9/11 Memories

I will always associate 9/11 with Gallagher.

When I was a kid, I was a big fan of the comedian Gallagher.  I loved prop comedy, so his Sledge-O-Matic routine was especially hilarious to me.  I also loved how he made fun of words and pronunciations.  Some of his content wasn’t really appropriate for children, but my parents were cool with it.  We didn’t have cable growing up, but we had several of his specials someone had taped off of Showtime for us.   Some of his jokes were mildly racist, but I didn’t get the impression he was racist himself, so much as he just saw the humor in everything and loved having fun with stereotypes.  Which was typical for comedians, really, both then and now.

In August of 2001, I found out he would performing in downtown Nashville the following month.  It was the same arena where I used to attend wrestling matches as a teenager.  My wife had never seen his routine, so I hoped she was in for a treat.  We also brought one of my high school friends.  I wondered if Gallagher was still as funny as he used to be.  His signature act was so full of energy, I wondered if he’d slowed down as he got older.  Plus I was older and wondered if my tastes had changed.  But good or bad, the three of us looked forward to a night out.

So… between the time we bought the tickets and the night of the concert, 9/11 happened.  I was on my way to work when I heard about it on the radio.  They said an airplane had hit the World Trade Center.  I didn’t realize it was a passenger plane yet; in my mind I was picturing a private, one-person plane, maybe an amateur pilot who got off course.  When I got to work I immediately turned on the radio, and soon heard about the second plane hitting.  Now we knew it wasn’t an accident.

It was hard waiting to get off work that night.  I wanted to get home so I could e-mail a friend who lives in New York, and make sure he was all right.  He was fine.  He’d made a lot of posts about it on a message board I frequented at the time.  I found out that somebody had already posted a T-shirt in an online store that said, “I flew into the World Trade Center, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”  The seller’s location was NYC, and (supposedly) the shirt had already been posted before the second plane hit.  People on the message board were furious, but my New Yorker friend advised them to let that one go.  “This is how New Yorkers grieve,” he said.  “We make jokes.”  I guess I’m not cut out for NYC.

It was a while before anybody was in the mood to laugh again.  A lot of sitcoms didn’t air that week.  When time for the Gallagher concert came around later that month, I almost wanted to give away the tickets.  In retrospect I wish I had.  But just enough time had passed that I was ready to see if I could laugh again.  I should have realized that 9/11 affected comedians too.

Gallagher was not funny that night.  He was angry.  He told a few jokes, but he spent the majority of the time making racist rants about people from the Middle East.  He must have been funny to someone, because he did get some laughs.  There was an extremely drunk woman behind me who spent the concert laughing so loud we could barely hear Gallagher.  But I don’t remember any actual jokes.  Several times he mentioned wanting to bomb the Arabs back to the stone age.  By this time, the world knew that the attack was the result of terrorists, rather than a government, but he was still happy to imagine an entire country being bombed to rubble.  He didn’t even do the Sledge-O-Matic bit.  He got the hammer out, and then let audience members line up and smash things.

I don’t blame him for being angry; we all were.  I’m not even sure I blame him for the racist bits – everyone was hurting at the time, and wanting to retaliate against someone, anyone within reach.  I’ve seen the same misaimed anger on crime shows.  The family of the victim often wants to convict the first guy the police catch, even when it becomes obvious they’re innocent.  Because it’s easier to punish the target in front of you, than to come to terms with the killer still being on the loose.  And it’s easier to say “Let’s blow up the continent these bad guys might be on” than to accept that it might take years to find the terrorists.  People think they want justice, when they really just want closure.

So I don’t blame Gallagher for feeling the same.  But I do blame him for not simply cancelling the concert.  He had to know he wouldn’t be funny, he had to know he wasn’t in the mood for comedy.  Maybe it was therapeutic for him, getting to air his grievances in front of an audience.  But it’s not our job to pay for his therapy.  I’m not mad – How can I be mad about a stupid concert when so many lives were lost earlier that month?  I’m hardly the first person to have to sit through a disappointing concert.  I was lucky to be alive and attending bad concerts; too many people weren’t.

But for me, Gallagher and 9/11 have a permanent connection in my head, and I can no longer look at him without thinking about the tragic event.  Maybe he doesn’t deserve it, but he will never be funny to me again.