TITLE: Remembering
DATE: 09/11/2006 11:19:15 PM

Five years ago, I was working for the Tribune Chronicle in Warren, Ohio. Right about now, I was helping finish up the first zone of the Sept. 12 edition, after having been at work since 10 in the morning.

On Sept. 18, 2001, I wrote about that day. Though it was missing the perception and perspective that time provides, it remains my most vivid, and somber, memory of that day.

* * * * *

The Longest Day

I was up late Monday night (actually, early Tuesday morning), returning to my apartment — like most other nights — from putting out the paper. Being a copy editor at a morning newspaper gives me a somewhat nocturnal existence.

Tuesday was Election Day for voters in Massachusetts and New York City, and I had something to say about it. So — like many other nights — I wrote. Nothing special. In fact, most of it was pretty bad. But I wrote until the last moments of night, going to bed a little before 7 a.m. Tuesday. No need to wake before work that day, I figured I could sleep until 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

My sleep was cut short.

The phone rang.

Not even looking at the clock, I ignored the call, knowing it was some telemarketer I had no desire to speak with.

Then my cell phone rang.

My best friend.

It was 8:58 a.m.

“Turn on the TV.”

“What?”

“Now.”

MSNBC — the channel on when I had turned the TV off the night before — gave me my first view of the horror. For all my life, I will never forget the image so many of us saw that morning.

I also will never forget my half-asleep reaction from the relative safety of my Ohio home. The voice that came from my mouth was one I have never heard before — and hope to never hear again.

“Oh my God. Oh my God!”

Within moments, I was called into work.

I called my mother on the way there. I checked in with her and then called my friend again. The drive to the newspaper had me listening to the radio and my friend from Washington, D.C., report about smoke rising from behind the Old Executive Office Building — the earliest mentions of what soon turned out to be the flight hitting the Pentagon.

* * *

About 9:30 a.m., I arrived at the newspaper.

A special edition was to be put out by noon, and with the news changing by the minute, the task was not a simple one.

In addition, I had to make a decision that taught me more about journalism than any class or experience before Tuesday had ever suggested.

I could not feel.

I could not let the event hit me — in any true, emotional way — until after I was done for the day.

As we prepared the special edition, I did just that. I didn’t think anything other than checking the Associated Press for the latest updates, reading and editing local coverage, writing headlines and laying out pages.

There was the “buzz of the newsroom” I had loved since my first day at the paper.

I never would have guessed how empty and horrid that buzz could be.

As we went through the motions, as the terror became clear, as the towers crashed and the rumors swirled, our reality was singular. Our responsibility was awesome — yet depressing.

We were pressed against the glass — looking through the window for the community — hoping to accurately and objectively portray the day’s events, a simple phrase that took on a whole new meaning Sept. 11.

Regardless of how tight we pressed against the glass, we also were powerless.

We were not the doctors, police or firefighters rushing to the scene. We were not the local ambulance company hurrying to help. We were removed — and yet in the middle of it all.

After we finished the special edition, we at the copy desk were able to slow down for a few hours before beginning the next day’s paper.

* * *

Occasionally contributing to the editorial page, I sat with some of the editorial board as we discussed the next day’s editorial.

“Flatten Afghanistan — just go in and flatten it,” said one particularly ready-to-strike and half-serious editor.

I was disturbed, but not sure how I could speak — at my age — about an event with which I had little or no benchmark for comparison.

I remembered getting videotapes and recording the CNN coverage of the Gulf War as I attended middle school. I knew nothing then — and I knew less now.

All of a sudden my earlier dismissals of international politics and foreign nations were worse than simple-minded — they were arrogant, they were wrong, they were dumb.

With the surety only naivete can provide, I spoke.

“We can’t do that. They are just as innocent as the people in the towers.”

The discussion continued and my mind reeled:

What would it mean?

Was this war?

The hawk editor said it was war; I countered that it was an “act of war,” a distinction I desperately clung to in my 23-year-old mind.

As we talked, an editorial position became clear — and was echoed by many papers and the Bush administration in the next days.

I wasn’t willing to give up Afghanistan so easily, and other editors filed closer to me than to the hawk. We settled on those countries “who supported these terrorists or aided in the attacks.” I thought I was satisfied, but I wasn’t sure.

I wasn’t sure of anything.

* * *

Some lunch and down time later, the evening began.

The stories kept coming; the horrors kept building; the fears kept growing.

Being a rather cynical staff, we wanted to see Bush. Hell, we wanted to see Cheney. I think we all wanted to see anything resembling what has now become either “normalcy” or “life before Tuesday.”

As the paper came together and the images were placed with the stories, the “big picture” started to form.

A man falling — diving — from one of the towers.

The fire, blood, smoke and darkness of “ground zero.”

The Pentagon — which I had always seen as our military’s central fortress — becoming a misnomer, with fire trucks aiming their hoses at its missing side.

As the night came to a close, the last few of us sat watching the TVs, looking to find something — what it was, I am not sure.

Maybe some were looking for a way to avoid facing the reality.

Maybe some were trying to find some meaning.

Maybe some were hoping a counterattack quickly would be under way.

Maybe we just didn’t know what else to do.

* * *

Finally, about 2 a.m., I headed for home. I drove that drive I have driven five nights a week for the past year and a half thinking about everything and nothing at all. More than once tears started to well up.

I started thinking about people. Earlier in the night, I had read of Barbara Olsen’s death. The wife of the nation’s Solicitor General, I often had shouted obscenities her way as I watched her on Chris Mathews’ “Hardball.”

She called her husband before she died — from the plane. I had read it, and now I could get nothing else in my mind.

But then there was something else.

My friends.

I had talked to or gotten e-mails from nearly all my close friends in D.C. And to my knowledge, I knew no one who worked in or with the Pentagon in any way.

In New York, I knew one friend was OK. After returning home and checking my e-mail, I knew another was shaken, but fine physically. One other friend had not e-mailed — and despite wanting to hope for the best, I considered the worst.

As I read Wednesday’s online versions of The Washington Post and The New York Times, it hit.

It was 3:30 a.m.

I was not a journalist now.

I started crying.

I hurt. I had no concept of what had happened — and yet I felt it all hitting me at once.

The morning a distant memory, I called the friend who had woken me to this terror nineteen hours ago.

I cried; he comforted.

Then we talked of our fears of the day, our fears of tomorrow, anything to keep the voices going.

Eventually, we hung up, ending a long call on the longest day either of us have ever known.

I went to sleep.

Like a reverse nightmare, I hoped when my eyes shut that the terror would disintegrate.

It didn’t.

It won’t.

On Wednesday, Feb. 23, I appeared in the lead segment on Capital Insider, the 8 p.m. show on TBD TV, Channel 8, in the District. I was far from perfect, but it was a great experience and host Morris Jones was gentle on me. If the video does not appear below, try here.

Well, I still have this site and will continue to maintain it, but the overwhelming majority of my attention (and writing) is over at Metro Weekly now, where we have, in the past week, launched Poliglot: a queer spin on politics! As things come up that don’t fit there, I will still post here on occasion — but it will be rare.

I urge you to bookmark Poliglot and stop by often!

When Gawker picked up this “report,” Yusef and I at Metro Weekly decided it necessitated a response.

Thank you, Mr. President. My question is about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal compromise amendment that faces House and Senate votes as early as this afternoon. Adm. Mullen said yesterday of the conditions in the amendment, “That trigger is to certify whether we should move ahead with that change.”

Earlier, and repeatedly, however, Sec. Gates said of the study, “This is not a question of if, but how.”

Which is it, Mr. President, and is your understanding of the compromise that the certification is discretionary? And, if so, why is that discretion necessary if the study truly is only looking into how to implement repeal?

But, I did not get to ask my question, so, it remains unanswered.

Here is the background, from my two reports at Metro Weekly on Wednesday: “Discretion Required,” about the impact of the amendment, and “Digging Into the Details,” which looks at the Senate vote count and features my interviews with Reps. Murphy and Frank on the House side.

About 9:30 p.m. Monday night, two people stand looking at the White House from the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Yes, I have been a bad Law Dork.

But, I’ve been writing plenty, at Metro Weekly, where I had been freelancing, then was working part-time, and — finally — earlier this year started working full-time.

On Monday, for example, I began with “DADT Talks at White House and on Hill,” covering the meetings regarding a possible “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy repeal compromise. Then, I followed up with the brief “Pushing Forward on DADT Repeal Compromise,” addressing a letter sent to the White House from the leading trio of pro-repeal lawmakers. Finally, I ended the day with “White House Signals Support,” which covered the Administration’s endorsement of the repeal compromise and several LGBT groups’ reactions to that support.

Unfortunately, days like that have left me with little time to devote to Law Dork.

I do, however, ask that you continue to check out my work, which is published nearly daily (if not multiple times a day, sch as Monday) at MetroWeekly.com and, if you live in the D.C. area, each Thursday in print. Also, if you’re not following me on Twitter and you want to keep up with me, you should be following me. Finally, I will update here as I find reasons (and time!) to do so, which is primarily when non-LGBT topics or Ohio-centric issues come to the fore.

If you have any other ideas of how I can use this space — I’m thinking about a weekly photo journal update, perhaps — please leave the idea in the comments section.

Thanks to everyone who has been so truly supportive of me as I spent the past 15 months feeling my way out and about back in the blogosphere, then on Twitter and, eventually, to D.C. It’s been — and will doubtless continue to be — quite a ride, so please do keep up!

Truly, few emails have made me more happy than this one, letting me know that I have a seat in the U.S. Supreme Court’s press section “for the oral argument on Monday, April 19 at 10 a.m. and Wednesday, April 28 at 10 a.m.”

The building that houses the Supreme Court of the United States, located at One First Street, N.E., in Washington, D.C.

The cases are Christian Legal Society v. Martinez and Doe #1 v. Reed. This, to me, is about as exciting an opportunity as I could have imagined when moving back to D.C. nearly six months ago. In that time, I’ve had the opportunity to write for The Atlantic Politics Channel and Metro Weekly, which has led to a job at MW as the senior political writer. In that role, I’ve covered Congress, the White House, the Pentagon and, now, will be covering the Supreme Court.

The first argument has particular meaning for me, as this debate, about whether a student organization that refuses to abide by a school’s nondiscrimination policy — here, CLS — can be denied university funds, is one in which I was heavily engaged during my time as a law student at OSU. The question in the case comes down to whether personal religious views can be imposed on a public institution and trump generally applicable public funding decisions, a question the court has answered in the negative on repeated occasions.

The case raises a lot of interesting questions, depending on the angle from which you come at the case — CLS and its lawyers argue that this is a religious freedom and associational freedom case. I’m going to be reading the many amicus briefs submitted in the case over the coming days, so I’ll have more on the specifics of all that soon. What already is clear, though, is that it will be intriguing to watch how the justices address the case.

The second argument, I think, has a growing meaning in the evolving dialogue on LGBT equality — or at least the opposition to it. As with the CLS case, those opposed to LGBT equality are increasingly painting themselves as themselves being the group that is subject to animus. They, not the LGBT people, are the “victim” in this framing. The Washington case involves the disclosure of the names and identifying information of those people who signed the petition to overturn Washington state’s domestic partnership law that became Referendum 71.

The case asks whether the Court will hold that disclosure requirements — can the public see who signed a petition to put a referendum on the ballot? — should be curtailed because of fear that those who signed such a petition will be subject to retaliation or other intimidation. The broad issue — the intimidation question — already has arisen twice in recent months at the Court, when the Court rejected the attempt to allow a live-streaming of the Proposition 8 trial to other courtrooms and in Justice Thomas’s opinion in Citizens United.

Incidentally, that second argument will fall, to the day, six months after my first D.C. coverage, the signing of the hate crimes law a couples days after I moved back.

Of personal interest and excitement to me, these two arguments, looking at the intersection of LGBT equality and various First Amendment freedoms, fall into that same general area of the law as the first Supreme Court oral argument that I attended, Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, argued 10 years ago this month, on April 26, 2000.

Yes, this Law Dork is incredibly excited and proud to be covering the Supreme Court for Metro Weekly.

The washingtonpost.com site earlier this afternoon.

Heh.

On Friday afternoon, a spokeswoman for the Smuckers Stars on Ice Tour denied allegations made by both U.S. Olympian Johnny Weir and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation that he has been kept out of the tour because he is ”not family friendly.”

Jennifer Cosgrove, a spokeswoman for Stars on Ice, responded to GLAAD, writing in a statement released to Metro Weekly, ”We are disappointed that there is untrue and inaccurate information being disseminated. Please be assured that the ‘gender identity and sexual orientation’ of cast members has never been a consideration in the selection of tour performers.”

In a posting at the GLAADBlog on Thursday, March 11, updated after its initial posting to reflect that an anonymous source had shared the information with GLAAD, the media watchdog reported: ”GLAAD has learned from a source that wishes to remain anonymous that sponsors of the Stars on Ice Tour, which include Smuckers and IMG Entertainment, have refused to allow 3-time US National Champion and 2-time Olympian Johnny Weir to participate because they claim that he is ‘not family friendly.”’

Weir somewhat confirmed this, repeating the “not family friendly” line to Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush. No one has yet attributed that very specific quotation to any specific individual, which gives me concern. At the same time, and as noted in the article, Stars on Ice — while denying the “untrue and inaccurate information” generally — has not specifically denied the “not family friendly” quote.

If those words were said, I think we should know whether this came from Smuckers, IMG Entertainment or the Stars on Ice Tour people. The distinction is important for a variety of reasons, most notably because people and organizations — most of all, GLAAD — are putting pressure on all three of these entities based on an unattributed quotation from an anonymous source.

I think my biggest concern is that this is coming from the “media watchdog” for the LGBT community as the salacious hook for a very public campaign against a company. Aren’t anonymous, gossipy quotes the very type of thing that GLAAD generally fights against?

Here is the latest from GLAAD, a statement from President Jarrett Barrios:

Johnny Weir is a two time Olympian and three time U.S. champion. Other athletes of his caliber would be granted the opportunity to perform during national tours like Stars on Ice. By choosing not to bring the performances and talent of Johnny Weir to American audiences, Stars on Ice is reinforcing an unfortunate double standard that is too often applied to gay athletes and athletes perceived to be gay.

GLAAD calls on Stars on Ice to invite all eligible figure skaters because today people of all gender expressions and sexual orientations are part of the fabric of our culture. Athletes of Weir’s caliber deserve the same rights to perform on this, and any, tour.

We urge community members to speak out against this apparent double standard and call on Stars on Ice and corporate sponsor Smucker’s to demand equal opportunities for all athletes.

I agree that Weir’s gender expression and sexual orientation should play no role in his invitation to any tour, but I am concerned with the approach being taken by GLAAD on this issue. Thoughts?

Liza, Joe and I after lunch. (Photo from Andres.)

A great truth from Bil Browning at The Bilerico Project, about this past weekend:

I was honored to co-host a gathering of top bloggers and print media editors with Paul Schindler of the Gay City News last weekend. The Four Freedoms Fund sponsored the gathering and we spent several hours on Saturday talking about comprehensive immigration reform.

Spending time with so many of my colleagues and inspirations was amazing – especially during the Q&A period. Think these people write well? Try watching them in action as they think on their feet and pepper presenters with questions. Here’s who came: Adam Bink, Toni D’orsay, Chris Geidner, Prerna Lal, Joe Mirabella, Mike Rogers, Kerry Eleveld, Josh Lynsen, Mark Segal, Rex Wockner, Andrew Belonsky, Andres Duque, Joe Jervis, Ramon Johnson, Michael Jones, William Keck, Liza Sabater, Jillian Weiss, Paul, Phil [Reese] and I. (Contributors Steve Ralls and Matt Foreman were both there as well, but not as bloggers.)

I second it all. It truly was an eye-opening experience that I plan to write and talk more about in coming days and weeks ahead. I’d particularly like to thank Toni, Prerna and Liza for their insights both at and after the “formal” portion of the day, as well as thanking Bil and Paul for their invitation and work putting the weekend together.

Also, if you read Law Dork and are not familiar with any of these folks, check them out.