Though my head is exploding over the lunacy of John McCain’s increasingly cowardly and dishonorable presidential campaign, it seems imperative that I join the rest of the political culture in taking a break from the back-and-forth of lipstick and pigs and idiot conservatives (whoops), and devote some space to a reflection on 9/11 and its continued impact on our American life.
There. Can I move on now?
I don’t mean to sound crass. I just don’t believe that, seven years on, you need to hear my personal perspective on 9/11. I also don’t feel a need to impart my memories of that day (suffice it to say I was at work at the U.N. when the planes hit, then was evacuated from both my office and Grand Central Station and spent the day with fellow future-Popdoser Bob Cashill, who was kind enough to take me in). My thoughts on the attacks’ long-term political and cultural ramifications similarly aren’t important; you’ll get enough of that elsewhere today, unless you choose to spend the day (as I might) under a rock.
However, when the wife woke me this morning with the news that she had spent the previous hour and a half watching a real-time replay of the Today show’s 9/11 coverage on MSNBC, I was stirred anew by rage and resentment. Not toward al Qaeda or bin Laden or the Taliban or the hijackers, though that’s there too – it’s always there, not just one day a year. Instead, I raged at the callousness of those who continue the cynical use of 9/11 as a tool for achieving their own purposes – be they a political party or a television network.
Anyone who watched MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican convention last week, or who watched Countdown last night, knows that Keith Olbermann has been apoplectic over the video “tribute” to 9/11 that aired minutes before McCain accepted his party’s nomination for president. Olbermann’s fits, which culminated in a typically rambling “Special Comment” last night, have been well-placed (if untidy and, as usual, over the top). That convention video was truly appalling, a crime against the memories of those who lost someone in the attacks as well as those who lived through them. It was overly explicit both in its footage and in the (wrong-headed) politics of its narration. Perhaps even worse, by conflating the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80 with al Qaeda’s campaign of attacks on U.S. interests, it once again betrayed the Republicans’ inability to differentiate Shi’ite Muslims from Sunnis, and thus it implicated the full sweep of contemporary Islam as the “enemy” (the video’s word) in our War of Terror (Borat’s words).
