Posted on 02/24/2003 3:16:48 PM PST by HighWheeler
History expands. Terribly. In 1914, two bullets fired at an automobile driving through the streets of Sarajevo killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophia, his wife. Their deaths led to World War One.
In 2001, two massive jet aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center in New York killed ... the numbers are so far unknown, but it's likely that thousands are dead. Another hijacked jet, aimed at the Pentagon, killed untold others. Yet another jet, also under the command of terrorists in league with the attackers of the World Trade Center and Pentagon, crashed in Pennsylvania, killing all on board.
The difference between June 1914 and September 2001 isn't merely one of scale, or of potential consequence. Many of those who fought in WWI -- from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and myriad other nations -- had never heard of the Archduke, or his murder. But every soul bound for the battle surely followed the American attacks today, within minutes of this strange new war's beginning.
The Internet spread a massive slice of the awful information. Newspapers had already been delivered across the United States, and working folk in the east were already at or on their way to work when the first U.S. passenger jet slammed into the World Trade Center. E-mail, Web sites, and chat became primary news sources, joining television.
Princess Diana's car crash and Bill Clinton's Oval Office frolics suddenly seem minor markers in the evolution of the Net as a news provider. Today's horror first reached President George W. Bush as he sat among a crowd of schoolchildren at Emma E. Booker Elementary in Sarasota, Fla., before a chalkboard bearing the words: 'Reading makes a country great.' What was being published online, however, made for ghastly, unbelievable reading.
Solid AP and Reuters accounts of the initial attack, as well as blanket TV and radio coverage, provoked a furious response from various political chat rooms. 'I just don't know what to say. I can't believe this,' wrote Zontar, a poster at a Web forum linked to Democrat-supporting bartcop.com. Any possibility of political gains from the strike met a quick death -- another bartcopper, LJGins, wrote that 'There is nothing good about what has happened but it did happen on the Bush (II) watch... This truly might be the end for the Bush dynasty.' It soon vanished as the full scale of the attack became apparent.
At FreeRepublic.com, conservative posters called for religious observance ('Pray for the families of the dead,' was an early post from CoolGuyVic) and vengeance. Freeper Mol spoke for many: 'I pray that GW stands up and deliberately, and swiftly crushes these bugs under the heel of the armed forces of The United States of America. Let them tremble before our rage.'
In the non-partisan zone of MetaFilter, commentary was both wrenching and newsworthy. As television reporters struggled to explain a second, sudden blast of flame and matter from the World Trade Center's twin towers (under enormous pressure, most on the scene initially concluded that the first crashed jet had detonated within the structure) a poster named TNLNYC announced: 'I'm looking at it right now (we can see the WTC from our office) and it looks like a second plane just hit the second tower (we just saw it happen). I can't confirm it but it's absolutely crazy...'
Why were chat rooms a major focus for people seeking early information? Because many of the Net's major news sites were quickly crippled by massive traffic. The bigger the news event -- as if anything like today's nightmare could ever be reduced to such a term -- the less the major news sites are able to cope.
'Our administrators are aware of it,' a CNN.com spokesman told atnewyork.com. 'They're trying to balance it out, but it's being hit drastically. They're trying to ... put some more space into it. It's probably going to be that way for the rest of the day -- very off and on -- until they can get more space added.' CNN.com usually generates 11 million page views each day. This morning, the site was tracking 9 million views per hour.
MSNBC.com chopped its site down to a minimum of graphics and ads, to allow for faster page loads. The New York Times, swamped by millions of readers worldwide, dodged traffic by sending email alerts to subscribers. (By sad comparison, The New York Post's site merely ran a pointer to an AP story; no front-page changes, no nothing).
Smaller journals kept the news flowing. The usually below-the-radar Morris group of newspapers saw traffic to their websites fall immediately following the World Trade Center attacks, presumably because readers were swarming to major sites; the readers returned when those sites became overloaded, eventually pushing the Morris sites to 98 percent of their capacity.
Meanwhile, the number of chatters at Yahoo's New York room swelled to 1,600 (about 1,400 more than usual for early morning) as desperate web searchers sought updates.
Other online news sources were simply caught off guard by the staggering size and speed of events. At least five threads on the attacks had already begun at FreeRepublic.com before the Drudge Report had filed a single story or posted a link. Older media forms suffered their own problems, some of them avoided by techno-savvy newsfolk; when television screens at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International airport went blank, Rusty Coats, director of new media at MORI Research, handed his Palm Pilot to other waiting passengers so they could read wireless Web accounts of the disasters in Washington and New York.
Reflecting the near-incomprehensible gravity of the attacks, both online and mainstream sources were hesitant to lay immediate blame; for once, all media seemed to wait for others to make the call. His rage barely contained, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) damned the attackers as 'bastards.'
Some reports were bizarrely wrong, but almost eloquent in their representation of the frightening stresses involved in covering this worst-of-all scenarios story. For example, MSNBC.com reported that 'at the Pentagon, the nerve center of the nation's military, one wall of the hexagonal building was destroyed.' A hexagonal pentagon? And some commentary we can dismiss as the product of a race for copy; the London Guardian's online service quoted Professor Paul Rogers, of Bradford University's peace department, warning about targeting Middle East extremists: 'With Oklahoma, everybody assumed it was Middle East [terrorists], then it turned out to be home-grown Timothy McVeigh.'
Nobody, but nobody, anticipates finding a McVeigh at the core of today's extraordinary assaults. That convenience is impossible. By midday, the Net -- in advance of reports that Kabul had erupted in explosions -- commenced to light up with anger between Muslims, Christians, east and west, left and right.
Students of WWI history should have a good idea about how this story will end.
In the bizarre world of liberal journalism, anything is possible.
I know I've made posts stating that I pray for the President .. but I don't recall making that post
Who ever did, made a great post though
I was asked by a reporter "do you think that yadda yadda yadda? (Whatever the question was.)
I thought for less than a moment and said "Sure.". The next day the writer has me quoted in the story as the originator of the statement.
It surprised me also .. LOL
This is the new reality of news in America for conservatives:
At least five threads on the attacks had already begun at FreeRepublic.com before the Drudge Report had filed a single story or posted a link.
Free Republic just had its 100,000 person sign on. I don't know how many we had on 9/11/2001, but there has been significant growth since 9/11.
One can only imagine the impact that Free Republic would have with 500,000 members and about 20% of those donating 17 cents per day or $ 5/each month to Free Republic.
Jim Rob and John Rob could be buying Slate.com and maybe CNN and Reuters for pennies, and we could stop left wing Bravo Sierra before their ink dries on the NY Slimes.
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