On 9/11: The Sound (Effects) and the Fury
The sorrow of this day—and the glimpses of Ground Zero allowed to peek through the programming on CNBC and Fox Business News—raises all the more urgently this question for me: Why are the producers working so hard to create artificial combat zones?
Why are they giving us sound effects on CNBC that make it seem like there are five-year-olds playing with action figures in the background? Why the menacing whiplash swoosh every time a chart is shown? Why the creeping mimicry of these noises on FBN?
And why all the adversarial posing? The hard-driving sneer of belligerence from Brian Sullivan and the mocking tone of Stuart Varney—both on FBN. The smackdown clang of the ring on CNBC when two reporters talk economics. The angrier-than-thou stance of Larry Kudlow. The shaking finger of outrage pointed by Bill Griffith. The rising pitch of indignation in Dennis Kneale’s laments.
By contrast, the peacefulness of American markets, the orderly flow of invisible money—this is our paradise. This is what the Islamists tried to destroy.
We can only be thankful they failed. The tape is still running, and we’re still watching. And the quality of that entertainment puts all the mock war games to shame.
Yours in tape-watching,
Sam Bronoff
p.s. Thanks to Brian Sullivan and FBN for bringing us today and yesterday’s two-part interview with Larry Silverstein, who had owned the Twin Towers only a few months when they were destroyed. Silverstein’s hard-headed wisdom about the cheerleaders and doomsayers in every market (“If I listened to pundits I never would have accomplished anything in my life.”) was nourishment in the current swoon, and his patience with the politicians was an inspiration. On the future of Ground Zero, even Sullivan’s harrumphs were hushed as Silverstein expressed his unwavering faith that what can seem like the nonsense of democracy—still more studies, more money, more time—would somehow get it right.
