Monday Minute
No. 235 | May 2, 2011

“Justice Has Been Done”

 
In my five decades and counting I’ve had the chance to witness quite a bit of history, but tonight I can say that I don’t remember a moment like this.  So often the most memorable events are the most tragic—the assassinations of the ’60s, the Oklahoma City bombing, and of course, 9/11.  There have been jubilant occasions, too—the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall—but as an occasion of justice and victory, today’s news, though on a smaller scale, feels like something we may not have experienced in the United States since the end of World War II.

Osama bin Laden is dead.  The news was shocking when it came—not because we’d given up the effort, but because we’d given up the thought that it would actually happen.  Yet now we get to think about it differently.  The effort to get bin Laden (not to be mistaken for our multiple missteps along the way) was not a lost cause, after all.  Suddenly, so it seems, we got it right. 

The past decade has been painful and troubling, filled with more futility and self-doubt than we ever would want to admit.  The demise of bin Laden puts an end to one chapter of our recent history.  Though time will tell what it means, for the moment it is reason to celebrate.

As I watched the news with my wife, who I met in the weeks following 9/11, and my son, who’s approximately the age that I was watching the events of November 1963, I felt a glimmer of hope that I have not felt in a long, long while.  Maybe we can move on now.  It’s about time.

“Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead”

Ding Dong!  The witch is dead. 
Which old witch? 
The Wicked Witch!
Ding Dong!  The Wicked Witch is dead.
Wake up, sleepy head,
Rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. 
She’s gone where the goblins go,
Below, below, below. 
Yo-ho, let’s open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong the merry-oh,
Sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead!

The most fitting movie for the occasion, it seems to me, is the most American of movies, The Wizard of Oz.  The witch is dead!  The nightmare is over.  The time to leave the storm cellar has come.

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The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Victor Fleming, director
“Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead”
Harold Arlen, music; E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, lyrics
The Munchkinland Parade
Judy Garland, Billie Burke, and the Munchkins

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Quote of note
Mayor:  Then this is a day of independence for all the Munchkins and their descendants!
Barrister:  If any!
Mayor: Yes, let the joyous news be spread!  The Wicked Old Witch at last is dead!
—Mayor of Munchkin City (Charles Becker), Barrister (“Little Billy” Rhodes), The Wizard of Oz (1939)

…58…59…60.