It seems the biggest question coming out of this morning's coverage of 9/11 ceremonies in New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania wasn't the status of the war on terror, or even just where Osama bin Laden is hiding out: it was why we still do it.
"It" being the ringing of the bells; the moments of silence; the reading of the names. New York's been abuzz for the past week over WABC 7's call to skip the hours-long name reading and become the only local TV station to air regular programming (Regis and Kelly, no less) instead of marching in lock-step with every other local television station broadcasting the name reading.
WABC reversed course quickly after station officials got an earful -- an email box-full -- of comments from families of those killed in the World Trade Center attack and other citizens who feel blowing off the defining moment of American History so far this 21st century was improper.
Have we as a society become ADD America, suffering so much from Attention Deficit Disorder that we have to have something new on the plate at all times? Reflection isn't a bad thing, whether it is the fifth anniversary, the tenth or as in this year the sixth year since the worst single attack on U.S. soil ever.
It bears noting that the generation so preoccupied with itself that Easy Rider Dennis Hopper is now a pitchman for retirement financial services, the same folks who still wrap themselves up in tie-dye to commemorate the Summer of Love, the aging baby boomers who still argue whether Yoko really broke up the boys, can so easily think it is time to move on from an event that still scars Manhattan with a giant, gaping hole.
Thousands of American men and women -- and tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians --continue to pay a price as public policy pushes the War on Terror, regardless of liberal/conservative or Democrat/Republican. That price is with their blood, their "normalcy", their sacrifice in wars fought far enough from home that we watch them now on the same screens that just hours earlier displayed soap operas and laugh-a-minute gabfests designed to take our attention away from real life.
You don't have to hate bin Laden to remember the event that put us on the path we now tread. You don't have to hate war to remember those lost in the opening salvo. What's left is what's right: some things don't deserve that loss of attention. Remember September 11, 2001 with some time on television and radio on one day out of 365?
"It" being the ringing of the bells; the moments of silence; the reading of the names. New York's been abuzz for the past week over WABC 7's call to skip the hours-long name reading and become the only local TV station to air regular programming (Regis and Kelly, no less) instead of marching in lock-step with every other local television station broadcasting the name reading.
WABC reversed course quickly after station officials got an earful -- an email box-full -- of comments from families of those killed in the World Trade Center attack and other citizens who feel blowing off the defining moment of American History so far this 21st century was improper.
Have we as a society become ADD America, suffering so much from Attention Deficit Disorder that we have to have something new on the plate at all times? Reflection isn't a bad thing, whether it is the fifth anniversary, the tenth or as in this year the sixth year since the worst single attack on U.S. soil ever.
It bears noting that the generation so preoccupied with itself that Easy Rider Dennis Hopper is now a pitchman for retirement financial services, the same folks who still wrap themselves up in tie-dye to commemorate the Summer of Love, the aging baby boomers who still argue whether Yoko really broke up the boys, can so easily think it is time to move on from an event that still scars Manhattan with a giant, gaping hole.
Thousands of American men and women -- and tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians --continue to pay a price as public policy pushes the War on Terror, regardless of liberal/conservative or Democrat/Republican. That price is with their blood, their "normalcy", their sacrifice in wars fought far enough from home that we watch them now on the same screens that just hours earlier displayed soap operas and laugh-a-minute gabfests designed to take our attention away from real life.
You don't have to hate bin Laden to remember the event that put us on the path we now tread. You don't have to hate war to remember those lost in the opening salvo. What's left is what's right: some things don't deserve that loss of attention. Remember September 11, 2001 with some time on television and radio on one day out of 365?
Hell, yes.
Update: read WKYC's Directors Cut with Frank Macek for his perspective on that day; it is a great window into what television stations and newsrooms were dealing with that sunny day.
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