I'm not planning on any big 9-11 post this week, so this will have to do. I will always remember the feeling I had when I first saw the bulletin on the AOL screen that morning that a plane had crashed into the WTC, and thought at first that it was one of these private aircraft being flown solo by an amateur pilot, and resumed my surfing for about fifteen minutes. Then the AOL screen stated that the WTC had collapsed, and I knew that this would be a day I would always remember. The horror and pain that day have not gone away, nor has the anger that another human being could plot such a thing.

Nevertheless, of all the articles I have read on the subject, this one, by Jill Stewart, best encapsulates how I feel. From the "Let's Roll" bric-a-brac (and the popular mythology, largely based on unsubstantiated rumors and hearsay, about Flight 93) to NYC's efforts to steal the Oscar Awards to the Bush Administration attempting to exploit the attack in order to boost the GOP in November, as well as to justify performing a Pearl Harbor on Baghdad, the baser elements of American culture and politics are raping the memories of the brave firemen and innocent clerical workers at the Pentagon and the WTC. A critic writes that this sort of view is a typical "PC", "California" view, at variance with the rest of the country, as if that were a stinging rebuke (and btw, anyone who thinks Jill Stewart, who is just barely to the left of David Horowitz, is politically correct has got to be the biggest moron in all of christendom; hey, I'm PC, buddy, and Ms. Stewart is never at our meetings). In fact, if anything symbolizes the stereotypically facile "Hollywood" reaction to the murders of September 11, it's the repetitive, maudlin tributes and mourning (classical music on the Food Network?) that that critic seems to demand from everyone. How we remember those events is an individual decision, not something to be imposed by some sort of Stalinoid mandate.