Sunday, September 11, 2011

Ralston on 9/11.

I really liked Jon Ralston's column today (here).

4 comments:

James Milles said...

It's a good column, except for the "both sides are equally bad" business. It's simply not true to compare the odd left-wing blog commenter to what has become the mainstream of right-wing politics.

Unknown said...

Hi, Jim--thanks for your great comment! I don't completely agree, though: I think that both extremist wings are equally to blame. Most of us are smack-dab in the middle of our political parties, and the extremes have been calling all the shots for far too long.

Unknown said...

And a comment from my buddy George Connelly, which somehow didn't make it to the blog:

My memories of that day are etched in stone. I was driving to an IRS appt when I heard from a talk show "can you believe this, some plane just crashed into one of the World Trade Center bldgs." Soon thereafter, it was "amazing, but another plane hit the other one." It all sounded like small planes, which don't always observe air space rules among LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark airports. Then I thought: I bet it is the same right wing crazies who did Oklahoma City.

When I got in the IRS bldg, before they evacuated it, I learned it was 2 airliners, and both towers were coming down.

I don 't know if you recall my deceased partner Charles Frost. Former West Point. When the news was spreading through the office, and people were watching the film of the crashes and destruction on their desktops, he sent an email to the effect that "this is just a rumor, and keep calm."

Unknown said...

And my story: I had just come in from a conference in Long Island around midnight. By 8a on 9/11, I had just dropped Jeff off at Hobby Airport so that he could fly out for his brother's wedding. I was going to meet him there (Vegas, actually) the next day (9/12). My dad was having surgery, and I wanted to be there when he woke up.

Mom, who was mostly deaf, met me in the hospital waiting room w/the news that the towers were both falling down. I assumed that she'd misunderstood until I saw the footage.

I waved at Dad in the recovery room, picked Jeff up at Hobby as it was being evacuated, and drove us back to the hospital. (Dad's first waking thought about the attack was that Bin Laden had directed it.) We tried to figure out if we could drive to Jon's wedding in time, but we didn't think we could make it.

In some real sense, my mind still can't grasp the enormity of it in the way that folks who were there in NYC and DC are able to do.