FINAL INSTALLMENT:  “IF YOU CANNOT FIND OSAMA: BOMB IRAQ!”

By Connie Corcoran Wilson, M.S.

(*Recap of our previous three installments:  Connie sings “If You Cannot Find Osama: Bomb Iraq” on public radio station WVIK (see 4/25 blog entry). Station has a cow. Connie takes song to Penguin's comedy club. Patrons have a penguin. Connie takes song and accordion to anti-war rally. Students in attendance fall off chairs laughing. Husband is not amused. Now, Connie includes the story in her book Both Sides Now, and attempts to begin marketing her mostly-funny book….only to learn that……..READ ON…..(The excitement mounts)…..!

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If you want to read the ENTIRE book by this Uber-Patriot (Whoops! Bad choice of words. Sort of like W's “crusade” slip. My bad! Make that SUPER-PATRIOT), order Connie's book at www.ConnieCorcoranWilson.com or at Amazon.com or at Barnes&Noble.com, or from the shelves at Border's Book Store in Davenport, Iowa….It's funny! It's serious! It's Patriotic! It's all those things in a delicious mélange of penguin and cow!…

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HEY…and leave some comments on the blog for me….OK, already? I'm working my fingers off for you, here, but do you write? Do you call? Nooooooo. You CAN write me at EINNOC10@Aol.com if it's nice stuff. If it's insulting and nasty, send, instead, to the http://www.WhiteHouse.gov. When you do write to EINNOC10, put “Comment from Blog” in the title part…Thanks for hanging in there through this entire story!

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 If you are still reading about the “night the lights went down on Iowa” (i.e., the night I sang the title song on the air at WVIK (which is actually in Illinois, but which carries to nearby Iowa) …and suffered the consequences…let me now tell you, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story”…..

 But, first, I must take you back in time to 9/11/01, when I was at a Sylvan Learning Systems Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, residing on the thirty-eighth floor of Baltimore's tallest (and newest) hotel, directly across the street from Baltimore's version of the World Trade Center. Terrorists had just hit the twin towers of New York City with commercial airliners. I realized that life as we knew it would never be the same, and sat, clad only in the towel from my just-completed shower, watching in horror!

 I didn't leave my room for hours, watching both assaults on the Twin Towers “live” until I was called by my employee, Chris, from the hotel lobby.

 “Aren't you coming down?” she asked.

 It was now about noon. I explained that there wasn't a workshop or a Sylvan speaker of any kind who could hold my attention when history was being made on television, and our world was seemingly spinning out of control! 

 She said, “They evacuated every floor above the fourth floor hours ago. The authorities aren't sure whether there are any other Eastern seaport cities that have been targeted by the terrorists, and they are taking the precaution because this is the tallest building in Baltimore, directly across the street from their World Trade Center.”

 Oh. Well. Nobody had 'splained it to me like THAT, before!

 I quickly hustled down to the lobby and we set off to find a restaurant that was still open. Which wasn't easy. We ended up at Hooters, the only restaurant operating in Baltimore's Inner Harbor on 9/11/01.

 How surreal is it be watching the airplane attacks on the World Trade Center replaying, over and over, on national television, while a jiggly blonde in tight, short shorts asks you for your order in Hooters-speak?

 “What's wrong with this picture?” I asked Chris, my companion.

 “W is exhorting the nation to remain calm, and I am ordering buffalo chicken wings from someone in microscopically tight shorts with the name 'Bambi.'”

 As we ate, I began hatching a scheme to do something to help. Anything. I think we all felt this way on 9/11. First, I tried to get the Sylvan franchisees present at these pre-conference activities organized to give blood. (This never quite materialized for a variety of reasons, which seemed mainly to be because it had been my idea and the PTB were angry with me for saying, “Where's OUR Ronald McDonald house?” at a conference meeting the day before).

And so it was, on this fateful moment in our nation's history, that I hatched the idea of a patriotic “Sing-Along” money-raising event called “Celebrate Citizenship!”, which would feature the BEST junior high school band in the state of Illinois (the East Moline, Illinois, Glenview Junior High School Band had just received that honor), speakers, things sold to profit the orphaned children of the WTC bombing victims. All this would occur in just two months' time, on Veterans' Day, 11/11/01.

 So it was that, after two months of organizing, I did secure the Glenview Middle School Band, under the direction of Director James Weir. I rented the Pleasant Valley High School auditorium (stadium seating), putting up all insurance money(s) and payment fees. Local Channel 4 WHBF newswoman Andrea Zinga signed on first to MC and speak. Then, the Daily Dispatch agreed to print thousands of flyers to publicize the event. We secured “Happy” Joe Whitty, local pizza king, as a speaker and his daughter Krystal to sing. John Marx, local columnist for the Dispatch spoke. A young sports reporter from KWQC, Channel 6, named Ryan Nolan took part. (I was kidding him, though, when I said that one of my students had brought a baseball for him to sign. He failed to “get” the joke, and, afterwards, said, “Where's the kid with the baseball?”) There were Sylvan kids everywhere….just not with baseballs. (That was a joke, son.)

Our Sylvan students had written about the WTC bombing(s) and several of them read touching selections, in between the musical numbers, where we all sang our little hearts out, accompanied by a full band. Except for a couple that I had to play the piano to accompany, because Jim Weir didn't have the arrangement(s) for a couple songs.

We sold red, white and blue popcorn. We sold patriotic pins. Krispy Kreme doughnuts gave us doughnuts at cost to sell. Happy Joe's donated ice cream. We sold tee shirts. Any profit from the sales of these items on November 11, 2001, …appropriately, Veteran's Day and two months out from the bombings…. was to be matched by our corporate parent company and would go into a “special” fund, administered by Sylvan Learning Systems, a fund for the education of the orphaned children of the World Trade Center victims. I have always felt that was the company's response to, among other things, my nagging that we needed to do more community-oriented charitable acts. Good for them! Good for us! Finally, “our” Ronald McDonald house!

 So, sing we did. And raise funds we did…thousands of dollars, in a burst of patriotism which would soon be crushed by the subsequent actions of our bumbling war-mongering pResident.
 
 It cost, me, personally, as the CEO of Sylvan Learning Center in Bettendorf, Iowa, several hundred dollars to put this patriotic event together (permits, insurance, items to sell, tee shirts for band and for sale, pins, advertising costs, etc.)

 I wonder how much Dwyer & Michaels personally shelled out to “help” after 9/11 and what they did, at that time, to “Celebrate Citizenship”? Because the radio duo, when asked to possibly interview me on their show and cut commercials from the “live” interview, pronounced me “unpatriotic” because I dared question the U.S. bombing of Iraq and Bush's getting us into another Viet Nam quagmire. And, boys: I'm old enough to remember Viet Nam up close and personal? Are you?

 They said I was wrong to dare to say, way back before the bombing began, that perhaps we, as a nation, were acting on wrong information and were making the wrong response. I wasn't “supporting our troops,” even though I had just, also, sent off several CARE packages, containing sun glasses from a recent party, for one thing, and playing cards, and hand lotion, and all sorts of things that I had read were wanted. Old unpatriotic me.

 So, imagine my surprise, when, in attempting to get the area's Top Morning Duo, Dwyer and Michaels, to cut (really expensive) paid commercials for my book Both Sides Now, I was told that “Dwyer and Michaels don't want to interview you or do any spots for your book because you are unpatriotic.” (This from the ClearChannel representative, whose e-mail I still have.)
And what caused this judgment of MY lack of patriotism?

 Why the ditty, “If You Cannot Find Osama: Bomb Iraq!”, of course, which I didn't even write, but merely sang, because it was just too good not to be heard.

 When logical and thoughtful dissent over rash actions (like bombing Iraq without cause) is cause to label good citizens like me “unpatriotic,”….(ME who organized the “Celebrate Citizenship” event, single-handedly, at her own cost, and who loves her country dearly)…Hitler's deputy Himmler would be proud, because that is exactly what he said one should do to dissenters: pronounce them “unpatriotic” and let them be swept away and put down in the militaristic fervor and hysteria of the moment”.

Let's just say that I don't listen to that station any more. In fact, ClearChannel, in general, is pretty much off my list. And I don't mean my Christmas list. 

If you want to continue listening, go ahead, because, for the moment, this is still a free country where we can each speak our minds. But just barely. BUT, for my part, I took my business to B100 and Jeff and Missy in the Morning, who did a wonderful job both interviewing me and making commercials from the interview.

Jeff and Missie also thought “If You Cannot Find Osama: Bomb Iraq!” AND my book were amusing.
I hope you do, too.

Thanks for reading! Keep those cards and letters coming. And watch for me on Mondays on the www.blogforiowa.com.
  
The End

Copyright 2004 by Connie Corcoran Wilson, M.S. All rights reserved. You may recopy this article, as long as you do not change the content and give full attribution. And don't forget that the story itself is in Connie's book Both Sides Now, available, as stated earlier, from all major bookstores online and at Connie's website www.ConnieCorcoranWilson.com. See you next Monday!