This afternoon we got an email from DC TPM Reader JJ who said he thought the mockery of the DC quake had maybe gone a bit too far.
I actually think the backlash now against the DC earthquake hysteria is a bit much.
For those of us who were here on 9/11, when I felt the building I was in shaking and the eleavators swaying, that’s immediately what I thought of. In the moment, it felt preposterous for DC to be hit by an earthquake – that never happens – and all I could think was that we were under attack.
Now, that quickly proved totally wrong and things settled down and people went on with their business. But, it was a wierd, unsettling moment here.
It was gentle criticism. And I wrote him back explaining that I didn’t think we were discounting that experience at all. Indeed, I shared some of his experience. Or at least a similar set of recollections.
This afternoon at 1:52 PM I got a call from DC Bureau Chief and TPM Managing Editor David Kurtz telling me they were in the midst of evacuating the building where TPM has its DC Bureau, just a few blocks from the Capitol. It was a rushed and a bit jagged, though not panicked, call. He said that it was either some kind of explosion or an earthquake. For whatever reason over the course of what turned out to be a 59 second phone call the explosion theory made more sense. After all we’re on the East Coast. And as we were speaking I started to feel our own building start swaying back and forth.
Now, that was the pretty clearly the tell that this was an earthquake. But I was in DC on 9/11 and now I work a pretty short distance from Ground Zero. And for a split second … or well, maybe three or four split seconds, with my mind fixing on the explosion theory in DC and our own building starting to shake in New York … well, I’ll be honest, though I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, my mind imagined some pretty scary sh-t. I won’t speak for anyone else but maybe 9/11 etched into my brain somewhere the experience of really ridiculous ideas quickly turning out to have happened.
So I get it. And I get it for anyone else who had a similar experience like JJ’s who had a much bigger jolt, literally and figuratively, than I did. But I think we mock these things not because they can’t be scary but because they can and it’s the ethical response to fear. When the worst happens, we have to mourn. We have no choice. But when we can I think we mock and laugh in the face of fear because it’s the best way to approach life.
