Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 20

A20 Sunday, October 14, 2001 WAR ON TERRORISM: AMERICA RESPONDS Austin American-Statesman THE WEEK IN REVIEW Anthrax made news, but economy kept our attention allow critics of the United States tc? express their views? Three-quarters answered yes. Although the terrorists explained their attacks in religious imagery, one in 10 Americans belonging to mainline Protestant denominations thought U.S. politicians should use more religious language in their public statements. Irony is an essential means for comprehending modern politics-and life, especially in a country that" supports both a war and war pro- testers. Almost two years ago, British foreign service officer Robert Cooper wrote: "What else is there left for the citizens of a post-heroic, post-imperial, post-modern society? Provided it is tinged with humanity, irony is not such a bad thing.

It suggests a certain modesty abouf oneself, one's values and one's asJ; pirations. At least irony is unlikely to be used to justify programmes of, conquest or extermination." c. By week's end, U.S. and British troops trained for winter warfare were being shipped to the Middle East. Staff writers and editors Steve Scheibal, Jerry Mahoney, Raeanne Martinez, 6.W.

Babb, Shonda Novak, LaDonna Massad, Mary Ann Roser and Janet Jacobs contributed to this report. You may reach 1 Bill Bishop at bbishopstatesman.com or at 445-3634. Republican Mark Earley clashed over taxes and roads in the Virginia governor's race. Warner would allow Washington suburbs to raise a local sales tax to pay for $900 million in transportation projects. In a one-hour debate, Earley barked at Warner for raising taxes 15 times.

On Thursday, it was one month since the attacks. And it's been one week since connoisseurs of cable TV ads noticed offers for the "American Freedom Collection," a $14.99 combo pack of two flags, four flag stickers and a lapel pin. America's commercial spirit is indomitable. Country music singers in Nashville repackaged patriotic albums. Gamblers paid up to $45 a pop at the Harrah's Casino in Cherokee, N.C., to hear Lee Greenwood belt out the Gulf War theme song "God Bless the U.S.

General Motors urged buyers to "Keep America Rolling," and Es-cada issued its "Stars and Stripes" clothing collection: "a mix of wit and charm, accented with rhine-stones and sequins what the American woman uses to make her dreams of freedom come true." People are spending more time at home. People are sewing and baking. Grande Communications reports its customers are hunkered down on the phone and in front of HBO. Retail sales of all products in September were down 2.4 percent from September 2000, the biggest drop in a decade. But sales of candies and DVD players were up.

Bush doesn't like leaks to the press, never has. Texans know their former governor's legendary demand for loyalty and discipline. Now, so do Congress and the TV networks. Earlier in the week, Bush cut off most of Congress from classified information after material from one briefing found its way to The Washington Post. Bush later relented, but the traditional wartime conflict between the press and the administration was under way.

Bush administration officials Wednesday asked the TV networks to edit videotaped statements from bin Laden and his followers. The networks said they would. On Thursday, the administration asked newspapers to refrain from printing full transcripts of these statements. Editors said they'd think about it. The game was on.

The Washington Post, quoting sources in the CIA, reported on financial ties between bin Laden and the Taliban. At Bush's news conference Thursday night, reporters pressed for details about the FBI's weekend terrorist alert. Bush talked about than Osama bin Laden but 35 people fell sick from the pepper spray authorities used to subdue the 23-year-old man. This is the country of antibacterial soap, antibacterial shelf paper, antibacterial garbage bags, so the scare easily took hold. People asked their doctors for prescriptions of Cipro, an antibiotic that can treat anthrax.

Others bought the drug over the Internet, 100 pills for a mere $449. In the eastern Kentucky town of Inez, several residents took letters with Minnesota postmarks to the sheriff's office. "We called the FBI, and they told us how to open them with gloves and a surgical mask," a deputy told the Lexington Herald-Leader, "and they turned out to be free samples of Folgers coffee." If the concern with anthrax was hysteric, politics remained mundane. Everything may have changed since Sept. 11, but elections still turn on potholes and taxes.

At a televised debate in Houston on Wednesday night, mayoral challengers Chris Bell and Orlando Sanchez blamed incumbent Lee Brown for the road construction projects that have slowed traffic to a dribble of cold syrup. They argued about taxes and two November ballot initiatives on light rail. Democrat Mark Warner and smoke and caves and "evildoers," but provided little information about what the government knew or had done. The Onion, a weekly satirical magazine, reported, "Responding to the threats facing America's free democratic system, White House officials called upon Americans to stop exercising their democratic One month ago, several New York literary types declared the Sept. 11 attacks had ended the "age of irony." Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter later said he really meant to announce that the "age of ironing" was over.

But the notion took hold that the brutality of the attacks made cynicism obsolete and irony dispensable. We were nicer now. We talked to one another more. We were friendlier. Everyone felt it.

But irony may have been prematurely cast aside. Irony is a device for pulling together two, sometimes contradictory, thoughts. We say one thing but mean another. That's irony. It's a way to deal with ambiguity, to make sense out of confusion.

Americans support the war and Bush with near uniformity. They also support the war protesters. Should the country allow anti-war protests, asked the Pew Research Center? About 71 percent of respondents said yes. Should we Continued from Al "At some level, things are normal, even if they're not the same," said Kevin Dickson, a community adviser at University of Texas apartments on Lake Austin Boulevard. The percentage of people paying close attention to the news hit a high of 67 percent, but it had dropped since Sept.

11, according to the Pew Research Center. Bouts of depression, which affected 70 percent of Americans just after the attacks, was then afflicting just 42 percent of us. The war had begun in Afghanistan. Things were normal. Before Sept.

11, the most important issue to Americans was the economy. After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Gallup found little change. Nine of 10 Americans still said the economy was extremely or very important, running just five points behind terrorism. If the war in Afghanistan was remote, the wobbling economy was as close as a job or a neighbor. Hotels in Dallas were at 47.4 percent capacity in September, the lowest level of occupancy since the dark, days of 1986.

Nationally, employers cut 199,000 workers from their payrolls, the worst decline in employment in a decade. Since January, 800,000 people have been laid off. The nation's exports have dropped by a percentage point from the previous year, the equivalent of $100 billion. The downturn was hurting everyone, but reporters found that the recession worked hardest on the poor. The head of the hotel and restaurant workers' union told The Wall Street Journal that his industry was the nation's largest employer of single parents, immigrants and "people working paycheck-to-paycheck." A third of the union's 265,000 members had lost their jobs, includingmany who had just clawed their way off welfare.

When a Florida man contracted anthrax, the nation caught a case of paranoia. By noon Tuesday, the Austin Fire Department had responded to five hazardous material alerts from people worried about possible anthrax contamination. The items weren't contaminated, nor was an envelope in Corsicana that was briefly the object of an investigation. A deranged man sprayed liquid on passengers in the Washington subway, causing a brief panic. The spray, a detergent, didn't hurt anyone it was more Mr.

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