9/11 Survivors Should Stop Moaning

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

[HoustonCurmudgeon]

And as for sending a $1 to help an illiterate Afghan kid, I'd rather send a $1 to blow up an dirt-bag Muslim country. This would do a whole lot more good than all the hand-wringing, candle-lighting, where-were-you-when-it-happened-stories, and general schmaltz that we are currently wallowing in.

MOM? ;-)

[hole_n_one]

But you addressed your comments to JustanotherJoe. You may well have meant what you said, but you did address it to the wrong person.

You've been registered here since 12/97.......start acting like it.

[ladysusan]

But you addressed your comments to JustanotherJoe. You may well have meant what you said, but you did address it to the wrong person.


I addressed my comments to the world. But I quoted Jill What's-Her-Name. She's just another useless, hypocritical, swamp- minded, liberal, better- than- the- rest- of- the -world magazine opinion writer with nothing new to add to the debate.

Let her run into a burning building to save lives before she criticizes people who do. Let her nurse the wounded through their suffering before she makes her comments.

Honestly, I'm so SICK of the non-combatant pseudo intellectual ilumaniti groupies who would fall over in a dead faint at the sight of what the firepeople, the police, nurses and doctors deal with every day, telling the rest of us what to think.

As if.

[ofMagog]

But I had the sense that many of the public mourners had worked themselves into tears, not because they cared about Diana, but because they wanted to be part of "the happenings." ...
King has written of the "teddy bear brigades," all those people who litter accident scenes with teddy bears and candles and school kids' fingerpaintings.
The walls around the viewing platform at Ground Zero are similarly graffitied and littered with plush toys and finger-paintings and other such maudlin nonsense.

They are the same group of hysterics who show up with streaming tears at Graceland, John Lennon's murder site, etc., nobodies who feel that they are a "part of something" and such therefore makes them somebodies. You can identify them fairly easily, the guy who walks back and forth many times behind the person being interviewed at the wreck site on television or the ones jumping up and down with their silly signs outside the news sites on the morning national news. They feel that to have seen Cher or some other famous person on the street in NYC or some little cafe somewhere somehow makes them equal to the that person.

Why, I remember one time I was on an airplane and right up there in first class was Abraham Li.......

[sweetliberty]

While I agree that some are exploiting 9/11 and I dare say there are even some who would be terribly disappointed if their "lost" relative were to turn up alive and safe at this point, I don't think it is our place to judge them. We can only follow our own consciences as to how we deal with it and with the upcoming anniversary. I regretably have to be on the road that week working as I was when the original attacks occurred. It was an agonizingly slow week as I wanted to be online with my friends and fellow patriots and Christian brothers and sisters. I feel very much the same way now, although not so intensely.

The point was made that if we don't want to see all the fuss made, then don't turn on the TV. I agree with that. But at the same time, the families of the victims aside, Americans have an incredible capacity for remembering what we should forget and forgeting what we should remember. Personally, I think that we need to be bombarded with the graphic images of 9/11. I think we need to see and hear whatever it takes to keep us outraged enough to take steps to make sure that it never happens again. Far too many people have already forgotten and tossed their lots in with those who want to blame America, not protect her.

There are going to be opportunists and scumbag lawyers ready at hand to exploit any situation they can. That is just a fact of life in America. I don't like it either. The families simply represent what could as easily be any one of us given a different twist of fate, and I propose that that is why we have become so caught up in their experience. But this really isn't about the families of of the victims. It is about the wider truth that we were ALL victims of 9/11 and unless we confront that soberly and head-on, we will be again.

Conservobabe, I apologize for my earlier remark. It was uncalled for. I was reacting based on others' influence and that was wrong. I have no personal issue with you.

[Dave S]

The one thing she forgot to mention in her article is that now the survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing are bitching that they should get the same deal as the New Yorkers. Perhaps if the Murrah building had been hit by an airplane they would have a point but the settlement funds were created to avoid having the entire US aviation industry wiped out by the trial lawyers.

[Conservababe]

I began to dislike Lisa Beamer when she tried to copyright "Lets roll". Now that is greedy, indeed.

[ladysusan]

Hell hath no fury like...


Ah, but my darling, scorned is the last thing I am....;-D

Now you've got me giggling.

LS

[Dana113]

I'M not the one suggesting that an entire country is in a moral and psychological quagmire because of the way it expresses its grief. It may not please me aesthetically, and I do agree that the most cynical among us are exploiting it, but I don't suggest that decent, honest people are somehow morally inferior to the rest of the world because they are publically moving through their grief. This babe really thinks she has an insight when in fact what she has is the same old , same old muddled soft toothed liberal thinking that has been fashionable since the 1950's. It's time to move on all right...from that kind of world view.

You know, I disagree with her view that we should somehow be more traumatized about greater tragedies in other countries [India's loss of 20,000] and that should somehow disentitle us to grief. It is unrealistic to think that foreign tragedies would somehow minimize our shock. It is a preposterous view that holds that one would be more griefstricken about the loss of Indians than one's own countrymen.

That being said, I think she is right on target with her criticism of those who are capitalizing on this tragedy and parading their grief all over their country. 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.

[Dana113]

You've been registered here since 12/97.......start acting like it.

Do you give lessons? Oh brother.....

[Just another Joe]

And as for sending a $1 to help an illiterate Afghan kid, I'd rather send a $1 to blow up an dirt-bag Muslim country. This would do a whole lot more good than all the hand-wringing, candle-lighting, where-were-you-when-it-happened-stories, and general schmaltz that we are currently wallowing in.

MOM? ;-)

BWAHAHAHAHA

[mewzilla]

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.

[Just another Joe]

Ah, but my darling, scorned is the last thing I am....;-D

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

[BlazingArizona]

The author makes some good points about the greed of relatives and the tackiness of a lot of the memorializing, but then we come to this:

Partly, what makes us not Bosnia, or Israel, or Angola, or Kashmir, or Palestine is that we do not obsessively nurse our most profound grievances against other peoples from generation to generation, nor turn our worst bloodlettings into our most revered holidays. Can you imagine how we'd hate the Brits if we were still deeply pissed off about the Revolution? Or how awful it would be if grade-schoolers sang morbid songs about the rotting Civil War dead at Richmond?

There's a big difference between wars that was over and done with 100 and 200 years ago and the war we are in rihgt now. She is arguing the liberal position that we should love our enemies and "move on". Lady, when we've crushed the radical culture and erased the memory that it exists, as in 1945, we will be able to afford to be magnanimous. Until then, we're at war. Slacking off will only cause new terrorist action to happen again.

[Commie Basher]

One can grieve without the cameras being present

I remember the widow of Congressman Larry MacDonald (who died on Flight 007, which was shot out of the sky by the Soviets). Mrs. MacDonald presented a stoic face to the cameras, saying neither she nor her husband believed in public grief. The media critisized her for it.

We have too few stoic Romans, and too many who want to drag their "Oprah momements" past their alloted fifteen minutes.

[Lessismore]

The objective of terrorism is to stage an act of violence that the media will publicize in order to change the psychology and political views of a large number of people.

With the help of the American media, Al Qaeda has pretty well achieved its objective.

[Just another Joe]

With the help of the American media, Al Qaeda has pretty well achieved its objective.

That objective MAY have backfired on them.

[Husker24]

I dont know, I never trust a columnist that used the word "jingoistic" to describe anything American. For some reason it remindes me of something great leader Kim Jong II would say. "Die you jingoistic, capitalist, imperialist dogs!!" Although she makes a few good points in this article, they come across in a tone that gives me the impression that her political views may be somewhat closer to "great leader Kim's" than to the average American.

[Movemout]

"A couple million from insurance and the gov. settlement isnt enough to support her and her family for the rest of their lives? "

You may have missed the point. Lisa Beamer and family aren't owed anything. She has beome Todd's voice as he has none since being murdered by Islamakazis. I am for whatever she can earn by being his voice. A couple of million is not much money spread over a lifetime.