Andy: I will take issue with moving on. To pretend that this didn't occur is markedly unhealthy. To mourn the exceptional loss of life is not to sympathize - it is to grieve. To think that such an unspeakably evil act could be done - that an act could be perpetrated upon one's fellow man - awakens deep emotions within your soul. There may be revulsion. There may be fear. But Bush's "terrible sadness" may be something else that may be felt. And it's not something that is confined to D.C. or to New York, and it's not something that's confined to anyone who knows someone who they frantically called. If you're living on a farm in Wyoming, the stunning weight of this atrocity may move you to grieve for those who are lost, even though you may not have known any of them. I was at work yesterday, and I am at work today. What happened has not stopped me from doing what I do on a daily basis. In time, this will not predominate my thoughts and I'll go back to posting song parodies. But to ask myself or anyone to eliminate that memory is entirely presumptuous. More than 4,000 dead. In a few hours. In a planned attack. Kids on a trip perished in one of the planes. One kid was on his first plane trip ever. Do you think he held the hand of the person next to him at takeoff since he was scared? Andy, it is so horrible as to defy comprehension. Ask people where they were when Kennedy was shot, when man walked on the moon, when Challenger exploded, when the Berlin Wall fell - these are experiences that are implanted upon people because of the enormity of their emotional impact. September 11, 2001, like it or not, will be a similar day.
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