One of the drawbacks I faced while writing this memo was that having lived no more than a year in the US, I still don’t have the necessary experience and knowledge to talk about a society that in some ways was and still is new and alien to me. But as I started thinking more and more about the assignment, I recalled my first initial impression of American society.

It was one of shock and amazement at the openness of the press and the media. Though I had read about the First Amendment and the freedom of speech, I was still unprepared for the society’s ability to criticize and comment on itself, its government and its people. Whether it was news, television shows, music, books, Americans seemed to have the enviable quality of self-criticism and the ability to laugh at themselves. So on the anniversary of the bombing, I would like to see a story on whether that ability has changed or if it has become stronger than ever.

In yesterday’s San Jose Mercury News, I read a story on how advertising has changed, how several advertisement campaigns have been trashed as the advertiser and the company feels that they were in bad taste after the bombing. Then yesterday on the local news I saw a story about a rapper who, on his album cover, had chosen to show the destruction of the World Trade Center as a protest against capitalism. After the bombing he decided to recall his album and change the cover. Some television shows like the West Wing are airing special episodes related to the bombing.

So as an aftermath of the bombing, I would like to see an article on the effects or changes in the popular media. I would like to see if the tone of most television and magazines on popular culture is subdued or if media has started to recover its irreverence. I would like to see how the event dominates talk shows, how comedians like Leno and Letterman, who seemed to make fun of everyone and everything, are dealing with it.

I have heard several people make the comment that life will never be the same, so I would like an article questioning that. Since, in a way, this is the first time that Americans have suffered from such an act of war on their own soil, it would be interesting to see how fast and well the media recovers from it. In that regard I would also like to go back in history to WWII, Pearl Harbor, Vietnam and take a look at how the popular media coped with those events by making war movies, television shows like M.A.S.H, writing books and to see if these shows did provide a catharsis for the public.