A TERRIFIC OBSERVATION BY ANDREW GREELEY:

On Sept. 11 last year, up to 1 million people were evacuated from Lower Manhattan by water ”in an emergent network of private and publicly owned watercraft–a previously unplanned activity.” It was an American Dunkirk, like the epic rescue of the British army at Dunkirk in 1940 by an armada of similar craft.

Yet you most likely never saw this astonishing event, reported last month by Professor Kathleen Tierney at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, on television and never read about it in the print media. It would have made for spectacular TV imagery; yet, as an example of calm and sensible and spontaneous action, it did not fit the media image of panic, an image that will doubtless be re-enacted next week.

Yeah, I remember the media telling us all that we were scared and that we’d have to give up our freedom in the days and weeks following the attack, though it seemed to be them, not us, who were so scared. (This Michael Kelly column from October is a priceless window into the past.)