December 27, 2002

ANNOUNCING THE 2002 MAUREEN DOWD PSYCHOBABBLER OF THE YEAR PRIZE

    This first annual Horsefeathers prize is named after the New York Times pundit in recognition of her unique combination of fatuous self-regard, shallowness of knowledge, condescension towards her betters and her grotesquely polemical misuse of psychological terms and ideas. A finer example of what Dr. Johnson called “articulate ignorance” could not be found. We're certain the many competitors who fell a little short of our winner will continue to strive towards the standard she has set. This year’s award winner captured the prize for comments he made just before his untimely demise so the award is, regrettably, a posthumous one.

     When Samuel Johnson advised Boswell: “Clear your mind of cant” he was remarking on the ease with which we fill our minds with nonsense and cliches that we never question. Johnson had in mind the social hypocrisies that we all engage in, and while acknowledging the need for such hypocrisy, he cautioned against believing what we may be forced to say. Cant thinking eases the need for genuine critical thought, replacing it with clichéd and formulaic notions. While Johnson’s counsel holds for all time, even the great Doctor could not have anticipated the cant of our therapeutic age, nor the way we are inundated with it through the mass media. Horsefeathers, taking up Johnson’s injunction as our mission, awards Five feathers to the 2002 Psychobabbler of the Year.

     The competitors included:

      1)The Freud Museum, London, whose spokesman Ivan Ward enlisted Freud on the side of Yasser Arafat's terror apparatus. He assured us that Freud, were he alive today, would speak up on behalf of innocent Palestinian children brutally victimized by pathological Israelis.

     2) The U.S. State Dept. utopians, from Colin Powell down who “explain” that the reason why Palestinians commit acts of terror is because they feel desperate and deprived. The therapeutic stance assumes that if we address their grievances with sufficient empathy they will feel better, become happy and civilized. Hatred is never irrational; it is caused by frustration, by insufficient caring, for which we are responsible. Hence the worse the barbarians behave, the more we need to empathize with their distraught state and help them gratify their wishes. This is the Officer Krupke, “we’re depraved, because we were deprived” school of psychotherapy

     3) Dr. Carol Wolman informed us that in her professional psychiatric opinion the psychopath on the world scene was George W. Bush who was merely going after Saddam in order to win an “oedipal” triumph over daddy in order to win mommy’s love. What made this a particularly rich example of psychobabble was Dr. Wolman’s citation of the American Psychiatric Assn’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to lend a patina of professional respectability to her diagnosis of a man she clearly loathed. The best psychobabblers, like Dr. Wolman, are relieved of the task of considering what practical policy choices are needed for dealing with the Saddams of the world, in favor of displaying for us their “deeper” understanding.

     4) While Dr. Wolman was intent on diagnosing, i.e. pathologizing George W. Bush, Dr. Jerrold Post did the same for Saddam, telling us how the poor man suffered from the after effects of cruel mistreatment in his childhood. The diagnosis Dr. Post offered was designed to warn us against using force to subdue him because “malignant narcissists”, in Dr. Post’s view, are best treated with empathic care lest they become violent. Neither Dr. Wolman nor Dr. Post bothered to mention that the same traumatic early lives can be found in the background of many of the greatest human beings who ever lived—including Samuel Johnson.

     Clearly it was a difficult choice by virtue of the worthiness of the contenders. Nevertheless our decision was clearcut. The winner of the 2002 Maureen Dowd prize is:

      5)Sheikh Salah Sa’adeh. When asked whether young people blowing themselves up in order to kill Jews was a sign of mental health, he replied: "The stream of youths [who seek to] attain martyrdom shows [mental] health and the awareness of Palestinian society, and is not a mistake or an escape from a situation of despair or frustration. Many people come to Jihad, and they are willing to lay down their souls - which is the most precious thing a man has. There is a vast difference between someone who sacrifices money or an offering and someone who sacrifices his soul for the sake of Allah to bring happiness to the nation, and to remove its torment and distress."

     On July 23, 2002 Sheikh Sa’adeh was killed in a missile strike by the Israel Defense Forces, in their own form of therapy, and in gratitude for his efforts towards improving the mental health of Palestinian youth.

     The 2002 Maureen Dowd Prize with five feathers is therefore awarded posthumously to Sheikh Salah Sa’adeh.