In this AP article about the attempted Times Square car-bombing, I was struck by this quote from Crysta Salinas, a 28-year-old woman from Houston who was visiting the area when police moved in to investigate the suspicious Nissan Pathfinder:
“No more New York.”
There’s not much context in the article, so it’s possible she was only bemoaning the inconvenience she experienced (she “was stuck waiting in a deli until 2 a.m. because part of a Marriott hotel was evacuated because of the bomb”). As we’ve learned from, say, polls finding that huge swaths of Republicans aren’t sure whether Obama was born in the U.S. or not, sometimes people make dramatic, exaggerated statements when they feel out of control in a situation and want to express their displeasure. Maybe she was being interviewed at 2 a.m. in said deli. I know I’d be displeased, in her shoes.
But if she was really saying that she is never willing to visit NYC again, just because some mental midgets tried to detonate an amateurishly constructed car bomb-well, I’m just shocked. I thought Americans were made of sterner stuff. I know Texans like to think they are. Does Ms. Salinas realize that hers is exactly the reaction sought by whoever did this? And that she’s giving it to them in response to what amounts to a head fake?
Fortunately, not everyone is looking for a bed to hide under.
“This is America. This is what we do,” said Earl Morriss of Seattle, who was sightseeing. “Nobody is going to stop us from living our lives and doing what we want to do.”
That’s a little more like it.