I was, on account of unusually rapid progress from waiting room to exam table to clinic exit, home before the normal hour Monday and relishing the prospect of a half hour of Jeopardy competition when I learned of the bombs that went off at the Boston Marathon. I expected it was just a quick cut-in and that I'd soon have my chance to be shouting suggestions at temporarily mute contestants--but, no, Brian Williams just would not go away. My suggestion to him and his network would be to run the regular programming if you have nothing to say or show. What was shown, over and over again, was film of the first bomb exploding. The frequent replays were separated by live shots of cops walking hither and thither in downtown Boston. The "news" being "reported" was mainly idle speculation and was regularly retracted in order to be replaced by new speculations. Then there were the paeans to the pluck and grit of Bostonians. This notion that the inhabitants of certain cities are marked by admirable moral traits is reserved for special occasions (because, in normal weather, it's too easy to detect bullshit).
I know, lives were lost, limbs were lost, it has the look of a terrorist attack, and it's an error in tone to be missing Jeopardy. But I have a counter-argument. Whether the perpetrator is a disturbed domestic sick-o or a calculating jihadist, the goal is to whip up hysteria, and to me it looks like he, she, or they are off to a good start in Boston. It'd be better not just for me but for the world generally if, turning on the TV in the expectation of viewing special coverage of his deed, the perpetrator instead discovered Eric's favorite game show airing at its usual time.
Margaret Thatcher was buried earlier this week. Hendrik Hertzberg, observing the rule against telling the whole truth about someone who has just died, went looking for something to praise and hit upon The Iron Lady's response to a bomb set off by the Irish Republican Army in a hotel she was staying at on October 11, 1984. Five people were killed. Though targeted, Thatcher was not herself hurt, and the next day she delivered a speech, as scheduled, in which she declared that the British government was "shocked but composed and determined" and that "all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail." Hertzberg:
Mrs Thatcher's bracing, keep-calm-and-carry-on response to a terrorist outrage--one that nearly took her own life--contrasts favorably to the tsunami of fear and overreaction that engulfed the United States in the wake of the (admittedly much bloodier) attacks of 9/11. That continues to this day in such varied forms as a bloated and secretive national-security establishment, the unending shame of Guantanamo, and a cult of memorialization . . . that has had the ironic effect of darkly glorifying the perpetrators. There's still a lot we don't know about today's gruesome explosions at the end of the Boston Marathon--the dead and injured are still being counted. But the aftereffects of the tragedy will surely test how much, if anything, we have learned about keeping calm and carrying on.
A trade would have advanced this worthy cause: Brian Williams for Alex Trebec.
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