As far as the fifth being any more significant than the fourth or the sixth, it isn’t, necenssarily, just part of our tendency to assign significance at this time to multiples of five. A few millennia ago, it would have been the sixth anniversary, then the 12th, that we upped a little in our minds. It’s an accident of our number system.
As for the appropriateness of how people are memorializing the event, I find it appropriate. The widows and children of victims of the 11th of September came together and read their names for whoever cared to listen. I think it right and good that at the very least, these people, who did no wrong, and got caught in the wrong place at one of the times when bottomless incompetence known as the USA’s foreign policy since time immemorial caught up with it, should have their names not forgotten.
My local station even showed parts of it occasionally, in between whoring for various products and broadcasts.
There is a real life out there, DtC, and it’s not nearly as awful as TV makes it seem. Step away from the television for awhile.
You answered your own question there. The majority of people don’t want to do something that requires actual inconvenience or sacrifice. They just want to hang a little flag decal on their cubicle wall to reassure their office chums that they’re patriotic. And quite a significant number of people who have no personal connection to 9/11 (and, I suspect, no experience of actual personal grief) will wallow in “remembrance” for some vicarious tragedy porn.
Sorry for the confusion…and appreciate the links. I had forgotten that there were in fact a few fatal attacks, though I did recall a few beatings, etc, from the various members of the nutball association after 9/11.
My point however was that none of these things happened ON 9/11…so I’m unsure why there would be an expectation that they would or wouldn’t be shown on a day memorializing the actual events OF 9/11. Unless they were going to do 9/11 and the preceeding months/years, what spun out of it, what other events transpired, etc etc…in which case we wouldn’t have a week or so of preceeding advertising and then a day of being flooded by commentary and memorials of 9/11, but a 9/11 month where it would all be discussed and disected…ad nausium.
So sorry something’s disrupting Survivor for you, Dio. But rest assured - those of us with compassion and human empathy will be done by tomorrow, and then you can go back to watching the T.V. without having to give a shit about anyone who shows up on it.
I think the Duke has inadvertently put his finger on the reason I’m irritated by this particular anniversary.
Most things we make a special effort to commemorate the anniversary of, the point is that we don’t commemorate them every day, but the anniversary gives us an occasion to think on things we don’t think of, day in and day out.
In America, we’re never given a rest from 9/11, since it’s George W. Bush’s version of the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Making a big deal of this anniversary makes about as much sense as kids’ making a big deal of Halloween, in a world where they went trick-or-treating in costume every night, and came back with bags full of candy. Why is this day different from all other days? It isn’t, except that the 9/11 hype gets ratcheted up just a little higher. Enough, already.
I agree with this. We have been constantly awash in 9/11-isms since 9/11. There will still be anniversaries commemorating it, just like Elvis or Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima.
I bet the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a hot topic there for a number of years, now that anniversary has become a rallying point for anti-nuke peace activists. Seems like some good has come from remembering that tragedy. Maybe if eveyone would have just said, “Fuck I’m tired of them bringing this atomic bomb shit up every year” that movement would have died out.
It’s not so much the mere act of remembering 9/11 that bothers me, what bothers me is a certain group of people (who shall remain nameless) who continually rehash 9/11 over and over again as if we should constantly live in fear because of something that happened half a decade ago and use it to justify whatever actions they take.
Maybe if someone had dropped a nuke on New York on 9/11 then Diogenes would have cut the media some slack. Nah, probably not.
Seriously though, it seems that the “good” that comes out of remembering 9/11 is a call to greater security measures, rather than peace. Would anyone have been happy if the Hiroshima anniversary had become a defiant patriotic celebration in Japan? I wonder how the occupying American forces would have felt about that. heh.
Anniversaries have at least two useful functions to society.
First, they are how we pass our cultural – heritage, mythology, history. baggage, whatever you care to call it – to our children. Every year another set of kids learns about another little bit of our common past because the adults around them take note of anniversaries.
Secondly, they are yardsticks. Dio, you say “Move on”. I wonder how far we’ve moved, how fast, in what direction. I think useful to be able to saythings like, “Here we are, 5 years later, and the cops still can’t talk to the firefighters because they haven’t been able to … blah blah blah,”
I don’t think it’s a terrible stretch to say that anniversaries are the framework on which history is built, at least as far as disseminating it goes.
I can’t wait for 9/11/11, when we remember with a significant tear WHERE WE WERE when we saw the 5th year anniversary tribute on the ESPN Monday Night Football pre-game show.
I can see it now… an offensive line dressed like airliners, with rubber wings strapped over their shoulder pads, smashing into a defensive line dressed like famous tall buildings.
It’s hard to believe that someone can get bored by the marking of the anniversary of the deaths of 3,000+ people at the hands of some crazed lunatics.
Then, again, it’s Dio doing the whining–a heartless, soulless bastard if there ever was one.
Man, do you think you can find some more ways to display your contempt for anything regarding empathy, sympathy, or any other virtue of the human condition?
And, please, deign to inform us just how much grieving or time for remembrance is appropriate, since you seem to have the answer for that, too.
I bet you find the Fourth of May tragically unhip too, huh.
Just millions of deaths remembering.
Maybe you’d like to join the muslims on that day in a game of ‘deny-the-holocaust-soccer’ with the wreaths from the graves of those who died? Diogenes the Cynic, I really feel sad for you.
Being bored by so many innocent deaths.
You must have a heart made out of concrete. I hope some day blood will flow through it again.
Good luck.
I simply love the comments about how heartless and callow Diogenes is. :rolleyes: Look monkeys. I know that reading is hard when there are so many words involved, but do try to actually read the thread before rushing to conclusions.
I have to agree with Dio here. The media build-up and coverage has gone well beyond respectful remembrance and well into whorishness. It’s not actually showing us anything we didn’t already know. It’s more picking at a scab to get a reaction.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been some respectful shows on. Discovery aired a Ted Koppel special about where we have come since and what we’ve given up to become “secure.” I believe CBS aired a documentary that was filmed with the firefighters on 9/11.
Of course we’ve also had the heavily politicized, now heavily edited, ABC docudrama and todays wall to wail coverage. It isn’t so much the grieving or remembering of the tragedy as it is the media’s exploitation of it.
THANK YOU. Sometimes I feel like I am the only person who remembers that. First there was news (from the White House) that they had intelligence that indicated Air Force One was a target. Even at the time, that seemed a little odd. They’d probably notice a big jet plane coming from pretty far away. Then it got downgraded to “it could possibly be a target,” then something more like “well, Al Qaeda never said it wasn’t a target, now did they?” and then it never seemed to come up again.
This has bothered the living heck out of me since … well, since 9/11/01 (how rare that I know the exact length of time that something has been irking me, it’s rather refreshing). I have no problem with keeping the President on Air Force One because, hey, no one knew exactly what was going on and it seems prudent, but just be straightforward about it instead of making up threats.
So anyway, as to the OP, I agree that the coverage is too much and too … weird for me personally, so I’ve been pretty successful at avoiding most of it.