Keith Olbermann got pretty steamed last week when the RNC chose to show video footage from the events of 9/11; he apologized on air and the next morning made it clear that he would have one of his “Special Comment” rants about it on his show this week. Last night (or early this morning, if you want to be picky about it) he delivered:
I think he got a little carried away with the part about McCain personally abetting Osama Bin Laden by not revealing his “secret plan”, but his primary point — that the Republicans have shamelessly and cynically used the events of 9/11 not just at the convention but for the last seven years as a weapon of fear and distraction to further their misdeeds and malfeasance — is unassailably spot-on. It goes beyond the shame that the Republican Party should bear for fetishizing those images last week, it is absolutely nothing short of sedition. Keith Olbermann may play the outrage card a little more often than is really necessary, but his outrage now is wholly justified.
Since 2002, the New York skyline has been highlighted several times with the “Tribute In Light” display of two shafts of light shooting straight up into the sky from so-called “Ground Zero”. This year, as for the last two, the display will be visible only for the anniversary, and there are presently no plans to bring it back, since the construction work on the new buildings in that spot continues apace. As a memorial, it has been simple and dignified, but the continued exploitation of “Ground Zero” as a tourist destination cheapens any serious remebrance, and Olbermann’s commentary demonstrates that this coarsening of what was for many a personal tragedy seems to know no limit.
Writing at The Seminal, contributor “Red Wing” adds his thoughts and observations to the pornification of September 11, echoing some of the same sentiment expressed by Olbermann. How long indeed before this anniversary is turned into a three-day weekend, complete with shopping mall sales, car dealer “discount events”, and college football extravaganzas?
Finally, while John McCain and Barack Obama waste our time and insult our intelligence arguing about the phrase “putting lipstick on a pig”, Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich continues to fight to keep alive the calls for accountability for the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Writing in “The Nation” this week, Representative Kucinich says he will ask Congress to create a “Truth and Reconciliation” commission to once and for all bring to light a complete and accurate picture of the deceptions of the Bush Administration after 9/11, as well as their deliberate ignorance of events before 9/11, and to begin a national dialogue to find a path to reconciliation between the sharply-divided factions of the American public. I offer you the following excerpts, but recommend reading the entire piece:
We suffer in our remembrance of 9/11, because of the terrible loss of innocent lives on that grim day. We also suffer because 9/11 was seized as an opportunity to run a political agenda, which has set America on a course of the destruction of another nation and the destruction of our own Constitution. And we have become less secure as a result of the warped practice of pursing peace through the exercise of pre-emptive military strength.
It is not simply 9/11 that needs to be remembered. We also need to remember the politicization of 9/11 and the polarizing narrative which followed, locking us into endless conflict, a war on terror which has wrought further terror worldwide and which has severely damaged our standing worldwide as an honorable, compassionate nation. As we were all victims of 9/11, so we have become victims of the interpretation of 9/11.
…The dominant color of our new national security since 911 is neither red, white nor blue. Every day is orange. Every day, reminders of fear of 9/11 become banal. Yet we no longer hear the airport announcements nor see the orange-colored warnings because they have commonplace standards in our new national security state, as is the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and a host of invasions of privacy and diminution of civil liberties. The Constitution has been roundly attacked by the very people who took an oath to defend it.
…our path may necessarily be different: High US government officials stand accused in impeachment petitions of violating national and international law. Our continued existence as a democracy may depend upon how thoroughly we seek the truth. I will call upon the America people to join me in supporting this effort.
The truth can move us forward, as a unified whole, so that we can one day become a re-United States. 9/11 is the day the world changed. It is the day America embraced a metaphor of war. If we are open to truth and reconciliation, we may one day be able, once again, to embrace peace.
Peace be with all of the victims of the horrific events of September 11, 2001, dead and alive, near and far.
You’re on target about the politicization, although it took me a while to realize that was what was being done. Like most people, in the first months I was caught up in that initial flag-waving “Daddy keep us safe” response.
Wasn’t Charlotte little when 9/11 happened? When I first saw the TV news reports, I was nursing 2-month-old Sam. It was an unsettling time to be the parent of a tiny son. I hope America will have its head screwed on straighter by the time he comes of age.
Charlotte was three months old. She had just started day care the day before, as a matter of fact.
I will never forget being home with her a couple of days later, watching a local memorial service on TV for the Boston-based flight crews who were killed in the WTC attacks, crying like a baby myself and wondering what sort of world she would have to grow up in.
I despise the fear-mongers and the people who twisted a national tragedy into an unnecessary nightmare that we may never fully find our way out of. They have a lot to answer for.
Oh my. Boston. My childhood pen pal, who was from Dedham, was a passenger on Flight 11. I had never met him, but he was a husband and father of three. He put the human face on 9/11 for me. Before that day I thought international affairs and terrorism had nothing to do with me. When I saw on the news that Jeff Coombs was one of those who’d died, I realized it had everything to do with all of us.
When 3,000 people die, there’s bound to be a lot of collateral damage — many people with family, friends and acquaintances who were killed. Then, hundreds of millions of people watched it happen live on TV, and we all were emotionally or psychologically affected, even if we weren’t directly connected to the event.
But that’s the damage of a large-scale tragedy. Terrorism is not a constant threat to the fiber of human civilization the way that the non-stop threat of global thermonuclear war was for half a century. It is a minor, indeed almost minuscule, threat that has been distorted beyond all reasonable imagination by the half of the American political system that is vested in keeping the populace motivated by fear. It has very little to do with any of us, except that the seeming randomness of its application makes all of us think we could be the next target, even though it is less likely to occur than being struck by lightning or some other more mundane peril.
I haven’t watched much tv at all since the Democratic Convention so I didnt have any idea about how the RNC co-opted 911…although the republicans have been doing it for years now, it certainly seems more blantant.
BTW…it’s interesting to hear John McCain tell us that he knows how to win a war…if my memory serves me well (and sometimes it does) I recall that not only did he sit out a bunch of that war recovering from plane crashes and in some POW camp, but didn’t we lose that war? What other war did McCain win where he learned his most excellent strategies?