One of the gauges of America's pulse after 9/11 was the late night talk show. Much was said and written about how Dave, Jay, Bill, Conan, Jon, Craig and Saturday Night Live dealt with the disasters, especially with regard to the first new broadcast each show had to do after that day. At the time, I was touched by most of the entries and thought most of the hosts did a fine job in a difficult situation. Recently though, I was given some tapes of all those "first broadcasts back" and I watched all of them at least partway through. Most, including ones I really respected at the time, I now found unwatchable.
While I do not question the sincerity or grief of anyone, I found all the shows overly maudlin and mannered and, with the possible exception of Mr. Maher on Politically Incorrect, horribly simplistic. Somehow, they all reminded me of those horrible moments on the news when some reporter asks the survivor of a tragedy, "How does it feel to lose your home and family?" I always feel that pain is being paraded and emotions exploited for no good reason.
(One thing which kinda jolted me was how everyone kept talking about "more than five thousand dead." The total has since been revised to more like 2819, which is still, of course, ample cause for all the sorrow we can muster. Still, I find it odd that in the last year, this happy downgrade hasn't attracted much attention.)
I also, watching the tapes, was struck by how much importance was attached to the difficulty of resuming production on a comedy show…as if that was one of the significant tragedies of September 11. And some of the tears — especially Dan Rather's on Letterman — now seemed horribly affected and mannered. I don't think he said one thing that was insightful or informative that night. It was all a matter of "look how upset I am, how upset we all are." Those who enjoy the bully pulpit of a national audience ought to be offering something constructive and healing, as opposed to ratcheting up the despair.
I am not suggesting that any of the late night shows did bad jobs, or could have been expected to do better jobs. They did what they had to do for those airings and I'm not sure that it matters much that some of it may seem inappropriate, nearly a year after the fact.
Still, I think it's interesting and not unhealthy to note how sensibilities have changed, largely for the better, since September 11. The cliché of that week was "everything has changed" and I suspect most folks today would suggest that things have changed a lot less than we thought they would. Some of us thought World War III was commencing and that at the very least, the attack would overshadow everything we did and everything we said for years to come. It hasn't. We are a far more resilient people than we thought at the time, as evidenced by the fact that people are finally starting to deal with problems of that day and asking some hard questions instead of moaning and sitting shiva. Watching those late night talk shows, I saw a lot of crying and reverence and even the occasional bit of eloquence. But I didn't see anyone talking about recovery or moving on or doing anything positive.
The anniversary of 9/11 is upon us and television is pulling out all stops to show respect for the dead and to celebrate our pain…and I'm sure Dave, Jay, Conan and the others will offer a respectful dose of all that. But I wish one of them would remind us that not everything has changed and that we show respect for the departed by doing everything we can to prevent further disasters, not by wallowing in grief and airing endless montages of old news footage. I suspect though that, in an industry where everyone is terrified of being accused of insensitivity and lack of patriotism, it's easier just to salute the flag, curse out Osama, and cry about our dead.