9/11 Survivors Should Stop Moaning

New Times ^ | Sept. 5, 2002 | Jill Stewart

[Misterioso]

Yes, yes. Osama and his backers count on our hysterical and manipulative media to help them terrorize us. Good point.

[Dave S]

Wait and see. Sounds like the OKC bombing may have had a lot in common with the 9-11 attacks. In which case, I'd say those folks are entitled to some of that compensation, too. Heaven knows there's enough to go around.

The fund was created by congress to buy off victims families to prevent the complete destruction of American aviation and insurance companies. What do you mean theres enough to go around. Those are my tax dollars that you are offering to give away.

[Howlin]

Not to be outdone in finding an angle on the tragedy, Larry Silverstein, the developer who held the lease on the World Trade Center when it was destroyed by the terrorists, is insisting that he is entitled to a double payment on his $7 billion insurance coverage for the buildings because his property was destroyed in two "separate occurrences."

Evidently she has a problem with an insurance company paying what it's suppose to be paying in the first place.

I saw two planes, didn't you?

[SarahW]

Let me just say that Sept 11 changed ME profoundly.

I will never forget that absolutely perfect late summer day.

My mood was high. It was the optimistic beginning of another "best ever" homeschooling year.

The day was so perfect the whole family decided, on the spur of the moment, to "play hooky" and go on a day trip, to DC.I had a hankering to tour the Capitol building.

DH went to the store to get pet food while I got things ready at home. He never made it to the store...he called on the cell phone and told me to turn on the TV....

The shock of that day is so hard to describe. The towers hit. The Pentagon hit. Then, the horrifying news of another plane headed for DC...

I speak for noone else, and I don't expect anyone else to understand, but if that plane had hit the Capitol or White house.... I just, it just, would have destroyed me too.
Something in my soul would have broken...

I get down on my knees every night and thank God Lisa Beamer helped give her husband the strength to try to stop the plans of the hijackers. He and the others on flight 93 gave me the strength to fight back, too.

[sweetliberty]

"King has written of the "teddy bear brigades," all those people who litter accident scenes with teddy bears and candles and school kids' fingerpaintings."

Have you ever actually been to any of these memorials? I was living in Colorado when the Columbine massacre occured and watched it unfold live. Although I lived over an hour away, I had a very strong need to go there. It felt important. So a few days afterwards I took my grandson and my son-in-law to Columbine. Sure there was media around, but it was peripheral. We wore ribbons and took flowers and pinwheels and silk butterflies. The ground was flooded with people bringing gifts and flowers and notes and poems. People cried and people prayed and people hugged. Many comforted the fellow students of the children who died. But I defy anybody to prove that what was going on there was anything other than genuine. If anything, the cameras were avoided. They weren't even allowed near the hill where the crosses were erected.

Perhaps there is a syndrome such as you say and Columbine is my only first hand experience with such a memorial, but if it is typical I would have to say that when it is close to home, people genuinely ARE involved and do take it very personally, whether or not they actually knew the victims.

[ladysusan]

One can grieve without the cameras being present and they can survive a tragedy without their hands held out in anticipation of financial aggrandizement. This doesn't have to be an orgy of neverending shows of public grief.


There are plenty of people grieving privately. Not everyone in this country is a media w**** or a greedy grasper. I agree that there are looters among us who look upon tragedy as an opportunity to rob the candy store. And I do agree that we need to be on our guard against them, recognize them, and boo them off the world stage. On this we agree.

That said, there are several things that bother me about the original article. The first is the vast sweeping generalizations she makes about the country not being changed. That's just silly. It's a logical error.

Another is that while she says we are *all* guilty of valuing one human life above another, she does exactly the same thing by suggesting that we pray for the people in India or Afghanistan INSTEAD of our fellow citizens. She's, in effect, suggesting that there should be a quota on prayer, and a quote on grief. This is absurd, and can be construed as an extension of the "diversity and inclusiveness" argument.

Something that I find very harmful in her argument is the beginning of the backlash against people who are coping as best they can. It would deepen the tragedy if those who are moving through their grief work were also confronted with "It's time to move on," before they are ready. I think it's dangerous and irresponsible to demand lockstep healing in human beings who have had a profoundly different experience from what the rest of us have had. But this is implied in her article. I think it shows exactly zero
comprehension for the human healing process, and I think
it's ridiculous for some editorial writer to be attempting to speak to such specialized knowledge using a public vehicle such as a magazine. She's simply not qualified. So I approach what she writes with a great deal of skepticism. I mean, who is SHE to say when people should be healed, should move on? Hate to break it to her, but man made trauma is by far the worst kind. People traumatized by man made events sometimes never fully recover. These people deserve our respectful understanding, not our boos and hisses for not moving on in the way we expect.

I also don't appreciate her treatment of Lisa Beemer. Does she know this lady deeply? Until she does, any statements she makes about Ms. Beemer's motives are ridiculous and laughable.

I'll speculate a bit based on her article. She writes:
"A California housewife who was virtually assured a life of anonymity before September 11, Lisa is a star today, as her Web site informs us with its list of her current appearances on Dateline NBC and Larry King Live. Indeed, groups clamoring for a speaker from the Beamer Foundation can hope only for a visit from one of the founding members, not always the vaunted Lisa herself, and must fill out a form on the Web site to be considered. "

I think Jill Stewart is jealous.

[ladysusan]

Well, I was going more for, "Hell hath no fury like ladysusan's wrath".
My bad.


Oh, blush and tee hee.
You flatter me!

[Dave S]

A couple of million is not much money spread over a lifetime.

So much for economic education in this country. :-(

$2,000,000 invested in non-taxable state and local bonds would produce an annual income of $100,000 a year without ever touching the principal. If she invested part of it (say half) in good mututal funds or stocks she would make 10% per year or $100,000 appreciation on just the stock portion and she still would have $50,000 to live on. Then if she got out and worked like everyone else, she would have even more income.

[88keys]

But let me add that I only agree with the author's characterization of the victims. I do not agree with her moral equivelency of global crisis.

Me too...she weakens her mostly excellent points when she's less than "objective" about other tragedies, global or otherwise.

[Dave S]

Evidently she has a problem with an insurance company paying what it's suppose to be paying in the first place. I saw two planes, didn't you?

Yes two planes hit but I didnt see anyone rebuild the towers or replace his first loss before the second plane hit. He had one loss and thats what he should get paid for.

Say a GI gets mortally wounded. While lying dying he gets hit by a grenade. Is his wife owed double death benefits because he was mortally wounded twice? He died once. (sorry about the disgusting analogy)

[Commie Basher]

I saw two planes, didn't you?

I saw two planes, one event.

Or do you imagine that the two planes wear hijacked by entirely different groups, ignorant of each other? And that the attack was planned by two seperate groups?

For that matter, I remember it being reported early on that many insurance policies (including on the WTC) did not cover "acts of terrorism." Yet it seemed the insurance companies dared not enforce that clause.

Or do I mis-remember?

[mewzilla]

You're right. But they're my tax dollars, too, and I'd rather the money go to the victims than the airlines. Af for the enough to go around, I'm also thinking about the private donations as well as the taxpayers' money. And I'm also hoping that if people don't need the money, they won't take it.

[hole_n_one]

Say a GI gets mortally wounded. While lying dying he gets hit by a grenade. Is his wife owed double death benefits because he was mortally wounded twice? He died once.

Fascinating.

[sweetliberty]

"Let's stop licking our wounds and start licking our wounders."

I nominate that for quote of the day!

[SarahW]

There is a legitimate legal argument about the terms of the insurance policy.

The first crash was a discrete event from the second. It alone was enough to "max out" the policy. However, there was still a tower standing.

The second tower would still be standing but for the second crash.

The insurance company is arguing that the two crashes should be treated like a single disaster, like one big earthquake. After all, they are temporally linked, and the attack was part of a single "plot" to destroy them at about the same time.

However, the real question is, would the damage have been the same if only one plane had hit? Is the second his a separate attack? There are arguments to be made on both sides, but I see each crash as a discrete event. But for the second crash, the second tower would be standing.

[Movemout]

You are full of it. I guess you just can't stand that someone has a longer lever than you. I'm here to say that $100K a year isn't going to buy all of the dreams you planned or pay for the loss of a spouse by murdering Arabs.
Your bottom line approach based on money is bullshit.

[Howlin]

So are you saying that the plane that hit the Pentagon was also included in the "one event" rule? Because that's what the argument is, one "wave," if you will, of planes. So it would have to include the PA and the DC planes.

I happen to personally know people involved in this lawsuit; the insurance companies involved are now claiming that they NEVER understood a policy that they READ AND SIGNED for 28 years and 11 months, up until the second those planes hit those buildings.

[Arkinsaw]

We still remember and mourn the dead at Pearl Harbor. We still see men from the Arizona go back there and cry. We still toss flowers into the oily water. I saw an over 80+ year old woman talking mournfully about her fiance who was killed on D-Day. There is nothing wrong with a foundation designed to promote her husband and what he did on that day. If she doesn't the country will forget him. I suppose that some would prefer that she just shut up and get remarried. How dare she be dedicated to her lost husband's memory. Thats not "feminist" enough.

There is nothing wrong with mourning. The difference is that we paid back Pearl Harbor and justice was done. Thats not the case yet here. I say, we should get off the lady's back and stop being her judge. I'm not sure what it is that sets people off about her and the other widows and friends. I think people just want them to shut up so they won't be reminded or would prefer that she go out and get a real career and join NOW or something. I don't mind being reminded and I think she's doing pretty good for her husband.

[Arkinsaw]

...and some people don't care for American heroes or the promotion thereof.

[Howlin]

I saw four planes; that's FOUR acts.