From: Neale Smith
To: [email protected] (DC Comics' Superman fanmail)
cc: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Where was Superman?
Dear DC Staff,
I am writing you with one burning question:
Where was Superman?
It is my understanding that you have the closest connection to the man with the big "S", so I hope that you can pass this message along to him.
Dear Superman,
In light of last week's catastrophic events, I feel that I have no choice but to ask you this question:
"Where were you?"
I live in Washington, DC, less than 10 miles from the Pentagon, and I remember thinking three things as the events of Tuesday morning, September 11th, 2001, began to unfold:
1) "Oh my God, those poor people...!" 2) "Should I flee the city?" and 3) "Why? Why? Why weren't these attacks anticipated, diverted, or stopped? "
Like so many other Americans, I was dumb-struck. Confounded. Angry.
Plain and simple, before any of this happened, where were the warnings from our Federal Agencies?! America's brightest and best? The CIA, the FBI, the CTC, the FAA, the military?
Nowhere to be found. Their silence spoke volumes. In the midst of a national crisis, one larger than life, there was no one there to have foreseen, to have stopped these man-made disasters from happening.
To me, these heinous crimes seemed so easily predictable, so highly orchestrated... they were crimes that, with all of the resources of the world's most powerful nation to draw from, should have been stopped. The attack on New York was a repeat attack, even if via a different means. After 1993, shouldn't the World Trade Centers have been that much more closely-guarded: on land, at sea, and in the air...? Thousands of lives could have been saved. Homes and offices spared. Cities protected.
In the hours following the crashes, I sat in an exodus of bumper-to-bumper traffic, worthy of Hollywood's "Independence Day", listening to the radio. I tried in vain to wrap my head around the magnitude of these national security oversights; tried to rationalize the incompetence of the World's Finest leaders. Hearing no explanation, no confession of error from the adult powers-that-be, the child in me screamed for an accountability from a higher power. Where was God in all of this? Short of God,
"WHERE WAS SUPERMAN?!!
...Doesn't he live only a few townships away from New York? That's his city to protect! What could he possibly have been doing that was more important than rescuing the people in those planes? We've seen him do it before; the classic scene of the caped crusader flying underneath an ailing jetliner, putting it on his back, and setting it safely on the ground. Why couldn't he do that now? Even when Superman was being drowned in a pool, with kryptonite chained to his neck by Lex Luthor, he managed to escape and stop a missile from destroying Metropolis.
This time, there weren't two, but four missiles targeting U.S. cities, and they were even closer together, geographically, than the one he had stopped before. But Superman didn't even try to stop one of these. Where was he? Where was his old trick of flying around the earth so it would spin it backwards, reversing time and therefore allowing him to correct his mistakes?"
I waited. Time did not spin backwards. I listened. The descriptions of the atrocities were still broadcasting. I couldn't believe it. It was like a movie, a bad comic book plot. I was waiting for the government to reveal this was another "Invasion from Mars" scam; a "Wag the Dog" conspiracy. But the flags were at half-mast. My friends and coworkers had been evacuated from our offices. As the Op-Ed by Neal Gabler in Sunday's New York Times read, "This Time, The Scene Was Real."
* Wednesday, Sept. 12th: We, the world's strongest nation, rallied together to show our unity in a tiime of crisis. I saw American flags on proud display everywhere I went. It felt so good to know that we, a country so large and so diverse, would stand united in our compassion for our fellow citizens, even ones who were hundreds of miles apart.
* Saturday, Sept. 15th: By now, all local stores were completely sold-out of flags and red-white-and-blue ribbons. I saw an uncanny number of people wearing red-yellow-and-blue shirts displaying the legendary "S".
Though I was glad to see our country's colors represented in this way, I found myself resenting the man that the "S" represented. The hero who had let us down, who was nowhere to be found. Seeing his initial emblazoned across the chests of my diverse coworkers, I felt a bitterness ---even rage--- toward this man (who I realize, in my adult mind, does not really exist). But I could not shake the feeling that, somehow, at the bottom of all of this, Superman had betrayed us. How could these people show support for a man who let us all down? In our greatest hour of need, where was he?
As the epitomy of America's strength, resilience, and virtue, surely Superman had it within his power to have intervened? To have shown his face, if only in sorrow? At the least, he could have helped to clean-up the destruction left behind. Or did he flee the earth, or go hide in his Fortress of Solitude, too ashamed to face the world he is sworn to protect?
Instead of Superman, the news was filled with other superheroes, real Supermen and Superwomen...
The public servants of New York City and Washington, DC... The volunteer firefighters who rushed into the Trade Center to rescue trapped civilians, who gave their lives, and who later raised our flag in the midst of tragedy...
(The words of the one legendary firefighter who, after emerging from the Trade Center debris, prepared to go back in, and told a cameraman simply, "It's my job" should put the man of steel to shame. )
...The many more who have been called from all over the U.S. to help with the recovery efforts.... The hundreds of people who lined-up in droves to give blood for those in need...The offices, families, and groups around the world who flocked to give support, encouragement, and aid to the survivors and their families... The TV & radio stations, the websites and billboards who are donating their ad space to encourage people to help however they can... The military police who lined the streets, to protect us from ourselves... The strangers who helped a man to his feet after he was trampled by a stampeding crowd... The teachers in our schools who are teaching our kids about racial tolerance and anger-management, hoping to prevent the kind of blind hatred that sparked recent mob beatings and rapes of Arabs and Arab-Americans... all those people who helped to preserve a life, even if it was their own.... these are the real superheroes.
And then, today, as I thought again about my coworkers, who proudly wore the "S" in our time of greatest need... I smiled.
Yesterday, when I condemned Superman for his absence, for his cowardice and his neglect of office, I realize that I had closed my eyes to my country.
Today, I opened my eyes to my country, and I have found Superman, or what he represents, everywhere: in the valiant men and women described above, in my own community, and on the faces of my coworkers who proudly bore the insignia of one man who does, and I hope always will, personify everything that makes the people of the United States of America so incredibly awesome: Superman.
If there was ever a time that our nation needed superheroes, the time is now. My heart goes out to the survivors of these disasters, as well as to the family and friends of those who perished. You are in my thoughts and prayers.
DC, I salute you, and great creative teams like you, for giving America heroes, even at times when we resented them. I believe that we all have the potential, deep down inside us, to be a superhero, in our own way. And I hope and pray that everyone comes to realize that potential in their own time.
As for me, I will bear my "S" with pride.
Sincerely,
A Comic Book Fan and a Proud American Citizen
Paynetown, MD...
(just S/W of the
Snow Hill city limits)...