I should state right here that when I first started off on my Grand Hollywood Adventure, I was a socially left leaning, moderate fiscal conservative, proudly independent, ignoring party affiliations and casting my ballot for whoever I thought was best for–or, in any case, would do the least damage to–my beloved country.
Had I been born a generation earlier, I would have described myself as a Kennedy Democrat. As it was, I suppose the Libertarian tag might fit, but I’ve always borne a healthy suspicion of anything that smacks of an “ideology.”
All that said, I was pretty much apolitical. The closest I came to studying issues was to pick up one of P.J. O’Rourke’s books for a giggle or two. But then, I also got a kick out of Michael Moore’s first film, Roger and Me. Politically, I was the proverbial wise-ass kid with a permanent seat in the rear of the classroom where I could safely heckle the nuns without collecting too many stripes across the back of my knuckles.
Then, on September 11th, 2001, everything changed.
I remember watching the collapse of the first tower and feeling–literally feeling the breath just leave my lungs, my chest filling with a terrible, ghastly void; a sense of distant screams in a windswept wasteland and loss loss loss oh my God all those people all those people they murdered all those thousands of people…
Though it was but seconds, it seemed minutes, many long minutes before I could draw a breath. I quietly excused myself and hurried to the bedroom to spare my young children the memory of seeing Daddy collapse helplessly into a series of horrified, aching, gut-wrenching sobs.
As soon as I’d composed myself, I rejoined my family. I really have no memory of the ensuing hours, only that my wife and I decided I should go to work, that we’d try to keep the kids calm by maintaining our normal schedules. Only God knew what the future held…
I was working my first network series gig as a staff writer on a show called Wolf Lake while Carnivale was in development at HBO.
I was greeted by coworkers in various states of shock, portable TVs turned to the news in all the offices. Like every American, I was approached by a number of colleagues who wished to vent and commiserate.
But unlike every American, my coworkers expressed little or no anger toward the terrorists who had committed this atrocity. Rather, they directed their vitriol towards American Imperialism, American foreign policy, American arrogance, American warmongering, American racism and, most of all, our American President, the evil, unfathomably stupid, idiot Christian, bumbling Texan oaf, George W. Bush.
And what did I say?
Nothing.
Not a damn thing.
I was just shocked silent. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Were these people crazy?
