Mourning, but not despairing 9.21.01

Since last week, I have not been able to shake the dread feeling that America had been horribly changed forever.
Sleepless nights are bad times to be thinking about how America will recover from this brutal assault. Normally, I would catch a little late night comedy to help readjust my compass but just like us, the hosts of late night television needed some time off to collect themselves.
And it occurred to me that like so many other Americans, I really do get a great deal of my information about the days events from unorthodox sources like Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." Why not? It is at least as informative as FoxNews.
Don't misunderstand. I get my facts from the hard news boys and Andrea Thompson of CNN Headline News, formerly of "NYPD Blue," formerly of "Babylon 5." Did anyone else notice that Thompson started off cocky, but these days she looks like she wished she never left the acting business?
What I had been missing over the last couple of weeks was perspective. Not the kind of political explanation of current events you get on PBS, but the kind of perspective only comedy can give a situation.
For the last couple of weeks, I forgot how important laughter is, not just for me, but for all of us. It has felt trivial and shameful to laugh since Sept. 11 and that is a shame. The worst thing we can do is trivialize our need to laugh. It keeps us sane.
Granted their was not much joy in America and their still isn't. But that is about to change.
Tragedy is a part of the American landscape and no one knows that better than a good comedian.
Great comedy comes from pain. Anyone truly funny can tell you that. It is not something that can be explained well, I am afraid, but suffice it to say there is a moment in all great comedy where the worst is confronted and overcome.
The silent film stars knew this. Slapstick is all about human strength in the face of weakness, inevitability and evil.
I saw three men I admire (and Jay Leno) get back to the business of making us laugh this week. David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Jon Stewart came out to do their "little shows" and each one stood in front of their audience and shared what Woodie Guthrie called their "nakedest self" with the folks at home and in the audience.
None of them was sure if what they were doing was right. They were feeling their way along like the rest of us, and God bless them for trying.
I was particularly impressed with Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" Thursday. For the uninitiated, "The Daily Show" is a satirical news show on Comedy Central. It's popular with the college kids, but grown-ups like it, too.
I was shaken from my reverie when Stewart said, "I mourn, but I do not despair because we've already won."
This little comedian from a second-rate cable show went on to describe how the forces of chaos will never beat us because it is too unsatisfying to destroy. "Chaos cannot maintain itself."
We are builders and always have been.
We do not live in prosperity because we are lazy or wicked, and if Jerry Falwell thinks that Sept. 11 happened because we were asking for it, he has more in common with the men who blew up the World Trade Center than the rest of America.
We are prosperous because we are industrious. Before the day was done Sept. 11, rescue workers were picking through the rubble by hand.
Now that is tough.
We had a setback, but in the final analysis, we didn't lose anything, not a damn thing. Terrorists knocked down one block of this country and as soon as they did, we didn't cower.
We didn't run and hide. We got out there and started digging and we haven't stopped yet and we won't stop digging and rebuilding and growing ever because no matter what else is true about America, we progress and we prevail.
Attacks like this don't weaken us, they just make us stronger, like fire on the prairie.
Everybody where I'm from knows the toughest guy around isn't the one who can beat the hell out of the most people, he's the one who can take a punch like it never even phased him. Those are the guys I have always respected and that is what America is.
We can take a hit and keep on keeping on.
We aren't just the toughest because we beat the hell out of the Japanese militarists and the Nazis. We're tough because we took what they dished out and kept rolling. We're tough because we survived the depravity of the Great Depression, the brutality of the Civil War, the horrors of World War I, the existentialist nightmares of Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War and the witch hunts of the McCarthy era.
America didn't lose it's innocence last week. That is self-deluded bunk. We lost it in 1776 when we told the British Empire to lump it and then beat them back with squirrel guns. And we did it again in 1812 when they came back for round two, burned down the White House and found out the hard way what a "trench" was.
America will survive as it always has, through sheer force of will - not because we are righteous, not because we are the chosen people of the Lord, not because we are better than everybody else, but because when all is said and done, we can take a hit.
-Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. He can be reached at 328-1811 ext. 279 or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.