November Rental Rag Page

November Rental Rag Page #3

Rent-a-Tragedy

In this space we usually make a feeble attempt at humor. This time, if you’ll bear with us, we’ll hark back two months to a topic that still consumes us.

As I write this it is exactly one week since the tragedy at the World Trade Center. Television and newspapers are still full of it as I imagine they will be for some time to come. Yesterday, while waiting my turn at the post office, a woman ahead of me was telling the clerk of a loved one she has yet to hear from or receive word of. The more she spoke, the more distraught she became until she was so overcome with grief she could no longer speak. Abruptly she turned and left.

"It’s heartbreaking," I said to the postal clerk, "what could you possibly say that would help?"

"Nothing," she replied, "I just listen because they need someone to listen. I’ve spent the week crying along with my customers."

Just as many others, I sat in front of the TV almost without interruption from day one – after four days the repetition became as numbing as the tragedy. I longed for a commercial break – anything – but it never came. It boggles the mind how television commentators and reporters kept going hour after hour when the only news they had to offer was repetitious and depressing. Last night I looked forward to the return of Dave Letterman to the airwaves. Now at last, relief from the gloom, a light touch once again from television. As they say, "It’s his job, it’s what he does."

He didn’t do his job last night. It was touching, but it was more of the same.

It’s fascinating how something as overwhelming as tragedy can put a different spin on things. Once I thought in absolutes. I disliked Rudy Giuliani – absolutely. He was a tyrant and a New Jersey basher. Sure, he mellowed during this last year probably because it was politically expedient. However, no one can deny that he came through when he had to. He brought New York together. He worked tirelessly and left us feeling secure that someone was in control.

President Bush, about whom I was always happy to make jokes, came through more statesmanlike than I ever thought he could be. Announcing his desire to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive may not have been statesmanlike but it pleases me no end.

I think I understand why bin Laden and his followers look upon the United States as the enemy. What I can’t understand, however, is the depth of their hate. Surely there are avenues other than terrorism open to them to achieve their goals. It shouldn’t surprise me, we have our own hate mongers in this country. Jerry Falwell, for one, who claims to be a man of God, blames the World Trade Center tragedy, not on terrorists but on homosexuals and abortionists. Their actions brought on the wrath of God and that, he says, is why God destroyed the World Trade Center.

Perhaps bin Laden and Falwell worship the same god – one who condones hate. My God preaches love and He is so powerful, He could zap homosexuals and abortionists individually or collectively if he chose to – He’d have no need to blow up the World Trade Center and 5,000 innocents to make a point.

If there’s a bright side to all this, and I’m really reaching to to try to find one, it’s that it has been a week where there has not been one image of Britney Spears or ‘N Sync or people waving and screaming in front of the Today Show window on TV. I’ll bet you could come up with a list a yard long of things you didn’t miss on TV or in newspapers while they were consumed by the horrible event. Maybe there’s some truth to the adage that every cloud has a silver lining but, if truth be known, I’ll take Britney Spears over a terrorist attack any day.

True Story: There was one brief light touch the morning the towers were destroyed. I was on the phone with ARA-NJ member Sam Hoffman of Millennium Steel who was calling from his New York office. He assured me that all was well as they were far enough away from the Trade Center to be affected. We then spoke of how unreal, even as we watched it on TV, it all seemed.

"You don’t know the half of it," he said, "One of our drivers actually saw the first plane hit the north tower as he reached our office."

"Wow," I exclaimed, "that must have been terrifying!"

"No," Sam said, "it didn’t register. He came into the office and said, ‘don’t go downtown if you don’t have to, they’re shooting a movie’."

Maybe next time we can lighten up again in this space - right now I feel like Dave Letterman.

Carl Sparacio

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