A 9/11 SAMPLER: VEGAS'S PROPHECY, BUSH'S LEGACY, ATTA'S ASHES , ETIQUETTE'S EPITAPH ETC.

9/11 IMAGE AND ANECDOTE OF THE DAY:

This is the sidewalk in front of my apartment. It's my personal Ground Zero. It's where it all got started for me on 9/11/01. Yes, that moring as I stepped out of my building on my way to work, I stepped--at this very spot--in a steaming pile of dog feces. Note: I had not stepped stepped in dog product for well over a decade and have not stepped in it since. At that moment, I let out a huge expletive and, noticing that an older lady was passing by--and attempting to temper my crass verbal gesture--I explained, through a forced smile "This is going to be a bad day."

Moments later--and, yes, after assiduously wiping my shoe off-- I arrived at my coffee shop where a man ahead of me was describing to the short order guy how he'd just seen that a plane had flown into the World Trade Towers. "It's the most terrible thing I ever saw," he said. In my ungenerous, pre-caffeinated, post dog pooped state all I was thinking was "Ok, drama queen...a little biplane flies into a building. Quit your histrionics and get the hell out of my way." It was only when i arrived at work that I realized just how horribly accurate my morning prediction had been.

PRE 9/11 MEDIA OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY:

They had the 9/11 movie "Flight 93" on cable so I started watching it. Whatever praise-worthy qualities (and claims to nonexploitativeness) the film may have had were completely compromised by its being punctuated at 15 minute intervals by pods of commercials. The Masters--the OTHER truly solemn event in American broadcasting --always merits a commercial free broadcast. But evidently not September 11. And not only were there commercial interruptions, but they were not in any way put through any kind of tact or relevance filter. Indeed, I went straight from seeing this gut wrenchning re-enactment of real heroic courage in the face of certain death to seeing a commercial for the World War II video game Company of Heroes. So to re-cap: From watching a re-enactment of recent tragic events with heroic overtones to an ad for a video game that lets you participate in a re-enactment of a past tragic events with heroic overtones--with both distinctly for profit acts of representation laying claim to some kind of historical authenticity. Now lest you think that, in the necessarily impure medium of commercially supported television, this is a relatively reasonable and contextually appropriate product pitch (an attempt to master the tragic events by endlessly replaying them (albeit in a displaced fashion) yourself),please note that the subsequent commercials in that pod were for E-surance, Mr. Clean Magic Reach (A behind-the-toilet bathroom cleaner) and Cialis (a boner booster). I guess it's arguably appropriate in the event that the trauma of watching this show causes you go limp, vomit and then get in a car crash on your way to pick up some Magic Reach to clean up your mess. But really, for me it kind of broke the spell.

Actually, sort of fascinating to see this hallowed "sacred" American tragedy presented in this crudely commercial context. I guess it's corporate America's way of reiterating the great Bush Doctine to which I would be faithful the very next day at Ground Zero: "Be Patriotic. Go out and buy something."

NON 9/11-RELATED MEDIA OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

This viewing experience happened on the same night that I watched Larry King show replay after replay of his guest--an investigative reporter--getting beaten to a bloody pulp by one of the targets of his telejournalistic inquiry, a gruesome sequence that wqas catpured on video while the guy was trying to film a segment for his show. Larry showed it 3 straight times in its entirety and then replayed it again--asking the still scarred guest to give a blow by blow commentary. Then when the guy was done giving the truly unenlightening commentary (he might as well have said...well, this blow hurt...and yeah, he got me good here and ouch and yeah, that one was a real bone crusher...) he finished the segment by solemnly assuring us that the entire segment would be available to watch ad nauseaum or ad infinitum (whichever came first) on the CNN website. It was sort of fascinating to see the seemingly endless looping of this brutal beating presented under the flimsy cover of serious journalistic inquiry.

But I guess they have to compete with Youtube somehow.

AMAZING QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the War on terror."

-George W. Bush.

I am that rarest of things: Speechless.

Ok, I'm coming out of it slowly.

We feel your pain, Dubya.

And one of the hardest parts of our job as citizens is connecting anything you say to anything that's true.

My brain is going to explode. Too...Many...Jokes!

BTW OF THE DAY:

I don't watch morning television so I've never seen this Katie Couric. I really know nothing about her but her name. But, really, if she is trying to establish her credentials as a serious evening news anchor shouldn't she try Kate or Catherine? I mean it wasn't Petey Jennings, Tommy Brokaw, Danny Rather, Waltie Cronkite or Eddie Murrow was it?

SOCIOLOGICAL OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

Reflections on Subway etiquette:

A friend at work was telling me about sitting next to a woman on the subway who was telling her (sharing with her or perhaps oversharing with her) that the only upside of having gained 30 pounds is occasionally getting mistaken for a pregnant woman and being offered a seat. This really surprised me because my perception has been that our collective sense of etiquette has devolved to the point where even pregnant women won't get offered a seat unless they're really hot. And, then, only if they look like they might reward the chivalrous gent with a little sumpn sumpn.

Also interesting to see the effect your acts of basic politeness have on the other people in the car. If you offer your seat to an older person or a pregnant woman, a lot of people look at you askance, resentfully--like you're trying to show them up. In others it seems to ring a dim and distant bell of conscience. "Oh, that's cool. Never seen that before. Maybe I'll try that one day---IF the bitch is hot." (Note: The seat-offering gesture can be particularly weird and polarizing if it's across racial lines.)

But the worst is when you see someone contemplating doing the right thing and then you witness the moment at which they visibly decide against it. It's a pantomime of "Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm......Nah." They put their iPod back on and tune back out--safely disassociated from the implied obligations of membership in the human community.

TROUBLING ANECDOTE OF THE DAY:

Speaking of the subway:

I'm not the kind of guy that gets freaked out or scared easily. I don't really see signs and symbols of the great apolcalypse (6/6/6 posting notwithstanding) wherever I look. And I resolutely do NOT have a sci-fi imagination. (Never watched Sci-fi stuff as a kid.) I have a sort of aesthetic disdain for apocalyptic thinking much as I have a sort of aesthetic disdain for conspiracy theories. But that said, let me tell you what I saw in the subway:

I'm waiting for the train to go to work and I see some normal looking 50-ish guy in a suit with a briefcase. He walks right past me and, standing on the far side of a metal beam (so as to obscure the view of others clustered at the other end of the platofrm), puts down his briefcase and starts rubbing his hands together with a manic intensity I cannot begin to describe, It was the classic warming of hands gesture. But he was rubbing them as if they were the last two sticks on earth and if he couldn't get them to catch fire by friction he would die from the winter cold. As he rubbed with this truly terrifying fury, his face was distorted into a rictus of agony. Then he stopped, picked up his brief case and walked back to where the rest of the people were. Then he stepped away once again and began his crazed rodent on 'roids routine anew. Once we were all in the subway car, it happened again. People all turned away out of terror or fear or shame or tact--as they would from any random luncatic--except for two little kids who couldn't stop staring. I didn't think of it too much afterwards. Chalking it up to some kind of intense shingles or some bugs-under-the-skin neurological disorder or some kind of non-verbal variant of Tourette's syndrome.

But then, just the very next day, I saw a woman walking towards me in the subway rubbing her pointer finger back and forth against her top front teeth with the exact same kind of terrifying intensity and the exact same kind of possessed look on her face. I mean she was virtually sawing her finger off. And for the first time in my life I was thinking strange sci-fi thoughts. An alien infestation? A new kind of psycho-neurological plague? The invasion of the zombies? I was so freaked out I had to take 6 hours refuge in the blessed opiate of televised sport.

Then I made the mistake of looking at a photo of Dick Cheney and the creepy feeling came flooding back.

TOTALLY OUT-OF-CONTEXT APERCU OF THE DAY:

McDonalds is like the gym for people who'd rather eat than exercise.

TEDDY VEGAS INTERACTIVE FEATURE OF THE DAY:

Which is the best formulation of the above idea?:

a) The Mall is like the gym for people who don't like to exercise.

b) The Mall is like the gym for people who'd rather shop than exercise.

c) McDonalds is like the gym for people who'd rather eat than exercise.

IDEA OF THE DAY:

Bush recently claimed that we don't use torture. We use "alternative interrogation techniques."

Oh, then that's all right. Fine. Perfectly kosher. The media inquiry ends there.

Actually, wouldn't it be nice if he'd share these "alternative interrogation techniques" with the media so they could start using them on him?

ARTICLE OF THE DAY:

Bush reminds Americans U.S. is at war

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060905/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_terrorism

Sounded like an Onion headline. But, alas, it wasn't. Of course, it's the problem you run into when you have elective military wars and link them dishonestly to rhetoricial wars (the "War" on Terror). The fact that he has to remind us that we are at war is a stunning indictment of his authority as a leader and a pathetic expression of his deep psychologocal need to be thought of as a wartime president. He has never made a clear and compelling case for the Iraq War. He has not asked Americans to sacrifice in any way reminscent of wars past. He has been dishonest in his connection of our military wars to the generalized "War" on terror. And he has been incompetent in his execution of both.

9/11 THOUGHTS OF THE DAY:

I went down to Ground Zero today to check out the pre September 11 goings on. A big sign reads "Here. Remembering 9/11." I stand in front of the church cemetery in the exact same spot where I stood with a friend as part of the relief effort on the Friday after 9/11/01 and try to superimpose the memory of that day over the reality of this one. I remember the thick holocaustal ash that covered everything--obscuring even the writing on the headstones. I remember the stray office documents that littered the churchyard. I remembered the twisted metal and the heaped rubble and the acrid smell in the air and the clusters of rescue workers.

Now, today, 5 years later, the clusters of rescue workers have been replaced by clusters of police, clusters of war protesters, clusters of conspiracy theorists and the random Apocalpytician--reminding us that the end is at hand and there is time to repent. A bunch of black circular balloons float in the air--I am not sure if they are symbolic of bombs or wrecking balls--with the words "Troops home now" written on them. One protester's sign reads:

9/11 Deaths: 2973
Iraq Deaths 2667
Bin Laden Lives
Mid-East in Chaos
Al Qaeda Growing
Make Bush Accountable.

A group of Buddhists chants for world peace. A random guy dressed in the American Flag rants and raves about Bin Laden.
A guy hands me a CD of "Loose Change"--a conspiracy-minded documentary--and engages me in conversation about his thesis: That the government (not the terrorists) took down the Twin Towers as a well-planned demolition job. That there is no way the planes alone could have done it. Experts claim the fires couldn;t have reached the temperature necessary to melt the reinforced steel beams. If Osama Bin Laden was behind the attacks, why have criminal charges never been pressed against him? The engines of the plane that allegedly crashed into the Pentagon have never been found and the heat could not have been sufficient to melt them. Etc.

For some reason, this intrusion of lunacy jolts me out of a reflective, elegiac mode and into discursive combat. I tell the guy that I think dismissably nutsy-cookoo paranoia like this undermines the credibility of those of us who are critical of the administration for more solid, less speculative--ok less stark raving loony tunes-- reasons. Plus, even if you are willing to attribute to the Bush-Cheney cabal the requisite level of cold, calculated evil to conceive such a plan (which I am not), you can't possibly grant them the degree of competence to pull it off. I mean, this government can't manage to get electricity to work in Bagdad, couldn't deal with the aftermath of Katrina and can't even manage to plant and "discover" a WMD in Iraq...but they can pull off some dazzlingly complex, diabolically evil plan like this?

Get back on your medication.

I actually only think this last thought to myself because the guy was being quite calm and reasonable-seeming and I didn't want to come off as the crazy one in the exchange.

But the talk of things disappearing without a trace did get me thinking about something I'd never thought about before: Mohammad Atta's ashes.

I have never heard a word about the discovery of any of the terrorists' remains and as I stood there it occured to me that they were, no doubt, mingled inseparably with the ashes of the victims. That the killers and the killed are mixed at the molecular level. That Atta's ashes are in the lungs of the fire fighters. That there is an inalienable impurity at the sacred site.

And such thoughts of inalienable impurity led me to a reflection on how the spirit of unity that prevailed in those days after 9/11 (in NYC, around the nation and around the world) was so quickly and needlessly squandered by the fearmongering, divisive politics of this administration.

And that in turn led me to make a pilgrimage to Century 21 where I performed my patriotic duty and bought something.

9/11 MEDIA OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

As I post this it is just after 8:46 A.M on September 11. I am watching morning TV for the first time in years. I scan the channels and see that every network has devoted their programming to 9/11 coverage. CNN which I am watching at the moment has just replayed the broadcast of their original coverage of the north tower being struck. I am struck less by the imagery (to which I find to my horror I am growing slightly numb by overexposure) than by the fact that the reporter said "We are not sure why the plane struck the building...but we are efforting to find out more." Efforting. Well, I effort to see if there's any channel that is not dedicating its coverage to an attempt to get a piece of the 9/11 ratings pie and I discover that the only one seems to be PBS. Their poignant and pointed bit of programming this morning has to be a political commentary of some kind. It's Curious George.

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Posted on 9/11/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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