Looking back: 9/11 coverage

The New Neo Posted on by

The 9/11 anniversary is now over for another year. To mark the day, I went to YouTube and watched videos of the original coverage. Although I’d seen some of it before, I realized that a great deal of it was new to me.

That’s because—as I noted in a previous post—on 9/11 I was staying at the home of friends who didn’t have a TV. It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that I got to one, and so I never saw the original early coverage. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m struck by how long it took the newscasters to figure out what might be happening that day.

At first they thought it was an accident, which is somewhat understandable. But even after the second plane hit, when the fact of terrorism should have been unmistakable, they seemed reluctant to mention it or credit it for the dreadful events that were transpiring. On CNN, for example, the leading theory was that something was wrong with the general navigational system that was sending planes on a beeline for the World Trade Center.

This idea should have been preposterous even at the time. Not that navigational systems can’t go wrong. But to be flawed in a manner that caused two planes to go for a particular target? And on such a gloriously clear day, wouldn’t the pilots have seen the towers and avoided them, no matter what the systems were telling them?

It’s easy to criticize now, knowing what we know. In a way, it’s astounding that the newspeople were able to keep their wits about them enough to make any coherent statements at all; I probably could not have done so. But that’s what they’re paid for, to be professionals. And for the most part they managed to keep on an even keel despite the shock of what they were seeing.

But they demonstrated a curious naivete about terrorism. Perhaps some of it was a result of their hesitation to cast blame without knowing for certain, in case they were later found to be in error. And some of it was probably a failure to appreciate the depth of the hatred that fueled terrorism, as well as an underestimation of the cleverness and creativity terrorists can muster. Probably the relative ineptness of the earlier 1993 attempt to bring down the WTC towers lulled them—and many others—into a false sense of security.

Another thing that struck me now is that, in the YouTube comments section for some of the videos of the day, there are quite a few teenagers who were young children at the time of 9/11. Nine years is long enough for a child to almost grow up, long enough to go from nine years old to eighteen. A number of them remark that although they were too young back then to understand what was happening, now they finally do.

And it struck me that those who are even younger will have grown up with 9/11 always having been in the background as a given. Much as my generation didn’t know a pre-nuclear era, they will have no memory of a pre-9/11 world. Beautiful clear days on which airplanes, piloted by malevolent killers, come out of the blue (literally) to slam into buildings and cause huge bursts of orange flame that kill thousands of people and collapse some of the world’s tallest buildings, will not be shocking to them. It will be the way things are.

On the “Republicans are racist” card

The New Neo Posted on by

Gerard Alexander has an article at the WaPo describing the history of the perception that Republicans are racist, based on the so-called Southern strategy:

This reading of the conservative movement presents problems of logic and history, relying on assumptions that fall apart on close examination. First, it assumes that Republicans depended on white Southerners to become politically competitive in the 1960s. Second, it assumes that Republican presidents from Nixon forward swayed these voters by giving them the policies they wanted. Third, it assumes that the modern conservative policy agenda is best seen as racially motivated. Finally, it assumes that conservative positions on recent controversies are just new forms of that same white-heartland bigotry.

These assumptions are badly flawed…[T]he GOP presidential majority and much of the party’s modern policy agenda were forged not in the racial heat of the 1960s South, but first in the 1950s and across the country.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) recently argued that race did not play a central role in the partisan shift in the South, saying the transformation was led by a younger generation of Southerners in the post-segregation 1970s. But the best evidence that things other than race mattered most in the shift was that it was an even older generation that moved to the GOP in the peripheral South. By the time Lyndon Johnson reportedly remarked that the Civil Rights Act would deliver the South to the Republicans for a generation, the GOP had already won nearly half the region’s Electoral College votes three times in a row.

Alexander goes on in that vein. But although I think he is correct that some of the thinking behind the “Republicans=racists” accusation follows the sort of reasoning he is critiquing here, most of it does not. Most of it appears to be a reflexive and opportunistic response that is more strategic than anything as well-thought-out or historically aware as arguments about the Southern strategy and how it worked. Most of it is just a habitual way of attacking Republicans that is sure to make a great many liberals nod in agreement.

The question is whether it is going to work any more with the large segment of the American public that liberals (and conservatives, for that matter) ordinarily need in order to win elections: Independents. My guess is that liberals have overplayed their hand on this one. I suspect that their use of the race card against almost all objections to the policies of Obama, our first black president, has caused a backlash because it is so obviously an overuse of the race card strategy.

One of the reasons is that a great many Independents also happen to dislike Obama’s policies. They happen to agree with the Arizona law about illegals, and with the idea that a truly sensitive iman would know better than to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero. They know it is highly possible to hold such views for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. And they resent the constant harping on the topic, and the transparent political motivations behind it.

[NOTE: Scott at Powerline adds that Alexander is working on a book explaining the history of race and the Republican Party. Promises to be interesting.]

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a previous post of mine that touches on these subjects.]

9/11: nine years

The New Neo Posted on by

Nine years. So much has happened since then that it seems as though we’re a different country now.

And not a better one. For a while it seemed the legacy of 9/11 would be a unity of purpose, a stunned togetherness. But not only was that illusory, it was deeply so.

I’ve been reading and reflecting on some of the stories of that day, tales of horror and tales of near-miraculous survival. Here’s one of the latter that I’d nearly forgotten, as told by the protagonists in their own words:

Let’s have a giviak party

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back I wrote about the slimy fermented soy product known as natto. Well, as a public service, I’d like to introduce you to another revolting food: the Inuit delicacy known as giviak.

I confess that I’ve never eaten giviak. But I was introduced to it—in the imaginative sense, that is—many years ago, when I first read Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen’s informative Book of the Eskimos.

Unfortunately, I can’t locate my copy, so I won’t quote Freuchen on the matter. This will have to do (and you may thank me for not offering Freuchen’s even more graphic and evocative description):

A giviak is an Inuit delicacy, made by stuffing a whole sealskin with whole raw auks, and letting it ferment underground.

First you need a dead seal with an undamaged hide. With your flensing knife, reach in through the seal’s mouth and carefully separate the carcass from the skin and blubber. Pull the seal carcass out of the skin, through the mouth, without breaking the sealskin.

Then stuff the dead auks – feathers, feet, and all – into the sealskin. Sew up the mouth, and bury the bloated skin. During the summer months, the seal blubber on the inside liquifies, melting slowly into the dead birds. Fermentation occurs. Months later, dig it up.

Bring the giviak to a party. Guaranteed fun!

To eat one of the little birds from the giviak, hold it by its feet, and eat the feathers first by shucking them off with your teeth. Then crunch up the rest of the oily, delicious morsel — bones included. The heart and the coagulated blood inside it are the best part, with a texture and taste reminiscent of the finest cheese — according to Peter Freuchen in his book “My Life in the Frozen North”.

Warning: In Inuit culture, refusing to eat what is offered you is very insulting to your hosts!

A giviak bears a certain resemblance to the Scottish bagged meal known as haggis. But—never having tasted either—I think giviak sounds as though it wins the disgust sweepstakes, hands down. However, these dishes are/were greatly beloved by the groups that originated them, as this excerpt from “Address to a Haggis” by the great Scottish poet Robert Burns attests, in a burst of culinary chauvinism [a handy guide to the meaning of the poem is at the link]:

…Is there that ower his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect scunner,
Looks down wi’ sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him ower his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit:
Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
Oh how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his wallie nieve a blade,
He’ll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.

Ye Pow’rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if Ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis!

Or a giviak.

[NOTE: I actually Googled for images of giviak, and found a couple. I refuse to link to them, but I will say they were very, very, very disturbing.]

On small breasts

The New Neo Posted on by

In an effort to boost my traffic, I am writing about breasts today. Small breasts. But breasts nonetheless

As did the NY Times recently, in a piece about a new trend: lingerie stores that cater to and celebrate the less-endowed woman.

I’ll keep a respectful silence about my own particular form; that much traffic I’m not seeking. But back when I was a dancer, I observed that small-breasted women had it sort of good, at least in the ballet and fashion world. Their bodies created a better line for both dance and the display of fashionable clothing.

And I never understood the later trend towards implants, especially of the perfectly round variety, a shape that does not exist in nature for the human female breast but has become a standard of sorts. When you view enough of these orange- or grapefruit-like objects in catalogs such as Victoria’s Secret which purport to show the ideal female body, the unreal becomes the sought-after, unobtainable except through surgery.

Men being men, there’s a certain tendency I’ve noticed for larger breasts to be considered better—at least, up to a point (pun unintended). But men also being men, there’s a certain tendency I’ve also noticed for a pretty wide range of more-than-acceptable possibilities for the desirable female form.

And speaking of wide ranges, there is actually a website dedicated to photos of unenhanced, non-surgically altered female breasts. It’s not meant to be prurient, although some might certainly find it so. It’s meant to demonstrate to girls growing up in the age of the ubiquitous implant what a natural breast actually looks like, so they don’t get the idea that theirs are abnormal. That’s what it’s come to.

[NOTE: You might enjoy Nora Ephron’s comic 1975 meditation on her own small-breast woes. I especially love this sentence; a perfect description of the bathing suits I recall from the late 50s and early 60s:

That was the era when you could lay an uninhabited bathing suit on the beach and someone would make a pass at it. ]

Connectivity

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m having connectivity problems. Hopefully they will be temporary.

I just got online, and I’m slapping this post up to let you know what’s happening, just in case I lose the connection forthwith.

[ADDENDUM: About 45 minutes later it’s still on, so I think I can safely assume it’s fixed.]

My mother has another adventure

The New Neo Posted on by

Many of you have followed the story of my mother’s stroke and rehabilitation, and her move back to assisted living in New York, where she’s been doing pretty well for the last four years.

“Doing pretty well” at the age of 96 is not quite the same as doing pretty well at forty or fifty. But, as my mother says, “I can’t complain. Actually, I could; but I won’t.”

She had reached a certain homeostatic equanimity: walking with a walker, doing a lot of reading, and needing assistance only for taking her medications and showering. And this despite the fact that the staff at her initial rehab facility five years ago had predicted she would need 24-hour-a-day assistance for the rest of her life.

Doing pretty well—until last Thursday, that is, when I got one of those dread phone calls. This one was from my sister-in-law, saying that my mother had fallen and had been rushed to the emergency room with a broken hip.

My first reaction was a short expletive. I know the score on broken hips in the elderly, and my mother is nothing if not elderly.

The first good news we got was that her heart was strong enough to withstand surgery. The second was that the procedure (partial hip replacement) had gone well. The third was that she didn’t have any of the extra confusion so many elderly people get from the anesthetic. The fourth was that she seems to be doing okay painwise after having been taken off morphine two days ago (her surgery was Saturday).

And the fifth, which I witnessed yesterday (having come down to New York to spell off my brother and sister-in-law), was that she took a few steps. I would not have believed it had I not seen it myself. Two youngish physical therapists came by and announced that she was going to stand, and my mother’s reasonable response of “No, I’m not!” was overruled.

With only a single muttered “It hurts!,” my mother cooperated, allowing them to support her heavily while she leaned on her walker, stood, and took a couple of tiny shuffles forward and back. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and did it again at their behest.

I well know that the road ahead contains many possible pitfalls. But after witnessing that scene—and after one of the therapists turned to me and said, “Your mother must have a very high pain threshold”—I have to admit that my mother seems to have a lot more grit than anyone ever gave her credit for. Which is a good thing, because extreme old age is not for sissies.

[ADDENDUM: I’m not crazy enough to think this sort of thing is in the future for my mother and me—but take a look at this perfectly astounding mother-daughter duo:

RightNetwork

The New Neo Posted on by

Today is the launch of RightNetwork. Have a look:

At RIGHTNETWORK we have created an entertainment television network for Right-Minded people. RIGHTNETWORK will have a presence on the web, your mobile device and, yes, your television….Here you’ll find a fresh daily perspective that is unapologetically American. Everything will be presented with humor, insight, wit, and an optimistic turn.

And the editor-in-chief of the site is none other than Gerard Vanderleun, a blogger with whom you’re probably already familiar.