You’ve chosen to hang out in an odd place.
With all due respect, I listened to CNN coverage for 10 minutes this morning. Started to tear up. Turned off the radio. Left the house, left NYC, went up to Dutchess county and just got back an hour ago.
Nobody is going to tell me that I’ve chosen an odd place to hang out by being a Doper. I was there that day and I swore off media for the day.
:mad:
~3000 people died. I get it. What I don’t get is why we need 192 hours of programming about it. If a bus full of school kids crashes the nation doesn’t spend 8 hours watching CNN’s look back 10 years later.
Not only was it not playing on every single channel, I had to search around for a channel that was showing it. And far from the disaster porn that people are claiming, CNN’s coverage was tasteful and appropriate. It was exactly the kind of stuff that I tuned in to see. I’m not sure what horrible programming everyone else was forced to watch.
As far as Bush’s reaction on hearing the news, what did you expect of him? Did you expect him to make this face?: :eek: As much as I think he was a horrible president, he acted with calm and composure in that moment. I expect no less from a president.
As to why he wasn’t immediately flown to DC – really? Fly the guy in charge to a city that’s under attack? He was flown to the nearest place where he could take control of the country again.
I get the hate for Bush. What I don’t get is the criticism of him on that day. He did exactly what he should have done.
I also wonder exactly what people expect Bush to have done, given the information available to him at that point. It is not as if his aide whispered “Planes piloted by Al-Quaeda jihadists have been crashed into the World Trade Center towers so you need to take off the suit, put on your cape, and fly off to find bin Laden.”
It’s kind of funny (and sad, of course) reading the thread started that day. Nobody knew what was going on, and speculation was running wild. How many planes were hijacked? 2? 5? 100? No one knew. Bush had exactly as much information as the rest of us, which was very little.
I clearly remember news reports about explosions on the Mall in Washington. These did not happen, and I am sometimes surprised that the Truthers don’t pick up more on the huge amount of misinformation that was flying about that day. They seem to concentrate on just a handful of the statements made by news agencies that support their conspiracy and ignore the tons of other statements which proved to be mistaken.
This was unprecedented. I am not at all surprised or angry with the Bush administration for not preventing an event that was such a long shot. It is easy after the fact to say what could have been done, but does anyone honestly believe Americans would have stood for the inconvenience of current airport security screenings prior to the catastrophe? Or for a law that would have prevented Middle-Eastern men from taking flying lessons? Come on, people.
Unfortunately, people need to die before any real security is put into place. And I still fear that current security protocols are a case of shutting the barn door after the horse escaped. The next attack will be from a different direction, unanticipated, but obvious in hindsight.
And that frightens me a lot.
The thing was that we had clear information that that exact scenario was going to happen. We also had clear information about a thousand other scenarios that never happened. It wasn’t that we didn’t have enough information – we had too much.
I’m reminded of something I recently read about how airport security screeners profiled drug smugglers: “Travel alone; travel with others; always sit at the front of the plane; always sit at the rear of the plane; sometimes sit in the middle of the plane; carry no luggage; carry one bag; carry two or more bags; white; black; Hispanic; Asian; travels one way; travels round trip”
How does one make sense of that?
Agreed. If the government had pulled out all stops to block the “crash a hijacked airliner into buildings” plot, we would all be sitting around today arguing that it was a waste and they should have expended their resources to block the “dirty bomb in a van” attack of 2002.
No one is taking the time to dig up the equally clear warnings about all the things which didn’t happen.
I was talking about the “I hate America.” comment. This is an American message board frequented by lots of Americans.
Erp. Please accept my apologies for the post.
No problema. We’re all a bit on edge lately.
In just about two year’s time, I would wager that we will see a good bit of special programming about the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, with hours devoted to his presidency, his family, the events in Dallas that day, and the myriad conspiracy theories arising therefrom.
I doubt the New York Times editorial page, Paul Krugman, or the members of this board will bemoan the excessive coverage, and, indeed, I think they will be right not to do so. It was an historic event that deserves commemoration.
So does 9/11. The ceremonies I saw on TV, with the reading of names by relatives of the slain, the interludes of music from the children’s choir, the bagpipers, Paul Simon, James Taylor, and others, were low-key and appropriate. There was no bombast, no triumphalism, no USA! USA!, nothing over the top.
It seemed about right.
I listened to whatever was on NPR (or PRI or whatever intitials whoever was responsible for the programming is using these days) from probably 7:30- 9 am, and it was fine.
Then in the afternoon, I listened to the Sonic Memorial project, which was mostly neat–more tidbits about the Twin Towers than anything else, and in the evening, StoryCorps’ hour of coverage of some of the people who died on 9/11. An hour of that was plenty, especially since they had people who had recorded stories of their loved ones five or so years later, and then they spoke to them again now as the tenth anniversary approached. Some of them are not exactly over the loss, but in a much better place now than they were when they first met with StoryCorps.
And we didn’t watch the early afternoon football game, although we did watch the late game (and Dad watched the really late game, for a while at least), although some of that may be based on when the teams Dad was interested in were playing, rather than anything else.
Still, it was a balance that seemed about right.
The NFL’s Giant Fucking Flags pregame thing was probably the most American tribute there was.
BBC Radio 5 this week had a long and interesting interview with one of the pilots of Air Force One that day. The fighter escort was there pretty swiftly, and most of the immediate transport decisions were being made by the Secret Service. That’s their job, and a wise President listens to that advice. The original plan was to go to Washington, but it was determined that they would go to an air force base that was both secure, and had the facilities to make a broadcast.
I like a lot of Americans. Also becoming an ex-pat isn’t a piece of cake.