Well, generally speaking, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and the like aren’t considered acts of terrorism so no heightened security is warranted. Just like a sheriff from bumfuck can’t come waltzing into a crime scene in another jurisdiction, even if he wants to help, but would be welcomed if it were a natural disaster.
Just because it’s the anniversary of a tragic event doesn’t validate putting in writing the corniest cheesiest stuff you can dream up.
Not much.
Another day at the office. Came in, made coffee, shot the shit about football.
The most interesting thing for me to watch over the past 6 years was oberserving how crassly we’ll use any event for political gain, retail sales, and movie marketing. Clearly, in the wake of this, there can be no event that people won’t exploit for their own gain.
And, it really exposed the people amongst us who I always suspected walked around in fear of the world, but were otherwise able to keep it hidden.
I’ve been perusing the old Doper threads on this over the last few days, and the thing that just comes to mind is just how lucky I am right now, in this moment. It was a scary and horrifying day, but it’s not a day that we have to live over and over again for the rest of our lives. The sun is shining outside and I have peace. On this day my greatest feeling is gratitude that life isn’t like that every day. Things could always be so much worse than now.
thanks Annie-Xmas, I never read that thread before since I joined a few months after. Wow, strange to go back and feel that panic again. Crazy
I understand how Nava felt. I can be amused, in a deeply ironic way.
I can also understand why we rejected the aid: we had enough shit to deal with, without a group of people from another country coming in. Trust me when I say the thought was appreciated, but the bodies wouldn’t be. Hell, the dogs alone would have to go into quarantine, I think. (I know they do when they go to England.)
I remember the day of and the day after. The Deegan shut down, exit after exit, the roads empty.
Nothing on the road. No taxis. No cars. Nothing at all. It was like the Bomb went off.
I made that post earlier just before I went to a memorial service for a friend who didn’t get out. He’s not the only friend I’ve lost, over the years, not the only one I lost by senseless violence, not the only one I lost suddenly. Not even the only one I’ve lost by enemy action.
But I remember him this day.
And I’m going to say what I said, back the first time they tried to blow up the Towers. “It can happen to us any day. Every day, I go to work where the nukes are aimed, where a thousand thousand maniacs want to kill us all. And I will not, I will never let it change how I behave. Because if you do, they do win. Fight terror.”
Just like every other year, the pedestrian tourists clogged the West Side highway overpass, so it took me longer than usual to get to work. Due to the pouring rain, there were fewer camera crews, less grandstanding, and thankfully, less noise.
The weather was better in 2001, that’s for sure.
Even downtown, life has gone on.
Pretty much, yes.
It was a shocking tragedy, but it didn’t change my world. It seems to have changed other people’s worlds and then they, through their actions, have changed mine. It wasn’t inevitable, and for the most part it wasn’t reasonable.
People are going to think I’m horribly callous, but here goes.
It really, really sucked. It was horrible. It was awful. My heart went out to everybody involved, especially those who lost family.
But it was six years ago. Do we have to have this fanfare about it every year? I’m not minimizing people’s personal pain, but I do think having the same lengthy ceremonies and stuff every year is just drawing out the drama and making it worse for those who were really badly hurt by it.
I’ve lost family under (personally) unexpected, horrible, dramatic circumstances. But life goes on, and you pick up your pain and you go on. Why can’t we, as a country, do so? I bet that’s what the people who did this would hate the most.
I’m with whiterabbit. It’s way past time for people to stop indulging in the tragedy porn of 9/11 year after year after year, particularly those who have no personal connection to it.
Actually, at work today a bunch of us were saying that holding a fire drill would be a more appropriate way to mark the day than another ceremony full of exploitative politicians. Would give people something to do, with the added bonus that that something might actually be useful in a future emergency. In 1993 it took what, 7-8 hours to evacuate the towers? In 2001 thousands, tens of thousands got out in and hour to an hour and a half - and it was because all of a sudden post '93 folks started taking those emergency drills seriously.
Tragedy porn. That’s a good way to describe much of it.
I also agree. There’s only so much “feeling sorry for ourselves” that we can do.
I’m probably going to be called heartless, but so be it-I do NOT want to remember that day. Not that I don’t want to remember the victims so much, but THAT DAY.
All I remember is feeling scared shitless and just horrified and not knowing WHAT was going to happen next. It seems silly now, but then? For example, I remember my mother buying bottled water for the first time-which is absolutely ridiculous now when you think about it.
But back around that time, you didn’t know WHAT the fuck was going on, if there was going to be another attack, or what.
“Tragedy porn” is right.
So for people to want to stop the world on the anniversary, and glom all over the “Never forget!” and “WE WERE ATTACKED!” pisses me off.
I have been hiding from 9/11 all day. I hide from 9/11 every year. I hide from the memorials and retrospectives-- I don’t even turn on my TV. I don’t ever want to see the video footage again. I wish the public wailing and mourning from all corners of the country would stop. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable talking about it. I don’t want to be that, “Oh, yeah, well I knew somebody who died!” person who drags it into everything.
But, since it’s technically 9/12 now. . . I’d like to (for once) publicly remember the awesome guys from Engine 4/Ladder 15. I don’t know how many of them I’d met-- it seemed there were always an armload of fireman at any party my uncle threw. Some I knew. They came in full dress uniform to my grandmother’s funeral and did a salute. It was once the most touching memory of of a miserable, awful day, and it makes me so sad me to think that most of those guys are dead. (That was my uncle’s firehouse. He was okay, though the family had a frightening day. In the chaos it was evening before we found out about said okay-ness.) I am lucky that I did not lose someone I love. But someone I love suffered a level of loss that is staggering, so I see the day much differently that I probably would otherwise. It makes the mourning of those who saw it only on TV feel a little. . . I don’t know, voyeuristic?
I also hope someday it is again okay for me and mine to wear a FDNY t-shirt in public without getting the fish eye ('cause, dammit, I had it before it was trendy-then-tacky).
I ain’t even going near that Pit thread.
Guess we know just what your thoughts are on V-J Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day and other publicly recognized days.
You are entitled to be pissed off, of course. Just as I am entitled to be nauseated by the point of view you and others are espousing in this thread. ( Note quite well: I am not attacking Guin. I’m not singling out one poster. I’m opposing a point of view expressed by several posters in this thread. )
“Tragedy Porn” huh? You all want to put your money where your mouth is and pop in at a funeral for someone who died in a house fire? Stand up during the ceremony and yell out, " Oh for chrissakes PEOPLE- Get OVER yourself. Enough with the damned tragedy porn. They’re dead. Deal with it and stop wallowing like a bunch of spineless children."
Because, that is exactly what people who use the loathesome phrase Tragedy Porn are saying.
Not everyone has the same low threshold for respect and grief as others.
And, lest we forget, not everyone on the Dope was 2,300 miles away and uninvolved directly. But then, apparently for those who lived, worked or responded that day, the phrase “Tragedy Porn” is also applicable, eh?
Loathesome.
Cartooniverse
I nearly used the word “fetishism”, but “tragedy porn” works just as well. As does “voyeuristic.”
Wow, and here I thought I’d get Pitted. There must be more people out there who feel the way I do than I thought. Do something productive in rembrance, if you want, but otherwise don’t dredge up all that awfulness!
Yeah, if they are having an anniversary funeral six years after the first one, then the phrase would be fitting.
I nearly used the word “fetishism”, but “tragedy porn” works just as well. As does “voyeuristic.”
Wow, and here I thought I’d get Pitted.
MOST OF US WEREN’T INVOLVED. For people who were, let them do what they feel they need to do. I didn’t lose anybody that day. I don’t want to wallow in it – which is what I’d be doing since I WASN’T INVOLVED. I’ve GOTTEN OVER IT. Have a brief public ceremony, like on other such days, and let those who were directly hurt by it do what they need to do more privately!
I kept the TV off because I didn’t want to hear about it OVER AND OVER again. It’s not like I’m going to forget. It’s just that it’s been a few years and it’s getting a bit much to ask me to go into full-blown, “Oh no!” mode over and over again.
Hey man, cool off a little. I was here. I went to the memorials. In 2001. To my mind, the overblown public rehearsals of grief and public renewal of our commitment to the war against terror are not only tacky but downright Orwellian.
But I suppose it takes all kinds.
If you had read my post for comprehension rather than outrage, you would have seen that I reserved that phrase for people who had no personal connection to 9/11 who continued to wallow in the recreational grief year after year, but feel free to continue with your idiocy, jerkoff.