Do You Remember?

You may know by now that I have a certain affinity for the newest HBO show The Newsroom. Maybe it's because I work and have worked in different newsrooms myself, maybe it's because I have a huge man crush on Aaron Sorkin's writing abilities, or maybe it's because of something different. But rarely has a show caused me to run the full gamut of emotions like this one does, much like this week's episode.

Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001?

Most of us that were alive at the time and were in-tune enough to know what was happening do. I was a freshman at Fuquay-Varina High School, sitting in second period in Ms. Hinton's health class, waiting for the bell to ring and thinking about what I was going to eat for lunch that day.

I remember that teachers kept walking in and out of class, and were roaming the hallways. Something was obviously amiss. Then we found out why when our principal, Mr. Picket, came over the intercom to say something to the effect of:

"Students, a plane has hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Both are on fire. We don't know what else is happening at this time."

I'm sure most have a similar recollection of what happened that morning. What I remember most is the confusion and questions which followed. Why did this happen? What's going to happen next? How were we going to retaliate?

And then the next decade happened.

It's tough to think about what life was like before 9/11. I want to say it was happy and we, Americans, weren't so defensive about everything. We weren't stuck in this "We're 'Merica! and this is how we roll!" mindset. We were more accepting of other people's differences, and certainly didn't scare so easily. Maybe that is my naiveté having only been 14 when the towers came down.

Do you remember where you were on May 1, 2011?

I was sitting in the sports department at WRAL, producing the 11 p.m. sports segment with Ken Medlin. I was chatting with my friend Loren in New York when, I think it was around 10 p.m., we all got the strangest email from CBS. It was like a cryptic message, vague, yet telling at the same time. All we knew was the President was addressing the nation, and it was on a matter of national security.

Ken and I stopped working on sports and started wondering what it could be. Had we been attacked again? Had we started moving out of Afghanistan? It was only a far off thought that we finally captured Osama bin Laden.

What I remember most is the moment when we found out that Seal Team 6 had infiltrated and killed Osama. I remember that Ken and I stood up and high-fived each other. I remember being so overjoyed that the fact that I was going to be at work longer didn't even seem to bother me anymore.

Most of all I remember feeling a connection to every other American at that one moment. No matter who you were, at least as far as I'm concerned, it was a feeling that we all shared. The past decade didn't matter at the moment. The man who had caused our country to go into a spiral of hatred, closed-mindedness, ignorance, and nationalism was finally brought down. More importantly: he was brought down at the hands of an American. This wasn't a scud missile attack. One of our men pulled the trigger and brought him down. He did what everyone in the country, everyone affected by 9/11, had wanted to do since that day in 2001.

It was a great feeling. One that I am happy to have experienced and one that I will cherish for the longest time.

But in the aftermath it seems that it never happened. We're still just as nationalistic, ignorant, closed-minded. What does it matter what someone believes, as long as it suits their lifestyle? Why does it matter that two men, two women, or a man and a woman want to live a legal, happy life together?

Instead what is happening more and more, at least from what we are shown every day through the T.V. and internet, is a degradation of society and societal values in general. Think of it like this, when Kennedy gave the speech in which he told people, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," people actually looked inside themselves and tried to figure out what they could do to make the country better for themselves. If a politician would say that today the reaction would almost be laughable. One, because no politician has that much conviction anymore. Two, because people are so set in this "it's all about me" mindset that there's no room for introspection.

People today aren't looking to work to achieve a common goal, or working for the common good, anymore. They, and admittedly I'm probably talking about probably 35-45% of the population, are trying to do the least amount of work and get the most from the government as possible.

And a common good? That went out the window a long time ago. For a country that's such a hodgepodge of different culture and ethnicity, we're very xenophobic at the same time. It'd be great to think that one day instead of fearing the Muslim family that moved down the street, their neighbors would welcome them in and try to understand their differences, rather than exhibiting fear that someone different has taken up root in their town. It'd be great to see people actually embrace the gay couple next door who just want to live a life like every other "normal" person. What is "normal" anyway? Can someone define that? I sure can't.

I would hope that an event as unifying as the death of Osama bin Laden would help the country to realize that yes, we are all different in our own unique ways. These differences, though, aren't something to fear but to embrace.

We completely missed the boat on that idea.