“We All Have a Dog in this Fight” by Java Goddess

An acquaintance who is on one of my distribution lists sent out this very powerful post to us on Monday regarding the film “United 93.” He starts his email to us this way:

Yesterday, I went to see United 93 with my daughter, Krista. Krista was a flight attendant with UAL at the time and had flown the United 175 trip several times before 9/11. I had flown it also before my retirement from my LAX base and it could have been the same airplane. So, we felt like we had a dog in that fight. I think this movie should be a requirement for everyone, especially the anti-war pukes and the democrats that wonder why we are at war. They should, especially, strap Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Dick “Turbin” and their likes, in a seat on the front row of a theater and slam it down their throats over & over & over…….. This synopsis of the movie was written by Krista, on her blog, and you’ll have to excuse some of her language, but she came by it honestly. A chip off the old block. – Gino

And here is Krista’s very compelling review:

“Two Thumbs Up” When I first heard about the release of “United 93” a few weeks ago, my first response was, “Hell no, I’m not going to see that.” Why did I need to see some cheezebag Hollywood pussy’s version of what happened that day? So I can get even more pissed off when my emotions were manipulated into feeling sympathy for a bunch of psychotic religious whack jobs? I was still on the line back then. I vividly remember everything about that day–from being woken up at 6:25 am to seeing that plane fly into the building to trying in futile desperation to connect to scheduling to figure out where all my friends were. I remember leaving the house around 5:00 pm that day, walking through a deserted downtown Long Beach–right past the Pacific Coast’s “World Trade Center” standing just two blocks from my place on Ocean Boulevard–and hearing the soul shattering silence coming from the direction of Los Angeles Airport. Any domestic-bound flights departing out of LAX almost always hung a lazy turn out over the Pacific and came back towards the east directly over Long Beach harbor. But not that day. I could feel the shock hanging in the air everywhere I went. It wasn’t anger yet, just empty shock.

Besides, ask anyone who is or was in the airline business and they’ll tell you the same thing–Hollywood never gets it right. From the original Airport 77 to that ridiculous disaster movie with Kurt Russell and Marla Maples (comically standing at the door during evacuation and calling out “Buh Bye!” as passengers hurled themselves down the slide. And she wasn’t doing it to be funny.) I’ve seen all those movies and I sat and laughed at how wrong everything was. I had no intention of sitting through a depiction of a day that completely altered my life and see everything that was so glaringly wrong–and even worse, what would be wrong on purpose–about the movie.

But sometime last week I was reading about the movie on the internet–wish I could quote the article directly, but I can’t recall it now–and I read something about one of the passengers snapping a hijacker’s neck. I instantly realized, “I need to see that.” Call it morbid fantasy, but I really had a deep-seated need to see that moment. My dad, a retired pilot, agreed to go with me.

I packed a dozen Kleenex in my purse in preparation. I didn’t use a single one. I realize now that all the crying has been done. I went to memorials for my flying partners who were killed that day, I’ve cried for what was lost and what was changed forever. I broke out in hives for weeks after 9/11 and woke up crying in the middle of the night. I’ve addressed the crying in many many ways.

What has not been addressed is the anger. And that is what this movie did for me–it let that raw fury come bubbling up to the surface, back from where I had stuffed it and locked it up. I felt my hand on that fire extinguisher as the actor playing Mark Bingham smashed it–over and over–into the head of the hijacker carrying the fake bomb, splattering blood all over the bulkhead wall. We have no way of knowing what really happened in those last few moments, but there is no doubt in my mind that if those passengers were half as furious as I am, that it was brutal. And I hope to God it was. I really hope that motherfucker went to his 72 virgins picking his teeth out of the back of his skull.

There were tiny little details that popped out to me and to my father that anyone else would have never noticed. And I think the actor playing Dahl did him a disservice by making him come across as self-important and even slightly effeminate.

Jason Dahl had a great sense of humor and was an athletic, charismatic personality.

…It was pretty rare to see a live safety demonstration on the ‘57–that would have only happened if the video unit was broken. It was, however, quite realistic to hear Sandra Bradshaw say to her panicked crewmates, “I got through to United on the phone.” “What did they say? What should we do?” “He didn’t know. I spoke to a mechanic.” She had contacted the mechanics we used to call to report “write ups” about the cabin. I’m just surprised she got hold of anybody at all.

There has been a lot written about the amazing job Ben Sliney does of portraying himself in the ATC command center, and I wholeheartedly agree. The interspersed scenes of Boston ATC, the control tower at Kennedy, NORAD, and the Central Command were vital to the movie–plus those are locations you don’t see depicted in movies very often. The language is foreign as is the atmosphere. What really got to me were the looks on everybody’s faces as the huge screen displaying the CNN live feed of the towers showed United 175 plowing into the South Tower. Every single face said it loud and clear: We are fucked.

I will also say this about the movie. No one gets off scott-free. Just about everyone has moments that look bad–the President, the military, the flight attendants cowering in the back galley and wondering in futility what to do. You hear mention of the guy who runs the “Hijacking Desk” at some command center who is “on vacation.” You see military commanders dripping with sweat as they hear someone on the telephone tell them they only have four fighter jets available–and two of them are unarmed. There’s no nice way to say it: we got caught with our pants down.

As I drove out of the theater parking lot, I came to a stop at a red light right behind an SUV sporting a huge bumper sticker across the back window that said, “Support Our Troops. Impeach Bush.”

“There’s a difference,” I thought to myself, “Between getting caught with your pants down because you were off-guard and putting your bare ass up into the air with a target painted across it.” There are people out there who think it is “too soon” or “inappropriate” for this movie to be shown. Funny how they were silent about it being “too soon” for Farenheit 911. What would I like to say to Mr. SUV with his snazzy little red white and blue bumper sticker? “Support America. Go Fuck Yourself.

Don’t think I can express it any better than did Krista. When I see a “Clinton Lied, Nobody Died” bumper sticker, I just grin, remembering the one I had recently seen that said “I’ll forgive Jane Fonda When the Jews Forgive Hitler.”

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