Category Archives: true life 2001

we’re pretty careless when it comes to our innocence

The media told us that America lost it’s innocence on September 11th. We’ve been told this roughly ten zillion times.

This got me to thinking. You know that isn’t good.

I fired up Lexis/Nexis and discovered, whatta ya know, this isn’t the first time we’ve done gone and lost our innocence.

A few examples….

Pearl Harbor (the movie). Every review seemed to use some variation on the phrase. An example….

May 25, 2001, LA Times, Kevin Thomas, Movie Review

The film is sustained by a grand theme: innocence lost. It suggests that the innocence that fired the unhesitating bravery and self-sacrifice of the American people, in battle as well as the home front, carried with it an ignorance that allowed the U.S. to underestimate Japan’s military power and determination.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor was a long time ago, and we seem to have gained and lost our innocence many times since then.

June 11, 2001, Newsday, Richard Serrano, What
Created Timothy McVeigh?

“America’s innocence was shattered.” (by Timothy McVeigh’s actions in Oklahoma City)

Same author, the previous day, LA Times. McVeigh: The Indelible Legacy of a Mass Killer Contained the sentence (fragment, I might add): “A Shattering of Innocence.”

See also: lots of articles in lots of different publications; from the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, when we lost our innocence, to the day the judge refused to halt McVeigh’s execution, when we again lost our innocence, to the day of McVeigh’s scheduled execution, when we all opened our papers to discover we were about to lose our innocence.

August 17, 2001. Baltimore Sun, David Zurawik. Review:

Barbara Kopple’s “My Generation.” Last sentence: “This is the stuff of poetry, and My Generation is an elegy for an American innocence and optimism lost.”

July 23, 1999. Dick Feagler, Plain Dealer, The Last of our Innocence, Scattered on the Waves.

“Our totem of innocence, preserved from the day that the rest of innocence died. Call me maudlin if you want to. But, as far as I’m concerned there’s been a death in the family.”

For those of you playing along at home, the day we lost our innocence was the day JFK, Sr was shot, the day that the rest of innocence died was the day JFK, Jr died in a plane crash.

Gaaaaah.

This from a modern dance review in The New York Times from June 2, 1985

“Each age begets its own creative spirit and obviously an America that has lost its innocence cannot be the same as it was in the first half of the century.”

There are lots of other incidents where we’ve lost our innocence, according to the Media:

Vietnam, repeatedly
JFK’s Assassination
MLK’s Assassination
RFK’s Assassination
The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
The explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger
Every school shooting (involving white suburbanites)
The shark attacks off the NJ coast in 1916
WW I
WW II
Korea
Sputnik
The 2000 Presidential election
The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland
Watergate
The Clinton Crisis AKA the Monica Lewinsky Scandal
The Titanic (the actual incident, not that damn movie)
The Atlanta child murders
The Gulf War

Okay, I have to stop now. There are lots, lots more, but I’ll leave you with this one.

The Washington Post reported, on July 19, 1981, that “For better or worse, Oldtown [Maryland] has lost its innocence.”

What caused this shocking loss of innocence, you ask?

Brace yourself: Oldtown, Maryland got cable TV.

California Dreaming

I dreamt last night that I quit my job to write fulltime for Hollywood. I was in a staff meeting when some faceless exec came in, threw away our work, and informed us that we were in a new era and would be working in a new genre. What could be more fitting at this point in our history than Hollywood’s jingoistic take on patriotism, The Western?

That’s right. Westerns. All Westerns, all the time. I had to write Westerns.

They were positioning Brad Pitt to be the new John Wayne.

I got a promotion when I convinced the studio to fire Pitt and hire Christopher Walken. Then Christopher Walken was heralded as the new Brad Pitt, and it all started getting really self-referential and I couldn’t follow what was happening and I woke up in a cold sweat.

Sure, you’re laughing now.

use your goddamn turnsignals

Traffic is a mess thanks to detours and checkpoints, but some things are getting back to normal.

SUV drivers seem to have gotten the memo advising them to drive like the black hearted bastards that (many of them) are. Tailgating and other random small-car intimidation tactics are back in fashion (and not a moment too soon!) possibly even reaching a more advanced level of psychosis than before. Hooray!

I wrote a poem about using your turn signals, but now I can’t find it. It’s called “Use your goddamn turnsignals.” Maybe I’ll post it later.

Or maybe I’ll go home and fix a nice big martini. Gin, of course. Do not get me started on the gin versus vodka thing. Oh, I don’t know why I should talk. Let’s face it, I’m only in it for the olives.

children can be good for something

Nisa Rant and I just had a nice little dose of normality. We were taking a walk just as a neighboring elementary school let out.

There were two boys. One was wearing one of those orange safety patrol belts – symbolic in The International Language of Children for “dork.” We’ll call him Safety Boy. The second boy was larger than the first, we’ll call him The Bully.

The two boys crossed the road, then the The Bully grabbed Safety Boy by the lapels. He shoved Safety Boy into a tall hedge and held him there for a moment. Safety Boy said, somewhat dispassionately, “Ouch. Ouch.” It was very matter-of-fact. “Ouch.” No yelling. Just “Ouch” in a sort of low tone.

Then The Bully sets Safety Boy back down.
Safety Boy: “Ouch.”
The Bully: “See ya tomorrow.”
Safety Boy: “Okay. Ouch.”

Then they casually walked away. Fortunately, Nisa and I got past them before we started laughing. This appears to be a ritual, you half-expect them to punch a timeclock after the encounter. It was oddly soothing. It was a perfect moment.

oh my, the things we learn about each other
On the way home from work I was relating the story of the Bully and the Dork to my partner. He thought it was funny. Then told me he was not only a Safety Dork, but a Lieutenant, making him King Dork of his elementary school. I’m not sure what to do with this information, so I’m sharing it with you.