Very Short Post: Salman Rushdie and Headlines, Lorem Ipsum

The editors at the NYT and the Washington Post who decide the size of headlines and where to place stories have an influential job. They are telling their readers what is most newsworthy. What we should pay attention to. What might be most exigent to my world and to your world.

On most days, the differences between my priorities and those of the editors are unremarkable. Today, however, the gap was enormous, almost as if the top of the front page appeared to me as styled in the gibberish used as a placeholder until the real words are found (Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do…).

Left to my own editorial devices, I’d have given the stabbing of Salman Rushdie a headline with letters gigantic enough to scream for attention and alarm. I’d have devoted the entire front page to the assault on Rushdie.

I understand why the editors gave pride of place to news about Mar-A-Lago, but it seemed like a sacrilege to me, the true heresy.

I don’t know Rushdie’s work. I’ve never read any of his books. All I know is that he was a writer who wrote his truth, and I must love him for that, because without such writers the world would be a barren place. Certainly it would be for me.

Rushdie was assaulted and grievously wounded because he was a writer, and there exist certain mad men who didn’t like his truth. And these mad men, devils all of them, have the patience we attribute to saints. They were after him for thirty-three years.

Whatever Rushdie’s future may be, his books are forever. His enemies may bark like dogs, but his writing is a caravan that will go on and on.

I’ve ordered “The Satanic Verses” and will read it. It’s a small, quiet action, but the only one I can think of for now.