The Midnight News 9.13.01 

Posted By Hyatte on 09.13.01

A Nation Defined. 

Hello. Is everyone okay? I hope you and your family are all sitting at home in shock. In outrage. In anger. It doesn't matter, so long as you're all together and you all still possess your fingers and toes.

You want wrestling news? Why? Fuck wrestling. That's right, fuck it. Wrestling is so unimportant right now. You want wrestling news? Go read Scott Keith. Or Scaia. Or 1bob. I'm sure they are carrying on like wrestling is the only thing that matters.

Actually, that's unfair. Everyone seems to have the proper perspective. Good work. For once, almost no one on the net is acting like a total loser.

Smackdown will go on tonight in a live show from Houston. Linda McMahon promised a new type of format for tonight's show. The last time the did this was on the night after Owen Hart's death. So it should be a special show and a welcome break after three days of watching skyscrapers crumble and humanity in tears.

I've discussed this with Widro earlier yesterday and we both decided that 411 will go "quiet" for the next few days. The only posting you will see are in the fan forum and the sporadic news board message. No recaps, no columns. Everyone gets to take a long weekend and try to get through this however they see fit. Widro works in NYC, he needs a vacation. Everyone does, quite frankly. 

An amusing aside from all this... Tuesday, thanks to synergy and the merging of all these major corporations, Dan Rather was the only face on not only CBS, but MTV, VH1, NESN, and a few other stations. Dan Rather on MTV.... and to think, it it took was a major act of devestating evil to pull it off.

Oh, and did you notice how we re-routed all of Tuesday's air traffic to Canada? Heh. Our neighbors up North are always good for extra parking.... too bad they don't seem to be of use for much else though. 

And has anyone thought to check on OJ's whereabouts during all this? Any chance we could get him on this?

Yeah... bwahaha. While I'm here, I'd like to discuss this a bit. You guys seem to like it when I talk about shit like this, I guess it helps some people absorb some of the trauma here... or something. I'd like to try to do this now. 

Rather than bore you with another column laying out where I was, what I was doing, and how I felt when I witnessed all this go down, I will try something else. My whereabouts are not important, and my feelings are just like yours. Bad writers netwide will perform this task quite nicely.... expect to read the words, "appalled", "outraged", "numb", and "shocked" numerous times before all this settles down and we resume business. No, you don't need another column that explores the writer's feelings. I'll spare you.

No, I'd rather talk about my country. America. I'd like to tell you what I saw yesterday other than the heartbreak. Past the misery, I saw beauty.

I saw total strangers, people from all walks of life, of all colors, creeds, religion, and economical class coming en mass to Ground Zero at the southern tip of Manhattan and ask the exhausted fire fighters and police officers, "What can we do to help?"

I saw saw rescue workers, trained EMTs, and firefighters from different states on hand to help New York try to save lives.

I saw reports of little to no looting in New York last night. I saw very few selfish people try to take advantage of the situation.

I saw a country get behind a President without hesitation. No more petty squabbling over who deserves to be in that seat (And to be honest, I feel much better having Bush in office than I would if it was Gore. The Republicans are much better at war and surgical strikes than the Democrats ever were). A Nation stands behind it's President, who is so far responding to the situation like a true leader.

I saw thousands.... hundreds of thousands pints of blood at the ready, thanks to citizens who want to do something to help.

I saw my country respond to this attack with astonishing bravery and fearless courage. We are not afraid. We are not selfishly hiding under our beds. We are working as a proud unit to help our fellow brothers, in any way we can. 

As our President said last night, we stared absolute evil down and responded with the absolute brightest that we, as a country, have always been capable of... yet seldom show other than in times of crisis.

This is why my country is so great. This is why we have set the standards that everyone else must try to measure up to. The level of fierce pride we have in being Americans cannot be calculated. We love our nation, with all the chinks and dents in the system, we absolutely love our land. As a national community, in times of danger, we are at our very best. This is the critical mistake our enemies have made. We cannot be demoralized. We cannot be intimidated. We, as a nation, will never blink. You can hurt us. You can wound us. You can shock us, but you will never beat us. 

We can get angry though. And when this happens, our enemies who hate us will learn another emotion. They will learn fear.

My country has been assaulted, and my country did not cower. We rose up and worked together to help. Retribution will come, I hope President Bush and his staff take their time and do this correctly. I also hope my people, as enraged as we are, will not take their aggression out on the first Middle Eastern citizen they see. The Arab who runs your local gas/convenience store had nothing to do with this. Please do not take it out on him. 

In closing, we will go on, we will survive. Humanity has this remarkable ability to overcome trauma and move on. Recovering from this event will be no different. We will rebuild, and emerge stronger from it. And once again, the rest of the world will be in awe of our resilience.

In our darkest day, we shine the brightest.

I have never been prouder of my country, or it's people. 

Thank you all.

This is Hyatte.