Tuesday, September 18, 2001

Hypocrisy of the Week Award

ABC's "Politically Incorrect" taped a show Monday. Producers were keeping one of the talk show's four guest chairs empty in honor of conservative commentator Barbara Olson, who died in one of the ill-fated planes last week.

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"For once, let's have no ‘grief counselors' standing by with banal consolations, as if the purpose, in the midst of all this, were merely to make everyone feel better as quickly as possible. We shouldn't feel better."

— Lance Morrow - Time Magazine

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One week later. Life goes on........

Food and Tear Stained by The National Hearth

We have become one of the mole people and a bit squirrely from a solid week of around the clock TV. There is a TV in every room where I live. Even the smallest one and my family is grateful, otherwise no one would have showered. It was as though, if you left it for a moment, something more would happen and you wouldn't be part of it because you didn't see it in real time.

We spend a lot of time nitpicking the people who produce our favorite means of communication. The most prevalent complaint among us conservatives is the decidedly liberal spin on the networks. This is why Fox News has flourished.

It's not that Fox is "right wing" it is that it gives the other side of the news and that is so revolutionary it just sounds like its coming from the right. But, network or cable, the people who bring us the nonstop news have behaved magnificently during this great national tragedy. Oh, there were a few false reports. Desperate hope and a few whacked out hoaxers will do that but all in all we got a furious torrent of accurate, up -to- the -second news, 24 hours a day. That's what kept us riveted to the TV as we watched a big chunk of our extraordinary city amputated and destroyed and the world's reaction to the outrage.

We couldn't go anywhere and one doesn't have to go out to eat. They bring it to you - anything you want. Except for the first terrible day the papers always arrived. Our delivery service even brings milk and bagels if you order ahead. There was no reason to leave. And, who wanted to? By the second day otherwise sane people called to ask if we really thought there might be a germ warfare attack on our subways. A shrink friend called to say he had been on the phone 18 hours a day with agoraphobic patients who were convinced that terrorists would be coming in their windows, even on the 21st floor. They came in through the windows of the 102nd floor of the WTC, didn't they? It was hard for him to talk them out of such reasoning.

There wasn't any reason to dress up. A pair of sweats works fine during the day and are perfectly comfortable sleep gear until someone tells you the food stains are beginning to gross them out. You'd stumble in a find a clean T-shirt and pull it on the appease the more hygienically sensitive.

Thank God and a bunch of 23 year olds for inventing the computer because millions of us can work with a 20 second commute. But, the TV is on there too. Our life has become the people inside the flickering glass box.

This was a beat up, literally ratty, and nearly unlivable place when I moved here as a bride. People thought nothing of flinging newspapers and coffee cups they no longer needed into the street. The quickest way to dispose of a flaming mattress was to heave it out the window. But, despite the side streets you couldn't walk on and the places you simply wouldn't go - it was so much fun. The people were so vibrant and in your face. The attitude was indeed, if I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere.

Not until our current mayor did it finally become that shining city on the hill, the "alabaster city undimmed by human tears" that caused Dan Rather to break down on Letterman last night just repeating the words. Last week without warning some faceless subhumans smashed it.

Last weekend I actually go to see what they had done, albeit from the Jersey side of the river and I felt as though I had opened my door to see a beloved child staring up wordlessly dripping blood from the stump of a missing arm.

The first reaction to a wounded child is to bandage up the wound and provide comfort. The next reaction is to scream "Who did this to you?" and the last reaction is to set about tracking them down.

That's why hearing George Bush say, "Dead or alive" felt so good. Our bandy legged, phrase mangling President didn't bite his lip and hang his head. He didn't tell us he felt our pain - he assumed we knew that. He told us he was going to inflict some of his own - big time. We will all watch it happen around the TV, our national hearth - riveted, red eyed and wondering if a larger force didn't know something was up when he gave us real leaders this time around.

-- Anonymous, September 18, 2001

Answers

Thanks Git.

-- Anonymous, September 18, 2001