David Letterman's Remarks, 9/17/01
inothernews:meredithnyc:lizlemon:
(Video here, HT Throwingthings)
… The 20 years we’ve been here in NYC we’ve worked closely with police officers and fire fighters and fortunately most of us don’t really have to think too much about what these men and women do on a daily basis and the phrase “New York’s Finest” and “New York’s Bravest” you know, did it mean anything to us personally, first-hand, well maybe, hopefully but probably not, but boy it means something now doesn’t it, they put themselves in harm’s way to protect people like us and the men and women from the fire fighters and the police department who are lost are going to be missed by this city for a very, very long time, and my hope for myself and everybody else not only in New York but everywhere is that we never ever take these people for granted absolutely never take them for granted.
I just want to go through this, and again forgive me if this is more for me than it is for people watching, I’m sorry but I just I have to go through this. The reason we were attacked, the reason these people are dead, these people are missing and dead, they weren’t doing anything wrong. They were living their lives, they were going to work, they were travelling, they were doing what they normally do. As I understand it — and my understanding of this is vague at best — another smaller group of people stole some airplanes and crashed them into buildings, and we’re told they were zealots fueled by religious fervor, religious fervor, and if you live to be a thousand years old will that make any sense to you, will that make any goddamn sense?
(Dave takes a deep breath to prevent himself form crying)
I’ll tell ya about a thing that happened last night, there’s a town in Montana by the name of Shoto. It’s about 100 miles south of the Canadian border and I know a little something about this town, it’s 1600 people, 1600 people and it’s a – an ag-business community which means farming and ranching and Montana‘s been in the middle of a drought for, I don’t know, three years and if you got no rain you can’t grow anything and if you cant grow anything you can’t farm, if you can’t grow anything you can’t ranch because the cattle don’t have anything to eat and that’s the way life is in this small town. 1600 people, last night at the high school auditorium in Shoto, Montana they had a rally -– home of the Bulldogs by the way — they had a rally for NYC and not just a rally for NYC but a rally to raise money, to raise money for NYC and if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the spirit the United States then I cant help ya, (Dave tears up) I’m sorry.
(Audience applauds)
And I have one more thing to say and then thank god Regis is here so we have something to make fun of. (Audience laughs) If you didn’t believe it before and it’s easy to understand how you might have been skeptical on this point if you didn’t believe it before you can absolutely believe it now, NYC is the greatest city in the world. (Audience applauds) We’re going to – we’re gonna try and feel our way through this and we’ll just see how it goes take it a day at a time, we’re lucky enough tonight to have two fantastic representatives of this town, Dan Rather and Regis Philbin and we’ll be right back.
