Having been a columnist in a former life — before I discovered the joys of having my faults pointed out to me within minutes by blog readers — I’m aware of how easy it is to get on a roll when writing about a particular topic, to the point where perhaps the rhetoric gets away from you and the facts take a back seat. Today’s object lesson: Frank Rich, a columnist with the New York Times, who wrote an op-ed piece for the paper (which unfortunately is now behind the TimeSelect pay wall) about a famous photo of a group of people watching the towers fall on September 11, 2001.
In the column, Rich wrote that the picture was “shocking” because it showed that right after the attacks, callous New Yorkers had already moved on. As he put it:
This is a country that likes to move on, and fast. The young people in Mr. Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American. In the five years since the attacks, the ability of Americans to dust themselves off and keep going explains both what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong on our path to the divided and dispirited state the nation finds itself in today.
Okay, so here’s one of my favourite things about the Internet in action: David Plotz wrote a critical piece for Slate magazine, saying Rich was jumping to conclusions about what the people in the photo were or were not thinking about the attacks. At the end of it, he asked anyone who was in the photo to write in and describe what was happening — and someone did. Walter Sipser wrote in and said that he and his girlfriend were in the shot, and that they (like everyone else that day) were in shock. And he adds:
A more honest conclusion might start by acknowledging just how easily a photograph can be manipulated, especially in the advancement of one’s own biases or in the service of one’s own career.
Well said. Too bad the truth had to barge in and interrupt that great flight of rhetorical fancy you had going there, Frank.