What To Write When You're Staring At A Blinking Cursor On A Blank Screen

<![CDATA[24 years ago, 19 jihadists hijacked four commercial airlines and turned them into missiles, killing just under 3,000 Americans in three cities, changing the world forever. The Hugh Hewitt Show was a 9am-Noon Eastern radio program, and Hugh and I were planning on doing a relatively silly show. Congress was on summer break, George W. Bush had finally gotten the keyboards replaced in the White House after the Clinton team had glued or removed all the W's, and politically speaking, nothing was going on. Hugh and I had played in a 100-hole fundraising golf tournament for Young Life, the Christian youth outreach ministry, the day before, and both of us had plenty of stories from the links, heavily exaggerated, ready to deliver to the radio audience. When the second plane hit the World Trade Center about a minute before we went live, all that went out the window. We knew we were at war, and American life would never be quite the same again. It was the hardest day of broadcast I've ever been a part of in my 30-plus year career.Yesterday was the second-hardest. Hugh had just interviewed Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the Nixon Library about her new book, Listening To The Law, and was winging his way back to the Beltway. Alex Marlow, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart.com, was filling in. We had a great show planned. I had about 20 clips of Democrats saying the most ridiculous things possible. It was going to be a fun show. As we came down the home stretch in the half-hour before going live, there was more than the normal amount of clutter going on in the studio. We had lighting issues, I was trying to pull one more cut to add to the mix, and Alex walked into the studio a little later than expected. He walked into the studio, put his bag down, was on his cellphone, and all I heard from my production room was, "Oh, my God." Everyone else in the studio hadn't picked up on it, yet, but I immediately knew something bad had happened. Within minutes, the internet, especially my X feed, was full of reports of our friend and colleague, Charlie Kirk, being shot at an event in Orem, Utah, 30 miles south of Salt Lake, at a community college called Utah Valley University. Seconds before air, we saw the first grainy video of the shot that hit Charlie. We were numb. The clock did not stop, although we prayed desperately that it would. We had to cover the worst breaking news story imaginable - the shooting, and potential assassination, of one of our own. Marlow isn't just an acquaintance of Charlie Kirk. Kirk wrote an essay for Breitbart.com about bias in high school textbooks, and noted how sad he was at the recent passing of Andrew in 2012. Marlow and Kirk became friends and stayed so until Charlie's murder in Utah yesterday. Yes, Charlie was a fearless debater. He would go anywhere and tackle any odds stacked against him, whether it be at Oxford or a community college in Utah. His famous edict was that all were welcome to engage him in debate, but if you disagreed, you were invited to come to the front of the line. Yes, Charlie was a fierce defender of MAGA conservatism. He was an avid reader, and was an autodidact. What he lacked in letters after his name, he more than made up for doing the research, studying, thinking, and then communicating issues that specifically resonated with younger Americans. What Charlie was above all else was an unapologetic Christian. Politics were his trade, but his faith was his passion. This is the Charlie Kirk I will remember.]]>