In the summer of 2001, Brooks & Dunn recorded "Only in America". The song was written by Don Cook, Ronnie Rogers and Kix Brooks and featured Ronnie Dunn singing the lead. Released in June, the accompanying music video included brief footage of the World Trade Center. As most know, today is the 18th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the WTC and the Pentagon.
The song's chorus:
"Only in America Dreaming in red, white and blue Only in America Where we dream as big as we want to We all get a chance Everybody gets to dance Only in America"
Under domestic terrorist trump that dream has become a nightmare. The RED represents the constant spilling of blood by mass shooters. The WHITE represents white supremacy (which many of the shooters espouse - note Charlottesville). BLUE is what many of us have become, depressed by the constant corruption, greed and cruelty of trump and his enablers. And if trump (cadet bone spurs) gets re-elected we won't all get a chance - especially those who are black or brown.
I wrote this about two years ago after one of those shootings.
Another shooting - 17 dead at a Florida school. Repubs will offer nothing beyond thoughts and prayers. Can we believe that they will do even that? The president lies all the time. The republican party will take their checks from the NRA (like trump - Not Responsible for Anything) and continue to do nothing. They are the party of greed and corruption. I think it would be fair to say that the greatest danger Americans face today comes from the so-called pro-life party, the so-called law-and-order party. They are neither. There are no patriots in the gutless gop. We will not see any profiles in courage from them. No one needs an AR-15 or any other type of assault rifle. There should be a ban on these weapons with severe penalties for anyone caught possessing such a weapon.
Here's an editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald shortly after the Las Vegas shooting:
EDITORIAL
Sadly, US will not learn from latest carnage
Once again, we are numb with horror. Once again, we are pierced by grief for the United States, a country to which we are bound by ties of culture, history, language, family, friendship. A country in some ways so much like our own, but in its love affair with the gun so utterly alien.
This time, we are forced to comprehend how a man can legally assemble a large arsenal of high-powered weapons without raising the slightest alarm. How he can transport them to a hotel room unremarked, and then, in about the time it takes to boil a kettle and make a cup of tea, end the lives of scores of people and wound, maim and traumatise hundreds more.
There is no way to fully understand what tipped this man, by all accounts a prosperous and stable member of the community with no history of violence, over the line into homicidal barbarity. Whether it was evil, ideology or illness or some combination of the three, he was in no way normal. But nor was he unique.
On average, there is a mass shooting, defined as an incident where four or more people are killed or wounded, every day in the US. Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings of 2012, when a gunman slaughtered 20 children and six adults, there have been more than 1500 such acts.
It is incomprehensible to us, as Australians, that a country so proud and great can allow itself to be savaged again and again by its own citizens. We cannot understand how the long years of senseless murder, the Sandy Hooks and Orlandos and Columbines, have not proved to Americans that the gun is not a precious symbol of freedom, but a deadly cancer on their society.
We point over and over to our own success with gun control in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, that Australia has not seen a mass shooting since and that we are still a free and open society. We have not bought our security at the price of liberty; we have instead consented to a social contract that states lives are precious, and not to be casually ended by lone madmen. But it is a message that means nothing to those whose ideology is impervious to evidence.
You might think, from a distance, that this slaughter would at least dispel the myth that carrying a gun brings personal security. Even had every concert goer been armed, it would not have saved them from a killer 32 floors above them in a room full of military weapons. But history tells us Americans will learn no such lesson.
Even before the full scale of Sunday's slaughter was known, the US gun lobby was swinging into action, framing this as an event akin to a natural disaster, random and ultimately unpreventable. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin was one of the first, tweeting "To all those political opportunists who are seizing on the tragedy in Las Vegas to call for more gun regs ... you can't regulate evil ..."
And he's right. You can't regulate evil. But you can disarm it. Once again we pray that the US will come to its senses and do just that. And once again, we are dreadfully sure it won't.
The first verse of "Only in America" ends:
One kid dreams of fame and fortune One kid helps pay the rent One could end up going to prison One just might be president
and now we have a president who belongs in prison.
Ten years ago:
As everybody knows, this Sunday is the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Shortly after 9/11 Alan Jackson asked in song, "Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?". Where were you?
I was sitting at my desk on the 4th floor of 6 World Trade Center at about 8:45 on the morning of September 11, 2001. I heard a crash and saw debris falling past my window to the ground. I didn't know it was a plane that hit Tower 1 but I did know this was no accident. I had been at work the day of the first terrorist attack in 1993. I got up from my desk and started heading for the door, following others who also instinctively knew to get out. I didn't stop to get anything out of my desk.
We exited building 6 and headed across a walkway over Vesey St to building 7, looking over our shoulders to make sure no more debris was headed toward us. We waited about 20 minutes before our division director gave us the ok to start heading home. He was trying to get in touch with the bosses at our headquarters in Washington. The glass fronted lobby of building 7 was making a lot of us nervous. An explosion could send all that glass right at us. In addition to the twin towers, buildings 6 and 7 were also destroyed when the towers fell.
Some of our personnel headed towards the World Financial Center across West St. They saw people jumping from the towers and others already lying dead on the ground. Glad I didn't see that.
I headed uptown. My thought initially was to go to Central Park. There are no buildings hence it wouldn't be another target. I got to call my wife from a pay phone around West 4th St. I didn't have a cell phone then. I was on 7th Avenue near the corner of 22nd St when Tower 1 collapsed. I couldn't believe it. That massive building of concrete and steel collapsed? I had seen it almost every weekday for the past 24 years. I started heading back uptown and saw the Empire State Building. I thought it could be another target so I walked over to 8th Avenue to be further away from it.
I was resting for a few minutes, sitting on a bench outside a building in the west 40's on 8th Avenue when I spotted a co-worker who also lived on Long Island. We continued uptown to 59th street and then headed toward the 59th street bridge. We crossed the bridge into Queens and somewhere got a bus to the Jamaica railroad station. We then walked to 169th St and Hillside Avenue where my wife and her sister picked us up. The soles of my feet were burning but otherwise I was fine. All of my co-workers made it out safely so we had a lot to be thankful for. I wish that all the 9/11 victims had been as lucky.
Just about 3 years ago I wrote about some good times at the WTC. I thought I'd re-post it here for the 10th anniversary of the attacks.
The 7th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks was observed a little over a week ago. With good reason, whenever anyone mentions the WTC, the first thing that comes to mind will be the events of that awful day. We will always remember the victims and the heroic firemen, police and other emergency workers, many of whom became victims themselves.
Prior to 9/11, there were good days at the WTC. I recall those wonderful lunchtime country concerts held outside at the Austin Tobin Plaza of the WTC. From my office window, I could see the side of the stage. Although I missed quite a few concerts because of summertime family vacations or business, I still got to see many great performances.
Country Thursdays was sponsored by former country radio station Y-107 and some corporate sponsors like the NY lottery and Chrysler. (It's a shame that NYC has been without a country music radio station since May of 2002.) In addition to Country Thursday, the WTC also had Classical Mondays, Broadway Tuesdays, Jazz Wednesdays and R&B Fridays. I read somewhere that 2001 was the 15th year of concerts which were generally held from late June to the end of August. I don't remember them being around that long but my memory is not the greatest.
I got to see Suzy Bogguss, the Dixie Chicks, Terri Clark, Ty Herndon, Carolyn Dawn Johnson, Phil Vassar, Big House, Trick Pony, Steve Wariner, Darryl Worley and probably others. Some of the acts I missed include Hal Ketchum, Lari White, Bryan White, Jo Dee Messina, Mark Wills, Keith Urban, Gary Allan, Chris Cagle, Toby Keith, Chely Wright, Tracy Byrd and Lila McCann. The following is a typical schedule I found on line at www.panynj.gov/pr/92-98.html that came out on June 27, 1998:
July 9 Hal Ketchum
July 16 Gary Allan and Mark Wills
July 23 Bryan White
July 30 Dixie Chicks and Gil Grand
August 6 Lari White
August 13 Big House and David Kersh
August 20 Steve Wariner and Suzy Bogguss
August 27 Chely Wright and Jo Dee Messina
I'd love to see the complete schedule for the entire fifteen years of the concert program. If you go to the website noted above, you can see what artists were scheduled to perform that year in the other music formats.
In addition to the lunchtime concerts they had Summer Oldies on Thursday evenings and a Salsa Dance Party on Friday evenings. I remember seeing Johnny Maestro of the Crests and later of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Boxtops, Drifters and Gary Lewis & the Playboys were also scheduled. I got to see the Tokens featuring Jay Siegel (loved "The Lion Sleeps Tonight") but I believe that was a noon time show.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Comments