Paxety Pages

The September11^th Remembrance Concert scheduled for Sunday, September 10, 2006 at 7 p.m.
has been cancelled. Navy Band Southeast will perform at the Sounds of the Holidays event on Sunday, December 3, 2006.

Is this a trend? Another bit of denial? We all heard last week about how members of the Clinton Administration, including Big Bubba himself, were telephoning Disney in an attempt to change a docudrama ABC is running on the events that led up to the September 11th murders.  Several top Democrat Senators even threatened the broadcast licenses of ABC O&O (owned and operated) stations.  That's what Nixon did at the height of Watergate. He threatened the broadcast licenses of TV stations owned by the Washington Post, including Channel 4 here in Jacksonville.

There will be lots of stories today from folks who know more details than I do about what happened in Washington and New York and Pennsylvania five years ago.  I don't know any of those folks, but I do know Robert Lee. Robert was the on-air producer at CNN Headline News when the murderous bastards stuck, and here's what he wrote to me the next day.  The pain and anguish comes through even in email

I was in the booth when it all happened yesterday. We took live the first pictures of the burning tower before we knew why it was burning - stayed with it live... finally got a CNN VP on the phone who had seen the first plane crash - then as we were interviewing him - he starts yelling "There's another plane coming - there's another plane!!! It just hit the building!! Oh my God!!!" As he said it, we saw an explosion live on the air. In all my years of training as a producer - I have never felt more terrified than I did in those few seconds. I started shaking so bad I could hardly speak to the anchors. But then I realized we had to keep going - and started feeding them information as fast as I could read it off the wires - get it off the CNN squawk box - or have it given to me by supervisors.

Then the report crossed the CNN squawk box about a fire at the Pentagon.... My heart nearly stopped. "Oh my God, It's the end of the world as we know it" was all I could think.

A short time later, in one of our live hits with a reporter on the phone - a mob grabbed the phone out of her hand as she was speaking to us... "I'm doing a report... I'll be off in just a moment.. wait.. they're grabbing my phone!"

Click.   Again - a wave of panic for the safety of our reporter.

Words cannot describe the horror I was feeling watching and hearing all this unfold live before me - knowing hundreds of thousands of people were counting on us to get them information as quickly as possible.

As producers, we all LIVE for the BIG story and hope we get our crack at it. I had my crack at it. I came through with high marks from my colleagues - who all stopped by later to personally thank me or praise me for how I handled the whole ordeal. Yet, deep inside - my heart broke. No amount of appreciation can replace the lives that were lost right before my very eyes - live - on national television. I want to cry - but I'm too emotionally drained.

Yes, I lived for the big story - and I got it - now I pray I never have another "big" story as long as I live. I'm not sure my heart could take the pain.

We were all aghast that day, as are the folks in New York in the above photograph.  Are we still? Does Western Civilization have what it takes to fight for itself any longer? A woman once asked me what we did here to fight back? I answered that we use two weapons. First, information so that folks will know about tyrants worldwide.  And second, we use one of the greatest of weapons to fight a sick, murder producing culture - satire.

This blogs permanent 9/11 Memorial page is here.

(Photo geek details - the photo at the top was shot with a 4x5 Crown Graphic, 135mm Graflex lens,  on Ilford HP5+ film, developed in Pyrocat P, and scanned from the negative.)