Ellen Goodman: Is Orange The New Color Of Safety?

[matcom]

<snip>

Are we safe, safer, safest, yet? What is safe enough? If we won't live in fear, don't we have to live with fear?

This is a country that is, by every actuarial table, extremely safe. But it's also a country where toothpaste comes with a warning label and a mad cow can set off a vegetarian stampede.

Our reactions to the current orange alert ranged across a bell curve of fear. A shoebox on library steps in New York caused an evacuation of 5,000 people. It held a stuffed snowman. A mayor told an NPR reporter that his city was "on the front line of the war on terrorism." His city was Peoria, Ariz.

At the same time, Americans went home for the holidays. And in D.C. a colleague blithely brushed away the alert by saying "orange is the new yellow" as if it were a fashion statement.

Part of the problem is that safety is not just relative, it's mobile. If we protect against anthrax, does the terrorist move to smallpox? If we hire air guards to beware of terrorists infiltrating the flight deck, will terrorists infiltrate the air guards? Or hop a freight?

In safety, as in thermodynamics, you cannot get to absolute zero. Or as Paul Simon sings, the nearer the destination the more you keep sliding away.

The biggest struggle with the "sense" of vulnerability is where to put our dollars and our worries. As a member of the duck-and-cover generation, my worst case scenarios are nuclear, and, as John Edwards has said most strongly, I do not rest assured. At the same time, I feel more manipulated than comforted by the way we launched a war against fear. The arrest of Saddam makes me feel delighted but not safer.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/01/04/so_is_orange_the_new_color_of_safety/

[H2O Man]

1. "Do not be afraid"....

....and "do not worry" are two messages repeated several times in the gospel of Matthew. For those who are offended by the right-wing republican interpretation of christianity, I'd note that this gospel has numerous almost exact quotes from Gautama Buddha. Not enough for you? Okay: "If you get down and you worry every day, You're saying prayers to the devil, I say."- the prophet Bob Marley. This is true: when this administration says yellow alert! red alert! deadly flu! mad calf dis-ease! it is the devil's mantra! Learn the truth! Listen to Bob Marley if you don't want to read a bible or meditate with a statue in front of you. But don't be afraid. Voter registration and education is the democratic mantra for helping us feel more secure. How happy will you be, brothers & sisters, when we kick that devil outta our white house in the fall? Put on the Wailers! Rastaman Vibrations! Think positive!