Reality check
Writing by treason on Monday, 30 of January , 2006 at 5:30 pm
I’d written awhile back about the experience I had at the company I worked for - a story about how my boss reacted to September 11. Just one reason I don’t mind that I don’t work there anymore. (For more details, see 7/16/05.)
Once she realized that everyone else was genuinely concerned and upset, and the attack on the WTC was the center of attention and she wasn’t, she called a meeting of her underlings to discuss some project. Then, teary-eyed, lip-trembling, she revealed how she, personally, had been touched by this tragedy.
Her friend in New York had been affected - either she knew someone who worked at the WTC, knew someone who lived near there, knew someone who had heard of the WTC, or she had had a flight delayed because of what happened at the WTC. I can’t remember the details because once I realized I was hearing something that made it even clearer that she had utterly missed the significance of September 11, I went numb and stopped listening. The rest of us witnessed the horror and knew life would never be the same. Some went on, their lives unchanged, but others were knocked completely off track - altered forever.
Her statement about how it affected her personally reminded me of actors who, preparing for a role, spend a few weeks learning what it’s like to wait tables at a truck stop. Or maybe they spent time in the Third World. They are now experts on the real world. They’ve seen it, smelled it, felt it. They are forever changed. They say they feel that they’re “in touch” with other people’s lives.
So when I heard ABC’s David Westin say that it was Bob Woodruff’s injuries that suddenly made the whole Iraq War “real,” I was offended. So now that it’s touched his world, it’s real. Um, it’s been real. In real life, war is real. Crime is real. Dogs are tortured by gangs of teenage boys; little girls are raped and buried alive; babies are shot in the stomach and left to die a slow death; others are placed in plastic bags and tossed into lakes; the rest are neglected, starved, smothered, or drowned by women who call themselves mothers. It’s the stuff journalists report on every day, and it’s just becoming real now?
It’s all out there and it touches the rest of us daily. I invite Mr. Westin and his circle to experience it. Come. Join us. See what it’s like here. Come feel “real.” It’s not such a great place to visit, which explains why none of you actually live here.
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