I was able to attend the Kennedy Center Lecture this afternoon given by David Simpson from UC-Davis. He spoke mainly on how the American media hasn’t done well in confronting the brutal facts of the events of the last decade, particularly 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of human suffering and atrocities. While he noted that he couldn’t provide a solution for the problem, he considers that by keeping the issue on the forefront of our minds, we will at least be more willing to question the bias in the information that we receive.
Interestingly, while speaking on the topic of literature covering the human suffering experienced on and after 9/11, Simpson quoted a passage from Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close where Oskar notes that he has to Google in other languages in order to find more graphic media pertaining to 9/11.
