I think this segment from last night’s Daily Show is appropriate.
9/13/01: Remembering The Day We Forgot The Lessons Of The Day We Had Sworn We Would Always Remember
Totally brilliant. Kudos.
(Ever notice that if you watch the first 10 minutes, you pretty much got it?)
I got an odd vibe from all of this, wondering if Paul, the chipmunk from Mensa, picked up on it too but interpreted it differently.
It seemed kind of, well, canned. Pre-packaged. off-the-shelf. If it wasn’t for the number ten attached, tenth “anniversary”, probably wouldn’t have been much. But everybody just sort of assumed that there would be a bigger deal, because its ten. And everybody already knew what was going to be done, they’d read the names, imagining that tedium is respectful. You already knew what the speeches would say, you knew they would sing Amazing Grace (Which is a great tune, and very appropriate, but anybody who plays it on the bagpipes should be horsewhipped!)
It didn’t seem “organic”, or even particularly heartfelt, everybody went through a predictable set of motions, because, well, it was the tenth. Not the ninth, not the twelfth.
I don’t agree with the OP, but I don’t agree with Krugman, either. I think the latter is engaged in some serious projection here. He may feel that way, but I seriously doubt that most Americans feel similarly. I certainly didn’t think the memorials were “subdued”. If anything, they seemed over-the-top and ubiquitous.
Exactly. 100 fucking percent.
Now, how many people are going to believe that Bill Frist gave a tiny little fuck about that woman? Nobody with sense. No, she was a prop.
-Joe
Terri Schiavo died in the Twin Towers?
In a way, didn’t we all?
So, was it a three ring circus or was it subdued? Because now you’re at odds with Krugman. He didn’t say the commemoration was a circus. He said it was “oddly subdued” due the shame we as a nation feel, whether we admit it or not. I do not think we’re all talking about the same thing.
Terri Schaivo does not equate to 9/11 for me, either. I never knew anything of her except for what was portrayed. 9/11 and its ramifications were far more broad than a media/political circus, especially to those who felt direct consequences.
Good lord you are dumb. Do you have problems in everyday life due to your inability to read and comprehend? Fuck.
Ok, more slowly for the stupid: When 9/11 happened, politicians turned it into a 3 ring circus and used it to do shitty things, like start a war. Ok? With me so far?
Now, Krugman thinks the 10th anniversary was subdued because people feel shame when remembering how that happened. Ok? Got it?
Also, Terri Schivo has nothing to do with 9/11. They were two separate events. There is no link. EXCEPT (here comes the hard part, focus!) they were both exploited by asshole right wing politicians for political gain. See, that was what we call an analogy. Ok? Sometimes analogies make it easier to understand complex ideas. Not for you, but then we can’t help our shortcomings, can we?
Now, go eat some paste.
Got it about right. Probably including the dumb bit as well, but I do what I can with what I’ve got.
Now certainly what I think Krugman is doing is weak sauce compared to the three stooges given as examples. He’s not used it to declare war. He doesn’t have 9/11 printed on his business cards. Not sure about what Kerik is doing as I stopped paying attention to him years ago, but hey. Fuck him too.
In my opinion, he’s still doing it. He’s taking the supposedly more somber mood of the nation (hadn’t noticed it myself, but then I live in Detroit Lions country and we were all happy that our team has continued to play actual football) and attributing it to agreeing with him that the country has something to be ashamed of. He may be doing it honestly and with the best of intentions in mind, but he’s still doing it. It’s entirely likely that he’s sincere in his belief that the country has looked back and deep in our hearts we are ashamed for the reasons he thinks we are. He’s appropriating his interpretation of the mood of the country and using it as a cudgel. Not for monetary gain or to gain political clout, but he’s still claiming it as his own and using it.
Hey. He’s off on his own little thing. I do not claim to represent or defend the idiocy of others. I’ve got more than I can handle on my own.
Currently in the Federal slam.
Yep. He’s a certified nutjob. He runs for office every once in a while and, thankfully, has lost every time. (He ran for the Republican nomination for the US House in 2010. He was the most popular choice in my county. :eek: Thankfully the other counties balanced him out.) He was also a substitute teacher at my high school. He only lasted one day (he apparently threw out the lesson plans he had been left and preached about abortion and called a black girl stupid for calling herself African-American). He had, twenty years before, been a teacher and the head football coach at my school. Then at his next school, he and the school were sued by the ACLU for turning the football program into church camp.
I don’t disagree, but as someone else said, this is bread and butter to political columnists. Even economists who play one in the NY Times.
I kind of agree with 'luc that PK has overinterpreted what I see as public fatigue over 9/11 outrage after a couple of long wars and the death of bin Laden. I didn’t notice that observances were as perfunctory as elucidator noted, but I do see where Krugman might have been inclined to see his own feelings echoed in the general sentiment.
Honestly, had he not thrown in those remarks spreading his feelings to the entire nation, I’d have had no problem with it.
I’m also not sure if it would be as much fatigue as simply that as a country we’re moving on. 9/11 isn’t as raw as it was. At a certain point, you just have to let go and get on with everything. The one thing that stood out over all the 9/11 coverage was one of the widows on This American Life. When asked about “never forget,” she replied that at a certain point you have to start to forget just to heal. Maybe that’s where we are now. Who knows?
I’ll give my best faith effort to explain myself. If you care to read this, try to understand it , and get what I’m saying instead of just thinking of some clever snarky way to respond. Please?
This is exactly what bothers me so much, that you and Krugman and so many others actually believe this kind of thing. To me, it’s just incredibly immature and sloppy and selfish thinking. I’m always ashamed of myself and have bad moments thinking like this because it is so indulgent and sloppy.
Bricker would often say that it’s possible for reasonably people to disagree. In order to believe that you have to have empathy, the ability to put yourself into someone else’s shoes, to look at things from their perspective. If you can do that, you can understand them and you can communicate meaningfully with them.
If you can’t, then I suggest that you are something less than a human being, something less than a full participant in society. What you are instead is a cardboard cutout, a prejudiced partisan hack.
For example, you say that Bush et al “used the memory of 9/11 to sell the invasion of Iraq, connecting it explicitly with the war on terror.” There is no recognition here of the fact that there is every indication that Bush did and does believe that he did exactly the right thing, that a substantial portion of the populace believes that, too. That it wasn’t sold as some cynical plan, that it was sold as the right thing to do.
No. You wish to play some partisan game. In reality, Republicans and Democrats should be Americans first. You should recognize that we have a lot more in common than we do in opposition. It is because we have so much in common that the differences seem so large, that we are essentially in it together.
What happened on 9/11 didn’t happen to Republicans, or Democrats, it happened to the whole country.
When I think of 9/11, I think of the moment that I realized all the thuds you heard in the film from the lobby were people who had jumped. I see the firefighters going up the stairs, never to come back down.
I think of a named Rick Rescorla. He was there when I worked in WTC in 1993 at the time of the first bombing. He was the safety officer for Morgan Stanley after that event and he took it really seriously. He annoyed the shit out of everybody with his drills. He was fat and a little ridiculous looking (nobody knew he was a decorated vet.) Well, he got everybody on his whole floor out of the building with his drills. He didn’t wait and have everybody sit put like he was told and like everybody was told. He took it upon himself to evacuate the floor, and he saved everybody’s lives doing it. The reason he was able to make the decision because he took the job seriously and had actually studied the possiblity of an airplane being flown into the tower. He knew what to do when nobody else did. After he got everybody out, he went up to help the next floor. He never came down.
I think about the people on flight '93. I think about George Bush in a classroom full of children, and what he has been told. I watched the Michael Moore film and saw the tape, and what I saw was a man who desperately did not want to frighten the children, and who wondered if by being there he was endangering them. Foolish or wise, like it or don’t like it, it was a fundamentally decent instinct he had there. I don’t understand why that is worthy of ridicule.
I think about Maria Bartiroma screaming and then the TV cutting out as the first tower fell.
What Krugman thinks about is how much he hates George Bush and Giuliani and Republicans.
I think it makes him a small and a disgusting human being. I think it makes him self-indulgent and stupid.
I think it’s a shitty thing to suggest that something like 9/11 could be overshadowed by something as shallow and stupid as partisan politics. I don’t see putting the two in the same category. 9/11 was much bigger than that, and ultimately Krugman’s inability to so see it is a failure of his own humanity. And your’s, too.
There have been about 4,000 other days for polticing and bitterness and infighting and partisanship. the tenth anniversary of 9/11 was the one day when a decent person holds their tongue on this bullshit and thinks on the bigger.
He’s an asshole.
If you don’t automatically see it, you are an asshole. Your parents didn’t bring you up right, and you’re not really fit or equipped to interact with society. You need remedial help.
Well, that certainly settles that!
So, you spent all that time explaining to us something we are supposed to automatically see.
Same to you, pal.
My initial, unsnarky reaction [to Scylla’s last post]? This feels like an appeal to emotion, co-opting the description of very affecting and painful aspects of 9/11 in a manner designed to engender agreement. In that sense, almost perfectly reflective of the problem that Krugman was talking about.
Fair enough.
But Krugman is also kind of emotional in his appeal. His appeal is to anger or hatred of political opponents. That makes him guilty of the same crime.
Perhaps Krugman feels there is something wrong with emotional appealsto emotional events. I don’t.
Krugman’s guilty according to his own criteria. That makes him a hypocrite by his own rules.
You probably already know it in your heart. It’s true that I don’t think much of you, but I find it hard to believe that there are many people on this board who are just so fucking poor in spirit that they don’t understand this even if they are too much of douchebag to ever admit it.