I'm a Lileks fan. Really.
I'm a Lileks fan. Really. But today, he's just irritating. Characterizing the thought processes of certain people who might be bothered by the fact that "there hasn't been a day" that he hasn't thought about September 11, he writes,
"They can’t stand people who won’t let go of 9/11. Once they washed the ash off their car it was over for them; why can’t it be over for everyone?"
First things first: James Lileks, like 99.9% of the rest of the country, watched the events of September 11 on a television, in the safety of his home, perhaps with friends and loved ones close by. The fact that he has a really excellent widescreen television with surround sound doesn't put the intensity of his experience in the same category as anybody who had to "wash ash off their car." It doesn't put his experience in the same category as my own, which consisted of washing ash off my body at the end of an eight-mile walk from downtown Manhattan to Queens with thousands of other evacuees. And it doesn't put it in the same solar system as the experience of the wounded and the families of the dead.
Which is a bit snarky, I realize. But Lileks thinks about September 11 every day because he chooses to do so. He doesn't live or work in New York. He's in Minnesota, which is most probably not a target for anybody anywhere in the world except, perhaps, for haters of Garrison Keillor. He's not forcibly reminded of that day. He will never be propelled back to that day by a random odor. He doesn't have to walk by the hole in the sky of downtown Manhattan, or look into the pit from his office windows. His memories can only be of watching video footage. He's got a choice, and what he has chosen is to dwell, to replay his memories of watching television, and to look at his daughter and think of the children on board those planes.
There is a certain tendency in this country to fetishize trauma. I'd blame it on the media, but the media wouldn't do it if the people didn't watch, read, and listen, so I'll blame it on the people instead. September 11, of course, is not the "trauma" of Jon Bonet Ramsey, or a summer "epidemic" of kidnappings. It's historical trauma, horror on a scale never before seen in this country. It's important that the rest of the country remember these events. People want to empathize and show their support, and that's a good thing. I'm not saying that Lileks is making an emotional fetish out of September 11. But he is wrong to put people who were so close that they had to "wash ash off their cars" in the same category as people who think that there’s "something unhealthy about thinking about 9/11" and were in, say, Berkeley.
Lileks is bitching about people who think he's being indulgent, who "can’t stand people who won’t let go of 9/11." I've got news for him: there are many people in this city who want nothing more than to "let go of 9/11," and are unable to do so. I, like many others here, are indeed "bracing" for the first anniversary. And our reasons are different from the reasons that Lileks and his presumed audience have. I want it to be over. All of the "Concerts for America," the "Special Live Coverage," the tributes, the speeches. That's for the rest of the country, the ones who need something visual or aural to remind themselves, whose memories of that day don't feel real, intense, or emotional enough, or don't seem to measure up to the monumental nature of the terror. Last night I saw the ad for NBC's planned "all-day" coverage, with Tom Brokaw, and I thought: Great. Just what we need, all-day coverage...just like on September 11, when we had all-day coverage, and all-night coverage, for days on end. Way to send us all back, Tom.
So, James: Empathize. Remember. Put your daughter on one of those planes in your mind, if you choose.
But don't tell me that I shouldn't be sick of hearing other people's thoughts and musings about September 11, particularly those of people who weren't there. I've been hearing about it, and looking at it, and smelling it, for 359 days. I've had enough.
