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September 11, 2005
Flight 93
I'm not sure why, but this evening I found myself eschewing baseball and football and opting for the Discovery Channel's "The Flight that Fought Back", a telling of the story of Flight 93 on September 11th through family member interviews and facts collected over the past four years. In all, and despite my reservations about dramatic retellings, the film was compelling and worthwhile. Interviews keep the telling grounded and ultimately the story is faithfully told (factual limitations announced), and one comes away having learned quite a bit about what happened on the flight and remembering that day and the heroism of the first Americans to fight back on 9/11, which I believe is a good thing. The film's "24" overtones (Kiefer Sutherland narration, split screens, ticking clock in bottom-right corner) seem in bad taste, but aside from this the presentation was respectful.
I was in New York City on 9/11 and though I was relatively safe and sound in midtown Manhattan, by a quirk of fate I saw and experienced some things that day I'd sometimes find myself thinking about too much, less so of late. Maybe someday I'll write them down, although I'm not sure why. On the other hand I think there's a temptation, one Mark Steyn and others wrote about today, to regard 9/11 itself as a quirk of our Republic's fate, a "tragedy" that, in the end, taught Americans we are not immune to grief and just one of those things.
Regardless of how one balances things, I have to believe reminders are worthwhile. "Never forget" can itself be too cliche, and so re-tellings - despite misgivings about such things - might be worth an hour or two every now and then. And as Jeremy Glick's widow says, Flight 93 gave us hope that day and that, too, is worth recalling.
Posted by bill at September 11, 2005 09:01 PM
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