Monday, September 11, 2006

West Coast Alert

Watch or TiVo tonight's Tonight Show With Jay Leno...most notably the segments with James Woods. The first part is a moving discussion of his brother's recent death. The second is about 9/11. Then Charlie Rose comes out and further discusses that awful day and the heroism he witnessed.

• Posted at 9:48 PM · LINK

Monday Morning

Okay, I give up. I've watched about thirty more video clips relating to 9/11 — many of them suggested by folks who'd read the previous message here — and I couldn't find one that seemed appropriate to have up on this site today. Worse, some of them were depressing to no good purpose and I have things I have to do this afternoon. So no video clip today. I'll make it up to you with the ones I have lined up the rest of this week. Hope you folks like the Marx Brothers.

I may not be watching much news today, either. At some point years ago, I became acutely conscious that on the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, most of the televised remembrances were not about the tragedy but of the press discussing its performance in covering that tragedy. Looking back at the news footage of 11/22/63 is important, of course, but there's one way of presenting and configuring it that says "Here's what happened that day" and another that says, "Look how we — i.e., folks in our profession — rose to the challenge of that day." Makes you want to yell at the screen, "It's not about you!"

Some of the 9/11/01 remembrances today strike me as skewing in that direction. The rest seems to be about the upcoming elections and how Republicans and Democrats can influence how 9/11 is viewed, the better to garner votes. Last night, I saw a few minutes — I think on Fox News, what a surprise — about the heroism of George W. Bush on that day. Yeah, right. I watched longer than I should have but I was kinda waiting to see if it would include the part where he runs out and single-handedly captures Osama.

Roughly 3,000 people died on September 11 for no good, human reason. Countless others were injured and/or had their lives forever harmed in a myriad of ways...physically, emotionally, financially, etc. (I think there's an unfortunate tendency to talk about the number of dead as if that's the sole measure of damage that occurred.) I don't think we should look back at it all in a way that just makes us afraid it'll happen again. We usually do the wrong thing when we operate out of fear. But there's got to be a more constructive thing we can do with that memory than exploit it for short-term benefits.

I probably won't be posting much, if anything, the rest of the day. I don't feel I have anything positive to offer and it feels creepy to be posting here about anything else. And besides, like I said, I have things to do. I hope you do, as well.

• Posted at 11:57 AM · LINK