Getting It First vs. Getting It Right

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The pursuit of the Boston Marathon bombers has been a great opportunity for journalism professors like myself to explore the emphasis in today's media on being first with a story — regardless of whether it is right.

When I was in journalism school, the emphasis was reversed. Getting it right was more important than reporting it first.

I don't mean to suggest that being first wasn't important. It certainly was. Always has been. But the difference is that we were told repeatedly that accuracy took priority. Publishing rumor, hearsay or something that was not independently verifiable was unacceptable.

That was something aspiring journalists learned from reading "All the President's Men." Woodward and Bernstein inspired a generation of young journalists with their coverage of an imploding presidency, but they insisted on having at least two sources for anything they wrote.

As a result, they were rarely wrong about anything. They were often impugned by their adversaries in the White House, but they were seldom wrong.

Far fewer sources apparently were required by CNN when it reported — erroneously — that a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was in custody. This was more than 24 hours before the release of the photographs of the suspects by the FBI led to the death of one and the eventual apprehension of the other.

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The audience bears a certain amount of responsibility for this atmosphere.

We live in a culture that not only desires but expects instant gratification. Nothing demands discipline anymore. We have hundreds of TV stations from which to choose — and the ability to record multiple programs for viewing at our convenience. We have numerous options for quick, filling (and mostly absent any nutritional value) food to eat and pills to take to fall asleep at night.

If we experience pain, we can get pain relievers over the counter that promise instant relief. Landline phones are disappearing; everyone has his or her own personal phone now — along with his or her personal water bottle in case of a sudden attack of thirst.

And people in the 21st century know that they can go to multiple web sites — in addition to the traditional stand–bys, the broadcast and print media — for news and information. There is no shortage of sources, and each one seems eager to go with any story it has — even if that story is wrong.

Being first is what counts with the audience.

And the pressure to be first guides the often ill–advised actions of media outlets.

Being right is what should matter to all journalists

When I was a journalism student — and then a young journalist — I knew I was up against competition for the readers' time and attention. Competition is part of the business, just like it is part of any other business. And scooping the competition is definitely not a new concept. If I could scoop my competition, that was great. But my professors and editors insisted on accuracy.

I believed in it then, and I still believe in it. Double checking isn't just a good idea for insurance companies eager to attract customers with discounts, you know. It's a good idea for journalists, too, and it used to be underscored with the words Libel Manual emblazoned on the cover of the AP Stylebook — the journalist's bible.

Now, libel is treated almost like an afterthought by the AP — but I know it isn't. It couldn't be. Libel is still a significant portion of media law, and any media outlet that acts as if it isn't is playing with fire. At the very least, it is tempting fate.

E.J. Dionne laments, in the Washington Post, this rush to judgment in the media. And that judgment usually supports whatever the journalist is predisposed to believe.

There is every bit as much partisan rushing to judgment on the left as there is on the right.

In Boston, Dionne observes, "there was an immediate divide between those who were sure the attack was a form of Islamic terrorism and those just as convinced that it was organized by domestic, right–wing extremists. ... [A]bsolutely no one imagined what turned out to be the case: that two young immigrants with Chechen backgrounds would be held responsible for unleashing the violence."

This is not what I believe journalism is about. Journalists report the news. They are not cheerleaders for one side or the other. They report the facts, even if the facts contradict their personal beliefs, and allow the readers to reach their own conclusions.

OK, a few journalists are cheerleaders. They write opinion columns — and, in most cases, those columns are labeled as opinion.

If it isn't clear whether an article in a newspaper is a news report or an opinion column, I would not recommend that you continue reading that publication.

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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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There was a time when I would recommend to people that they turn to CNN for reliable news coverage.

I would have made that recommendation as recently as four years ago, when CNN was the only news outlet (as far as I know) that didn't jump to conclusions based on the observations of unauthorized personnel — and waited until someone who was authorized to do so confirmed that Michael Jackson had died.

That decision prevented CNN from being first; CNN, however, retained its integrity.

But, as the attached clips so clearly show, CNN yielded to the dark side in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings and joined (nay, led) the rush to judgment. There were lesser news outlets that did what CNN should have been doing, what CNN used to do — what all media outlets should have done — the responsible thing.

Next time, undoubtedly, it will be someone else who does the right thing. And, rest assured, there will be a next time.

Responsible journalists do not report rumor, innuendo and hearsay. They do not take their lead from "canine dogs" barking in the darkness or what other outlets may be doing.

They do their job. They report the news.

When Jon Stewart makes you the recipient of his razor–sharp witticisms twice in a week's time, your credibility is pretty much shot.

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Blood in Boston

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I used to work as a sports copy editor, and, in those days, you never saw an article from the Boston Marathon on the front page of the newspaper.

Times have changed. I can guarantee that the Boston Marathon will be on the front page of every newspaper tomorrow, but that has nothing to do with the race.

It has everything to do with the explosions that occurred near the finish line this afternoon.

Initially, it was thought there had been three explosions, but, as I write this, it appears that the third event — a fire or explosion at the nearby JFK library — was a bizarre irony.

When I heard that, I immediately thought of the hijackings of 2001 — and how I heard of planes crashing into the World Trade Center ... and then the Pentagon. Perhaps it was due to the fact that my office did not have a television, but there was a lot of confusion in my workplace that day — and a lot of misinformation floating around, even from people who had been in contact with friends and relatives who were watching things unfold on TV.

There is always some confusion around an event like this, and, sadly, I have become well acquainted with them. I was living a short distance from Oklahoma City when the federal building there was bombed (the 18th anniversary of that event will be this Friday, by the way); it is safe to say that my exposure to that event was more intense than it was for most.

And I, like most Americans, remember the confusion that was part of the developing story on 9–11. A few years later, I watched, transfixed, as the news coverage of the series of bombings in London flooded the airwaves.

The only things that seem clear are that at least three people are dead tonight, more than 100 are injured (some have lost limbs), and no one has claimed responsibility.

The investigators may already have an idea who was responsible, but they are keeping their cards hidden — as good investigators do.

In the days ahead, I expect many of the pressing questions to be answered — perhaps not always to everyone's satisfaction but answered, nonetheless.

There were people from all over the world in Boston today; consequently, I expect to hear eventually of injured — possibly even deceased — people from several countries.

There may even be things about this case that will surprise me.

Actually, the only thing that I am sure of — at least, as sure as anyone can be at this point — is that this was a coordinated, organized attack that almost certainly involved more than one person. I don't know if it was carried out by a domestic or foreign group. I suppose that is a detail we will learn in due course.

For now, I am willing to let the investigators do their work — which, I suppose, is an easy thing for me to do, considering that I am about 1,500 miles away and I won't have to put up with the inconvenience that many Bostonians will as they try to go about their daily business.

But investigators don't get to choose where a crime is committed. They can only investigate the scene of a crime, wherever that scene happens to be. This seems likely to be a difficult scene to process.

I wish them all the best in investigating this crime. I hope they bring those responsible to justice.

And I hope that we learn whatever we need to learn from this event to keep another one from happening.

But I am doubtful that will happen.

I am doubtful because, as is abundantly clear in the debate over guns, we tend to treat only the symptoms and not the disease.

The symptoms are the weapons that are used to kill and maim people.

The disease is whatever prompts one human being (or a group of human beings) to deliberately hurt or kill other human beings.

People who are bent on destruction will do it with whatever weapon is available to them. They will use guns — or knives, as we saw at the school in Houston last week — or explosive devices, as we saw in Boston today.

Until we are ready to face that problem with the vigor with which we attack inanimate objects, we will not rid our land of this epidemic of violence.

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The First Attack on the Twin Towers ...

Do you remember where you were 20 years ago today?

I had just started my second semester of teaching at the University of Oklahoma. A little more than two years later, we would all be absorbed by the bombing of the federal building in nearby Oklahoma City, but, on this day in 1993, our attention was on the World Trade Center in New York where someone had set off a bomb in the underground parking area of the North Tower.

I remember lingering in the campus newsroom, watching TV reports and trying to figure out what it all meant. On our TV screen, we saw a lot of smoke and a lot of soot–stained faces on people who were being brought out of the building. Six people were killed that day (seven if you count the unborn child one of the victims was carrying); more than 1,000 were injured.

But as far as we (and, no doubt, most Americans) were concerned, the reason for the bombing was incomprehensible.

As spectacular as those numbers appeared at the time, the bombing did not go off as intended. The plan was for the bomb to knock the North Tower into the South Tower and bring both down, killing thousands in the process. Neither tower fell that day. That would have to wait about 8½ years.

Ramzi Yousef was the mastermind behind the plan. Although it failed to accomplish the objective, it was revised and became the 9–11 plan, which did bring both towers down and did result in the deaths of thousands.

I guess that was the first salvo in the War on Terrorism, although few, if any, realized it that day. Initial (and erroneous) news reports focused on the likelihood that a main transformer may have blown.

My recollection is that neither I nor anyone around me (the other professors, the students, etc.) understood what had happened that day.

Of course, none of us had any idea what would happen in 2001, when the terrorists returned with a vengeance. We were blissfully ignorant at that time.

That would change.

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The Dawn of the Cuban Missile Crisis

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President Barack Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney will meet in their second debate tomorrow night.

It will follow a "town hall" format in which members of an audience made up entirely of undecided voters will ask the questions. I suppose the general idea is that the audience will ask the questions that are of the most concern for undecided voters, which should be instructive.

In fact, it should be interesting, but I kind of wish tomorrow night's debate was the one on foreign policy instead. It would be much more appropriate, given that half a century ago today, the Central Intelligence Agency's National Photographic Interpretation Center identified what it believed to be missiles in surveillance photos of Cuba.

The State department was notified that evening, as was Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. National Security adviser McGeorge Bundy decided not to inform President Kennedy until the next day.

Consequently, on the evening of Oct. 16, after confirming to his satisfaction that the photographs did indeed reveal the presence of missile sites in Cuba, Kennedy called the first meeting of what came to be known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM) — the nine members of the National Security Council and five other advisers.

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It is almost a cliche now to say that the Cuban Missile Crisis — which really can be said to have begun 50 years ago today because that is when the Photographic Interpretation Center first spotted missiles in Cuba although the president wasn't informed until the following day — is the closest the world has come to a nuclear war.

But there is certainly a lot of truth behind that assertion.

I suppose it seems anticlimactic to people who study that period in school today. Heck, it seemed anticlimactic to me when I studied it, and I can only imagine how it must seem to young people in 2012. When historic events are studied, it always seems the outcome was inevitable.

But the men who participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis did not know how the situation would play out, and it was in large part because of the lessons that were learned 50 years ago that the leaders of the larger governments of the world forged foreign policies that showed the proper respect for the truly awesome power that had been unleashed at the end of World War II.

They had stared into the abyss, to use language and imagery that became fashionable after the fact, and had resolved to do whatever was necessary to avoid a similar confrontation in the future.

It quickly became conventional wisdom that Harry Truman's decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved hundreds of thousands of lives because Japan promptly surrendered, sparing the Americans and their allies from a possibly prolonged invasion of Japan.

And, if the reports that the Nazis were on the brink of developing nuclear weapons and the Americans beat them to it are correct, then perhaps it is a good thing that the genie was let out of the bottle.

It was not a good thing that tens of thousands of civilians were killed on both occasions — but perhaps those sacrifices were necessary to impress upon those who had unleashed the power exactly how mighty was the power they held in their hands.

But the issue was not resolved in 1945. After the end of the war, the United States, the world's only nuclear power, chose to disarm, naively believing that merely having the most destructive weapon known to mankind would be enough to prevent acts of aggression.

America, to put it mildly, was caught with its pants down when it was revealed that the Soviet Union had developed the technology for assembling nuclear weapons.

Although most nations appear to recognize and respect nuclear power — and, to be fair, the world has seen no nuclear attacks in more than 65 years — the threat is very much with us today — in the form of terrorists who only want enough nuclear material to spread fear from sea to shining sea.

Reducing cities to piles of rubble is not in their plans — as far as we know.

Perhaps the greatest problem EXCOMM faced when it met for the first time 50 years ago tomorrow was that American naivete had backfired again. In spite of the fact that we had been involved in a Cold War since before the revelation that the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons, the Americans foolishly believed the Russians would never put missiles in Cuba.

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So, when the Russians did put missiles in Cuba, EXCOMM and Kennedy had to decide how to respond. There was no plan in place for such a situation.

For awhile, some members of EXCOMM probably felt that an invasion of Cuba was inevitable. The advocates of an invasion told Kennedy — forcefully — they believed the Soviets would do nothing in retaliation. Kennedy disagreed.

"If [the Russians] don't take action in Cuba," Kennedy reportedly said, "they certainly will in Berlin."

Fifty years ago, cooler heads prevailed. While diplomatic discussions, both formal and informal, went on, the Americans opted for a blockade in which the Navy would block any more shipments of missiles to Cuba.

Thankfully, things worked out in 1962. And one of the biggest reasons why things did work out was because Kennedy trusted the people of America enough to be honest with them about what was happening and what the risks were.

His actions were not guided by his memories of failure at the Bay of Pigs the year before.

But here we are, more than a month after four Americans were slain in a clearly coordinated attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya — and it is hard to tell if America has any friends left in the Middle East.

It is hard to tell because we get so much conflicting information from the administration that was going to be the most transparent in our history.

Even after the whopper that a video allegedly sparked a spontaneous demonstration that (allegedly) got out of hand had been discredited, U.N. ambassador Susan Rice continued to insist that it was true, as did the president.

My guess is that political considerations have been key factors in deciding what the president will or will not tell the American people — but I don't know that for certain. I'm simply acting on the old "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ..." rule of thumb.

I do know that jobs and the economy make everything else pale in comparison in this campaign, but I'd like to think that someone from the audience of undecided voters will ask the candidates about Libya and the four Americans who died there on the 11th anniversary of 9–11.

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Of Myths, Heroism and Flight 93

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I realize that this is a weekend of somber reflection, of remembering the thousands of lives that were lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11.

And I realize that it is true, as President Clinton said during his remarks at the dedication of the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania, that there has always been a special place in the American heart and memory for heroes who sacrificed themselves for others.

But one of the things my mother taught me was that there is true value in genuinely inspiring words and deeds, and I don't think what happened with Flight 93 was exactly what we have been told.

I agree that the story of that flight is very moving. It is tragic, as are the accounts of the other three hijacked flights, but it differs from the other three primarily in one way — the passengers on Flight 93 had the benefit of the knowledge that everyone on the ground had, that other flights had been turned into missiles that had struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Those other three plane crashes happened so rapidly that relatively few passengers on those flights probably knew what was happening. It was that element of simultaneous surprise that the terrorists apparently were counting on — to strike before anyone realized what was happening.

But there was a delay in the departure of Flight 93, and it disrupted their timing. It wasn't terribly long as these things go (I've been through worse even though I have never been a frequent flier), but it was long enough that, after the flight finally was airborne, the pilot and co–pilot nearly got a general warning from the ground about hijackings, and it was long enough for the passengers to learn what had happened in New York and Washington.

That gave them some time to consider their situation — and their response.

Consequently, many people have accepted the myth that has emerged that the passengers revolted as some sort of selfless sense of patriotism and sacrifice swelled within them.

I don't doubt that they were patriotic, but neither am I convinced that their motives were as altruistic as we have been told for the last 10 years, either.

If they put two and two together — as most of them apparently did — they must have realized that their plane was not going to land safely. They must have realized they were part of a suicide mission. They must have known that it was almost certain that they would die — unless some sort of miracle happened and they were able to take control of the plane and one of the passengers could, either alone or with assistance from the ground, manage to land it.

I'm reminded of a scene from the movie "Lenny" about comedian Lenny Bruce. In the movie, Dustin Hoffman re–created segments from Bruce's shows, including one about the famous Zapruder film, the graphic account of the JFK assassination.

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After the fatal shot, Jackie Kennedy could be seen climbing from her seat onto the trunk of the car and a Secret Service agent coming forward to help her back into her seat. A sequence of photos from the film were published nationally (in TIME, I think) with a caption that said something about how the first lady gave no thought to her personal safety and tried to shield the president from further gunshots.

Bruce/Hoffman said it was a "dirty lie."

"I think that, when she saw the president get it and the governor get it, she decided to get the hell out of there," he said. I agree. I think it was a split–second decision, reaction without reflection. Human instinct.

If she had had more time to think about it, she might have said yes, she would try to protect her husband if she saw he had been hurt.

But others assigned more meaning to it than that.

That's the feeling I get when I hear people speak of the passengers' revolt on Flight 93. They speak of them as if they sat in the back of that hijacked plane and had an in–depth discussion of American history and the principles of freedom and democracy — and then voted to stand up to terrorism.

I'm not saying that the passengers of Flight 93 reacted without any reflection. And the fact that they forced that plane to go down in a Pennsylvania field instead of Washington probably did save hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.

But I don't think that possibility crossed their minds. I think they were thinking only of their own survival. And that isn't a bad thing. It's a normal human instinct — self–preservation.

I've read the transcripts and heard the recordings that have been released to the public. I recall one of the passengers telling the others, "In the cockpit ... if we don't, we'll die!"

I have heard nothing about passengers shouting "Give me liberty or give me death!" or any other patriotic slogans from American history.

Their fates were sealed when that plane left the ground, but they mentally resisted that knowledge. They weren't thinking beyond the moment and doing whatever they could to live to the next moment ... and the next and the next.

There was, I should add, a certain poignance in Vice President Joe Biden's words about rising to the occasion and overcoming adversity. As a young senator–elect, Biden's life was forever altered by the loss of his first wife and their small daughter in a car accident, and for a time he considered leaving politics, but he did not.

Nor did he withdraw from life. He raised his sons the best he could and re–married a few years later. And his nearly four decades of public service stand as testimony to his survival.

Perhaps that will be the future inspiration of September 11 — the way the friends and relatives of the victims rose from the ashes and survived and persevered.

Things were over fairly quickly for the passengers of the planes. Sometimes just surviving is the hardest part.

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The Legacy of 9-11

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I know this has been said before — in many, many ways — but it really is hard to comprehend that it has been 10 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

I learned long ago that it isn't necessary to mention the year. All you need to say is "September 11" — or, in the shorthand form of which modern Americans are so fond, "9–11" — and the listener knows precisely what you're talking about.

My memories of that day are bound to be considerably different than the ones most people have, though. At the time, I was working in an office that had no television, and we had to get whatever information we could from the radios at our desks, phone calls from friends and relatives who did have access to television coverage and the internet.

The thing I remember most about that morning is how pleasant the weather was. It was unusually mild for Dallas, Texas, that early in September — the kind of weather, really, that one expects around mid–October at the earliest. Temperatures dropped to the mid–60s the night before, and I remember thinking briefly about wearing a jacket to work that morning.

(It's been a little spooky around here lately. We've endured one of the hottest summers ever, but, a few days ago, a cool front came through and our lows have been in the 60s while our highs have been in the 80s — just in time for the 10th anniversary.)

I remember thinking to myself that it really felt like football season — and that pleased me. You see, when I talk about football weather, I mean the kind of weather I remember from my childhood and college days in Arkansas — cool, crisp, a few clouds in the sky, maybe a slight breeze.

In fact, football season had begun, and that truly is a sacred time in Texas. Not every Texan believes in God, but most do believe in football. I do, anyway, and the knowledge that football season had begun put a spring in my step as I left my apartment that morning.

I was driving to work when I heard reports on the radio of the first airplane crash into the World Trade Center. The radio guys in Dallas were treating it like it was an accident, an isolated event, and I assumed it was. Apparently, they had a television in the radio studio, and they described the sight of one of the tall towers billowing smoke into a clear blue sky.

I have tried — many times — to remember if there were any clouds in the sky over north Texas that morning, and I just can't remember. There may have been some, and I just didn't notice.

I do remember that the sun was shining so, if there were any clouds, there couldn't have been many.

Airports shouldn't be so close to tall buildings, one of the guys on the radio said, as if he knew anything about New York geography. Most listeners probably assumed that he did — but, in fact, JFK Airport is about 12 miles southeast of Lower Manhattan, where the World Trade Center stood.

That alone should have been a tipoff that something was seriously amiss.

But I was driving in rush hour traffic and gave little more thought to the morning radio banter than I usually did, and I recall thinking that having airports a good distance from commercial districts was just common sense.

Terrorism wasn't on my mind yet — and, for whatever reason, it didn't occur to me that a plane crashing into the World Trade Center would be the lead story on the evening news. I made a mental note to mention it to my co–workers — and hoped it wouldn't slip my mind.

Well, it didn't slip my mind. Turned out, it was the only story on the news for several evenings.

I parked my car a few minutes before 8 a.m. Dallas time and entered my building.

In my office, we worked in two–person teams, and I remember walking to my workstation and starting to tell my partner, "I just heard the wildest thing on the radio ..." but she put one finger to her lips to silence me and turned up the volume on the radio on her desk. They were talking about a second plane that had crashed into the WTC.

My office processed auto loans for dealerships around the country, and our work flow depended on the morning and afternoon shipments of paperwork from UPS and FedEx. When air travel was grounded that day, work came to a screeching halt — and remained slow for weeks.

For the rest of that day, we heard about all the things that most people were seeing — the destruction at the Pentagon, the people who jumped to their deaths from the towering infernos that the twin towers had become, the apparently heroic acts of the passengers on Flight 93 that may have prevented the White House or the Capitol from being destroyed.

It was shocking enough to hear about. I remember my departmental manager, Carrie, walking around in a kind of daze. She kept talking about the people who were trapped on those doomed airplanes.

By mid–afternoon, the overall managers of my office decided to close up early (there wasn't any work to do, anyway), and, when I got home, I finally got to see what everyone else had witnessed live.

I haven't had to live with the trauma that seeing all of that as it happened surely must have caused for many. I have seen footage from that day, of course — I saw a lot of it that very day — so I know what millions saw. The difference was that I knew what was coming.

It was like seeing a shocking movie ending that someone told you about before you saw the movie.

Imagine if, 50 years ago, you were standing in line to see "Psycho," and someone walked by and casually said to his/her companion, "I saw it the other day. What a finish! Anthony Perkins is his own mother, and he kills Janet Leigh while she's taking a shower!"

If you stayed to see the movie, the ending would be tarnished for you — to say the least.

Unfortunately, what happened 10 years ago was no movie, and even though I knew what was going to happen, I felt compelled to watch it — maybe out of respect for all the innocent lives that were lost, perhaps out of a sense of duty as an aggrieved American.

Maybe I felt like one does when a car accident or train wreck is unfolding before one's eyes.

Thousands of people died that day, and, as a result, thousands more have died on Middle Eastern soil, and billions of American dollars have been spent there.

I know people who are convinced that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed heavily to America's current economic problems, and perhaps they are right. I'm certainly no economist, but even those people who studied it in college and practice economics professionally don't know everything there is to know. If they did, it seems to me, there would be more of a consensus on what economic policy should be.

There can be little doubt that America's wars in the last decade have taken much of this country's resources, human and financial. But they weren't the sole contributors.

It would be foolish to blame what happened 10 years ago for the troubles facing America in 2011.

And yet ...

I remember, at the time, how so many of the people around me spoke in awe of the brilliant intellects that conceived such a plot. Much of their logic was rooted in the Middle Ages, most people agreed, but they were smart enough to anticipate any roadblocks they might encounter because of modern policies.

They did their research. They were familiar with routine procedures. They made sure the box cutters that were used as knives met existing standards. No detail was too small.

As the plan was taking shape, of course, the roadblocks they wished to avoid were the ones that could stand in their way to achieving a short–term — albeit dramatic — goal.

And they achieved it, perhaps in more spectacular fashion than any dared hope in those days in the late 1990s. From what I have heard, few, if any, thought the Twin Towers actually could be brought down.

But what if one — or more — not only thought the Twin Towers could be reduced to rubble but had the prescience to anticipate a more long–term consequence: how the financial weight of waging two wars simultaneously, combined with the unchecked greed of the seamy underside of capitalism, could bring America to its knees?

It almost seems like one of those bizarre conspiracy theories in which everything must happen just so. What are the odds?

And yet ...

Many of the upper–level operatives for Al Qaeda are either deceased or in custody now.

But if any who are still alive and at large had the foresight to anticipate how hijacking and crashing four airplanes would reverberate in American life and continue to have a corrosive influence on both American economics and American politics a decade later, I can only guess that this must be a satisfying moment.

If so, they must be the only ones who feel satisfied on this occasion.

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All Shook Up

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Earthquakes are different in the eastern United States than in the western United States, a fellow with a geological background was saying yesterday following the earthquake in northern Virginia.



I didn't catch everything he said because I was channel surfing, and I came across him midway through his segment, but I gathered from what I heard that the fault lines along the west coast are more active than the ones on the east coast.



I guess I didn't need anyone to tell me that. Folks speak of the period between earthquakes in California in terms of years — decades at the most.



Earthquakes in the eastern United States happen about once every 500 years. The fault line that was responsible for the 5.8 earthquake that shook the east coast yesterday may not even have a name.



The eastern earthquakes also don't pack the kind of punch that the earthquakes in places like California and Japan do. Something about how the fault lines along the east coast fill with accumulated sand and sea debris, making the seismic activity less intense — but, at the same time, helping to make it possible for the quake to be felt from greater distances.



That is why, this fellow was saying, an earthquake in northern Virginia is not as destructive as the 7s and 8s we've seen along the Pacific, but it could be felt in the Carolinas or Georgia as well as the much closer city of New York. I've also heard that it could be felt as far west as Chicago.



Now, science was never my strong subject in school so I have a little trouble understanding that part of it.



Wish I had caught the first part of what he was saying. Wish I knew more about why some earthquakes are more destructive than others — even when they strike areas that expect them and go to great lengths to be prepared for them.



A friend of mine moved to New York a few years ago. Yesterday, he posted on Facebook that he was sitting on his bed when the earthquake struck, and his bed shook.



I had some friends who lived through the San Francisco earthquake in 1989. They told me that their friends out there, who had joked for years about "the Big One," called that earthquake the "Pretty Big One." It only measured 6.9, and it only lasted 15 seconds, but it resulted in 63 deaths and more than 3,700 injuries.



There was also quite a bit of property damage.



Apparently, there was some damage yesterday as well, but it will take awhile to determine the extent. Most of it appears to have been done to older buildings that are ill prepared for an earthquake of just about any magnitude.



And I have heard no reports of deaths or injuries.



In fact, what happened along the east coast yesterday seems to be similar to the kind of thing that has been happening in recent years in my home county in central Arkansas. It is not far from the New Madrid Fault in the central United States that allegedly caused an earthquake in the 19th century strong enough to ring the bells in Boston.



Anyway, there was a series of earthquakes in my home county in the spring — most of which measured in the 3s, which admittedly isn't strong enough for most people to notice.



A 5.8 earthquake is strong enough to notice but not usually strong enough to cause death or injury — unless it strikes severely underdeveloped places. The government in D.C. may be dysfunctional, but the city itself is not underdeveloped.



Thus, I figured it wouldn't be long before some people began poking fun at the exaggerated response to the earthquake.



No deaths. No injuries. The most serious damage, by far, appears to have been psychological.



In both Washington and New York — and other places along the Eastern Seaboard — nerves are on edge less than three weeks before the 10th anniversary of September 11. And, as Marc Fisher reports in the Washington Post, terrorism was the first thought to cross the minds of lots of folks in D.C. yesterday afternoon.



And why not? An airplane piloted by a Islamic extremist crashed into the Pentagon a decade ago. The last earthquake on the east coast may predate the American Revolution.

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Satisfaction

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"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

Mark Twain

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The announcement yesterday of Osama bin Laden's death was a unique moment in contemporary history — unifying, in fact, and I felt compelled to share it with people so I stayed up later than I normally would on a Sunday night and listened to a few conversations on Facebook — even contributed to a couple.

When I went to bed, I was experiencing mixed, even conflicting, emotions over an event that should assure every living American that we have now heard what Paul Harvey might have called "the rest of the story."

There should be satisfaction in that.

Practically a decade ago, America was plunged deep into an abyss of shock and grief, and bin Laden was responsible for that. He did not hijack the airplanes nor did he crash them into buildings — but, in the language of the space age, he activated the launch sequence.

I know people who have been living for this moment for the last 10 years — and, judging from some of the comments I saw last night, many of them realize, albeit belatedly, that bin Laden's death is not the end of it, as they long had hoped it would be.

And that is a bitter revelation for those who believe in peace.

Violence only begets more violence, I read several times, and I have been thinking that that must surely be true of people like bin Laden, who live to inflict pain and damage on others. His followers are sure to be looking for some way to retaliate, and, if I or anyone I knew happened to be living abroad, I would be very concerned.

What's more, the world's experience with bin Laden and al Qaeda tells everyone how patient and calculating these terrorists can be. Those who possess bin Laden's discipline and dedication won't mind waiting years to avenge this — perhaps on a sunny autumn day in 2021.

In my lifetime, I have seen men of peace who died violent deaths — and, in the process, sparked even greater violence. Bin Laden definitely was not a man of peace.

An eye for an eye isn't merely a biblical passage, and the ones who openly speak it are not the only ones who believe it.

The comments I saw on Facebook last night came from people who occupy every inch on the political spectrum, from extreme left to extreme right and everything in between.

The ones on the left were eager to give Barack Obama all the credit and seize the opportunity to kick George W. Bush for failing to rid the world of bin Laden during his eight years in office.

The ones on the right were defensive about Bush and more prone to give credit to the guys on the ground who actually did the dirty work.

Both were right, I suppose, and, even though neither side appears to be terribly eager to give so much as a centimeter to the other, there is some common ground to be found.

The fact is that it is satisfying to know that the man who was responsible for the deaths of so many, for the pain and suffering experienced by so many who survived 9–11 and will never forget the horror they witnessed, is now dead.

But it would be naive to think that this is the end of it.

I'm not sure if I agree with Obama that this is justice — although, as I wrote last night, this may be as close to justice as we were ever likely to get.

But it wasn't the kind of justice I would have preferred to see — the kind where the guilty must answer for his crimes before a judge and jury.

Perhaps, since bin Laden eagerly acknowledged his involvement in the 9–11 attacks, that wasn't necessary.

I don't know. I am left with my original question.

Was it justice or vengeance?

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Bin Laden Is Dead

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It occurred to me this evening, as I watched the news reports of Osama bin Laden's death, that this must be how Americans felt in the spring of 1945 when they heard that Hitler had died.

I've been watching the spontaneous gathering of jubilant Americans outside the White House, chanting "U–S–A" and singing the national anthem.

It's appropriate, considering that the 9–11 attacks were widely compared to the attacks on Pearl Harbor, that bin Laden should be killed almost on the anniversary of Hitler's death.

And, in a way, bin Laden's death is more satisfying. He did not take his own life, as Hitler did. Instead, he apparently was killed by the actions of American forces.

We will never have the satisfaction of bringing him into a courtroom and making him answer for those thousands of deaths. But what happened today may have always been the closest we could ever have expected to get to justice in this case.

Bin Laden's death does not mean the end of Muslim terrorism. That war will continue, probably indefinitely. Because of where it occurred — Pakistan — I would expect that his presence in that country will raise new questions and issues. It may also affect America's relationship with Afghanistan, which can reasonably claim that it was right all along, that bin Laden had not been hiding there.

That may or may not be the case. And tonight, it isn't really important.

Sure, there are things that demand our attention. Many Americans who are living abroad will be at risk of being targeted by terrorists for retaliation in the days, weeks, even months ahead.

But this is a rare time of celebration for a nation that is weary.

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Shilling For Your Dollars ... And Votes

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"[O]ne of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry. It's to tell the traveling public: Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida."

George W. Bush
Sept. 21, 2001
O'Hare Airport, Chicago

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I guess it's official now. Presidents don't lead anymore. They shill.

Do you remember, a little more than a week after the September 11 attacks, when George W. Bush was in Chicago, and he pleaded with Americans to travel to places like Disney World? The popular rhetoric of the time was aimed at encouraging Americans to spend their money on expensive jewelry, clothes, family vacations, etc. — because, if they didn't, the reasoning went, "the terrorists win."

The idea — and it truly was worthy of Madison Avenue — was that the attacks were all about capitalism and consumerism — the American way of life. And it was the natural extension of the Republicans' simplistic argument — "They hate us for who we are."

Such an assessment defied the only conclusion that could be reached after a logical review of the facts — but it did have a few things going for it. Primarily, it could be boiled down to a simple, memorable phrase that Americans could remember, like "don't ask don't tell" or "just say no."

Never mind that, only a few days before, as he was standing on the South Lawn of the White House, Bush warned that the war on terrorism — which he described, in an unfortunate word choice that conjured up medieval memories for those in the Muslim world, as a "crusade" — was "going to take a while."

On that day in Chicago in September 2001, Bush faced a crisis in the airline industry. Commercial airline travel had been shut down for three days after the terrorist attacks, which had been costly, but business had been shaky before the attacks, and it was really struggling after them.

After seeing the events of September 11 unfold, people were, understandably, jittery about air travel. The demand for tickets plummeted. Airlines were having to cancel flights.

Bush knew that air travel played a key role in economic activity, and he wasn't eager to let the airlines drag the rest of the economy down. So he shilled for the airlines. Things remained bad for the airlines for several months — there was so much unused jet fuel that, by the end of 2001, gas prices had fallen below $1/gallon for the first time in decades — but folks didn't blame Bush for that. It had been the work of those nasty old "evil–doers."

No matter how long it took to wage the war on terrorism, the airline industry — and all the related industries, like hotels and restaurants — needed a boost right away.

Say what you will about the Bush administration — and I've said and/or written most of it before — but he was light years ahead of his successor when it comes to self–serving photo ops.

He was a superior shill.

See, I feel I am witnessing the same kind of thing from the current occupant of the White House — only it has been far less competent. Some people see that as a plus — that Barack Obama is such an amateur at shilling — but the truth is that shilling has become perhaps the primary role of a president.

The Gulf of Mexico is huge. It is the ninth–largest body of water in the world. It took Hurricane Katrina nearly a week to cross it and make landfall in New Orleans. Contrary to what you might have imagined, the Gulf isn't one big oil slick.

That doesn't mean that three months of constant flow of crude oil into the waters of the Gulf didn't take their toll.

Certainly, the oil has created an environmental catastrophe that will be decades in repairing. People are staying away from the Gulf. The many Gulf businesses that depend on tourism are struggling, even if they are a great distance from the actual location of the oil spill — and the Florida Panhandle is not far. Many of the people there truly are suffering.

That suffering can't be blamed on the previous administration, but it's still a threat to the economy, and Obama seems to be intent on nipping it in the bud. Maybe he thinks there are still votes to be won for this November's midterm elections.

Oh, he warned everybody that there was a long slog ahead. "Our job is not finished," he said yesterday, promising that the work would go on until the job was done. It was meant to reassure the folks on the coast, whose jobs are now at risk because the tourists aren't flocking to the beaches — and who might be thinking about voting against the Democrats in November because they're tired and angry and frustrated and they need to lash out at someone.

I'm more inclined to think this is about 2012 than 2010 — unless Obama is still harboring fantasies about avoiding midterm losses this year.

And I don't believe he is naive enough to think that his constant slide in the polls can be reversed in time to make a difference in November.

Anyway, there was a lot of talk about how Obama and his daughter went for a dip in the Gulf of Mexico. But it wasn't seen by anyone who could verify it independently. CNN reports that no press cameras were on hand to record the symbolic swim, but, lucky us, the White House's photographers apparently were there.

Well, a photo of the president and his daughter in some water was promptly circulated. The non–verbal message? Come to the Gulf of Mexico. The water's fine. The food is great. The beaches are as white as sugar. Come to the Gulf and spend your money.

I hate to be a party pooper, but there is nothing in the picture that could possibly confirm where it was taken. Not to go all "Capricorn One" on you, but suspicious minds might surmise that the Obamas went ahead with their original plans to visit Martha's Vineyard, and that the picture was actually taken at one of the exclusive/private swimming holes in Massachusetts.

Water is water, right?

Now, why, you may ask, were no press reporters there? Obama had an answer for that. "I'm not going to let you guys take a picture of me with my shirt off," he said. "You guys will tease me just like last time. I was on the front page ... People commenting."

So the president wanted to help the Gulf economy — but he was sensitive about being teased. You know, most of us got over that when we were still in elementary school.

I'm not suggesting that this was staged. But photo ops that can be that easily questioned won't achieve their primary objective, which is to be of some benefit to the person(s) in the picture.

Just sayin' that the symbolic swim should have been witnessed by some folks who aren't on the White House payroll — because whoever arranged for this photo op really dropped the ball.

And maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the Obamas have tried to keep their children out of the spotlight whenever possible. And that really has seemed to be typical of all the presidential families in my lifetime. But this time, the president apparently had no trouble using one of his daughters as his prop.

Perhaps, in spite of his protests, he is influenced by polls, like the AP/GfK poll that shows Democrats losing the allegiance of independents, who played an important role in the sweeping Democratic triumphs of 2008.

Those voters, report Alan Fram and Trevor Tompson of the Associated Press, have shown "especially strong concerns about the economy, with 9 in 10 calling it a top problem and no other issue coming close." But they have seen little improvement and little indication that the administration is doing anything to create jobs or prevent further job losses.

Perhaps Obama feels some pressure to shill for those who depend on the sand and the sea of the Gulf for their livelihoods — because it's entirely possible that he is going to want their help in a couple of years.

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