I wonder if we will ever get to the point that the cable news corporations don’t feel the need to replay the events of 9/11 every year on the anniversary of those attacks. It’s like a national holiday for cable news cameramen and hosts and producers. I wonder if they schedule time off with their kids.
Whatever we gain in the “never forget” category, we aren’t having a debate about the president’s speech. I think, this year, this footage is basically little better than pro-government propaganda.
And if I can admit a little personal weakness, reliving 9/11 is a trigger for post-traumatic stress. The 9/11 and anthrax attacks happened to my community and we lost people. I am not going to forget and being forced to experience it all over again is not a good feeling.
How long did it take the media to stop marking December 7 as a commemoration of the “The day that will live in infamy.”
It is very much pro-government (er, “patriotic”) propaganda.
Much support to you and all your friends and acquaintances for which this becomes a “trigger event”.
Until enough of “The Greatest Generation” had died off and enough of their kids, grandkids, and great grandkids weren’t interested in watching old, black and white, newsreel footage of a low tech war. IOW, it’s about ratings and ratings are about money. And isn’t there a cable channel now that runs all WWII newsreels almost all the time?
Yup, the American Heroes Channel (formerly the Military Channel), part of the Discovery Communications empire and home to lots of WWII shows, a number of them being pretty good documentaries. Also, it just finished a series, “Apocalypse: WWI”, a French production, by the way, though with English narration, that was hella good.
It’s heavy on but not all war porn, though. It also has marathons about ancient Egypt; a series called “Myth Hunters” about various more or less obsessed people who go looking for lost things like Noah’s Ark or ancient Troy or King Solomon’s mines; a series called “Mafia’s Greatest Hits” about various Mob figures, their rise and their fall; even what appears to be an original production (rather than reruns of National Geographic content), a series called “Gunslingers” re-enacting the Wild Wild West’s heyday.
Shared tragedy brings people together, so the anniversary of such terrible events won’t become obsolete or less triggering for a long while. If I’m with a group of people and 9/11 is part of the conversation, everyone wants to share what it was like for them. I was only five when Kennedy was assasinated, so I don’t remember the “where were you when he was shot?” stories and how long those went on.
I don’t want to see a barrage of replays or stories about that day. It will be a part of me for the rest of my life. If it has to be rehashed, at least let it be done with respect, not fearmongering.
I am spending MY Never Forget Day trolling right-wingers on Twitter.
believe it or not, I can remember “remember the Tonkin Gulf” for a few years.
It isn’t by chance that Obama chose the eve of September 11 to announce his new war (new phase of the Iraq war or whatever). So the media merely cooperates. What else can it do?
I thought it was nice that he did that. sort of clean-slatish vs Bushco’s misuse of the event.
misuse, i.e. exploitation
I’m going to be generous (easy when it doesn’t cost anything) and assume that choosing yesterday for his speech was coincidental to the day before the anniversary of 9/11. That it was two or three days after the final decision had been made which allowed time to inform those that get read into in advance and for the speech to be written, reviewed, corrected, etc. To schedule the speech for 9/11 would have been too gauche and the day or two after wouldn’t have been much better. Then it’s a weekend and important stuff is never scheduled in advance for the weekend. That loses a week of bombing runs time and increases the risk of being labeled an election stunt by the opposition, and on and on.
Dear Booman – the reminder is not for you locals, it’s for all the rest of us peasants who love to wallow in tragedy and grief. It’s a convenient prod to get us involved in fighting the godless hordes over there somewhere. Besides we’ve got a lot of weaponry to sell.
Whatever’s on television is generally meant to keep us non-warriors meek, scared and submissive. And our potential cannon fodder inspired to glory. We better remember that Muslims did this to us, and they might try again.
Maybe the show will close when the profits dry up.
We as a country need to get over this.
I understand those who lived through it are marked indelibly by it– as people are whenever a tragedy cuts through family or community. But this endless “Never Forget” bullshit, most pronounced in areas physically and culturally far away from the epicenters needs to go away forever.
It’s a yearly exercise in wallowing in self-pity. Other countries that have had terror attacks have managed to stiffen their backs and move on. Apparently America (or more accurately, the power center that profits from the perpetual fear) is unable to move on. There is a need for Americans to stay victims, stay afraid and stay compliant.
But then, that’s what al-quaida wanted too…
I was going to sort of ignore it this year for a change, then on the way to the bus at 11 pm last night saw a huge motorcycle ride, hundreds at least, going from the fire station at 43 to Ground Zero. I like that, the bikers’ observance, very moving
In my understanding, 9/11 as an actual historical event is an interdicted topic. It exists in “acceptable” public discourse ONLY as a media event.
This is particularly obvious to many people who were actually in New York at the time, as I was. I did not witness the event in person, but I did witness the actual city on that day and the days that followed.
Booman, I think your question is well answered by a paper by Miroslav Kosovic, “Revisiting the Society of the Spectacle in the post-9/11 World”, which is available as a .pdf file.
Kosovic is a scholar at the Polical Science Research Center, Zagreb, Croatia.
Obama didn’t exploit in his own cool way?
Seeing those towers down and smoking for the first time (I was on the west coast at the time) I quickly realized that this was Rove/Cheney’s ticket to implement their full agenda. It’s hard to remember now, but through September 10, 2001, the main political topic (if you could wade through the 24×7 Condit coverage) was GWB’s plummeting popularity following the stolen election, punctuated by the Jeffords defection.
But what I didn’t realize at the moment was that 9/11 was the element that would complete the decades-long transition of the US from a relatively isolationist state, pre-WW2, to the active no-apologies 100% military empire, with the most effective propaganda system the world has ever known.
Can you imagine that as recently as 1990 the US Senate engaged in serious debate as to whether to wage war on a country that had clearly violated UN and Geneva conventions? And that the motion to approve the war barely passed?
Does anyone remember the images from 1991, at the end of the Persian Gulf War, of literally 100s of thousands of Iraqi soldiers streaming over the Kuwait border to give themselves up because they knew treatment as POWs at the hands of the US would be better than the conditions they endured as soldiers? Can anyone imagine even one enemy soldier willingly giving himself up to US troops today, given our reputation for POW treatment (hell, we even deny that they are POWs now … when we even bother to acknowledge the Geneva Conventions at all).
Does anyone remember when torture was considered wrong, and not a partisan issue?
Does anyone remember the Peace Dividend in 1993-4, and the reduction in the military budget? Or when the term “cuts to the military budget” meant an actual cut, not a reduction in the planned growth-over-and-above the inflation rate?
Yes, kids, there once was a time when our nation did not universally pretend that every soldier was “defending our freedom” (from whom?). Or have a ritual honoring all military people at every sporting event.
Yep, I’m 65 and I remember all that. Also a time when the cops — in the flesh and on TV — weren’t decked out in combat gear and deployed like an occupying army. And they and firefighters weren’t described as “fallen” when they died in the line of duty; that was a term reserved for combat deaths.
I for one am tired of 9/11 and reliving the defeat of the US at the hands of 19 suicide bombers. OK, it was terrible. OK, we lost a lot of people.
I am no longer interested in hearing about it. Time to move on.