Mike of Modernity(or post?)

The realization that the media coverage surrounding the events of the World Trade Center disaster were instrumental in helping Osama Bin Laden accomplish his goal, became apparent to me a mere few months later when the call for retaliation came from the Bush White House. His goal was to disorganize, overwhelm and scatter our resolve. As well, it was to encourage a brash, poorly planned and executed retaliation, in order to cast the United States in the role of an incompetent bully, one who had just gotten his comeuppance. Unfortunately, we fell into the role like a natural, and began swinging in every direction but where the ball was. Jean Baudrilliard's words are cuttingly accurate when he said that the terrorist's were victorious because they affected "the whole ideology of freedom, of free circulation." Certainly anyone who flies on an airplane these days feels as if a part of their freedom has been taken, anyone who happens to be of Near Asian or Middle Eastern descent, almost anyone who is even brown is treated with some level of mistrust or outright prejudice. In the years following the "end" of the Cold War, America was without its "other". A common evil to organize against. And Bin Laden conveniently stepped into our sights. (I am no conspiracy theorist, but occasionally they almost sound too right not to have a kernel of truth.)
The media covered every detail, except for those that they did not wish us to see. It became a ratings bonanza. By bombarding the public with these images, carefully edited with moving background music in dramatic montage, the press began to effect the public's take on the disaster. The wholesale destruction we witness in films had prepared us for the "Real thing". Then when the real thing occurrede, it appeared as distant and unreeal as any Hollywood production. In their attempts to report the news they actually began to deconstruct and altogether diminish the "true" horror and place it in a stasis of sorts - a fantasy. As Baudrilliard says "There is no good use of the media", and they managed to match the description to a tee.