9/11 Tribute Fever - Good intention, bad result

Great Debates
1

And I’m not entirely sure I believe in the good intention part, but that’s not what this is about.

Something about all this 9/11 coverage, rehash, remembrance, etc. was really getting under my skin, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.

There were the obvious things that have been mentioned here in recent days, the overkill, the questionable sincerity, the exploitation factor, the general glurginess of it all, but there was still something else.

Then last night it came to me. However unintentional, memorializing this day, re-experiencing the shock and the grief, rehashing the stories, reliving the magic, as it were, boils down to * glorifying the acts of a murderer. * And don’t you know he’s sucking up every second of it.

Of course, it is understood that when people die, especially so horribly and spectacularly, there is a natural desire to somehow memorialize them and show that we care, yes, yes, yes… but is that really the majority of what is going on publicly today, and in the media? Isn’t it really more about elevating this attack to a very special plane reserved for very few things? What we are doing, as one of the Salon readers said, is turning ourselves into the world’s #1 victims. And in the process, we are sending a message to Osama that he got what he was looking for. It seems quite obvious to me that the more we rehash it and beat our breasts over it and replay it and declare “Never forget!” (like we could!), the more gleeful he would become, the more powerful he would feel, the more delighted everyone who is our enemy and supported this action would be.

If I had the power, I would stop the media from doing anything special today. The only things I’d support would be quiet, low-key memorial tributes specifically about particular people who lost their lives. I’d rather this day would pass pretty much like any other. In terms of the message that is being sent, I think it would be better to send the message of “You don’t matter, asshole, and we aren’t going to give you the twisted satisfaction of glorifying your act in any way. September 11 ain’t special at all, because YOU aren’t special. Fuck you, you don’t mean shit.”

I probably expressed myself poorly, I’m in a hurry and I’m just tossing it out there for discussion, but does anyone get what I mean? I mentioned it to a few people IRL and they picked up on it immediately and agreed with me, so I know I’m not completely crazy.

stoid

2

Ooops, Mod? The title is screwy, if someone could add a 9, please? Ta.

3

Gotta wonder what they’re gonna do next year. And the year after. Remember when the news orgs. made that dumb mistake and started every newscast with what day of the hostage crisis it was.

Just thank our lucky stars that nothing really dreadful happened, attack wise. (Probably our orange alert scared them off, they weren’t expecting a move like that)

But if they had done, with the War Hawks cooing in Our Leaders ear, this morning we would be bombing everybody but the Baptists.

4

9/11/02 filled me with dread. Not because of rememberance or fear of future attacks, but because I am so very, very tired of the sappy, tacky, constant tributes and rehashes.

Enough already. I can feel sad and think about what happened without having to face a whole day of human interest stories about survivors and a constant live link to Ground Zero.

5

That’s it in a nutshell.

Not counting those in a coma, or with serious head injuries. OK, maybe amnesia, brain tumors, concussions. But other than comas, serious head injuries, amnesia, brain tumors, concussions – has anyone else forgotten? Oh yeah, drunks and addicts. Other than comas… Stone Age tribesmen! Dammit, must start over.

I watched the 24 hour news channels 6 hours a day six months after 9/11 thinking…ah…I don’t really know what I was thinking. I just know that it made me bite the inside of my mouth.

The scary part about that is, I saw a big terrorist attack of some kind coming, and had for years. It was building from the barracks attacks in the 80s and 90s, the embassys, the USS Cole, and others. I can only imagine how the disengaged perceived the 9/11 attacks.

Remembering? No Problem. Forgetting? Problem.

Exactly. To…Yesterday (damn insomnia, changing verbs) was a tough day for the families of the victims. They need support. Seeing the poor guy jump off the WTC all over again probably did not help.

6

I’m sure that Osama bin Laden currently has nothing better to do than to see how many hours of coverage MSNBC and CNN devote to 9/11/01, so he can call in his lieutenants and say, “See! I even got them to pre-empt Passions! Haaaahahahahahahaha!”

:rolleyes:

Next up: Every time you view the Zapruder film, Lee Harvey Oswald’s ghost gets its wings.

7

I got so sick of the unending news coverage that I turned my television off JUST LIKE I HAD TO DO LAST YEAR. All of the channels were doing it to death. People complained loudly not long after 9/11 that the media was overstepping its bounds with a bombardment of coverage. Did they learn during the intervening year? Alas, no.

I know exactly why the coverage bothered me: it was diverting time away from other, more pressing matters. It would have been fine to take an hour out of the day to run footage and remember. But there’s enough news, real news to fill the whole day. Why not talk about our failing hospitals and ways to fix our health care system (or lack of one)? Why not talk about any number of things for the rest of the day? Instead, too many channels were eaten up by memorial services. The LA Times had a nice section in the middle of the newspaper with a photo of the WTC in flames.

I got a new viewpoint on it when I read an article about a girl who lost her father in the WTC. She said that she likes the Food Network now, because it has no news. It didn’t show the buildings falling over and over, crushing her father to death.

It seems as though our media has no sense of proportion. If it’s going to be done, they’re gonna do it to death.