CNN relieves 9/11 appropriately through news coverage

Country singer Alan Jackson asks this question in his 9/11 tribute song: “Where were you when the world stopped turning?”

I was in my webmastering class as a senior at Hahnville High School in St. Charles Parish.

When jetliners crashed into the Twin Towers that morning, I didn’t know it happened.

When I went to lunch around 10:30 a.m., a friend passed me in the hall and said, “Did you hear about the plane crashing into the World Trade Center?”

I immediately thought of the World Trade Center at the foot of Canal Street in New Orleans. I pictured a small single-engine plane dangling off of one or two floors of that massive white structure. I had been to the top of that building not too long before then to see the rotating restaurant on the top floor, which is now defunct.

Then he corrected me.

I didn’t know exactly what happened until I got off the school bus around 3 p.m.

While my future college classmates were sitting transfixed in front of television sets all day, experiencing the worst attack on American soil as a community, my principal decided to shelter us from the valid opportunity to learn and discuss current events.

When she got on the public address system at the end of the school day and announced a moment of silence for the many who had died in the event, I was dumbfounded. What in the world had happened?

I remember, too, that I wrote an essay that day on the WWI novel “All Quiet on the Western Front,” by Erich Maria Remarque, in English class. I later found out just how fitting that was.

For the five-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, CNN.com replayed their coverage from that day in real time, from 8:30 a.m. until 11 p.m.

I took the opportunity to see what I had missed that day. It was amazing to feel the emotions those reporters felt as our nation changed forever. I missed the actual moment the buildings collapsed, but I watched as CNN correspondents grabbed interviews with whomever they could, from congressmen to civilians on the Manhattan streets.

A lot has changed in five years. Pope John Paul II, who called the attacks “inhuman,” is no longer with us. Neither is Yassar Arafat, former Palestinian prime minister, who was seen issuing a statement that day denouncing the terrorists’ actions.

Most of us in southeast Louisiana didn’t truly know the pain of loss and disaster. Hurricane Katrina was another four years away.

Everything I felt that day came rushing back like never before. I watched in anger as CNN showed footage of Palestinians dancing in the street celebrating America’s pain. Senators cried “act of war” and got away with using expletives on air to describe the revenge we would exact on our enemies.

One senator lamented how distracted we had been. Education, health care and the economy, he said, were all minor concerns compared to national security and the safety of the American public.

I marveled at how five years — approximately 1,825 days — could unravel the good things that came out of 9/11 — the unity, pride, patriotism and solidarity we all felt.

Now 9/11 is inevitably tied to the Iraq War and then to oil prices. Discussion of the pros-and-cons of our polarizing President George W. Bush, as was illustrated so clearly in a Monday rant by Chris Matthews on MSNBC.

When I started to mentally rebut Matthews, I had to remind myself that the year was 2006. What seemed so cut-and-dry then isn’t so simple now.

But hopefully, in the years to come, we will continue to remember the victims and what we felt that day apart from current political spin and repercussions. It’s important for us to be reminded just what’s at stake.

I agree with the bumper sticker. We should not forget.

CNN helped me remember and did a service to all Americans by replaying its 9/11 coverage. I only hope they will continue that tradition every year.