The OP is spot on. When the US recalls its defeats more intensely than its triumphs, we have a real problem. It’s like a certain city I know of that allows itself to be totally defined by the many defeats of its sports teams, not to mention the departure of a certain basketball player. I can only see a point in talking about defeats if it is in the context of thinking about how future defeats could be prevented, or how the defeat ultimately led to a greater victory.
I don’t believe there was a lot of ceremony on 12/7/1951.
I daresay it’s the single most important event of American history in the 24/7 media saturation generation. If you can’t understand why it’s getting such extreme amounts of coverage ten years later, you are being obtuse.
On the other hand, that Zapruder guy can fuck right off. Some rich asshole from Massachusetts gets his melon popped fifty years ago and I can’t watch Pawn Stars without an ad for some fucking new documentary about it.
I was right across the river as the towers fell. Listened to it happening on the radio while my advisor weeped behind me. Smelled the smoke, which hung in the sky like a sad column for what seemed like an entire week. Drove home through a ghost town as the city had mandated everyone go home. No TV, save the home shopping network that was airing 24 hours news coverage. It felt like the end of the world. It felt surreal. I recall the adrenaline rush…that feeling like nothing was ever going to be the same. That a storm was a-coming. That history had finally arrived.
But even as a person who had just been at the WTC just a few days earlier, that slight “ennervation” was the only feeling I had. I do remember feeling irritated when my sister living in Alabama revealed her ignorance about the situation, because to me it seemed like everything was upside down–how could she not see it? But I did not feel sadness or fear. I didn’t feel anger. I felt some self-loathing for not providing the comfort my advisor needed (all she needed was a hug, dammit. and yet washing test tubes was more important to me). But as I sat in my darkened apartment that night and half-watched the tragedy repeating on the news, all I could really think about was if school was going to be open the next day.
I’m not going to be guilted into feeling any particular way about 911. If people want to weep and remember (what exactly are they remembering?!), they have every right to. It’s a spectacle for some, it’s an opportunity for others to glom onto an event and allow the emotionality from others to infect them. But some people really do feel connected to it, and if all the remembrances and retrospectives help them, then I’m not going to judge. I just don’t want others judging me for not wanting to be a part of it.
The amount of time spent wallowing in a public event is directly proportional to the amount of money which can be made from it.
Yes, people make money from 9/11. TV ads are sold on the networks which show tv specials, and those ads are priced based on the amount of people expected to watch. Merchandise is sold, at a price dictated by the demand of the product. That’s just the way it is. Once people stop WANTING to wallow in it, or stop acknowledging it entirely, then there will be no more money to be made. And it will fade away.
That’s the ugly truth…since I didn’t read the whole thread I wonder if someone already said that?
I think part of it is the round # phenmenon. But I must ask: If you’re not American I certainly get why you’re sick of 9/11, but if you’re American, how can you NOT be effected by 9/11, even 10 years later? :dubious:
Because I don’t have a martyr complex. Also I’m not a tedious idiot, so I think that pretending I have an “emotional connection” to a national tragedy is childish.
[QUOTE=Sparky the Wonder Spirit]
Because I don’t have a martyr complex. Also I’m not a tedious idiot, so I think that pretending I have an “emotional connection” to a national tragedy is childish.
[/QUOTE]
So, you feel no ‘emotional connection’ to, say, the victims of the earthquake/tsunami in Japan or earlier in Indonesia? No feelings about what happened in Haiti? How about when they do those ads on cable at night and show the puppies and kittens being abused, or the starving children in Central and South America? Nada? I have to admit, when I watch shows on what happened in Japan or any of those other places I always start crying like a baby. Hell, I usually tear up just watching said commercials.
If you don’t, if you feel zero connection, then paraphrase from Sherlock Holmes…You’re not HUMAN! And that’s fine…but why mock people who do have a bit of empathy?
I don’t know what this line of questioning is supposed to do except to either make people feel bad or holier than thou.
Some people are naturally empathetic and sensitive and cry at the drop of a hat. That doesn’t make them saints–feelings aren’t something you have control over and all the weeping in the world is useless without action. And some people are stoic and unflappable, maybe a little blunted. That doesn’t make them evil. What they do, not what they don’t feel, is what determines that.
When Heath Ledger died, I saw the headline on Yahoo and casually mentioned it to a coworker. She started crying and acting like I was so insensitive, just to drop something on her like that. Really now? I’m supposed to feel bad just because I don’t become unhinged at random celebrity deaths? Yes, I ribbed her a little. Because it was so over-the-top batshit crazy.
If I want to get emotional from seeing something on TV, I’ll set my DVR to play back the “Jurassic Bark” episode from Futurama. To be candid, I don’t think “empathy” is quite the apropos term for what is being elicited by these television events. Personally, I’m more inclined to go with “cheap sentimentality,” or “mawkishness.”
And the televised events themselves, I feel, can probably best be described as “contrived,” and “manipulative.”
[QUOTE=monstro]
I don’t know what this line of questioning is supposed to do except to either make people feel bad or holier than thou.
[/QUOTE]
And you don’t think that what I was responding too (i.e. ‘Because I don’t have a martyr complex. Also I’m not a tedious idiot, so I think that pretending I have an “emotional connection” to a national tragedy is childish’) is ‘holier than thou’, ehe? I specifically said that if one wants to feel that way, hey…whatever floats thy boat. But you take exception to what I’m saying as holier than though. Gotcha.
Never said it made them evil, old boy. I said that you aren’t human if you don’t feel any empathy at all, and think that any sort of national tragedy is ‘childish’ when you feel emotional about it.
If you can watch an entire village being washed away in Japan and feel nothing, and if you think that feeling anything about such an event is ‘childish’ then I think that’s a bit pathological, to be honest. But hey, I’m good with a bit of pathology…I’m a live and let live sort of guy. I would appreciate a bit of reciprocity however…if I want to feel emotional about something then that’s really my affair I’d say.
I have plenty of empathy. I just don’t make a big production of it, and set aside time/space to revel in how special I am because I have such feelings about a decade-old event.
[QUOTE=kaylasdad99]
And the televised events themselves, I feel, can probably best be described as “contrived,” and “manipulative.”
[/QUOTE]
Sure. And I’m a sucker for contrived and manipulative media, especially when it’s happening to real people. And I know that not everyone feels the same way I do. As I said, I’m a live and let live kind of guy. What I was taking exception to in that reply is the chest thumping aspect of (to paraphrase the way I read it) ‘Anyone who feels something during a national tragedy is an obvious idiot…I don’t feel anything during those times. Look how strong and brave me is! grunt, snuffle’
Sure I did. But if, 10 years from now, I made a big emotional display about commemorating those events, I’d be a huge fucking drama queen (or hypersensitive to the point of neurosis).
But we are not during a national tragedy, right now. I think what I and others object to is that the actual decade-old tragedy is being used in (what I see as) a cheap and manipulative way, for very banal political and money-making purposes.
