I love visiting "Pro-America areas of this great nation" -Sarah Palin
This was the banner on the huffingtonpost today.
I have had an anger burgeoning over the past few months that may be turning into a peculiar nationalism for my home town
I am from NYC. I was born and raised here. I have lived here my whole life - on the island of Manhattan. I was here when the World Trade Center was bombed.
This is not a 9/11 diary but it is about this city and how it is treated in national politics. It isn't possible to address this without talking about the bombing to some degree.
As this is a personal diary, I want to talk briefly about that day because it resulted in the one moment when I thought the heartland of the country almost accepted the place I grew up.
On the night of the bombing, I took the free subway downtown -home. There were no cars. As I emerged, sand bags and razor wire had appeared blocking off lower manhattan. It looked as though the bottom of Manhattan had fallen off the edge of the world and the barrier, marking that cliff was a block from my house.
I worked in a hospital then. Earlier, that day we had cleared all the patients out imagining thousands of casualties. There were rumors that Bellevue was overwhelmed and EMS was moving north with victims. Of course none of that happened. There were no patients. Eventually, a call went out for ophthalmologists. They were the only emergency specialty needed.
The next day, I called a friend in Oklahoma and asked him what the feeling was out there in America. I asked a defensive, jaded question, something close to, "people probably think it was our fault don't they?" To my true surprise, my friend told me I was wrong. That the support for NY was unlike anything he had ever seen. I have to say, I had a hard time believing this. It didn't compute with my understanding of my world. I believed I came from a place that was always disliked and distrusted by the rest of America.
Over the next few days in the ever present smell of burning electrical wire and the fine white dust, I saw people walking down the avenues who had clearly never been in NY before. One man looked at me and said, "which way is the world trade center?" I must have looked like I was going to hit him because he said, "no, I mean no disrespect, I came to help. I'm from Nebraska." This guy apparently got on a bus because he felt he had to help. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe the whole country was actually supportive of New York in a time of need. In my whole life that had never happened. Suddenly, America liked us. I can't tell you how appreciative i felt.
As a native New Yorker, I have been defensive about how the country saw my home. I was a kid when the NY Daily News cover read, "Ford to City: Drop Dead." In those years New York was portrayed as dirty, crime ridden, corrupt, ugly and filled with drugs and porn. We were the brunt of every late night TV joke. The south bronx was seen as the scariest place in the country. When I went to school for a couple of years in DC, my teachers referred to my home as "sin city." As I got older I grew immune to the slurs about the place. New York has grown and changed. There is still a gaping whole at the bottom of the island.
I hear everyday how it is the center of the liberal, media elite (apparently the worst insult in the world.) In politics, we are presented as cultural weirdos, out of touch. What's the phrase? Arugula eating, latte drinking, Volvo driving - except you can't have a car in the city unless you're rich.
When the US invaded Afghanistan members of the FDNY and NYPD had bombs painted with their insignia and the names of the dead from the twin towers put on individual bombs. I don't know what the regional enlistment recruiting numbers were in that year following the bombing, but I know the enlistment in the NY area was big. The war in Afghanistan was seen very much as payback. We were pissed. We were also honored and elated to feel that the rest of the country liked us. Suddenly, for the first time, it felt like the other "kids in the class" were being nice to us. (The excuse "they're just jealous" got old about 30 years ago) Turns out, the popular kids were just kidding and it wasn't long before they were saying the same nasty things about us they always had. Our brief moment was over. (The popular kids in those days of course were Red state politicos.)
A bit over a year after 9/11, when the Iraq war vote came up, most New Yorkers unlike the rest of the country, were against it. We don't need to rehash that here but that was the sentiment. The feeling was so strong that there were huge demonstrations against the war. Tens of thousands of people who lived here marched against it. Some groups reported more than 100,000 people were in those demonstrations. The MSM didn't cover it at all. It might as well never have happened.
Even though we New Yorkers, were specifically the ones who were bombed, our opinion didn't count. We were seen as culturally anathema - again. It didn't matter that the residents of this city had lost more than anyone else and still had more to lose than any other group (I'll explain that in a minute.) Our opinion was apparently worthless.
(That's how it felt.)
So we watched as 9/11 was used as a jingoistic football. We watched as it was invoked by Conservative preachers and politicians who had long derided New York's culture and values to gain support from people who still saw this place as "sin city." Finally, we watched our ex-mayor make a fool of himself trying to ride a political wave by spouting, as Sen. Biden so aptly put it, "A noun, a verb and 9/11."
What we Manhattanites knew, both Democratic and Republican was that all of this saber rattling in the conservative movement wasn't going to be paid for in Texas or Oklahoma or Mississippi. If there was blowback from the terrorists we would pay for it.
Growing up here you know from the start that you live at target #1 of a nuclear war. We accept that. If a dirty bomb is set off in this country it will be done here.
(FWIW: A few years ago, after we were deep in the Iraq war, the department of homeland security tried to argue that NYC shouldn't receive much funding to prevent terrorist attacks because we weren't a target. They felt it was more important to send money to theme parks and tourist attractions in the midwest.)
I've begun to notice a rage about all this growing in me. I am developing a nationalistic attitude about my city. I see it not only as vulnerable to a repeat event from potential enemies of America but vulnerable to people with policies that use our tragedy for their own ends and deep down understand well, that if something really bad happened - it would happen first in New York and maybe only in New York. I fear there are wingnuts out there who take solace in that thought.
The final straw comes with comments like Sarah Palin's. She is saying we shouldn't negotiate with Iran and that we may need to start a war with Russia over Georgia. At the same time constantly implying that the people who live at the ground zero of any war on American, don't love this country, are morally bankrupt and "elite." Are we expendable too?
"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans.
People have written about this urban=un-american trend in politics as racist and it is; but I think there are also other aspects to it. Whatever it is, I am becoming increasingly intolerant of it. I know that's bad, Intolerance is never good. This is an issue of ignorance - yea, I know. Normally, I'm a pretty patient person. But it's wearing thin.
Considering this city's sacrifices in the "war on terror" I would like to know - why wasn't Sarah Palin thinking of New York as a pro-America area? Why not?
I realize what she said was bigoted and I realize the comment was a huge gaff and she insulted most of the country not just New York.
Sarah Palin (who will be here Saturday to do SNL) should explain her comment. It would be nice if it happened on that show. Maybe "Weekend Update" could ask her when she's on, if she standing in a "Pro-America area?"