A Generation Loses Its Innocence
September 11, 2001 started just like any other day, a beautiful late summer morning, blue skies. I stumbled out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5:15 to throw down some cereal and head for work, another morning of running the board, sending "The Bob & Tom Show" to the masses. The show was its usual OK quality, I like them sometimes, sometimes they go a little too far into the gutter, but I was laughing at some of the stuff, deciding what would be good to play on Saturday for "Best of" segments. It was already an unusual morning at work, as the automated weather radio wouldn't give the local forecast and the time and temperature phone wasn't picking up. I was awaiting 10:00 and the chance to get back on the production room computer and work some more on new imaging for the station.
Coming out of the end of the hour break at 9:00, Bob & Tom shared grim news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in NYC. I, as did they and most of the world, thought that there had been a gross miscalculation by some moron pilot or air traffic controller, and Bob & Tom went back to joking about stuff in the news. Then, they received word that a second, much bigger jet had slammed into the other one of the Twin Towers. Suddenly, a normal morning in America was changed forever, and it was the case everywhere as people started to congregate around TV sets, gaping at the ceaseless replays of the plane hitting the tower. Before leaving the board at 10, word came down that a plane had hit the Pentagon, and from there, the rumors went wild. It wasn't panic or mass hysteria, but more of a nation frozen, unsure of what to do and only left to guess. Meanwhile in lower Manhattan, where only three months previous, myself and a few friends stopped for a moment on a June midnight to take in the wondrous towers before catching a train for New Jersey, chaos was ensuing, as one tower came down, and then as I watched in horror on live TV back at my apartment, the other one plunged to the ground. News spread like wildfire, as I rushed home from work, I stopped at the Sheetz and all everyone in the store talked about was what was going on. We had no TV at the radio station and there wasn't one at Sheetz, either, it was all going on word of mouth. AM stations had gone directly to constant news coverage, soon FMs would do the same.
The next hour was incredibly tense. There's a rumor that a car bomb went off at the State Department, a rumor that there was another plane headed for the Capitol, then a confirmed report of a plane down in Pennsylvania, about 100-150 miles west of me; perhaps, the plane that was intended to hit the Capitol. We all became one as we took in the updates, VH1 and ESPN and other cable networks dropped programming, Major League Baseball canceled games, people were sent home from work early, government buildings evacuated, malls and schools closed. We no longer worried about our personal affairs, I no longer cared about my latest sunburn or the 63 points that were hung on my alma mater last Saturday in football. It was the most surreal thing anyone could imagine, and yet there were the images on TV, ingrained on our memories forever.
My generation wasn't born at the time of Pearl Harbor, we weren't born yet when JFK was assassinated. We remember the Gulf War, but paid little interest; to my social studies class, it was cool that we just got to watch TV instead of having to worry about lessons and homework and tests. Oklahoma City was bombed when I was in high school, the shock was faint for me, but the repercussions still fill the news headlines on occasion. My generation has never had to deal with something like this, at our age, we figured we never would have to. Gulf War aside, there hadn't been anything of a magnitude even approaching this since Vietnam. Now, my generation sat in stunned silence watching, and we raced to phones to try to call loved ones, and couldn't get through because everyone was trying to reach everyone. We ran to our computers, got on the Internet, sought out friends and relatives via Instant Message, as the Global Village grew closer and more tight-knit. National news anchors gasped at the pictures, BBC anchors shook their heads in disbelief, Fox News Channel anchors screamed about Osama Bin Laden and how to respond. Then after dark, President Bush addressed the nation and brought us together some more. 12 hours after I laughed at Bob & Tom joking about the president butchering a statement on improving education, I sat in front of the TV set smiling and proud to be an American and proud to have George W. Bush as my president.
Most of the details in the preceding paragraphs are already widely known facts to everyone. I have just noticed that they look even more gripping in print, as was the case when I read my copy of the Baltimore Sun today. Shockwaves still reverberate, radio shows that normally specialize in hijink and at times men's locker room humor turned into call-in talk shows as the nation spoke, cried, related stories, and vented its collective spleen. Most of the spleen venting centers on two things: the unanswered question of how could this happen, and the images both in Palestine and in America of Palestinians dancing with joy at the news that thousands of Americans were dead. There is a lot of sentiment in America today that the West Bank should be turned into one giant green glowing parking lot, and Afghanistan with it, for they are harboring Mr. bin Laden, the supposed ringleader of this operation.
And then there was by far the dumbest and most obscenely inappropriate phone call of them all, a caller to Mr. Limbaugh's show (Mr. Limbaugh by the way puts part of the blame for this on a certain former president, no shock there). This caller seemed to be more disturbed at the fact that our nation's businesses had to close and that employees didn't get paid, money didn't get made, stocks weren't traded than the fact that thousands were dead, employers and employees dead, parents dead, Americans dead.
The answer to how could this happen may never be known fully; somehow, someway, the series of events causing this catastrophe did indeed take place. Who to blame is becoming more evident, and suspects and evidence are being rounded up. People worry that our response has not been immediate and punishing enough, but I ask these people just what the hell are we supposed to do right now? Just start bombing indiscriminately throughout the Middle East until we actually hit someone related to this? Cooler heads need to prevail at least in the sense that we cannot fight the enemy until we know who the enemy is. If it is indeed Afghanistan, then we must go after bin Laden and flush the Taliban out of power. Sure there are risks involved; other Arab nations could attack our troops over there, more bombings could take place here, the n-word ("nukes") is thrown around like nothing but you fear it actually happening. Meanwhile on the homefront, people want to go to Paterson, NJ or their local 7-11 or taxi cab office (cuz according to the stereotypes, that's where you'll find Arabs) and either A) haul their butts into concentration camps, B) beat them to death, or C) both.
Anger is a very scary thing to possess. I alone know the power of one person's anger channeled in wrong ways, and let's face it, anger tends to make people think less rationally than they would otherwise. However, when it's millions of people's anger, it's not only a supremely powerful force, but a scary one and one we can only hope can be contained until such time as it is channeled into means that will accomplish the desired ends of the whole country, not just those with extreme or temporarily irrational views. We are the greatest nation on earth, but part of that great quality is our restraint, our unwillingness to fly off the handle and toss a couple Patriot missiles around whenever we get pissed. Take courage in the fact that there are great minds at work devising what we do next, and when we decide what to do next and whom to do it to, stand by the decisions and your country. Meanwhile, life goes on, because we need it to go on.
September 12, 2001 started just like any other day, a beautiful late summer morning, blue skies...
Coming out of the end of the hour break at 9:00, Bob & Tom shared grim news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in NYC. I, as did they and most of the world, thought that there had been a gross miscalculation by some moron pilot or air traffic controller, and Bob & Tom went back to joking about stuff in the news. Then, they received word that a second, much bigger jet had slammed into the other one of the Twin Towers. Suddenly, a normal morning in America was changed forever, and it was the case everywhere as people started to congregate around TV sets, gaping at the ceaseless replays of the plane hitting the tower. Before leaving the board at 10, word came down that a plane had hit the Pentagon, and from there, the rumors went wild. It wasn't panic or mass hysteria, but more of a nation frozen, unsure of what to do and only left to guess. Meanwhile in lower Manhattan, where only three months previous, myself and a few friends stopped for a moment on a June midnight to take in the wondrous towers before catching a train for New Jersey, chaos was ensuing, as one tower came down, and then as I watched in horror on live TV back at my apartment, the other one plunged to the ground. News spread like wildfire, as I rushed home from work, I stopped at the Sheetz and all everyone in the store talked about was what was going on. We had no TV at the radio station and there wasn't one at Sheetz, either, it was all going on word of mouth. AM stations had gone directly to constant news coverage, soon FMs would do the same.
The next hour was incredibly tense. There's a rumor that a car bomb went off at the State Department, a rumor that there was another plane headed for the Capitol, then a confirmed report of a plane down in Pennsylvania, about 100-150 miles west of me; perhaps, the plane that was intended to hit the Capitol. We all became one as we took in the updates, VH1 and ESPN and other cable networks dropped programming, Major League Baseball canceled games, people were sent home from work early, government buildings evacuated, malls and schools closed. We no longer worried about our personal affairs, I no longer cared about my latest sunburn or the 63 points that were hung on my alma mater last Saturday in football. It was the most surreal thing anyone could imagine, and yet there were the images on TV, ingrained on our memories forever.
My generation wasn't born at the time of Pearl Harbor, we weren't born yet when JFK was assassinated. We remember the Gulf War, but paid little interest; to my social studies class, it was cool that we just got to watch TV instead of having to worry about lessons and homework and tests. Oklahoma City was bombed when I was in high school, the shock was faint for me, but the repercussions still fill the news headlines on occasion. My generation has never had to deal with something like this, at our age, we figured we never would have to. Gulf War aside, there hadn't been anything of a magnitude even approaching this since Vietnam. Now, my generation sat in stunned silence watching, and we raced to phones to try to call loved ones, and couldn't get through because everyone was trying to reach everyone. We ran to our computers, got on the Internet, sought out friends and relatives via Instant Message, as the Global Village grew closer and more tight-knit. National news anchors gasped at the pictures, BBC anchors shook their heads in disbelief, Fox News Channel anchors screamed about Osama Bin Laden and how to respond. Then after dark, President Bush addressed the nation and brought us together some more. 12 hours after I laughed at Bob & Tom joking about the president butchering a statement on improving education, I sat in front of the TV set smiling and proud to be an American and proud to have George W. Bush as my president.
Most of the details in the preceding paragraphs are already widely known facts to everyone. I have just noticed that they look even more gripping in print, as was the case when I read my copy of the Baltimore Sun today. Shockwaves still reverberate, radio shows that normally specialize in hijink and at times men's locker room humor turned into call-in talk shows as the nation spoke, cried, related stories, and vented its collective spleen. Most of the spleen venting centers on two things: the unanswered question of how could this happen, and the images both in Palestine and in America of Palestinians dancing with joy at the news that thousands of Americans were dead. There is a lot of sentiment in America today that the West Bank should be turned into one giant green glowing parking lot, and Afghanistan with it, for they are harboring Mr. bin Laden, the supposed ringleader of this operation.
And then there was by far the dumbest and most obscenely inappropriate phone call of them all, a caller to Mr. Limbaugh's show (Mr. Limbaugh by the way puts part of the blame for this on a certain former president, no shock there). This caller seemed to be more disturbed at the fact that our nation's businesses had to close and that employees didn't get paid, money didn't get made, stocks weren't traded than the fact that thousands were dead, employers and employees dead, parents dead, Americans dead.
The answer to how could this happen may never be known fully; somehow, someway, the series of events causing this catastrophe did indeed take place. Who to blame is becoming more evident, and suspects and evidence are being rounded up. People worry that our response has not been immediate and punishing enough, but I ask these people just what the hell are we supposed to do right now? Just start bombing indiscriminately throughout the Middle East until we actually hit someone related to this? Cooler heads need to prevail at least in the sense that we cannot fight the enemy until we know who the enemy is. If it is indeed Afghanistan, then we must go after bin Laden and flush the Taliban out of power. Sure there are risks involved; other Arab nations could attack our troops over there, more bombings could take place here, the n-word ("nukes") is thrown around like nothing but you fear it actually happening. Meanwhile on the homefront, people want to go to Paterson, NJ or their local 7-11 or taxi cab office (cuz according to the stereotypes, that's where you'll find Arabs) and either A) haul their butts into concentration camps, B) beat them to death, or C) both.
Anger is a very scary thing to possess. I alone know the power of one person's anger channeled in wrong ways, and let's face it, anger tends to make people think less rationally than they would otherwise. However, when it's millions of people's anger, it's not only a supremely powerful force, but a scary one and one we can only hope can be contained until such time as it is channeled into means that will accomplish the desired ends of the whole country, not just those with extreme or temporarily irrational views. We are the greatest nation on earth, but part of that great quality is our restraint, our unwillingness to fly off the handle and toss a couple Patriot missiles around whenever we get pissed. Take courage in the fact that there are great minds at work devising what we do next, and when we decide what to do next and whom to do it to, stand by the decisions and your country. Meanwhile, life goes on, because we need it to go on.
September 12, 2001 started just like any other day, a beautiful late summer morning, blue skies...
Labels: 9-11
posted by Dave | 1:39 PM
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