How frustrating for them
Jim Lehrer had it right during a recent interview. The host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" asked him a serious question: How did Lehrer think the networks should commemorate Sept. 11?
Lehrer (who spent part of his youth in Kansas) said commemorations should be respectful and low key. The public doesn't need the news media to help them remember what happened, he said.
He's right, so this isn't to stir your memory. It's for mine.
While doing some packing, I found some magazines on the April 19, 1995, attacks in Oklahoma City. It seems so long ago, yet my memories came back: Walking into work, hearing "a building blew up in Oklahoma City." The first commentators, confidently describing the work as that of terrorists, but no one describing the terrorists as U.S. military veterans who had sworn to defend the Constitution. A day spent calling home, getting only a busy signal, until I finally got through and learned my family was safe.
The attackers lost. They figured the explosion would bring forth the thousands of militia members, ready to retake America for God or whites or tax dodgers or whoever.
As it turned out, most militia members didn't foresee blowing up secretaries and toddlers as part of the grand plan. The great attack didn't create a new leader or a new war. It left Timothy McVeigh with a lethal injection. It's left Terry Nichols in jail, where he's felt the skeletal hands of Death on his heart for seven years now, as he desperately tries to save his own pathetic life.
The Sept. 11 hijackers didn't win, either. They wanted to bring the United States to its knees. They didn't change us: We have people using the attacks as a way to make selfish political gains, and millions of people tuned in to a game show to see which 20-year-old was going to make a multimillion-selling album. And most of us continued to fall in love, have babies, hug our kids, and squabble.
It must be terribly frustrating to try to bring down America. You see a nation of people bickering about whether or not jeans are too low. It's natural to figure they're easy pickings. Next thing you know, you're huddled in a cave or a jail cell, wondering why, despite your best efforts, those Americans are still here.
We are indeed a nation that is sometimes silly, often has its priorities skewed, and undoubtedly sticks its nose into other peoples' business, when we have plenty of dirty laundry to handle ourselves.
But we're still here.
It must be terribly frustrating to that group in hell, including Hitler, McVeigh, and the Sept. 11 terrorists.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this," they say. "We were supposed to be heroes. Don't they understand? They're weak. They're supposed to fall apart.
"Don't they understand?"
— MATT NEWHOUSE
