ABCDE OUTLOOK sunday, november 28, 2010 INSIDE


Don’t pass Go Play Settlers of Catan instead. B3


And the winner is . . . Outlook’s Crystal Ball contest finally crowns a champion. B2


BOOKWORLD,B5-6 Naked ambition Harry Hamlin conquers his fear of nudity, onstage and off. B5


Nothing but net worth Trying to make money off the youth basketball machine. B5 A moral story Eric Foner charts the evolution of Lincoln’s views on slavery. B5


5 BY JEFFREY ROSEN T he protestontheWednesday


before Thanksgiving was called National Opt-Out Day, and its organizers urged air travelers to refuse the Trans-


portation Security Administration’s full- body scanning machines. But many appeared to have opted out


of opting out. The TSA reported that few of the 2 million people flyingWednesday chose pat-downs over the scanners, with fewresulting delays. There have been high-profile acts of civil disobedience in response to the two


controversial procedures recently de- ployed by the TSA for primary screening — the body-scanning machines and the intrusive full-body pat-downs — includ- ing software programmer John Tyner’s unforgettable warning to a TSA official: “If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.” But the public seems less op- posed to the scanners than civil libertari- ans had hoped. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, only 32 percent of respondents said they objected to the full-body scans, although 50 percent were opposed to the pat-downs offered as an alternative. That means opponents of the new measures will have to shift their efforts


from the airports to the courts. One advocacy group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has already filed a lawsuit, calling the body scanners uncon- stitutional. Could this challenge suc- ceed?


Courts evaluating airport-screening technology tend to give great deference to the government’s national security interest in preventing terrorist attacks. But in this case, there’s a strong argu- ment that the TSA’s measures violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits un- reasonable searches and seizures. Although the Supreme Court hasn’t


evaluated airport screening technology, lower courtshave emphasized, as theU.S.


Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in 2007, that “a particular airport securi- ty screening search is constitutionally reasonable provided that it ‘is no more extensivenorintensivethannecessary, in the light of current technology, to detect the presence of weapons or explosives.’ ” In a 2006 opinion for theU.S. Court of


Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, then-Judge Samuel Alito stressed that screening procedures must be both “minimally intrusive” and “effective” — in other words, they must be “well-tailored to protect personal privacy,” and they must deliver on their promise of discovering serious threats. Alito upheld the practic- esatanairport checkpointwherepassen-


BOOKREVIEW


Why we need art about the Holocaust


BY SUSIE LINFIELD


able paradox. Any attempt to describe the suffering of the victims will fail, yet we must not forget the suffering of the victims. Any attempt to make the event coherent is false, yet the event must be understood. There is something creepy about turning mass murder into art. “To write


A


A THOUSAND DARKNESSES Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction By Ruth Franklin Oxford Univ. 256 pp. $29.95


about atrocity is impossible,” Ruth Franklin admits in “A Thousand Dark- nesses,” an illuminating meditation on the special obligations and thorny con- tradictions ofHolocaust novels. “Yet not to write about it — though to do so is absurd, obscene, repugnant, insect-like — is equally impossible.” The moral nobility of Franklin’s book lies in its willingness to confront this impossibili- ty head-on — and blissfully free of dogma, guilt and sanctimony—without offering comforting, false or easy solu- tions. Franklin considers a range of narra-


tive approaches to the Holocaust, in- cluding the alienating realism of Polish journalist Tadeusz Borowski, the under- stated irony of Hungarian novelist Imre Kertész and the humane rationalism of Primo Levi (though the Levi memoir on which she focuses is not fiction). She looks at each work with fresh eyes, rather than imposing predetermined theories on it. Franklin is especially adept at analyzing how a book works — how it creates trust, or sorrow, or disquiet in the reader. Of Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” she observes: “By refusing to add the rationality of explanation or the cynicism of hindsight, Night takes us back to its terrible story with something resembling innocence.” This is an inno- cence, of course, that Wiesel’s readers must and will lose. But Franklin’s aim is larger than


literary criticism. Shewants to rescue us —writers and readers—froma tangle of related, pernicious ideas: that it is wrong tomake art out of the Holocaust; that survivor testimony is the only authentic and non-exploitative way to approach it; that the survivors and their children—or, perhaps, all Jews—“own” the experience; and that the event is essentially untouchable. In literature, themajor proponent of these ideas is, in fact, Wiesel (in film, it is Claude Lan- zmann), and Franklin is sober but gutsy


holocaust continued on B4


Susie Linfield is the author of “The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence.” She directs the cultural reporting and criticism program in the journalism department at New York University.


A PERSON ofINTEREST


But the Chandra Levy saga will always be his story. BY SCOTT HIGHAM AND SARI HORWITZ S


oon after Chandra Levy’s remains were discovered deepinRockCreekParkonaMaymorningeight years ago, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call broke what appeared to be a big story. A Salvadoran illegal immigrant named Ingmar Guandique had been


attacking women in the park around the time of Levy’s disappearance a year earlier. Charles H. Ramsey, then the D.C. chief of police, quickly


warned reporters covering the case that they were on the wrong track, that they shouldn’t make “too big a deal” of Guandique. Ramsey’s second in command went even further. If Guandique were a viable suspect, Terrance W. Gainer told reporters, D.C. detectives would have been on him “like flies on honey.” With those assurances, the reporters shifted their attention


backtothemanmanyof themthought toberesponsibleallalong: DemocraticRep.GaryCondit ofCalifornia.The possibility that a marriedcongressmanmighthavehadahandinthemurderofhis mistress provided the policewith a compelling investigation and the presswith an irresistible, career-changing story.


Everyone, it seemed, wanted Condit to be the guy. This pastMonday,following amonth-longtrialand3½days


of deliberation, D.C. jurors found Guandique guilty on two counts of first-degree murder for killing Chandra Levy during a daytime robbery. Even though the verdict officially exonerates Condit after so many years of living under suspicion, the former congressman remains at the center of the story. Network news shows are competing for the right to


broadcast Condit’s first post-verdict television appearance. A Hollywood lawyer is shopping Condit’s book proposal, purportedly detailing his love for his wife and how his life was shattered by overzealous police, prosecutors and the press. A movie deal can’t be far behind. In 2001, Condit was a person of interest in the Levy case.


Today, he still is — not only because his name will be forever linked to the saga in the public imagination, but also because the obsession with him derailed the investigation and delayed justice for years.


condit continued on B4 Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz are investigative reporters at The Washington Post and the authors of “Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery.” Gary Condit didn’t do it.


ddressing the Holocaust — in literature, in films, in music, in paintings — presents writ- ers and readers, artists and audiences with an irresolv-


In the summer of 2001,


Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.) faced a gantlet of reporters and cameras wherever he went.He never admitted an affair with Chandra Levy.


EZ BD


myths about the deficit. B2


The TSA is invasive, annoying — and unconstitutional


gers were first screened with walk- throughmagnetometersandthen, if they set off an alarm, with hand-held wands. He wrote that airport searches are rea- sonable if they escalate “in invasiveness only after a lower level of screening disclose[s] a reason to conduct a more probing search.” As currently used in U.S. airports, the


new full-body scanners fail all of Alito’s screening continued on B4


Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, is the author of “The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age.”


DUDLEY M. BROOKS/THE WASHINGTON POST


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