No, It Isn't Too Soon For the Truth

Too soon? When I heard that the mainstream media were citing some unnamed moviegoers as objecting to the release of “United 93” because it was too soon after the actual event, my BS proximity alarm went off. It struck me that we had yet another case of ventriloquist “reporters” placing words into the mouths of “some” to give legitimacy to their own opinions. I’ll show you how it’s done: “Some moviegoers say that it’s too soon for a movie about September 11, 2001”.
After all, real reporters aren’t supposed to allow their opinions to contaminate their reporting. So, reporters have to venriloquize their own opinions by putting them in the mouths of, “some.”
Of course, after all that, I had no choice but to see the flick at my first practical opportunity. If the mainstream media were so determined to dissuade me from seeing this movie, then I absolutely had to take it in, if only to irk them. So I went to see United 93 last weekend and I can report that it is not too early. If anything, it might have been released too late. With the encouragement of the ever-vigilant-and-unbiased mainstream media, we’ve conveniently forgotten a lot since that awful morning of September 11, 2001. It’s a lesson we need to have our noses rubbed in again.
As art, United 93 was less than remarkable. Jerky camera shots, which I suppose were meant to convey the confusion and chaos of that morning, made watching the movie a bit hard on the eyes. It was the story itself, not any clever cinematography or special effects, that carried the picture.
When the movie ended, that theater was the quietest I had ever sat in. Aside from weeping, there was not a human sound to be heard. Nobody stood to leave until the screen went entirely dark. When the lights came back on, the viewers silently rose from their seatd and solemnly filed out. No conversation was audible.
I credit the director for not burdening us with gratuitous sentimentality. There was almost no effort made to introduce us to the passengers and crew of that plane. When the movie ended, the victims were only slightly less anonymous to us than they were on that day 5 and a half years ago. What drove the movie was the gravity of the events and the incomprehensible evil of the terrorists.
What struck me most about the movie was the way that, even though we all knew how it was going to end, we prayed for a different outcome. Maybe this time, the passengers would wrest control of the plane from the hijackers and the surviving passengers and crew would have joyous reunions with their families. I don’t think I’m ruining the movie for anyone when I say that, it doesn’t turn out that way. It was history. And although Hollywood has little allegiance to truth, it’s certainly too soon to rewrite the ending.
Everybody should see this movie. We need to be confronted again with the relentless evil that intends us as much malice today as it did on September 11, 2001. Liberals who refuse to see it voluntarily because they’d prefer to live in a fantasy, where America is the fount of all that is wrong in the world, should be tied to chairs by their therapists and carried into the theaters by psychiatric orderlies.
The squeamish have got to grow up someday anyway.
I tried to remember if any reporter ventriloquized moviegoers to argue that it was too early for Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. I can’t remember a single occasion. I suppose that the timing of that movie’s release was judged to be just about perfect - during the 2004 election season. The timing was so good in fact that the entire Democratic Party’s senior leadership showed up for the movie’s VIP, invitation-only premiere. Moore was rewarded with a seat next to Jimmy Carter at the Democratic National Convention.
Five years later is too soon for the truth but less than 3 years is plenty of time to tell lies. An interesting contrast, don’t you think?
We need more movies. We need to know about the suffering of those trapped in the upper floors of the World Trade Center. We need to learn the firefighters’ stories.
It’s never to soon for the truth.