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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.
This editorial, from a Canadian newspaper, is worth sharing.
America: The Good Neighbor.
Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a
remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian
television commentator. What follows is the full text of his trenchant
remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most
generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out
of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars
and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today
paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who
propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the
streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries
in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by
tornadoes. Nobody helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into
discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about
the decadent, warmongering Americans.
I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the
erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other
country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the
Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10?
If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except
Russia fly American Planes? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you
get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles.
You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not
once, but several times - and safely home again.
You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store
window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued
and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they
are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at
home to spend here.
When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through
age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad
and the New York Central went broke, nobody Loaned them an old caboose.
Both are still broke.
I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other
people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced
to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even
during the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned
tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing
with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their
nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope
Canada is not one of those."
Stand proud, America! Wear it proudly!!
No one sensible thinks Bush should have headed directly toward DC or NYC. I figured he was going to end up in the mountain in Colorado we saw in War Games (part of NORAD, right? Can't think of the name.)
Airforce 1 is touted as having the best in communications systems so that the president can do his part to run the country after all the nice bits have been blown into radioactive rubble. Why didn't we hear from him then?
When he finally made a statement from Shreveport, it was not what I expected. It was vague, disconnected, and threatening. He said things like (paraphrasing) "We have now done the things necessary to make the country secure," which was a lie. More secure I would believe.
When he made statements about "aiding local authorities" he never mentioned NY or the Pentagon by name. It was as if he didn't actually know what had happened. Maybe he just can't pronounce "Giuliani".
"Mr. President, there will be some pompous gruff nonsense appearing on the teleprompter. Try to read the words and don't worry about what they mean."
The endless harping on retalliation reminded me of the debate where he giggled like a schoolgirl when he was gloating over executing prisoners. A little respect for human life would be nice.
People wanted to see a leader, a leader who was informed, who cared about his people, and who was ready to plan for the future. Nobody cared where his plane was going.
In the past I have even defended some of your more outrageous statements but this goes too far. As someone who has served in the defence of this coutry for the majority of my adult life, I can tell you to a certainty that what Bush did is exactly what needed to be done. Protect the top policy makers so they can make the decisions they need to in case immediate response is necessary. Instead of worring about popularity points or getting his face in front of the TV, Bush and his policy team were busy coordinatinbg the first National Aviation grounding. First in the history of the US .EXACTLY THE APPROPRIATE RESPONSE. THAT SINGLE POLICY DECISION ALONE PROBABLY SAVED MANY LIVES. I'm so upset by your clueless attitude Katz it almost makes me ashamed that I may very well risk my life in the coming months defending this country only to be spit on by the Katzites of this country. Katz you should be ashamed!
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
"Running and hiding" are okay -- the president doesn't really have a say in this. When there's an emergency, he's a pawn who is moved here and there as a show.
The real problem with Bush is much bigger. After 11 hours, Bush went on the air with his big address to the nation. He had nothing but platitudes ("We're gonna get these folks." (that was from his florida speech)) or inane lists of who was harmed, ("Firement, Police men, Business men and women, Mothers, Fathers...").
Compare and contrast with even the lowest of the elected officials in NYC. The fire commissioner was incredibly eloquent. Giuliani became the voice of the nation, answering questions and providing information.
Face it: if the president needs 2 hours of preparation to be able to read 120 words off a teleprompter, he's simply not able to communicate effectively during an emergency. Deficiencies like this usually cause delays, confusion, pain, and needless deaths.
Bush's communication problems in this context have been brought up before. He needs some more edumacation.
But running and hiding from airliners is just bizarre behaviour, there's no other word for it.
Was he expecting a stealth 767? "OK, George, you can come out from under your desk now, somebody's here to see you."
When he did get brave enough to stick his nose out, he toured the pentagon where 200 hundred soldiers died, not New York where thousands died.
OK, mod it down again, you know it's the truth. Just plain chickenshit, in the face of no risk whatsover. Next he will ask 1,000's of GI's to risk their lives storming mountain strongholds. Jeez.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
When there's an emergency, he's a pawn who is moved here and there as a show.
The real problem with Bush is much bigger. After 11 hours, Bush went on the air with his big address to the nation. He had nothing but platitudes ("We're gonna get these folks." (that was from his florida speech)) or inane lists of who was harmed, ("Firement, Police men, Business men and women, Mothers, Fathers...").
Compare and contrast with even the lowest of the elected officials in NYC. The fire commissioner was incredibly eloquent. Giuliani became the voice of the nation, answering questions and providing information.
Face it: if the president needs 2 hours of preparation to be able to read 120 words off a teleprompter, he's simply not able to communicate effectively during an emergency. Deficiencies like this usually cause delays, confusion, pain, and needless deaths.
Bush's communication problems in this context have been brought up before. He needs some more edumacation.
The itchier the culture, the more arms the gods have.
I quoted your post in full because some immature dickhead who doesn't understand the concept of moderation modded it down.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
"...when the plane crashed into the World Trade Center and burst into that orange fireball and the buildings fell down..."
...and then the big boom happened and then more big booms and then lots of people cried and my mommy was sad and I was scared.