Infamy, Then and Now
9th December 2015
The evening after, FDR was to have had dinner with Edward R. Murrow. Instead, they had sandwiches and a midnight snack in the White House and FDR spilled all the beans — which battleships had been sunk and all the rest. FDR said nothing about being “off the record.” Murrow, the first celebrity journalist, decided to… keep the information private until after the president addressed the United States in Congress Assembled. He felt that the People should get the news from the president, not from a radio reporter. Who among the Late Modern fourth estate would show such judgement?
But another theme ran silently throughout the background. In one scene, the dead from the attack are buried unceremoniously in a mass grave and the news film shows only about two dozen of the survivors in attendance. Everyone else was off getting the ships repaired and prepping for war with Japan.
In contrast, sneak attacks by a determined enemy today elicit not the grim determination of 1941, but a fusillade of mutual hugs, tears, teddy bears and lighted candles. That will make the enemy quail! They might have guns, but by gum! we have flowers. The enemy will also flee from our barrage of self-doubt and our plaintive questions about how we brought this on ourselves. Not to mention the focus not on the enemy who wrought or encouraged the attacks, but on our keepers who didn’t warn us about it ahead of time.