 |
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
AT ISSUE
- October 2002 by Thomas Sowell
Emotional Orgies Someone once asked why television was called a medium. The answer was that it was seldom well done. TV’s around-the-clock coverage of the September 11th anniversary was a painful example of the fact that nothing exceeds like excess. The extraordinary heroism of the policemen and firemen who went into the burning World Trade Center to save thousands of lives and the extraordinary heroism of those airline passengers who stopped the fourth hijacked plane from committing a similar outrage in Washington are all things deserving of commemoration. But what we saw on television went far beyond those heroes and far beyond reason. Moreover, this was not the only recent event to evoke emotional orgies on TV. The untimely death of Princess Diana was another. So were the kidnappings and killings of little girls earlier this year. All of these shocking events produced emotions, as did the shattering sneak attack on Pearl Harbor back in 1941. The difference is that an earlier generation did not succumb to simply wallowing in emotions. They had a job to do and they did it. That is why we are still a free nation and why some of us are still alive. Today’s generation seems far less focused on the future and far more self-indulgent. Well before the September 11th attacks, the little girls who were murdered were celebrated in the media, whose focus seemed to be on the emotional expressions of their families, neighbors, classmates and others. For something of historic proportions like the war that international terrorists have launched against us, and that we must wage against them in self-defense, surely the public venting of our feelings is not a top priority. Such boundless emotional exhibitionism only serves the terrorists’ purposes of gaining maximum importance from their efforts. What is truly obscene is having people worrying about the supposed “rights” of these terrorists’ cutthroat comrades who have fallen into our custody. Civilians have rights and soldiers in uniform have rights under the Geneva Convention. But those who infiltrate in wartime in civilian clothes, or wearing someone else’s uniform, have been summarily shot for centuries. The very fact that these cutthroats are still alive shows that they already have had better treatment than they are entitled to under international law. Maybe we need to
take some time out from our emoting to do some thinking. |
|
|
|
Copyright 1996-2002, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial content
is copyright 2002, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
