Friday, October 17, 2008
By the Way The Way We Are Now
Posted by PJ Tobia on Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 9:53 AM
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Last night I was in the Nashville airport, flying to my sister’s place to go meet my new nephew. At gate C-16, on a flat-screen TV hanging from the ceiling, McCain and Obama were talking at this charity event.
There were maybe a hundred people at the gate, fitting all the usual airport descriptions: business travelers in wrinkled suits, students plugged into their iPods, moms and dads laden with toys and bags, surrounded by rug rats running them ragged.
For most of an hour though, all of the people were riveted—their 100 pairs of eyes locked like vices on the zillion-pixel image hanging above them. They looked at the screen and listened to the sounds coming from it as if it were the most important message they would ever receive, even though it was just the candidates making clever jokes about themselves.
The only time I've ever seen a group of strangers so communally riveted by a news broadcast was in lower Manhattan in the days following Sept. 11, 2001. Then, people in Chinatown crowded around radios on Kim Lau Square, listening for reassurance in news reports of what the world had become.
In those days the city was silent and everything was closed. On Sept. 12 my friend and I had gone to eat something at a café in SoHo, a place typically patronized by some of the world’s best-looking people wearing some of the finest clothes. But on this day they all looked shitty. Red around the eyes, hair a mess, these beautiful people sat silent in the café staring at their banana French toast and $4 coffees.
I remember thinking: “Finally they see the world beyond the glitter and glamour of their lives. They're no longer blind to the difficulty in the world that we've helped to create. Perhaps we can talk about this and make it better.”
Of course I was wrong. The intervening years would bring little in terms of real public discourse or participation. Despite the proliferation of blogs, cable talk shows and satellite radio, most people were happy to tune in and drop out to Dancing with the Stars or the pretend activism of a Michael Moore flick.
But I think things may have finally changed. Sitting in the airport, watching all of those faces craning upward to learn more about the important choice that we will all soon be making, I felt hope that many Americans, for perhaps the first time in their lives, care enough about the world we inhabit and our collective future to take a few moments to learn about the people who will help shape that world and guide that future.
It was a good feeling that stayed with me as I picked up my bag, put on my jacket and headed down the jetway.
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