Last night was weird. It's one of those nights that you get really excited about, but you don't know why, until it breaks on Twitter, but you don't believe it till you hear it for sure.
Me personally? I was switching to watch MSNBC because they have Sunday night "To Catch a Predator" marathons that are always fun to watch. Instead, I got the "Obama to make announcement at 10:30.
It was like television you couldn't turn away from. Literally, the news staff didn't even know what was going on. They thought it was something else - Libya, gas prices, birth certificates, whatever. Then slowly you hear rumors. NBC had a lead from Pete Williams, but never said it. Then you'd read the other networks saying it. It all sounded so ridiculous. We have his body. Shot in the head.
It reminded me of the Michael Jackson death. Something was happening, but nobody knows what. But everyone's speculating. Low and behold: Twitter was right. And on it blew up. I personally tweeted more than I would during a Lost episode (which is alot, because I would tweet "WTF" every 30 seconds watching Lost.) Some of it is funny hearted (Team America, Jack Bauer) some is the amazement at what's going on via the media, etc.
What's really interesting about this? How long this has gone on. It's really more than just since 2001. Long long before. At least 15 years. 3 administrations. We had no idea. There would be rumors everywhere. South Park would make fun of him endlessly. (My personal favorite was comparing Osama bin Laden to Gandalf the Grey, think that was an SNL skit). We've portrayed this man as living in cave to cave, showing himself on a video, telling us what he's doing next, etc. Yet he's been living in this "compound" for quite a while, while not living the good life, he certainly wasn't stuck in caves all day. There would be rumors about his death previously.
I made a Jack Bauer reference previously, but this really sounds like a episode of 24 or a scene from a movie. Secret operations storming in via helicopter, a firefight, etc. I think I know a little more than the average person, but I don't know much about our secret teams. We must have so many Jack Bauer types. Men in Black almost. The government agency you don't know about, where they make people disappear. Trained assassins. It sounds crazy, but I really believe it all exists. Goes to show how much we really don't know about what's going on behind the scenes. All the data and missed intelligence and the potential opportunities, but it finally worked. None of our forces were killed in the firefight. That to me is extremely impressive about the training we give our soldiers.
From the media standpoint, beyond the confusion, the mad scramble to get their top people on the air. I'm pretty pro-NBC over the other networks, so seeing their top staff rushing to get to the studios was fascinating. Then watching some video from last night, they were still on the air through at least 4AM. I turned on the TV this AM? Same people are online. Talk about stressful. Also - I haven't watched 24 hour news networks in a while. I remember why I stopped - they just literally talk out of their ass with no clue what's going on, just because they need to have something to talk about. They have no idea what's next from Al Qaeda. No clue what the reaction is in the Arab world. At the end of the day, they're Americans in a foreign world. Who knows what they really know.
My favorite thing from last night: Chuck Todd was talking about how all of this came together from the media standpoint, and he got an email from a White House correspondent. The email basically said "get over here. this is big. can't say what, but trust me. BFD." You should remember, BFD is Biden's tagline for "Big Fucking Deal." Who knows if that's a common term for the White House staff, or if they're trying to be funny, but it makes me laugh.
I don't understand the need for celebration yesterday. They couldn't stop showing footage from outside the White House and near Ground Zero. That's a weird concept we have. When something huge like this happens, we gather with strangers and celebrate in a somewhat riot like instance. It looked to me like the DC crowd was just college kids, who I bet were hopped up on Aderral and Red Bull and were looking for any excuse to get out of studying for finals. I thought about going to Ground Zero, but for what? To stand there and chant USA? Makes us look like barbarians.
Some people really suck. This was an exciting moment, and some people wanted to talk about how Osama should have stood trial, how we have focused too much on Osama and not enough on our own country, including gas/jobs/the stupid budget thing. We also jerk around too much talking about Obama's birth certificate. What a waste of time and resources. Putting Osama on trial is a waste of time and would become more of a circus than true justice. Everyone knows he's committed terrible crimes. Not a secret. Putting him on trial would just end up with demonstrations and the security alerts from that would be catastrophic. We put Saddam on trial and what was the verdict? Death. Osama's was going to be any different? And he would milk it and be a martyr and all this garbage. Let it end. While I think it's BS that we say Osama has been "brought to justice," we talk about justice in law and everything. I agree, but let's not act like we're holier than thou.
Again, who knows what Osama had really been up to. Some people say that he was more of a figurehead than the true leader. Either way, it's a big deal (or a BFD) and it's an exciting thing. But we need to keep treading. There's more people and programs out there to squash.
Now let's solve this budget BS.
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