Real people;
shallow government

Programs of remembrance
Harold Hark
13 September 2002

After Channel Seven's excellent "9/11" by the French Brothers Naudet (excluding the hammy intro by Robert DeNiro and the peculiarly American castrated-Irish rendition of "Danny Boy" at the end), Oz family Hark sat mesmerised by Channel Nine's cross to CBS for the roll call of the names of the fallen. After twenty minutes, the readers were still in the "A's" and we gulped at the long night ahead.

Nevertheless, we hung in there. It went unsaid, but we felt we owed it to the victims to hear their names. Silly, I suppose. But the changing teams of readers, with their different accents and resonances exerted a hypnotic, contemplative affect on us. Shots of the mourners entering the pit of Ground Zero, and the quiet tears of men, women and children turned this simple ceremony into a profound experience.

What a jolting contrast it was when CBS switched to ceremonies at the Pentagon. Thankfully, the station kept the list of names going at the bottom of the screen, but the profundity was replaced by a garish display of hyper-patriotism.

A couple of singers, belting out patriotic ditties, sounded as if they were trying out for a place in the halftime festivities of a college football playoff. A huge flag unfurled from the roof of a rebuilt section of the Pentagon refused to hang as it was told. It took one look at the assemblage and promptly leapt back to the roof, where it was not seen for several minutes. Unfortunately the flag's unfurling coincided with everyone on their feet for hands over hearts in the pledge of allegiance. They were forced to gaze at the blank wall.

Finally Donald Rumsfeld got up to deliver a patriotic, inch-deep speech. That was bad enough, but the camera mercilessly gave us a shot of Condoleezza Rice, nodding her head earnestly. She could just as well have been listening to a grand master of the Ku Klux Klan, or the head boondoggler of an insurance company exhorting the gits to tell 'em anything, just get the signature. It was a pathetic instance of fawning sycophancy.

Thankfully, CBS soon switched back to New York. But what a contrast: The human race at Ground Zero v the pumped up, boys-own bullies at the Pentagon.

During the remainder of the program, we put the dog to bed and got ready ourselves. A good thing: we missed Dubbya's speech. I was just about to switch off the TV when we noticed the reader's were finishing the "T's". We sat down. We waited until the last name was read and somehow felt better for it.

PS: Sometime during all this a CBS reporter came on to say a website closely monitored by the "intelligence" community had put up a page announcing that Osama Bin Laden was killed on December 9 last during a bombing raid on the caves at Tora Bora. He gave the name of the site as "jihad.net".

This morning I brought it up. It is a site dedicated to "the destruction of Barney the Dinosaur". Go figure.

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