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A Tale of Two Media:Tragedy and Images
For me, the images down here will be the barges that chugged out of Battery Park carrying corpses bound for vast New Jersey morgues, the smoke and smell and noise, the gaunt and hollow-eyed looks of the cops and firemen digging desperately for their buddies with their bare hands, the relatives on their knees praying all over the place, the video of the couple jumping off one of the towers holding hands, crushed police cars and fire trucks, many with bodies inside, the distant figure on the water everybody said was the U.S.S. George Washington, an aircraft carrier sent to protect New York harbor, and the soldiers with machine guns that are guarding major roadways and airports.
Big stories like this now are covered two ways -- online and off. The former draws millions to websites like CNN's and USA Today's, and new kind of sites like this one. Bloggers and others put up sites so that people could describe what was happening in their own words. People in apartment complexes and news sites posted accounts, and looked for relatives and housing.
As interesting as the Net is -- some of the best and most graphic video of the tragedy was popping up all over the Web -- and as idiosyncratic, the dominant medium when stuff like this happens is still TV, by a wide margin. Hour by hour, TV culls and culls until it finds a handful of quickly familiar images burned into our national and global consciousness. In our time, somebody has a videocam aimed at everything all the time, and within minutes the pictures show up everywhere, on television and the Net. Almost nothing is our culture goes unrecorded or unobserved any longer. The immediacy was as astonishing as the images were unbelievable.
By nightfall, CNN, MSNBC and the networks were moving away from the dramatic video and the indescribable scenes of wreckage and carnage and calling in the policy wonks and propellerheads who hide out in Washington caves until something like this happens. The focal point of all the airtime then shifted from the devastation in New York to the parsing and analyzing of the political, governmental and intelligence communities. For future reference, that may be a good time to turn off the tube and get online, the medium of individual stories, feelings and experiences.
When things like this happen, TV, much more than the Net or the Web, reveals whether leaders rise or fall to the occasion. Mayor Guiliani of New York clearly rose to the tragedy. President Bush, sticking to his cautious sing-song monotone, fled to various bunkers and seemed to shrink throughout the day. Guiliani got bigger by the hour. Defying advice that he hide out until the shooting stopped, he rushed to the scene, was nearly killed, calmed the city down and took charge of the clean-up and rescue. Bush got on his best suit and stuck to the prompter. At least that was the image that TV brought of us of these two very different leaders.
If you love New York, your heart will break when the smoke clears. Something about the city is busted for good, no matter what the mayor says. The damage is not describable, and surely hasn't been captured on TV. There are dead firemen, cops and office workers all over the rubble, everybody is saying, and the dust is so thick even the cadaver dogs are getting sick. Five techs with thermal imaging probes were retreating uptown, their sensitive equipment almost useless in the mud (caused by water poured on the still-burning fires) and smoke and dirt.
The buzz from the cops and reporters standing around is that the death toll will be horrible -- between two and three thousand -- but nowhere near the much higher figures feared yesterday. It seems that many people did get out, calling wives and cops from their cell phones as they went, as did some of the doomed passengers on the hijacked planes. (And a number of the people buried under the towers are still calling for help on their cells. Others got calls from spouses and friends telling them to get out.)
Across the street, a group of structural engineers were reassuring reporters that the towers collapsed of their own structural weakness, the steel melting from the fires, the buildings designed to collapse inward -- rather than fall down -- to save lives.
With their usual hubris, reporters and politicians were promising us that everything was going to change. But if the attacks demonstrate nothing else, it is the folly of that kind of thinking. Terrorists change too, and for all the high-tech equipment pouring into Manhattan, sometimes there isn't a thing we can do to stop them.
first yes i am first dammit
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&as_drrb=b&as _mind=29&as_minm=3&as_miny=1995&as_maxd=10&as_maxm =9&as_maxy=2001&frame=right&th=54ab4d241c34e0cc&se ekm=3b8fd177%40monitor.lanset.com#link1
http://www.247news.net/2001/20010911-towers.shtml
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/nostradamus/part6/ --My friend says that is fake
I registered so I didn't have to read any of this idiots self serving prattle.
So why do I get this on my front page?
Oderint dum metuant - "Let them hate us, so long as they fear us."
I agree with your criticism of the original post, Reality Master. And I would add an additional criticism: the terrorists have not stood up and said why they did what they did. So the original post that Reality Master replied to, and it's original article, are either guessing, or inferring, or else it was written by the terrorists. In which case, I suspect that the FBI will be knocking on slashdot's door pretty soon.
Since I don't believe that the article was written by the terrorists -- it certainly isn't portrayed that way -- I'm left thinking it's just guesswork, which I reject, or else they inferred it based upon current information. If that's the case, every person on slashdot is equally qualified to state why it was done, based upon current information. It's entirely up to each person's interpretation. And in that case, my interpretation is that these are terrorists, these are evil people who are willing to sacrifice innocent people. There is no higher cause at work here. They are petty, self-absorbed people who are willing to sacrifice and sell-out their own people and other innocent people for an unstated message that I would reject even if it were stated. I give no forum to murderers.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
How can that post be a troll ?? It's totally valid and has a VERY VERY GOOOD Point. Stupid fuckin moronic moderators
Over the past few months, I've been wondering whether I should or should not buy a cell phone. The FCC issued warning about cell phones causing brain cancer, but since that only applies to people using the phones for more than an hour a day, I decided to cave in and buy one. When I first heard about this crisis, I thought about how horrible it might be to be trapped under a bunch of rubble. That's when my cell phone went off, and my friend from back east asked me if everything was okay out here in California. Then it hit me...if only everyone in the building had a cell phone! Hundreds, if not thousands, of lives would have been saved. Fortunately, since these devices are nearly ubiquitous, many people escaped death. Another blow for Nokia. Imagine their next advertising gimmick: "Buy our new 6100 phone. It could save your life.. [display picture of person lying dead in bomb rubbel, and picture of live person holding up phone hugging their family members] yuck. - Z;(Bu911
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
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Bush is lost. He looks like a kid wearing dad's suit. Those who despise Bush for political reasons are none too fond of Gulliani, myself included, but the man has really shown the symbolic elements of leadership that, unfortunately, Mr. Bush has been unable to demonstrate. We need a leader.
Shut the fuck up already, dude! Seriously man. Just shut up!
You're an ass and a dumbass of the highest order. I also concur with the previous poster - you're a retard. It's a fucking symbol. Get a CLUE, man!
Wow, that's cool!
I agree -- the speech he gave in the evening was terrible. I'd expect a better performance from the robotic Abe Lincoln at disneyworld.
Conservative defenders of Bush, remember your roots -- Reagan wasn't the brightest bulb, but he would have been able to unify and uplift the country in a time of need. The last thing we need now is an inarticulate teleprompted robot.
I posted this about a dozen times yesterday, but I pointed out the date - 1973 and the source, George Sincalir www.snopes2.com
I am not a supporter of President Bush, and I don't wish to push forward a political agenda.
But as much as I don't like the guy, I've got to say I did not find it at all reassuring to not hear much from him, or his advisors even.
I think during the entire day Tuesday I saw him twice. Once in the morning, once at night.
The only other person I saw from his administration was Karen Hughes.
I guess the point is, it scared me as an American. From talking to others at work, many feel the same way both Democrats and Republicans.
That's not to say I don't think he might be appropriately handling it. I've got to say if there is one man I would want as Secretary of State right now it's General Powell.
I want to see my leaders, it's important to me and it's disappointing that I saw far too much of him pushing his agenda of tax cuts and national missile defense, and now I don't see enough.
I really don't appreciate your president trashing our nation.
Having worked overseas I can understand how unimportant Australia is and how far we are away from the rest of the word so before you all trivialise my comments I would like to say is that a lot of Australians have sat up till 3 and 4 am (AEST) watching the coverage from CNN and abc. We care, we are hopping mad! A lot of Australians will loose friends and love ones over this. And today our government will debate enabling the ANZUS treaty which will put our country very close to a war footing.
Right will overcome these maniacs and their supporters..
God save the Queen and God bless America!
... although I also like C#..
Katz, we all know your all excited about this. Calm down before people hate you more than they already do.
fuck you foreign cocksucker. We're going to nuke your little piss-ant country next
Why? There's plenty more in case this is the wrong one, and they all have cockroaches.
greenrd, you fucking communist piece of shit. Someone needs to get out the blow torch, pipe cutters, and get medieval on your sorry ass.
greenrd, you fucking british cocksucker. America will beat the fuck out of anybody it wants.
While I usually agree with ragging on the bureaucratic crap that comes from Washington I did not see a shred, I repeat A SHRED of political maneuvering throughout this who ordeal. Politicians acted as Humans and American banding together in one concerted effort. Nowhere was there to be seen juristriction arguments between the FBI and local authorities or heated debate over nonsense in Congress. Instead what I witnessed were Americans with a single path and goal in mind -- to rescue survivors and make sure this can never again happen on American soil or elsewhere. All I see from Katz is constant wining for his own political agendas. He is entitled to them but I wish he would have some sense to not try and use a tragedy as a red cape to lead the bull into his own political arena. Not when everybody else is trying to leave politics behind and just deal with the Human issue for right now. As a New Yorker and American I am deeply offended by this article.
Yep, time to get nuclear on their asses.
Kill all the extremists!!!!
Oh! wait...
What is said here is true. Please, please fellow Slashdot readers do not let the American media blind you. There is NO EXCUSE for the atrocities commited in New York, but there is also NO EXCUSE for what the Palestinians to through on a daily basis. What we have there is systematic genocide by the Zionist government against the native peoples there that goes completly unreported!
I found Bush to be less an insightful.
Katz masturbates to children, not women. Get it right.
Yes, I'm afraid it is Katz. I almost didn't read the article when I saw who the author was. After reading it I wish I had gone with my first instinct. This article does not even rate 'interesting'. File under WOB (Waste Of Bandwidth).
This propaganda brought to you by....
You're the kind of person Scott Adam's Dogbert would love, because with citizens like you he could take over the world armed with a wooden spoon.
Too bad you weren't in the World Trade Center to die with everyone else.
What's exactly is wrong with saying hello before you start to talk? He has manners. So what?
where are the raw images? where are the bloodstains and the carnage? where are the 'stacks of bodies'?
is there no repository of images available?
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This is not a time to point fingers at ourselves, I was disgusted last night watching some asshole rip into one person after another who could be connected with this act, from airport officials to intelligence agency members.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Yes but that was the cowardly fuck named Bill Clinton. Those of us that disagreed with that action voted for Bush.
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Yup, you obviously know what you're talking about.
you racist bastard
And we must outlaw evil encryption, you know, so that mass murderers will stop using it.
I also agree with the posters above me, You my friends (LinuxLudite, [amorphis], and Reality Master 101) are fucking idiots
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101010b 2Ah 52o
How can you be so mindful of 'propoganda' in this particular arena, yet vapidly support PETA, the most ridiculous propoganda machine on the planet? You have no credibility. Go suck on some wheat chaff, you vegan commie freak.
What the hell have you been smoking, Katz? It's true that Bush can't blow smoke up your ass like Clinton, but putting the good of the country ahead of your camera time doesn't make him a wuss as you proclaim. Bush wasn't my favorite Republican canidate for the election, but right now I think he's got what it takes to see us past the next couple of years of war. Arrafat is another politician like Clinton that can talk the birds out of the trees. Maybe you should go site-seeing on the West Bank and see how long you last. If that doesn't float your boat, just STFU.
Bush is definately a lost puppie. Bush Sr. as a retiree has more thoughtful comments (even thought I disagree with them) and will probably have a larger effect on this country than his son the president.
I hate you
FIRE THIS BASTARD!
We're all sick of his shit.
FIRE JON KATZ!!
FUCK JON KATZ!
you DON'T KNOW SHIT!!!