9/11 AND BLAME

Every time the subject of 9/11 comes up, the sunshine soldiers and summer patriots of the “could’ve, would’ve and should’ve” school of criticism lecture us about all of the mistakes that were made when 9/11 happened and its immediate aftermath. Back in the real world, 9/11 was the most deadly attack on American citizens – claiming thousands of victims – that has occurred in the long history of this country. Further, the strike was unexpected and without warning or suspicion of impending doom. Of course, once it happened, the City could have simply been shut down. But this would have devastated the economy of New York and in turn, since New York is both the central financial hub of both America and the world, not only would America’s economy have been ruined, but there would have been a worldwide economic collapse.

On June 22, 1941, when Russia was attacked by Germany, Joseph Stalin was so paralyzed that for days he locked himself in a room in his Dacha, paralyzed into inaction, while the Nazis overran his country, killing and capturing literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and destroying the Russian air force – and this was after he was warned by numerous sources that the attacks were about to occur.

This was not what happened here in New York. The institutions of government were reconstructed on an immediate basis. If business did not go on as usual, at least there was a reasonable facsimile thereof. On the West Side Piers there was the astounding spectacle of each of the City agencies up and running in makeshift, but functioning, mode. Large signs were hung over desks indicating “Corrections Department,” “Sanitation Department,” “Water Department,” “Social Service Department,” etc. Huge fax machines spewed out hourly updates on the conditions of gas and power lines in the smitten area. The Mayor gave almost hourly reports to the public, keeping them informed and calm in the knowledge that there was a steady hand at the helm. An adjacent building was turned into a survivor’s center where missing loved ones could attempt to be contacted through a network of hospitals and aide centers. While all the searching went on, Chaplains, aide workers, Red Cross workers, etc. were available both to administer to the family’s needs and take care of children at a play center while the adults went about their grim business. Sadly, there were literally no survivors, but that was the fault of the despicable fanatic Muslims and certainly not the fault of any City official.

Furthermore, notwithstanding any temporary confusion, the Federal Government immediately recognized who the guilty parties were, the armed forces were mobilized and accomplished devastating strikes against the right people.

With the visual acuity of hindsight, the Emergency Response Center could have been constructed differently and in a different location. Different precautions could have been taken to protect first and second responders. But who knew? If we knew when it was going to rain with any degree of certainty, we would never be caught without an umbrella. The City acted on the best available information both before and after the event and, incidentally, as far as the Emergency Response Center was concerned, various Federal agencies were located in the same building and in the vicinity, and they, too, were devastated.

Anybody who witnessed New York and the downtown area immediately after 9/11, at the same time had to be appalled at the degree of devastation and marvel at the correctness of the response of a Mayor who led rather than dither. He wrote the textbook for the role public officials should assume when catastrophe strikes. The people coming out of the woodwork now could well fit under the category, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” Let us, and public officials – including the Mayor – be praised for what we did that was right, and not condemned for what could have been done differently, because we view, and judgment is made through the prism of time and knowledge certainly not available on 9/11.

Thoughts On The Writers Guild Strike

The Writers Guild is about to go on strike and the networks shamelessly announced that this would immediately affect the evening talk shows and daytime soap operas by forcing re-runs to be substituted for their usual fare. There was not a hint of embarrassment in this announcement. Is it then admitted that we are left with television notables who cannot even carry on quasi-coherent conversation and actors who cannot improvise the subnormal discourse with other actors intended for the IQ challenged viewers addicted to TV’s daily inanities. Ghost writers have become a recognized occupation beginning with our Presidents down to our comedian (which, in some cases, might be the same).

The role of Ghost Writers first became memorialized in our political culture with FDR. He utilized, among others, the services of Sam Rosenmund, a New York Judge, who Roosevelt brought with him when he moved from Governor to President. But Roosevelt heavily edited the speeches written for him thereby molding it to his personality. His “Day of Infamy Speech” – indeed that very phrase – was basically his alone.

As time passed, the creative role of the President in writing his speeches became less and less, finally arriving at the point where he basically became an announcer. Not only was it generally acknowledged Peggy Noonan was the author of Reagan’s Pont du Hoc speech but she wrote a book about it, explaining in exquisite detail how she crafted the speech. Bottom line: Reagan, the great communicator, was basically an announcer. Can anyone imagine Lincoln hiring a speech writer to write the Gettysburg Address? From there it goes downhill. Mere mortals who have a ghost write a book for them, usually have the decency to put “as told to,” or “with” etc. under the author’s name. But not politicians. Hillary Clinton’s best seller “It Takes A Village,” did not list any other writer except herself even though it was generally acknowledged that it was ghost written. And, of course, the joke was that Kennedys’ “Profiles In Courage,” was the first book written by a ghost writer to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Now, can anybody imagine George Carlin or Jackie Mason not being able to carry on a conversation without somebody holding up cue cards?

Maybe the strike is a good thing. At least the public will discover that the Emperor has no clothes. Lord knows, they might even be forced to buy a book written by its real author.

Race And Intelligence

America is the home of the free and the land of the brave. At least that is what we all learned in school. A basic tenet of the role science has in a free society is that the government does not direct science or instruct scientists where their quests must lead; that scientists are free to explore and search for truth, whether that truth is convenient, politically correct, contradicts government policy, or runs contrary to the sentiments of the day. Truth is truth, whether you like it or not and agree with its existence. Truth is not like your wife who may look beautiful to you and ugly to your girlfriend, or vice versa. When the Inquisition forced Galileo to recant the Copernican theory, after he did so, he muttered, “And yet [the Earth] it still moves.”

Apparently a subject that has attracted scientists is the question of the correlation between race and intelligence. Now don’t get us wrong. We believe that basically this is an area of wasteful analysis. In our lives, we don’t deal with “races,” we deal with individual people. For instance, if science has determined that Jews are smarter than Buddhists, the fact is if we needed an operation, we would rather have a smart Buddhist picking up the scalpel than a dumb Jew. But if scientists want to explore a particular subject for what they believe is a search for the truth, and want to waste their (hopefully, not the public’s) money on a particular piece of nonsense, so be it.

A worldwide uproar occurred because Nobel Prize winner James Watson made a racist statement about the lower intelligence of Africans. “All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours,” according to the London Sunday Times, but then he added, “Whereas all our testing says, ‘Not really.’” Who cares? Even if true – which we believe it is not – it is basically an irrelevancy. Does that mean, if Watson is to be believed, that Africans should not be entitled to an equal share of the economic pie, the right to be equally educated, or the right to have all the protections and benefits that government can offer? In short, even if it were true – again, which we do not believe it is – who cares? Might not centuries of exploitation and denial of the benefits of education and health facilities cause testing to be skewed?

Watson’s position is eerily similar to that of Professor Arthur Jensen, who wrote an article in 1969 in the Harvard Educational Review wherein he postulated that racial differences in intelligence test scores may have a genetic origin. He suffered the same fate as Dr. Watson.

While one may believe or disbelieve this sort of pseudo-science – and we do believe these “results” should be dumped into the dustbin where we personally put global warming and the Loch Ness monster – scientists like Watson and Jensen should have a right to journey to wherever their scientific quest leads them and not be attacked personally. The problem is, if we start attacking the scientists, somewhere down the line we will only produce scientists who produce what the government wants them to produce. Their role will basically be one of validating positions that have already been taken by the authorities before they begin their undertakings. Even if these explorations result in cockeyed results and theories and, in the long run, theories that should impact our thinking not one bit, the alterative – cutting off the scientists before they do the work, or making them feel that if they don’t produce the desired results they will be personally discredited – is much worse than the nonsense they eventually produce.