The Washington Post rang me up this week because they were putting together what cynical newsies call a “gee-whiz” story. The theme: Isn’t August supposed to be the dog days of the journalistic summer, a time when the world collectively yawns from a hammock somewhere at the beach or the mountains?
ISN’T THIS THE time of year when shark attacks rise to Page One proportions under the compared-to-what standard? That is, compared to nothing else going on…a shark sighting becomes big news.
So guess what? There was a shark attack, a fatal one, in California where there hasn’t been one in a decade. And the gruesome facts included the news that the woman victim, clad in flippers and a wet suit, may have looked so much like the seals she was gamboling with-that the shark, short on vision and long on hunger, took a fatal bite out of the lady when the real seals sped off.
But the shark story didn’t have legs, as they say on Broadway. This month…too much real news intervened.
Nearly back-to-back suicide bombings occurred in Baghdad and Jerusalem. About twenty people died in each atrocity; around a hundred more were injured in each blast. And this time, not only news, but history happened. The world is now divided into two sections: those who have experienced first-hand the pain of terrorism…and those nations which have not.
Britain knows terrorism. It wasn’t too many years ago that every hotel I visited had sandbags surrounding the entrances…presumably placed to attenuate possible IRA bombings.
For Israel, terrorist attacks are nearly a way of life. If the stereotyped Israeli is viewed as cantankerous and kvetchy, fifty years of routine attacks may partly explain it. Guys my age have fought in four wars-and that only counts the declared, official battles that started and ended-not the buses and pizzerias and nightclubs suddenly turned into shrapnel-ridden rubble.
The exportation of terror has touched Bali and Australia (the latter because so many of those killed in Bali were Australian tourists). Al Qaeda is the chief suspect in bombings and killings in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
And now terror has hit first-hand at the U.N. The United Nations likes to consider itself above the fray, outside the line of fire. There is no longer a “cordon sanitaire,” as the historians like to say, no sanitized corridor where all is safe and secure. Our correspondent at the UN pointed out, poignantly, that the U.N. has no mechanism for retaliation. It’s never been part of their charter. Now the U.N. has joined that club no one asks to join.
And, as we all know, the United States joined that cursed club twice: first in 1993 and then, much harder on September 11, 2001. Except for Pearl Harbor, nearly twenty years before Hawaii became a state, America thought the oceans surrounding it were a guaranteed buffer. Europe and Asia had ruins to mark their years at war; America at home was never touched.
So we have changed. And maybe a little bit for the better. Another big story in August was the blackout that supposedly couldn’t happen and stretched from New England to Detroit. We watched in apprehension and relief as New Yorkers seemed to shrug off the danger and inconvenience.
Why, we wondered, did New Yorkers behave so well when, during the Blackout of 1977, hundreds of establishments were burned and looted…and nearly 4-thousand people were arrested?
A friend of mine, schooled in history and specializing in military history, talked to me about the 29th Division of the 7th Army in World War Two. The so-called Patton Division. They fought in North Africa, landed in Sicily, invaded the south of France. By the time they hit the Utah Beach on D-Day, fierce battles had become just another day at the office.
My friend, quoting military doctrine, said there is no substitute for having been shot at. No training prepares someone for it. But after it happens once, the sense of panic subsides in subsequent episodes.
So maybe that’s what happened during the recent blackout. New Yorkers became battle-tested; they had taken what our enemy must have thought was the Sunday punch. Three thousand dead, two iconic buildings collapsing to rubble.
After that, anything is an anti-climax. We all grew up. And got tougher and more resilient. A blackout became a nuisance.
And as August wears down, the news continues to percolate — so we thank Ahnold and Cruz and Arianna and the besieged Governor Davis for finally obliterating the already blurred line between news and entertainment. Who could have envisioned that an electoral crisis in California would create the ultimate, final merger between Meet the Press and Access Hollywood?
So it’s on to fall — with promises of cooler temperatures, changing leaves, apple cider, much more Kobe Bryant…and the actual recall election out West.
It’s almost enough to make you forget about the World Series and the return of football.