Is Osama bin Ladin infamous (the flip side of fame)? or notorious (the flip side of celebrity)? I would say that, since the mass-murders of September 11 2001 were staged primarily as public-relations spectacles for Moslem publics, and since their effects on the economies of his enemies have been negligable, that he is notorious, but not—time will tell—infamous.

The infamous crimes of the twentieth century were not primarily publicity stunts, or even propaganda events. Neither Pol Pot, who didn't stage the killing fields for TV, nor Hitler, whose genocides were obscured by sophisticated disinformation programs, nor Stalin, whose genocides were cloaked in denials, acted for the sake of celebrity. Their infamy lies in their perversion of government, of the State. They made genocide a routine instrument of government bureaucracy, like the mails, or tax collection. They demonstrated the worst possiblities of the modern state, from which every modern state struggles to distance itself.

Almost infamous

A man whose celebrity has collapsed, the former Chairman of Enron, Mr Kenneth Lay, is well on his way to becoming infamous. He isn't infamous yet, because the enormity of his misconduct has yet to be felt—he has damaged the trust in the transparency of U. S. capital markets among investors worldwide: in five years America may not be the best, easiest place to raise capital by selling stock or bonds—but he will be infamous for degrading the quality of American life in ways of which Al Qaeda could only dream.

Fame and infamy can outlive celebrity and notoriety. Perfidious Ken Lay's name will be cited alongside that of Carlo Ponzi long after Osama bin Ladin has become an answer to a trivia question.

After all, who, today, recalls the despicable FALN terrorists? In the 1970s and 1980s, they committed 130 bombings in the United States, mostly in New York and Chicago. They brought rifles into the Visitors Gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives and coolly shot congressmen on the House floor.