2001-11-19

It’s kind of embarrassing when the newspaper quotes people that are simply wrong. When they give print-time, air-time and paid-time for a story that is essentially without value, in the Washington Post of all places. Of course, the article of question is in one of the two mildly respectable large-circulation papers to make matters worse(the New York Times being the other). While talking to the residents in the area of last week’s crash, there was an air of suspicion as if the crash may be terrorist related and the truth of the situation is being covered up. That’s how people want to see the world now. Something bad happens and there is an attributable evil to go along side it. A supporting quote for this belief came from one resident in saying “We've lived here all our lives and nothing like this has ever happened.”

This quote aggravates the hell out of me.

Now if she’s specifically saying no airplanes have crashes into our homes before, this is understandable. There are probably few people who can say that a plane has crashed into their house, and I believe almost none that can say it’s happened more than once (if you take away incidents involving all crop dusters flown by drunken farmers in the middle of this country). If you keep on getting jetliners in your living room, you need to move a bit further away from the airport. But if she’s talking about air planes crashing out of JFK, apparently she forgot:
-October 31, 1999: Egypt Air Flight 990 to Cairo. Final Destination: Atlantic Ocean.
-September 2, 1998: Swissair Flight 111 to Geneva. Final Destination: Atlantic Ocean.
-July 17, 1996: TWA Flight 800 to Paris. Final Destination: Atlantic Ocean.

There have even been less fatal incidents out of JFK, in case one is inclined to believe that these other 3 are due to terrorism as well. Most recently, on December 20, 1995 an icy run-way led to plan skidding into the water, no one died but the passengers were pretty pissed about having to walk through the water with questionable remains of questionable Mafia types.

Apparently, the person who gave the above quote of “We've lived here all our lives and nothing like this has ever happened” is about 2 years old because planes crash out of JFK all the time including crashes 1965 and 1970. Even more planes crash trying to get into JFK.

We can say she is talking about planes crashing into residential areas. As she is only 27, we can assume that “all of our lives” does not include the memory of December 16, 1960, when two planes crashed over New York City. One was bound for JFK, the other La Guardia. Final Destination for one was Staten Island, for the other, prime Park Slope. That was probably the last time you could get a cheap place in Park Slope.

I might be excessively morbid with all these plane crashes, but really, everyone, sometimes planes just crash. The story also contains this emotion-filled doozy:

“I want to believe it was an accident." She looks at the ground. "But I can't."

Sometimes life just happens. Sometimes there is no evil to blame. It’s merely the way of the world. The amnesia regarding previous, not so distant crashes, involving no planes into skyscrapers, amazes me. People want to hold onto the terrorists attacks. I understand that countless have PTSD and I can’t deny their mixed emotions, their hyped reactions to every event. However, they can’t be allowed to go about feeling that way. It’s unhealthy for “she looks at the ground” – understood emotional pain and sympathy – to dominate our way of thinking. It’s best for them to know that their reactions are not tolerated, that the need to calm down and accept that planes fall from the sky all the time.

When I typed up my 9 episodes, I cut out more than my disclaimer stated. It was a month after the terrorist attacks and an entire paragraph about planes crashing was deleted. Because it was too soon and not necessarily essential to my wee story. It was fictional, not real, therefore delete-able. I got rid of it, to not put people into the context of the terrorist attacks.

I just want everyone to stop putting everything in this context. I want everything not to be suspicious. I’m not cold hearted, I’m just exasperated. The terrorists attacks will never be something we can forget, it will never be something that is not talked about. I can image talking to my grandchildren about the time that two large buildings sat in southern Manhattan the way my grandmother tells me of the Manhattan she lived in during her 20s.

Making everything into good/evil, Made in the USA/killed by Bin Laden, dressed in “September 11” euphemisms is giving people a way to look at the world. It makes them feel something about the world. It gives them good and evil, life and death and a filing system of how to think of each event. Our entire lives can’t continue to be referenced to one point in time. And our few good newspapers can't continue to – pause for emotional effect – print stories that play into this one-moment view of the world. They, more than any one, should know things happen every day.