http://www.nypost.com/seven/01092007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/smell_of_ter ror_opedcolumnists_john_podhoretz.htm
SMELL OF TERROR By JOHN PODHORETZ January 9, 2007 -- ON the message boards of urbanbaby.com, the very fashionable Web site populated by the often shockingly well-to-do Manhattan parents of young kids, the smell of gas that permeated Manhattan island yesterday morning caused a virtual riot. There were hundreds and hundreds of messages posted there within an hour of the smell's emergence. The first word came at 9:14 a.m.: "Anyone in Midtown smell a gas leak? I smell it in my office (45th and 5th), and my husband said that 30 Rock reeks of it, too." "Why isn't everyone panicking about the gas smell?" wrote one poster. "I am usually pretty level-headed, even worked until 5 p.m. on 9/11, but I am totally freaked out by this." "I was single on 9/11," wrote another. "Now with children, just the unknown of this gas smell is driving me into a near panic. Can't imagine what it would have been like to have children during scarier times." In a discussion of whether to flee from work, one poster offered this: "I would have left in a 9/11 situation today, but this was entirely different - what do you do if the air from Battery Park City to the Upper West Side is poisoned? Do you stay put? Do you run to get kids? Are they safer in school? The fact that the smell was so strong in my office - and equally strong miles away - has totally unnerved me." This post from a suburban ex-New Yorker generated rage among the city's Manhattanites: "I am so happy we got out of NYC last year. I'm sure the gas smell is nothing to really worry about (or maybe it is?) but this is just so telling of what's yet to come for NYC." Someone responded by calling the poster a nasty word. Her response: "No, just realistic. Sorry. I'm glad we're not in NYC anymore, because we all know something is going to happen someday, probably sooner than later." And there we are: Something is going to happen someday, probably sooner than later. If the gas smell had permeated Kansas City or Dallas or Seattle, people would surely have been speculating about an al Qaeda connection. But it means something else, something different, when such a thing happens in Manhattan - the location of two previous Islamofascist terrorist attacks in the past 14 years. The fact that Mayor Bloomberg went before the public and offered no solution to the mystery only enhanced the eerie quality of the entire incident. How could what happened be so quickly dismissed as benign if its source and origin remained inexplicable? It reminded many of the Urban Baby posters of the strange odiferous event in October 2005 when a bizarre sweet smell similar to maple syrup suddenly filled the air, then vanished as suddenly as it had come. The maple-syrup mystery was never solved, and became the source of some pretty decent jokes in the days and weeks afterward - Nick Paumgarten of the New Yorker noted a blog entry that dubbed the incident "Eggoterrorism." It's easy to joke about a sweet smell. It's harder to joke about the smell of natural gas (or, rather, the odor of the chemical added to natural gas to indicate a leak) in any way except mordantly. As this Urban Baby poster did: "Can't you just see a terrorist about to strike a giant match?" Yes. We can. [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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