I know many people here have stated that they don’t want to go anywhere near a TV on and/or around September 11.
Still, I have this weird, slightly morbid, curiosity about the events of that horrible, horrible day.
When the 9/11 documentary first aired, I started watching it with the guy I was seeing at the time, but, um… we got distracted. :eek:
So I guess I’ll be watching it again. Maybe I’m far enough removed from it all, and this will bring it home for me.
All I can say is that the next time I round that turn on the highway and see the skyline of Manhattan since the towers collapsed, I’ll probably lose it. Every time I’d go to NYC and I’d first see the skyline, I’d be in awe. It was like a giant floating place of dreams and possibilities for me, since I write musicals on the side. Seeing it without the famous landmark of the towers… I don’t know how I’ll react. Luckily I’ll be in a car with Elenfair on my way to NYC Megadope, and not on a bus with a bunch of strangers. But I’ll be packing Kleenex®.
Like you said, scott, I’m not going anywhere near TV that day. I’ve got class, work, and in between I’m going to do whatever I want like it was any other day (play Playstation, go to the mall, hang out with friends, etc.).
The tributes and stuff, to me anyway, are for the victims’ families. I was fortunate enough to be relatively unaffected by the events of that day, so I think the best thing for me to do is business as usual.
I’m not sure where I’ll be. I tune into news stations, so if I’m near a TV, I may check out the presentations. I visited NYC last November and approached it from the NJ side. I felt very sad when I looked at the skyline, and sadder when I walked around that area. I found a corner in a nearby church and sobbed for a while. The uncontrollable type of crying. I had been there the prior May, 2001. And I flew from Dulles to L.A. a few days before Sept. 11th. So I have a lot of strong personal feelings and emotions that I probably haven’t resolved.
I will not be anywhere near a t.v.
It’s just too horrible to sit there and watch the clip… over and over again. It’s just too disturbing.
And these major channels are competing for this. They’re seeing who can make the best presentation on a few thousand people dying. That means sound effects, a few special effects, add in some popular song…
I can’t stand the thought of someone making their money by sensationalizing the deaths of so many people… It’s like watching old WWII Nazi clips of people being killed… Except now with commentary from a unrelated (but highly paid) fameous voice along with a few commercial breaks for products riding on the horror of a disaster.
I’m already sad because I’m going through a slow miscarriage at the end of the first trimester. No fetal heartbeat. I don’t get pregnant easily and I’m kinda weepy. That’s reason enough to stay away from emotionally wrenching TV right now.
Last year, it took most of the day to find out that my sister-in-law, an American Airlines flight attendant, was not in the air during the attacks.
I later found out that one of our cousins lost three of her good friends at the pentagon.
I was without a computer all of September last year, and I was very worried about the NYC dopers. We have a small library with one computer in our town, and I couldn’t get the SDMB to load whenever I had a turn at the 'puter. The first thing I did when I got my PC fixed was check old threads here from 9/11.
I may hang out on the boards a bit that day, but the TV and radio will be off. I plan on spending a lot of time coloring with my two-year-old, and taking both of my boys to the park after school.
My older son has been wanting to teach me how to play his playstation, and he just got a second controller. We might play vidoe games that evening. He was deeply upset by the repeat coverage of the planes flying into the towers last year, and certainly doesn’t need to see it again. We’ll keep each other busy until his bedtime.
I’m sorry to hear that Tabithina, I’ve been there myself.
I will be watching. I don’t know why, but for some reason it just hasn’t sunk in for me. It seems more like a plot in a book or a movie then a reality.
Maybe it’s because I’ve never been to NYC, even though I grew up in Bergen County, N.J. or maybe it’s because I don’t personally know anyone who was there.
I feel the same way. I was saturated with gruesome coverage and I don’t want to start feeling numb all over again. I read a special report on the USA Today newspaper about how survivors of the Twin Towers experienced the crashes and how they got out. There was extensive coverage about people jumping out of the towers because they had no choice. I remember feeling so enraged and helpless and the newspaper article brought it all back to me. I’ll keep myself occupied some other way.
It was a horrible day, and the live coverage I watched is etched in my brain forever. I have no desire to see it ever again, frankly, and I’m well aware of the human impact of it without seeing a bunch of widows and babies or surviving cops and firemen.
It was a terrible day and I’ll be remembering it the best way I can. It won’t involve television, that’s one thing I do know.
I don’t need to watch it again, ever. I could be on my death bed in sixty years and still be able to vividly recall all the things I saw on TV that day, or heard on the radio. I become very disturbed just looking at pictures of the, well, “wreckage” doesn’t quite cover it. I don’t really don’t want to see the footage of the attacks or immediate effects as long as I live, if I can avoid it.
Wow, that’s pretty much unthinkable to me. Not denigrating you at all, scott, just…huh.
(I’m guessing that the title question refers to the “9/11” documentary made by a couple of French photographers specifically, and not 9/11 coverage generally.)
I’m afraid that I’ll be embroiled in nearly wall-to-wall coverage of the various commemorations that’ll be going on.
I work in the TV broadcasting business and we’ve been planning for 9/11/02 for weeks now.
So, I’ll not be able to avoid TV, 'cause I’ll be broadcasting it to all of you who wish to watch.
Now, having said that, I will say that I wish we weren’t doing it. I wish that we could just cover the ceremonies like regular news. I wish that we weren’t having the discussion about how many times to show the planes hitting the towers and the towers collapsing. I wish we weren’t planning to start at 5:00 AM and go commercial free and nearly wall-to-wall from there until almost midnight with coverage.
I wish I could say that people in my industry felt that we should pull back and not beat this one over the head.
I wish I could say that.
But, we won’t be pulling back. We won’t be doing “normal” coverage. We won’t be avoiding showing very painful footage (although we won’t be showing it every two minutes.)
For those of you whom I will be helping to hurt that day by dredging all of this up again, I’m truly sorry.
As I’ve said before, there are times that I’m not very proud of my job.
I guess we Americans are very big on anniversaries. We’ll get past this one, and hopefully we won’t have another huge commemoration/memorial/interview with survivors/fest until Sept 11, 2011.
<Helen Seinfeld>
You were making out during SCHINDLER’S LIST?!!??
</Helen Seinfeld>
(Sorry, that was my first thought . . . )
Anyway, I’ll probably tape it for posterity. It’s a compulsion of mine. We taped Princess Diana’s funeral so we could watch it at a more reasonable hour, and although we saved it, I haven’t watched it since. I taped the Concert for New York and the Sting in Tuscany docu too.
But on the day we’re having a moratorium on news/TV/radio. I think the dogs will be gettng lots of attention.
I guess I should explain myself. First, I posted why I didn’t get to see the whole thing because that was the honest truth. Second, the guy really didn’t want to watch it at all, but came over anyway. Finally, we weren’t really paying attention in the first place - mainly talking about other stuff.
As it turns out, Mrs. Lorenzo and I will be on vacation that week and I am hopeful we can find things other than watching television to do.
I just do not “get” this “celebrating” or “commemorating” such a huge loss. I could understand a victory, but not a loss. As previously stated, the families of those negatively affected may find this therapeutic, but what is the point for the rest of us. We got our butts kicked that day. Who wants to remember that? What can I do to stop it from happening again?
I’m trying to find an analog, maybe it’s Pearl Harbor. It’s on the calendar and in the history books but we don’t commemorate it every year. As previously stated, I am hopeful this is the last year we will see 9/11 coverage for a long time. Take steps to try to insure the occurance of anything similar is minimised without stomping on my civil liberties and let’s move on.
As I’ve said before, I’ll be staying far away from the TV. Like Lorenzo, I can’t stand the thought of celebrating the deaths of 3000 people. That’s why I don’t approve the Bush’s making September 11th a national holiday. To the vast majority of Americans who didn’t lose someone close to them, Patriot’s Day will be just another holdiay with a few years. And that will be another tragedy.
I’ll never forget the footage of the towers falling. I’ll never forget how scared I was in those first few hours when they were reporting that the State Department and the Executive Building and everything else was being blown up or burned down. I don’t need to be reminded, and especially not with day-long uninterrupted coverage. TVGuy, you have my sympathy. You must hate your job right now.
)