...When All is Said and Dunn

As all of us grapple to deal with the roller coaster of emotions we have been experiencing since 9/11, some of us seem to be handling it better than others. The fact that every news agency is acting as though there is nothing else happening in the world is not making it any easier.

We are all waiting for what we assume is the inevitable, a physical attack in some form on the terrorists and their supporters. Despite all of George W’s warnings that this is not going to be a normal war, most of us are getting a tad itchy and impatient as to the headway that’s being made.

Cutting off the terrorists’ funds may be a stepping-stone in our retaliation, but I hardly believe that they had all of their eggs in one basket. It’s like punishing a teenager by taking away one of their credit cards when they have three. Until we see some retaliation on CNN we aren’t going to stop feeling as vulnerable. I’m sure it’s coming, but like Tom Petty once said “the waiting is the hardest part”.

While the tough talk and no action continues, some things are beginning to surface as to what our future, at least our near future, will be like. Some are incredibly bad and downright scary and some can be listed on the plus side.

One good side effect has been the lack of wasting valuable television time on car chases. At least for the time being, the air above us has been so severely restricted that news helicopters are spending more time on the ground than in the air. So the hours of coverage of some drunken nut-job leading police on a 5-hour chase are over for the time being. Maybe without the television coverage, it will be less in vogue to attempt it.

The extreme resurgence of patriotism is another one for the plus column. I have never seen anything like this in my life, as I am sure you haven’t. It’s like being in a Frank Capra or a World War II John Wayne movie. The charity, flag waving, and overall support from every corner of the nation is overwhelming. Even the most callous and unpatriotic people out there are flying flags on their homes and cars.

On the other hand, the people who are trying to turn a huge profit on the selling of American flags is a prime example of what belongs in the negative column. The reason many of us can’t find a normally priced flag in a store is because these opportunistic parasites have bought all of them up and are selling them on street corners at a 200% mark up. The patriotic t-shirts are one thing but there should be a law concerning the sale of American flags.

Another frightening thing that has begun to happen more frequently is the rise in hate crimes against Muslim and Islamic Americans. Every week the number of attacks grows and that is sickening. Many of the attacks are not even against those groups; they are against people that ignorant bigots assume are Islamic or Muslim. Hate crimes were with us before the tragedy and unfortunately will be with us until the uneducated are either educated, in jail, or dead.

One thing that has yet to be seen is how this will affect the entertainment industry down the road. In the short term we have seen the immediate changes to television shows in what is acceptable and what is not. Many dramatic shows have been scrambling to retool plot lines in television shows. Some movies made prior to the attack will probably never see the light of day. Who knows how it will impact the music industry, only time will tell.

One change that has occurred is during the opening credits of many of the TV shows that are supposed to take place in New York. They have been editing the shots so you don’t see the World Trade Center.

I find this incredible painful because it was a truly awesome structure. They may not have been in the same league as the sphinx or the pyramids, but they were amazing nonetheless. They were structures that will never be built in the same way again. In my mind they will always be there, and yet I will have to do what the writers of these shows do when coming up with the stories, use my imagination to remember them. Because I never want to forget them. I never want to forget what they will forever mean to all of us.

We are all dealing with it in our own way, this is just one of the ways that I am.