
So where did the weapons of mass destruction go? I suspect Saddam Hussein sold them, without betraying himself to the vast American intelligence network whose prowess in Arabic is a teeny bit wanting. Where are they now? I don't know, but I suspect they'll be used soon enough. After which, the United States will invade the wrong place again. And think it was right. Again.
Posted July 3, 2003
O. J. Hussein © Coolth, 2003
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