“Things happen”

Today, in the Oval Office, Mary Bruce of ABC News had the temerity to ask Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the murder in 2018 of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, carried out, according to U.S. intelligence, at the prince’s direction. Bruce added that 9/11 families are angry about the prince’s visit to the Oval Office. Why, she asked the prince, should the American people trust him?

The current occupant replied:

“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest.”

“Things happen”: that phrasing has a particular resonance for me, as it appears in Geoffrey Hill’s poem “Ovid in the Third Reich.” Imagine the poem’s speaker as a voice of complicity amid the horrors of that regime. The poem begins:

I love my work and my children. God
Is distant, difficult. Things happen.

Yes, things happen. No human agency required.

Later Bruce asked why the current occupant doesn’t release the Epstein files himself, as he is permitted to do. A tirade followed, in the course of which the occupant told Bruce that she is angry and mean, that she is a purveyor of fake news, that ABC is a “crappy company,” that its license should be taken away, and “No more questions from you.”

Bruce spoke back, unintelligibly, as the occupant spoke over her. In my imaginary world, every journalist in the room would have shouted back: She’s not fake news. Answer the question. Stop threatening us.

Today, everyone in the room was silent.

[See also Friday’s “Quiet, piggy,” also met with silence.]