Who Would Have Imagined It?

How much of our current economic meltdown sprang from some one’s imagination? Or from a failure of imagination on the part of the rest of us? As we try to pull ourselves back from the brink, it might be wise ---and even productive----to put that question to members of Congress, to business executives, shareholders, regulatory watchdogs, the news media---and to ourselves, you know, us ordinary citizens.

At any moment--- for good or ill--- incredible deeds rooted in imagination shape and re-shape our world. And make us see anew what is possible. Two stunning examples stand out in my mind. Their only connection is a set of landmark buildings. My connection was as a reporter.

In 1968, on one of my first assignments for Channel 7 Eyewitness News, I took a camera crew to lower Manhattan where construction was underway on the Twin Towers site of the World Trade Center. All I remember of that assignment is how the sound of my voice on the film soundtrack made me almost sick to my stomach. That alien voice couldn’t possibly be mine, could it? Surely, there must have been a problem with the soundman’s equipment. But no, the slow, painful-to-listen-to voice was mine and the 6 o’çlock tv news audience would soon get a dose of it.

Fast forward to June 24, 1974. I and my camera crew are sent to cover a young Frenchman who is drawing crowds and stopping traffic in midtown Manhattan. He is juggling and performing magic tricks and aerial stunts on 59th Street and 5th Avenue along a stretch of sidewalk near the grand Plaza Hotel.

I’m not happy with this assignment. It seems like scraping the bottom of the barrel on a slow news day “Why am I the one they send on this corny stuff?” I grumble in the crew car as we make our way through heavy traffic, and unload the gear where a crowd is gathered.

I direct the cameraman, the electrician and the sound man (remember this was back in the days of 16mm film, before one-man-band video tape news) to get shots of the impressive Plaza Hotel, and the usually blasé New Yorkers--- now turned into laughing, applauding gawkers--- and a spritely young Frenchman who has the crowd in the palm of his hand. At one point, he stretches a tight rope between two trees, and to the crowd’s delight, proceeds to walk it. We capture all of this on film.

The man’s name is Phillipe Petit and his performance and personality win me over. This is not a bad story after all. So, microphone in hand, I approach the young artist and proceed to question him, or try to.

He just grins and shrugs, but says nothing. I keep trying. And when I give up, he laughs and hands me my wristwatch. The joke is on me. I never felt him relieve me of my watch. The crowd laps it up.

Fast forward, again. It’s August 7, 1974. I’m not due at work until late afternoon, and so I’m still lying in my bed. The radio is tuned to an all-news station. It’s 7:17am and a reporter is saying that a crowd has gathered at the foot of the Twin Towers. People are watching a man walk a tight rope between the two 110 story buildings. The man is Phillipe Petit. My heart speeds up. I am holding my breath. I am stretched out less than a foot off the floor, but I am as tense as if I were upright, walking that steel wire a quarter of a mile above the street. The daredevil up there is no stranger. He is the engaging street juggler from my non-interview news story. I cross my fingers and pray: “Please, please let him make it across that wire.”

He is up in the air for 45 minutes, walking, dancing and lying down on the wire.

This year marks the 35th anniversary of that thriller in the sky. Phillipe Petit is sought after for interviews. And "Man on Wire", the film documenting Petit’s exploit has won an Academy Award.

His book, "To Reach The Clouds" came out a while back (I bought it on sale and it was fun to read on pg99 his version of our encounter, somewhat different from my memory of it.) The words and photos in his book are gripping and terrifyingly beautiful. So powerful they bring the reader right up on that steel wire with him. Who could have imagined such a feat? Phillipe Petite did and carried it off. Brilliantly.

Fast forward, one more time. September 11, 2001. Two airplanes reduce the Twin Towers to rubble. In the aftermath of that terrible event, former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice and other Bush administration officials said ”no one could have imagined” flying a plane into the World Trade Center. But some people did imagine it, and they carried it out. There is imagination. And then there is failure of imagination.

In her 911 Commission testimony, Dr. Rice also said: “A band of vicious terrorists tried to decapitate our government, destroy our financial system, and break the spirit of America.”

The vicious terrorists of Dr. Rice’s description failed to accomplish their goal. But a band of greedy domestic robber barons may do that for them, abetted by a business-cozy US Congress, a corporate media and an unwitting citizenry. It is not foreign terrorists, but home-grown predators who have made our country less secure and its citizens angry and afraid. In their unbridled avarice they concocted sub-prime mortgage schemes of criminal proportions, schemes which have escalated and spiraled out of control and now threaten to unravel the US financial system along with the entire global economy. Who would have imagined it?

Did you? And when you think about the economy and the future of our country, what’s on your mind?