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Lets us share pain together
of TheColumnists.com
"JESUS, JESUS, JESUS." I say it stupidly as I watch the two towers of the World Trade Center come down.
Down and down and down. Over and over. On television. On September 11, 2001. At the end of the world or so it seems. At the end of reason and sanity.
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” I say it again. I’m not taking Christ’s name in vain. I know no other response. These are the only words my mouth will speak. I need a higher power, a universal force, to explain the inexplicable to me. And I’m supposed to be a self-reliant, cold-blooded critic, a reporter who knows how to keep her emotional distance.
So I try.
On September 11, 2001 I sit and devour television. Here I am in Southern California, safe by 3000 miles from the carnage of New York. There’s war in Manhattan. War in Washington, D.C. A president on the run.
Television is the messenger--but I want it to be the fixer, the avenger. I want it to erase the apocalypse.
CBS’s Dan Rather can’t erase it. Nor can Peter Jennings or Diane Sawyer on ABC or NBC’s Tom Brokaw or Aaron Brown on CNN.
But I’ve never been so proud of television all the same.
All day, Rather and Jennings and Brokaw stay in their anchor chairs while my eyes cling to television as if I were clutching the last lifeboat on a sinking ship.
All day, TV links us, bonds us, informs us, joins us in our terrible sad struggle to feel and understand and cope.
A lifeline indeed, TV is. Slow, cluttered and word-bound, the Internet did not come close. Give TV news outfits a crisis and they take us there. Nothing is better--or potentially worse.
In the early hours of the disaster I bristle with professional annoyance at the way the networks are couching their coverage--“Attack on America,” CBS, ABC and Fox call it.
Oddly, the label seems extreme at first. Yet, of course, it is true.
My only reference for the crumbling, collapsing, smoking towers is from fiction--some dastardly billion-dollar Hollywood movie that the moguls of La La have not devised yet. We all thought this, didn’t we? We had no other measure.
Must TV play that scene over and over? Yes, it must. This is not crass sensationalism. The collapse of America’s financial center is an unfathomable, impenetrable truth. Maybe if we see it enough it will sink in.
But no, never.
I worry about TV’s loose lips, about stunned commentators’ instant, unthinking finger-pointing at Muslim terrorists and evil Arab schemes. Yet caution is in play and the word “alleged” is frequently used in connection with any conceivable Islamic fundamentalist plot.
The name Osama Bin Laden is soon intoned--and apparently is on the money. The networks learned a hard lesson from their coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing. Back then they gave us much gratuitous blab and blather about inhuman Middle-Eastern fanatics. Yet the bombers turned out to be home-grown--our native sons.
Rather, that old war horse, seems to outlast all the other high-priced news stars, staying sharp and cogent late in the day while Jennings, obviously weary, flails for words.
And on the coverage goes, as network news organizations ride the biggest adrenalin wave since the assassination of JFK.
There are odd little out-of-sync jolts. ABC quickly throws famous psychiatrist and children’s expert Dr. Alvin Poussaint on the air with Jennings, to give emotional counsel. Poussaint calls the towers “phallic-looking” structures. Jennings quickly jumps in to deflect the odd, off-kilter comment.
I jump a little when a fireman puts his hand up to wave away a TV camera. I need to remember that TV can still be intrusive, even as it keeps us tied. That fireman is sinking in an overload of despair and weariness as he searches for victims, for fallen comrades.
How easy for me to think I have an inalienable right to information. In Manhattan, near the epicenter, some TV stations go dark. Safe on the West Coast I am, after all, merely a voyeur.
I am anxious about more attacks. So I do not leave my television’s side.
And other thoughts gnaw at me.
The new TV season is upon us, with its usual mix of mostly mediocre dramas and formulaic comedies. How will the new dramas about spies and government agencies and covert operations--“The Agency,” “Alias,” “24”--fare in prime time? Will they garner a new significance and a cadre of loyal fans--or feel too close to home?
What happens to laughter now? Will sitcoms become a sin? What about late night patter? Surely Leno and Letterman-styled shtick will no longer do.
Will the culture police gain new ground as America mourns, as we guilt ourselves into staying somber? Will the vocal interest groups who have so often rallied against creative freedom--against the questioning of religion on “Nothing Sacred,” gay lifestyle on “Ellen” and “Northern Exposure,” fleeting artful nudity on “NYPD Blue”--gain fresh support from those who would quell dissenting voices in the name of patriotism?
Will TV producers self-censor to avoid the label of “inappropriate”?
Will the entertainment industry’s chief mandate become “do not offend”?
Still there are survivors to pull and pray for, at the Pentagon and in New York. For four days I sit by the TV in my office. I do not go where television is not. I take notes, so many notes. For a story. For a column. For something. Simply to stay busy. But I can’t write. Not yet.
I keep watching the tube but few words seem to stick.
Now, nearly three weeks later, pictures still do.
I can conjure a firefighter’s dusty, blood-streaked face. I remember a search dog at the site of the World Trade Center, sniffing through sharp metal rubble for survivors--or worse--with its paws taped to keep them safe.
And always, New York’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani. On the scene. Shaken yet firm. In charge. He gives hope.
I’m glad that ABC calls John Hockenberry and Robert Krulwich--two astute correspondents who don’t usually report breaking news--into the fray.
I’m aghast that ABC has its former queen Barbara Walters doing a short and lowly report on how Broadway theater is reacting to the attacks--while Diane Sawyer is immediately out on the streets.
I turn to cable channel BBC America to gain a view of the attack from Europe. I get mad when BBC’s anchors repeatedly call America “vulnerable.” Their experts cite the failure of our intelligence operations, failure from egocentric over-confidence. Through television the world speaks, telling me we have had our comeuppance.
I cringe at the obvious truth.
Through television I join in the many moments of silence in cities around the world on September 14, in memory of the victims at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
I tear up when TV takes me to London’s Buckingham Palace, where “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played at the changing of the guard, by order of Queen Elizabeth.
I cry, finally, when TV describes the final phone calls of passengers on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, of how they planned to overtake the hijackers and take control of the flight.
I relearn the one true lesson of television. This medium skewers image like nobody’s business. But it honors and intensifies authenticity. This has little to do with words and much to do with the play of the heart’s emotions on the face.
Giuliani’s caring is genuine. At least on television, he outshines Bush.
And as the days pass one of my fears comes true.
Bill Maher, host of ABC’s late night talk show “Politically Incorrect”--the lone voice of provocative socio-political debate on network TV--is nearly silenced because he dared to call Americans cowards. Maher’s point: In past conflicts, our military had the bucks and technology to lob pricey missiles from a safe distance--thousands of miles from actual combat.
Cowards may not have been the most apt term. But Maher was making a valid, if subjective, point about the current nature of warfare.
And devil’s advocacy is what “PI” has always been about.
Maher’s consequences are severe. ABC forces hiim to apologize on air. Sears and Fedex pull ads from his show. At least one local station stops airing "PI" for a time. Maher continues to do his show but he is changed. On camera he looks drained, stricken, barely there. No more of his classic jabs at the Republicans or Dubya Bush.
Meanwhile Rather and Letterman get kudos for crying together on air.
A celebrity pantheon--Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Cruise, Celine Dion and many more--come together for a pan-network telethon that raises many millions. The fame-flamed do not identify themselves on air. No star treatment.
That does feel right.
But satire and sarcasm are seemingly verboten.
Oh how sensitive our jumpy skins have become.
Will we ever laugh mindlessly at silly sitcoms again?
Now, in the aftermath of 9/11, what is the appropriate thing for television to do?
On September 11 the world stopped and TV news stood by us. As best it could. If only it could have put reality in rewind and made the soul-sick horror vanish. But that was one thing--dear Lord, dear Lord--that television could not do.
© 2001 by Kinney Littlefield.
The illustration © 2001 by Jim Hummel.
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