Not everyone in this country was glued to their TVs on 9/11. Some foreigners ignored it. I saw this in person.
I was vacationing in Las Vegas that morning. My son called and woke me up. "Dad, turn on the TV." I left my hotel room and went downstairs to the casino to gauge reaction. I expected to find everyone crowded around the bars, watching the coverage.
Many -- all from other countries -- ignored it, playing their slot machines.
I asked one player why she wasn't watching the news. In broken English, she said something like, "Now you Americans know what it's like." She was from Indonesia. I sensed no compassion in her. I asked another player. "Al Qaeda kills people everywhere," he said. He said he was from Lebanon. He shrugged, and again, no compassion.
The next day, in an empty employee parking lot, I spotted an old car right in the middle, parked sideways. It had been hastily painted red, white, and blue. Spray painted along the side in big block letters was the sentiment all Americans felt: "Bomb the Fuckers."
I was executive producer at WBT in Charlotte at the time, and missing the biggest story since Pearl Harbor. In those first hours, I was certain that the terrorists also would strike Sin City. I filed reports from Las Vegas until commercial air traffic resumed days later and we could leave. I had a great crew in Charlotte, and they performed masterfully under uniquely trying conditions.
Two images I remember vividly about that weekend are the disinterested foreigners, and that painted car out back of the hotel.
USA, pal. USA.
Interesting comment from the woman, "Now you Americans know what it's like!" That was in 2001. I guess if there were parts of the world that had been suffering under the curse of Islamic terrorist groups, we were rather insulated from it. Not that we hadn't seen the instability of the Middle East for decades. But for this woman to take such an attitude, it makes me wonder if she was saying, "We've had to deal with this sh*t for years, maybe now you'll understand our pleas that have fallen on deaf ears." Or if she was saying, "You Americans somehow deserved it." I prefer to think it was the former.
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