In life, there are some things that you should never do. You should never cross the street without looking both ways. You should never count your chickens before your eggs hatch. You should never take relationship advice from Steve Harvey. And you should never listen to critics, before you listen for yourself.
While I have found all of these rules to be pretty accurate at one point or another, I found the last rule particularly true on Wednesday night (1/12/11). As I am sure you know, Wednesday night was the night of the memorial service for the victims of the Tucson shooting. Though it was described in its buildup as, “a moment of national mourning,” history has taught us that these memorials represent so much more. From the Oklahoma City bombing to the attacks of September 11th, the memorials that come in the wake of these tragedies have a unique ability to act not only as a platform to remember the fallen, but also as a lens through which the nation can redefine how it will forever remember the tragedy itself.
Now due to a previous work engagement, (translation: an excel spreadsheet was kicking my ass), I wasn’t able to watch the memorial live. But who needs to watch potentially historic events live when you have the holly trinity of political analysis: CNN, MSNBC and FOX News, taking notes? And boy did they take notes. Some CNN analysts thought that President Obama’s speech was too professorial. Some MSNBC’s pundits thought that there was too much cheering during the event and that the celebratory tone was wrong for the occasion. As for the Fox News experts, they hated just about everything. Seriously, they even complained about the seating arrangement… of an auditorium.
Well, after spending a fair amount of time listening to the pundits, I decided I needed to listen to President Obama’s speech and all of the messages that preceded it for myself. And after watching the entire memorial I realized one thing. The media got it wrong.
What the analysts couldn’t grasp was that President Obama’s words were not professorial; they were powerful. The words of a president determined to use his voice to give the nation back its voice.
What the pundits couldn’t hear was that the people in that auditorium were not cheering for Obama. They were cheering for the fact that despite the darkness that we face today, we are a nation that is determined to see the promise of a brighter tomorrow.
What the experts will never understand is that it didn’t matter where people were sitting, because for one small moment, the entire nation sat together.
So while I am glad that we have the media to provide us with play-by-play political analysis for every event under the sun, I am also glad that there are still moments that force even the busiest of us to sit down and judge for ourselves. This my friends was one of those moments.
