Surfing the Red Sea

Okay terrorists, go ahead and wipe the smile off my face. There is nothing to laugh about when bombs go off, and innocent people die. There’s nothing funny, but some things are odd.

What’s odd to me is how we continue to respond to barbarous acts meant to have us shaking in our boots. What do we do? We shake in our boots. Oh we pay lip service to courage. The President, the Governor, the Mayor, the Cleric say, “let’s all go on with our normal lives, but be vigilant.”

Say that 10 times real fast and vigilance turns into, “let’s stockpile the basement with supplies and hide in the closet.” I will more often than not defend the media’s side of a controversial issue. But here I depart.

 I walk in the house with the TV on and ABC’s Charles Gibson is teasing the next block of the news. On a day like this you don’t need to be working media to know what that tease said or what moving pictures you're seeing. The looped video ( bean counter answer to keep from sending more than one photographer to the scene) will show a body on a gurney, a grieving family member, a cop trying to maintain a perimeter, some flashing ambulance lights, a chopper over head if you can get one,  and some twisted metal.

Charles says,

“Next on the evening news we’ll ask the question, could what happened in London happen here?”

Duh!

So after the break all TV news outlets fall in line. We see video from the local train station, the local bus station, even the local TV station. Every TV news outlet, networks and locals,  will do that same story. Then every one will follow that up with a conversation with a terrorism expert. He (almost never a she) is an anal retentive condescending ex-general who has learned his meal ticket  in retirement is to scare the hell out of us. Next the news desks will have turned up somebody locally who knows somebody who knows somebody who was within five miles of the bomb. He’s heard it was just horrible. ( the news desk is working on getting an actual live witness for later in the show or the next show.)  Every single story that had been planned for the newscast, many of which could have helped us go on with our normal lives, is dropped.

Most stories have what journalists call a shelf life. They just die from lack of newsroom interest, more than viewer interest. The viewers were tired of them long ago. But there seems to be no shelf life for terrorism stories.

Fellow traveler Bill Clarke and I were talking several months after 9/11 (not very many stories have the date as their signature) about what the crashes did to the airline industry. I was supposed to be the go to guy on airports and airlines at the time. Bill was wondering how long it would take those airlines to recover. Based on past experiences, i.e. Locherbie, I thought it would take from 6 months to a year for air travel to get back to normal.

"Really, do you think that soon, Paul?"

 

"Oh, yeah, Bill. People's memories are short and let's face it they need to get to places."

 

I want to say it publicly Bill. You were right to present the jaundiced eye. What the hell did I know?

 

I won't say the airlines haven't created many of their own problems.  Greed on the part of management and unions, embarrassing golden retirement parachutes, cut throat pricing competition and frequent flier abuse are some of the reasons the industry is teetering on the edge of financial disaster. But another reason is there is no shelf life for terrorism stories. I know and you know someone who will fly, but not to certain places. As terrorism expands the certain place list expands.

I don't want to make this too long or I'll become part of the problem, and not the solution. So here's the solution. Let's retaliate, not with bombs but with disdain and ennui. Instead of hiding in the broom closet we should all get our passports in order, get some visas and plan vacations for Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq,  Syria and the Sudan. Let's have ourATV's and ski boats shipped over and organize a Persian Gulf sailing competition. Let's open some "Burger Kings" in the Middle East that offer lamb burgers.

Of course we care, of course we grieve, of course it's not funny. But until we convince these idiots they're wasting their time and ours with being mean, they'll keep being mean.

And that cuts into my laughing time.