Today’s media coverage is clearly going overboard. None other than Eleanor Roosevelt wrote on December 8th, 1942 that she
Her words on how to commemorate that day of infamy echoed with what I suggested for this day of infamy. Said the first lady, “It’s not a date for a holiday. It’s a date that should make us work.”
Of course, the full extent of the Pearl Harbor loss wasn’t known right away. Likewise, there was no 24-hour news cycle after the bloody Civil War battle of Antietam. The culture of mourning lacks any of this resolve and anger. As I said last week, those towers didn’t go down in an earthquake. This was an atrocity from which many tragedies came, but it wasn’t a “tragedy” per se. At any rate, you should read this column and listen to me comment on it, because what’s happening today is nothing like what was happening one year after Pearl Harbor.
