It wasn't just Mussolini's fascism that Oriana Fallaci detested but every
other variety-national or racial, Italian or German, or, in her last years,
Islamic. She tore into each as it appeared on history's chaotic stage - not
only with her untamable words but her Florentine flair. Custom could not
wither nor age stale the infinite variety of her invective. Or dim her
glamor. All her life, she lured the powerful and celebrated like a Venus
flytrap, and the aspiring Machiavellis of the world were her natural prey.
Signorina Fallaci saw through the practitioners of Realpolitik as if they
were made of glass, brittle glass. After reading her, one could never again
think of them in the same way. She had an unmatched talent for drawing
attention to the specks of blood on their well-tailored cuffs, and the human
groans behind their professorial talk about the balance of power and the
correlation of forces. (Henry Kissinger said his interview with Fallaci "was
the most disastrous conversation I ever had with a member of the press.")
There's nothing wrong with American journalism that couldn't be cured by a
few more publishers who take their responsibility personally - the way
William Allen White did - and a few more tough old broads who can not only
write but think - a la Oriana Fallaci.
Or Florence King. Instead we get snappy neo-McCarthyites like Ann Coulter on
one side and fashionables like Maureen Dowd on the other, for whom the
adjective precious might have been invented. (You can take the girl out of
the Upper East Side, but not the Upper East Side out of the girl.)
Oh, for another Oriana Fallaci, whose unflinching words survive her, and
more publishers like the kind who brought her thoughts, and soaring spirit,
to us.