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September 13, 2001
A First-hand Account, with an Opinion, For Discussion
Sigh. This bit requires an explanation. I wrote this two days after the attack--long before I created Astonished Head--having spent most of that time watching the television: over and over again, the planes, the buildings, the dust. I had been there--right there, on television, somewhere in the cloud of debris. And at the time, I was also in a cloud of happy-liberal-think, deeply enveloped in the haze of American self-loathing perpetuated by academia, the media, and Intellectuals. I had inhaled deeply of the cynical skepticism that passed for real thought at the time, and still does in certain circles.
The links will show you pictures of my office and the surrounding area, taken that day by Juan Lopez, a fellow who works in the mailroom in my office on the 42nd floor. He told me that he had other pictures, pictures of the wounded, but that he wasn't sharing those. It wouldn't be right, he said, to show those people in that condition without their permission.
What you will read here is me in a "condition" of my own: deluded, propagandized, and morally vague. I could just delete it, I suppose. But there is value here: it is a written account of my experience on September 11, and a portrait of my thinking at the time.
Hopefully, the rest of the writings on Astonished Head will offer a suitable corrective. There's nothing like showering the dust of the dead off your body to give you some perspective on things.
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I was in my office on the 39th floor of 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, about three blocks from the Trade Center, when the first tower fell. The floor heaved three times in quick succession. I knew that the towers were burning, because I had seen them earlier that morning. I also knew instantly that the horrible, gut-wrenching shudders were the impact of hundreds of thousands of tons of building hitting the street. I got out using the elevator—stupid, but fast—crammed into a car with twenty others. The two-story, glass-walled lobby of the building was in chaos: the glass looked as though someone had painted it dirty white; nothing at all was visible outside on the plaza. Someone briefly opened one of the handicapped access doors to the plaza, and a wind jetted a column of dust and smoke into the lobby. I tumbled down an up escalator to get to a street-level exit. I passed by a body as I left the building...laid out neatly on its back, arms at the sides. I thought at first that it was the body of a black man. It wasn’t. With the sort of morbid irrelevance that I suppose can occupy a mind in shock I realized yesterday that, because of its location and condition, the body must have been blown from a tower during one of the initial plane impacts. He had been flash-burned, thrown a quarter-mile, up and over my 60-story office building, and landed on the sidewalk in front of the William Street exit.
I ran toward Pine Street, using my shirt to filter out the white dust that turned to thick mud in my mouth, and headed for my bicycle, locked up on the side of the plaza. It was still there: every surface covered with two inches of the dust. I pulled my tiny headlights from my bike bag, affixed them to the handlebars and turned them on…they were useless in the white darkness. But I rolled blindly through the opaque dust cloud in eerie stillness, surrounded by choking white wraiths staggering away from that place. I didn’t see the sun for ten minutes, until I had passed under the entrance ramps for the Brooklyn Bridge, and even then, it was a pale white coin, barely visible through the thick, swirling air. But I made it to my girlfriend’s office, and together we walked the seven miles to my apartment in Queens, joining the pedestrian exodus from Manhattan over the 59th Street Bridge.
Since then, I’ve slept only because I’ve exhausted myself with long bike rides through a strangely quiet Manhattan, and by doing some relief work loading hundreds of bags of donated clothing onto trucks. Certain images on the television hit me like vertigo: the bronze statue of a man on a bench opening his briefcase (called “Final Check”), that I passed every day on my way to lunch, now dented and malformed atop a pile of rubble; the Brooks Brothers storefront I passed on the way to the Cortlandt Street N line subway stop, now a morgue; the Century 21 department store that didn’t have the right dress belt for me last Friday, now shattered and ruined. But what I have been thinking of most in the past two days, with increasing despair and anger, is this: America has not conducted itself with the commitment to unequivocal justice that most properly befits the keepers of the ideas nobly if imperfectly expressed within the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I saw, watching the one television station I could receive on Tuesday, a “terrorism expert” who told me that it was not America’s “relationship with Israel” that contributed to this event, but our status as the “symbol of all freedom.” That man, sitting there in his yarmulke, was not telling the truth, was protecting his own small, puny nationalism in the face of thousands of deaths on that day, and thousands before it. America, sitting here as the “symbol of all freedom,” has repeatedly and simplistically supported the unjust conduct of regimes and regime oppositions alike, in small places that are mostly insignificant to our complacent population, for many, many decades. We do so in secret when we can and—as in the case of Israel—with blatant, rhetorical disinformation or outright lies when we cannot. We do so because our support of the unjust actions of these groups and individuals expediently furthers the simplistic, shortsighted and—above all—morally vacuous goals of politicians and strategists who do not have the deep, honest courage that is required to pursue justice, at all times, in all places, whatever the cost to their individual careers. This courage requires the identification and condemnation of evil to be one act, simultaneous. No spin. No justification of “our interests” as more important than the petty atrocities of one of our client states or causes. It is justice that ought to be our overwhelming interest, but it is not.
The United States government has failed to uphold its professed standards of justice and freedom around the world. It has fostered a culture that has so sated the base desires of its citizenry, and has so crippled that citizenry’s ability to discover the true nature of our nation’s foreign policies, that as a whole we are unable to generate any sense of what ought to constitute the just conduct of a great and noble nation. Thus, we are appalled and bewildered when our continued support of injustice and evil results in numbing, crashing, choking evil in our greatest city.
This is not some simplistic “we had it coming” rant. This is not an excuse for the evil cowardice of the perpetrators. This is instead the simple, direct, and true observation that such profoundly inhuman acts do not occur in a vacuum. The United States of America has the opportunity here to search deep within its collective soul, and to constructively admit the deficiency of its moral character as an actor on the world stage. I have been watching, and waiting, for someone, anyone, to suggest that it is not our perfection that brought this day upon us, but our failures. So far, only Bruce Shapiro has had the courage to say so.
Tonight, in the foyer of my apartment in Queens, I can smell the stink of burning steel. The horizon is lit in the distance by a bubble of blue-white light that diffuses through rising haze. I went out, this evening, to find an American flag to attach to my bicycle, but the stores near here were sold out, or had only cheap versions—plastic, or square “American flag” headscarves. I didn’t buy one of those. I want a real flag, made of honest cotton and properly proportioned, to fly from my ride. Not because I want to unconditionally support my government, but because I want to support the citizenry, who are paying the price for my government’s lack of moral compass and genuine courage. Because I want to remember the stranger on William Street, who was someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s husband or someone’s father, who never knew what was happening to him, or why.
But mostly, I want that flag on the bicycle that I rode out of hell because I desperately hope that our leadership has the courage to change the nature of our terrible world by changing the nature of the actions they take within it.
I fear…I am almost certain…that they only possess the brutish power to make it worse.
POSTSCRIPT, 07/01/03:
A few weeks after I returned to work, I realized that I should have been able to see the body on the sidewalk in this photo, which was taken between the fall of the first and second towers, and therefore after I had fled the building. But the body wasn't there. So I asked Juan, the photgrapher, about it.
Faced with the incredible events of that day, my mind had played some grim tricks on me, as it turned out. The man wasn't burnt--he was, in fact, black. And he wasn't dead. He had been wounded in the head by a piece of flying debris, and then collapsed during a subsequent asthma attack. Juan and some others from the mailroom dragged him inside after the first tower collapsed.
I'm glad he made it, and I'm sorry that I didn't stop to help.
It is so very strange to me, the activities of the mind...almost two years later, my memory of him lying there is as clear now as it was then. I can see the blood on his head, and the pink, torn meat of his scalp. Now that I know what I was seeing, the details resolve themselves into a wounded black man, instead of a burnt corpse with exposed pieces of brain.
And yet, for several weeks, I was dealing with the shock of seeing a corpse.
A testament, I think, not only to my own ability to confuse myself, but to the unreal magnitude of that day.
March 01, 2002
On March 10, CBS is
On March 10, CBS is planning to air footage recorded inside the World Trade Center during the attacks. This has prompted a few politicians to issue letters in which they urge CBS to either delay airing the program for another six months (New Jersey's Bergen Country Prosecuter William H. Schmidt), or to "exercise taste and caution" in its production (New Jersey Senators Robert G. Toricelli and Jon Corzine). Some of those who lost people on 9/11 don't want it to be aired at all, which is understandable.
However, the Great Glass Eyes in our homes obey us. We can elect to turn them off, and that is what those who do not want to see this documentary should do. As long as CBS doesn’t indulge itself with “teaser” footage during promo ads scattered throughout regular viewing hours, there shouldn’t be a problem. The promo for the program I saw last night was circumspect.
I do question CBS’s choice of Robert DeNiro as host. Clearly, they intend his presence to emphasize the Heroism and Sacrifice of the day, subtly changing the tone from “sensational new footage” to “portraits of courage.” A bit disingenuous, like all televised attempts to be sensitive and compassionate while trying to gain ratings share.
I’ll be watching, of course. I was there that day. I want to see what was happening 300 yards away from me. I'll tape it, and put the video in the box along with the the newspapers, the magazines, the bit of burned office paperwork and the small jar of thick gray dust. And then I'll put the box in the closet.
March 06, 2002
After reading Andrew Sullivan's Dish
After reading Andrew Sullivan's Dish today, I'm a bit puzzled. Not by him--by my own reaction to the same news. I think Andrew lives in or near D.C. I live in New York City, and I work about 300 yards from Ground Zero. I, too, saw the splashed headlines about the nuclear possibilities. But the news--which would have driven me from the city for at least a week, had it come out in October--barely registered.
I find that very odd.
But I think I understand it: I've already been through one catastrophe. I'm buying a house outside of the city, and I'm getting the hell out. I never really liked it here, anyway, and with technology being what it is these days, my work is mostly portable. I probably won't be able to leave for a couple of months, though. So I bide my time and go about my business, keeping my focus very narrowly on my goal: getting out. Although I feel guilty for saying it, I think my lack of reaction boils down to "Just wait until I'm gone, please." Because I was so close on 9/11 (and God knows there were thousands who were much closer), those splashed nuclear headlines seem to have my name on them. Right now I can't afford to indulge myself in panic, because I'm driven: get out. Get safe.
Every time I see some jackass mouthing the "I'm going about my business as usual, because if I don't the terrorists have won" line, I want to reach through the television and punch them in the head. The only way any of us here in New York can go about our business is by pretending that it won't happen again. Anything else would send us all raving into the streets.
But, like Andrew, I'm pretty sure that it will happen again. My irradiated corpse will neither give nor deny the terrorists victory. So off I go!
Or, maybe my corpse won't
Or, maybe my corpse won't get so irradiated after all. The New York Times offers "Nuclear Officials Describe 'Dirty Bomb' Scenarios."
Could just be aimed at calming down a freaked-out populace that's pissed at the government for keeping the October Scare under its hat. Worth a read, anyway.
Of course, there's still the matter of all those loose Soviet nukes floating about, God knows where...
March 07, 2002
No, wait! My corpse will
No, wait! My corpse will be irradiated! Further expert testimony on nuclear annhilation from the New York Times. Just compare today's Standard Media, Inc. Risk Assessment
"Dr. Kelly offered a case study of what might happen if a dirty bomb containing a cobalt food irradiation bar exploded at the southern tip of Manhattan on a day with a light wind blowing toward the northeast. He calculated that Manhattan as far north as Central Park would be contaminated at levels similar to those in the permanently closed zone around the Chernobyl power plant. Manhattan would have to be abandoned for decades, Dr. Kelly said."
with yesterday's:
"Such a weapon [a dirty bomb] could contaminate dozens of city blocks with radioactivity, but not kill a soul, the officials told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. Or it could cause a few more cancers later in life for its victims -- say, four additional cancers in 100,000 people."
Of course, yesterday they were talking about a bomb laden with less-deadly strontium and cesium isotopes, and today they're talking about The Big Ugly, Cobalt-60.
Isn't it a pity we don't spend more on science education, so that the general public could decipher all of this and make decisions about just how worried to be! Would it kill anyone to publish a handy, bullet-pointed chart, instead of just releasing declaration after contradictory declaration with little or no context?
This reminds me of being told in October to "be vigilant" without being told a single thing about what to be vigilant about. In this time of crisis when the public--especially the urban public--needs to be involved in homeland defense, the media has been inexcusably remiss in providing clear and cogent information. "Duck and Cover" may have been laughably ineffective as a method for surviving a nuclear strike, but every schoolkid in America knew about it. We need something similar: "Six Suspicious Signs: Be Aware In The Subway!" or "How To Spot A Bomb."
For my own part, I think the likelihood of a loose Russian nuke falling into the hands of our enemies is far greater than the use of a dirty bomb. To make the highly effective cobalt-60 bomb would require the theft of the most tightly controlled radiation source in the country, along with appropriate shielding and protective gear, so that they could transport the material, store it, and grind it into powder without dying. Also from today's NYT article:
"An individual physically handling an unshielded single source rod [of cobalt-60] would receive a lethal (death within weeks) dose in about a minute, and an incapacitating dose (immediately deadly) in about 20 minutes."
There you have it.
Gosh, I feel better already.
March 08, 2002
Peggy Noonan offers one of
Peggy Noonan offers one of the first of what will I'm sure be many other “six months” pieces. I've got one on tap myself.
This one is notable because it combines cloned Chinese Rabbit Men with stigmata and Tina Brown, sprinkled with some assumptions about smaller dark people and taller white ones. I'd like to find the subway Ms. Noonan rides, and give it a try—I certainly wouldn't call the N/R/W line “darling,” even on its best days. Perhaps if I rode it for 12 years and prayed the rosary the whole time, I would. I find very little of the “we're all in this together” feeling to slather around, particularly when folks are trying to cram their wide asses into spaces not big enough for them and the urine-stench of Grand Central is oozing through the open doors while the subway remains stuck motionless in the station. That's why I generally bike to work.
The life here in New York, to me, is insect life: the incessant rustling activity of other humans, close by, anonymously sharing intimate space. I'm tired of living in a box surrounded by other boxes; I'm tired of hearing other people's noise in my home; I'm tired of the loudness, the particulate pollution, the unnatural edges of concrete and asphalt. It's a certain kind of person that thrives in this environment, and I'm not that kind. I've met more people I like and keep in touch with while spending weekends in the Hudson Valley than I have while living here for four years.
And now, to top it off, my prescient imaginings have come to apocalyptic life. When I started working downtown, I would occasionally look up at the knife-edged towers and think, “What would I do if an airliner hit one of them?” I'd look around, trying to figure out where shelter would be found: under the overhang in front of the Brooks Brothers? In that doorway over there? Perhaps down in the subway station.
So, no thanks. I don't need to move to Kansas to feel safe. I just need to spend less time in this bull's-eye.
March 11, 2002
Well, I was supposed to
Well, I was supposed to have my own contribution to the Six Months boulliabaisse done by today, but it's not quite done yet. Such is life. In the meantime, I sit here three blocks from Ground Zero and remember the day.
March 15, 2002
And so it goes…Sullivan's dish
And so it goes…Sullivan's dish (03-14, “Bush vs. Israel”) points out the subtleties I miss…like I said, I'm just sick about everything over there…and tired…no, the Palestinians shouldn't do that…those bad things…with the exploding in the cafés and so forth…yes, Israel can defend itself…and should…but gosh, don't you wish they would have thought about this when they decided to build settlements in occupied lands? Wouldn't it have been nice if Ben-Gurion and the rest of the Zionist visionaries had come up with something other than ‘relocation' as a plan for dealing with the folks who lived on the land they coveted? Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the British hadn't promised the land to both the Jews and the Arabs in exchange for support during WWII? There is the stink of primitive monkey evil all over that swatch of wretched earth…that miserable dusty corner of the globe where rocks and walls are holy, and worth shedding blood upon…that desert that breeds madmen and prophets with honey-drenched beards and locusts stuck in their teeth.
Meanwhile, Horowitz comes up with this cheery tidbit. We have truly dangerous, hateful traitors in our midst. Perhaps those who believe that the events of September 11 were anything but morally repulsive need to be taken to the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago, soaked with jet fuel, set on fire, and thrown off. On the way down, they can contemplate the justice of their punishment, and decide whether those office workers and firemen deserved to die, their bodies aflame, crushed into spaces no thicker than a sheet of paper, or rendered unidentifiable by the impact of a 90-story fall onto plaza concrete.
My first response, on 9-13-01, was to write a tirade about the American failure to uphold justice throughout the world. There is a theological perspective that simply states: there is no perfect Justice here, because this is an imperfect world. Perfect Justice is only found in the hereafter. Unlike me, these people—Sontag, Chomsky and the like—do not have the excuse of naiveté to explain their continued refusal to acknowledge the inherent absence of good in the acts of 9/11. These are educated people who firmly believe that flying airliners into skyscrapers is a reasonable act.
We have sunk so deeply into the swamps of relativism that life itself has become meaningless in the face of all-encompassing Theory. It is only since wiping the dust of buildings and bodies from my brow that I have come to realize that, even in the absence of God, simple reverence for life commands us to condemn atrocity. The fact that the United States government often fails to perfectly uphold such principles everywhere, at all times, is not an indicator of complete moral failure. It is only an indicator of imperfection.
Think of it this way: elsewhere in the world, women fight for the basic right to participate in government, to drive, to wear the clothes they want, to leave the house unaccompanied, and to have their genitals left unmutilated. Here in America, women fight for the final 25 cents needed to bring their average wages up to par with their male counterparts. Elsewhere in the world, speaking out against the teachings of religious authorities results in exile, persecution, and death. Here in America, the Church must defend itself against just criticism when its priests commit acts of sexual predation upon children. Elsewhere in the world, the people have no recourse to information other than that provided by their governments or their religious figures. Here in America, we have so much information, from so many different sources, that the only determiner of proffered truth is the reasonableness of the proposition, the argument used to convey it, the information that backs it up, and the intelligence of the person contemplating it.
What we're doing in America is working out the kinks and details in a relatively new system of government that is the freest the world has ever seen. Much of the rest of the world hasn't even decided whether everyone deserves to live or not.
The very process of criticism, even that leveled by such moral idiots as Sontag and Chomsky, is an indicator of the superiority of our system of governance and of those like it. The very fact that we don't imprison, torture and kill these people, but allow them to have their say, however they can manage to get it out, supports the open nature of our society. What is their objection? That the ubiquity of the “party line” promulgated by Standard Media, Inc. is equivalent to their repression? Get with the program, people! You are not the majority. The fact that very few people outside of your own precious, utopian revolutionary circles agree with you is simply an indicator of your elitism and the pragmatic common sense of the vast majority of the population.
Yes, the United States has done evil things, in the service of questionable ideas. But here, at least, our government hides such acts, knowing that, if made public, the citizenry would cry aloud in moral revulsion. That indicates that there is at least an awareness that such acts are wrong. Compare that with the joy in the Muslim world at the deaths of innocents, the pride with which Palestinian mothers strap toy explosives to their children, the celebration of suicide.
Our government may do shameful things. But at least we have a sense of shame.
March 17, 2002
This is why...yes...perhaps the Islamists
This is why...yes...perhaps the Islamists can tell us all about the last time American servicemen walked into a mosque...and deliberately threw grenades at the worshippers bowing down before their God. More primitive monkeys willing to kill to defend the anthropomorphic honor of their holy rock.
In that vein, here is a thought-provoking Christian treatment of the reality and uses of violence, from J. Bottum. Commenting upon the work of René Girard, Bottum points out that our failure to appreciate the "sacrificial logic [of] mythic cultures" is not serving us well. The Christian sacrifice of Christ, he maintains, is an alternative to something. That "something" is the literal presence of sacrifice, human and otherwise, that formed the foundation stones of so many prior cultures, in the West and elsewhere.
What we are forgetting is that the Islamist conception of Muslim culture requires blood...human sacrifice. Muslims willing to die by slamming planes into buildings, by strapping explosives to their bodies, by hurling themselves into waiting Israeli guns. This is an ethos and a mythology that is not from the time of Muhammad; it is from the time long before, the time of tribes, and magic, and blood ritual.
The soft pacifism that is rearing its head, Bottum maintains, is acting as midwife to the re-birth of an ancient, dark culture, explicitly founded upon blood sacrifice. It is our duty to prevent this from happening, and to do that it is permissable to use the ancient, dark tools of violence.
What we are confronting is a culture that has not shed its explicit belief in the efficacy of human sacrifice. It is as if the Aztecs, instead of cutting out individual hearts with knives of obsidian, had developed nuclear weapons and satisfied the blood lust of their gods with tens of thousands of burnt offerings at a time.
Those among you who have been educated in today's anti-Western doctrines will point to the American foundation, built upon the blood of the aboriginal peoples of this land. This is true: our vision of Manifest Destiny allowed the westward expansion to proceed without regard for the lives of the Native Americans, and upon the backs of the Africans we brought here. However, as a culture, we have progressed. We recognize that these acts contradict the statements of our founding. These deeds are now decried, and are the cause of epic cultural battles. We recognize the need to atone, and we wage rhetorical war among ourselves over the form that our atonement should take. In short, we have recognized that the blood spilled upon our foundations cries out for justice and for recognition. And make no mistake: it was only through the most convoluted thinking that we were ever able to justify these acts, and they were never regarded as sacrifices demanded by God.
This is not so for our Islamist enemies. Blood is the intended wetting agent for the mortar of their cultural foundation. That is the difference between the World Trade Center and the bunker at Al-'Amariya. We, at least, try to avoid shedding the blood of innocents. Our enemies choose to shed it, with deliberate intent, and are morally motivated to do so as part of their religious and ethical worldview. Furthermore, they regard the sacrificial shedding of the blood of their own as necessary for the establishment of their chosen culture. They are trapped in a time before civilization, when gods walked the earth and demanded the lives of their subjects as tribute.
March 20, 2002
Like George Will and Rush
Like George Will and Rush Limbaugh, Frank Gaffney apparently believes that Israeli lives are worth more than American lives:
"...the United States has lately resumed its strident criticism of Israeli efforts to prevent terrorists from inflicting further damage on the Jewish State at a rate that is, calculated on a per capita basis, far in excess of the losses we suffered on September 11."
As I stated previously ("Counting Corpses, 12-18-01"), putting such mathematics into the service of an argument intended to elicit a moral response is manipulative at best. One human life equals one human life; that is the only legitimate equation. Even God himself did not value the Jews more because of the size of their population:
"The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people. But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers." (Deuteronomy 7:7–8).
If God thinks that the relative size of a given population has no effect on its worth, why do Will, Limbaugh, and Gaffney?
March 25, 2002
Century 21, the department store
Century 21, the department store on Church Street that has been closed since September 11, reopened on February 28. So, too, have the streets running west off of Broadway. The small park near my office between Broadway and Church Streets remains fenced off, the trees and benches gone. Folks used to eat lunch there, and play chess at folding card tables. It’s now home to Porta-Potties and the mobile offices of Tully Construction. Ground Zero, once so immense at 16 acres, has gotten smaller, and more discrete—if a six-story hole in the ground can be called discrete. The piles of smoking wreckage have been trucked away, and the loaders and diggers are slowly propelling the site back through time to 1970, when all that existed of the World Trade Center was the vast, empty foundation.
Read more...
March 26, 2002
Just now, I watched them
Just now, I watched them bring someone out of Ground Zero. From 39 stories up, and 300 yards away, the workers are small figures an eighth of an inch tall. It’s raining here, so they’re very visible in their yellow rain slickers. I had stopped by a window to look out at the site, and noticed an ambulance parked at the top of the elevated roadway they’ve built from the bottom of the foundation up to the northwest edge of the Pit. Dozens of small, yellow-suited figures milled around slowly, and then gradually aligned themselves, person by person, along the edges of the roadway. The supporting structure beneath the edges of the roadway is hung with construction-orange tarpaulins, which when combined with the yellow rain gear created an incongruously cheery profusion of bright colors.
After fifteen minutes or so, two people—one in yellow, one in black—walked slowly onto the portion of the roadway that I could see. A few minutes later, a tight group of six or seven yellow-suited workers followed, bearing their burden between them. I had thought that I might be able to make out the flag, but I never saw the anticipated splash of red, white, and blue. Finally, after a pause at the top of the roadway while—presumably—the tiny figure in black offered prayer, the group of workers gathered around the rear of the ambulance, which then slowly went on its way.
I realized, as I stood there quietly watching the small procession, that during the past two weeks a peculiar form of grief has been heavy on my heart. It has to do with coming here to work, a few days a week, and being near that place. It has to do with the state of the world, and the constant burgeoning presence of bloody sacrifice. It has do to with the realization that much of the world doesn’t understand tolerance, or virtue, or humanity the way that my culture strives to. All of that was imbued with a subtle sense of history, that communal product we all manufacture in some form or another. I felt that I was standing there alongside those tiny yellow figures, and for just a moment, the immensity of their task and of the work that they have already done struck me hard, bruising my spirit.
These are still mournful times. A friend of mine, who was also near Ground Zero on September 11, expressed much the same sentiment. Here in New York, we move through each day trying to forget what has happened, and trying not to imagine what may come. It’s an effort that can only be maintained for so long, before the reality of the past and the potential of the future conspire to bring us grief and anxiety.
We’ve come so far. But we have so very, very far to go.
April 02, 2002
Once again, Frank Gaffney makes
Once again, Frank Gaffney makes the "there's fewer of them, so they're worth more" argument:
"First, the United States must stand with Israel -- a fellow democracy and close ally whose losses along its front (which now means practically everywhere in Israel) in the war on terrorism greatly exceed on a per capita basis those experienced by the United States on September 11."
How about this, Mr. Gaffney? I will trade Israel the sum total of its dead for the last two years for the sum total of our dead on September 11.
Sound good?
Didn't think so.
[FP posted my reply to Gaffney's math. Yahoo. --IW]
April 10, 2002
George McGovern spouts idiocy in
George McGovern spouts idiocy in The Nation. Here are some questions he asks:
Would we be better off opening up diplomatic, trade and travel relations with rogue countries, including a well-staffed embassy in each?
Of course! Setting up fully staffed embassies in Iran, Iraq and North Korea would allow those hostile to American interests to vent their frustrations by blowing them up, thus preventing future acts of terrorism. Similarly, we could send over groups of American tourists that could then be kidnapped and beheaded, with videotapes of each murder circulated among the disaffected, thus satisfying their blood-lust in the most economical manner possible in terms of lives lost. Brilliant! And let's not forget: if the governments of said countries still hate us, we can open up full trade relations with them so that they can finally get the cash flows they need to finish their nuclear ICBM programs. That will make them feel safe and secure, which is all that Sadaam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, and the Mullahs of Iran really want.
Isn't a rogue nation simply one we have chosen to boycott because it doesn't always behave the way we think it should?
Absolutely! After all, it's really not a big deal that Hussein experiments on his minority populations with chemical weapons, or that Jong Il is starving his population, or that Iran is providing high-grade explosives to Palestinian suicide bombers to increase their effectiveness. We should let those leaders know that we really do understand where they're coming from, and that it's perfectly alright with us if they want to kill, maim, and starve their citizens.
Is not the best way to diminish some of the international trouble spots, which might embroil our young men and women, by reducing the festering poverty, misery and hopelessness of a suffering world?
Yes! If we just provide Hussein and Jong Il with all the food their countries' populations need, I'm sure that they'll make certain that every citizen gets it before it rots on the docks. It is obvious that all of the world's problems can be solved if we just funnel more American tax revenues to other countries so that they can spend the money with the wisdom and responsibility that they have so clearly demonstrated in the past.
Is it possible that our well-intentioned President and his Vice President have gone off the track of common sense in their seeming obsession with terrorism?
Definitely possible! I mean, why be obsessed about three thousand American dead in our greatest city and our nation's capital? That's nothing to get upset about, after all…it's just mass murder. It's not like they're going to do it again, or anything. I'm sure that they've gotten it out of their systems, and feel no need to acquire nuclear or biological weapons so that they can kill tens of thousands of us. Bush and Cheney might in fact be downright loopy!
McGovern's absolute disconnection with the reality of the events of September 11 and the world we live in is beyond belief. It is, in a word, appalling. His glossing over of the complexity of the threats we face in order to service his simplistic, “all you need is love and foreign aid” pseudo-philosophy is an offense to our American dead.
This is a man who thinks that a stateless terrorist with a nuclear weapon is just like the Soviet Union with a field of missile silos. This is a man who has reduced the powdered ashes of the 2,077 still-missing bodies at the World Trade Center to the mischief of a ‘hobgoblin.'
This is a man who wanted to be President of these United States.
April 11, 2002
Somewhere around 1991 or 1992...
Somewhere around 1991 or 1992 - I'm not sure, because my journal files from that time are locked behind clever passwords I�ve since forgotten - I had a dream. The dream contained vivid images, accompanied by emotional impressions so potent that I�ve remembered it to this day. The image I remember most...the one that was foremost in my mind when I awoke...involved Interstate 95, the highway that ran near the town where I lived in New Jersey at the time. I-95 runs north/south, and is one of the major arteries that leads to New York City from New Jersey and other points south.
In this dream, I was looking northward along a familiar section of I-95 that ran near where I lived, from a slightly elevated position, as though I were standing on an overpass. The northbound lanes of the highway were nearly empty, but the southbound lanes were packed with slow-moving traffic. All of the crowded automobiles had their lights on. My impression was that they were fleeing, evacuating, heading south to escape. And, indeed, northward there lay a great darkness: an ominous, roiling, clouded darkness that seemed to stretch across the horizon. It filled my dream self with dread.
Prominently placed in this darkness, looming upwards and disappearing into the clouds, were two tall, square towers. There were fighter aircraft flitting around them, flying into and out of the clouds.
At the time, and for many years afterwards, I interpreted those tall towers disappearing into the smoky darkness as the legs of some giant, menacing creature or robot, something archetypal and biblical, a leviathan with the bulk of its massive body lost to view overhead. In the dream, its legs were massive things, that dwarfed me as an observer, and I had the impression of motion, as though they were slowly striding from the north towards me, bearing menace and danger.
It was only last week that it occurred to me: two towering structures. Dark clouds, swirling like smoke. Fighter aircraft. All key elements of that day in September.
Now, if that isn�t just downright odd, I don't know what is. I had this dream long before I lived in New York, and long before I worked near or even visited the World Trade Center.
There�s something that bothers me. Please allow me to indulge in some Mulderesque speculation, just for a moment. The towers: accounted for. The dark smoke: accounted for. The jet fighters: accounted for. But that scene of evacuation, the thousands of cars fleeing from the north, their headlights on to pierce the darkness from which they emerged...that hasn't happened. Not yet, anyway.
Let�s all hope I'm a crank with a vivid imagination.
May 03, 2002
Since the streets west of
Since the streets west of Broadway reopened a couple of months ago, I’ve been seeing that big hole in the sky over Ground Zero once or twice a day. There’s not much to see of Ground Zero itself—it is, after all, a hole in the ground now, mostly invisible behind construction fencing. But over the past few weeks, it was the sheer absence of the two buildings that began to weigh upon me. I would pause once or twice a week, gazing up into the sky where 50,000 people should have been working and going about their ordinary office lives. Sometimes I could almost see them there, floating hundreds of feet above me…phantoms hovering near copy machines, computers and water coolers.
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May 16, 2002
The crawl across the bottom
The crawl across the bottom of Fox 5 News this AM tells me that Mayor Bloomberg is going to announce the end date of the Ground Zero cleanup efforts as June 11. Nine months of cutting, hauling, digging, recovering, and bagging. I spent a few moments at the window, looking out at the southern section of the site. The hole is flat-bottomed now; they've exposed the gray concrete floor of the basement. Traffic moves busily along the fresh blacktop of the West Side highway. The pedestrian bridge that runs North/South from the Financial Center tower has been repaired - they've chosen some sort of dark red material to clad it. The top of the East-West bridge that crossed over the West Side highway, and was just across the street from the South Tower of the trade center, is still a mass of plywood boards.
Last week I walked along the street next to the small park between Broadway and Church Street, which had been full of trailer-offices and construction equipment. All that's left are a few small trailers. Peering through the green fabric that covers the chain link fence, I could see the neat squares of dirt, where forty-eight trees used to be, shading the broad, fat steps that ringed the park and served as seats for the lunchtime crowd. The concrete of the steps is shattered and scarred from being bashed into by trucks and other equipment. The bronze statue of the man with his briefcase that spent the past few months perched against a trailer wearing a gas mask is gone now, along with the black marble bench that he sat on before that. I hope they'll replant the trees, and I hope they don't skimp and plant little saplings, but bigger, more mature trees. Saplings would be too sad.
I don't really have anything to offer, other than those descriptions. Life goes on, I suppose. Forces of history converge. People die.
And deaths are avenged.
May 17, 2002
Peter Jennings tells me that
Peter Jennings tells me that the last day of work at Ground Zero will be on May 30, not June 11 as reported by the Fox 5 News crawl. Good old reliable Canuck Peter!
May 20, 2002
And now this cheery bit
And now this cheery bit of news, which is only official confirmation of something that those of us who think about such things already knew.
As a sometime-subway rider, I know that there is no way to defend against a bomb-belted lunatic walking onto, say, the middle car of the N train at the height of the rush hour (which is packed solid) and taking out fifty or more commuters. The attack would shut down the entire New York City subway system. The psychological impact would be enormous. Which makes such an operation fat and tasty for those who are interested in making Americans sweat.
That is why (in addition to the fact that I'm getting fat again) I'll resume riding my bicycle to work within the week. At least on the streets of Manhattan all I have to worry about is a coffee-dosed lunatic opening his parked car door into my path, or some taxi driver running me onto the sidewalk.
Not to mention that on September 11, I rode my bike to work, and it made it that much easier to get out of downtown.
May 24, 2002
Way back on February 27
Way back on February 27 I commented on Hillel Halkin's "The Return of Anti-Semitism." In this month's First Things, John Neuhaus weighs in on Halkin with far more nuance that I managed to muster:
"Hillel Halkin is certainly right in saying that, after September 11, the perceived risks in U.S. support for Israel are greatly increased. There needs to be a civil conversation about why we should be prepared to accept those risks. It is distinctly unhelpful to poison public discourse with the suggestion that those who disagree or have doubts are, in fact, simply anti–Semites."
May 30, 2002
Tired. Very, very, very tired.
Tired. Very, very, very tired. And sick. But I am in the office today. From a window, I can see folks gathering along the South and West sides of the Ground Zero site. They're there to watch the stately removal of the last beam from the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and the empty stretcher which represents the 1,800 or so people who have yet to be identified. Fortunately, we've still got 20,000 body parts to test.
20,000. That means, roughly, that the 1,800 unidentified were each blown into eleven pieces. Except for the ones who were burned to ash and then crushed into powder.
Anyway. The ceremonial bit starts in about an hour and a half. And with that, our cleaning up of the "Great Victory" of "Allah's Glorious Martyrs" will be complete.
Except for the part where we hitch up our collective rucksacks, head East and smite our enemies.
We are going to smite our enemies, George, aren't we?
Good.
June 05, 2002
Well now. Nothing has caught
Well now. Nothing has caught my interest today, not really. What a world we live in, when a blown-up bus full of charred commuters becomes routine news. Nothing special. Days like today I'm so proud that we came down from the trees and lost our knuckle-callouses. We certainly do put those opposable thumbs to fine and noble use.
In other news, they're looking at a Kuwaiti as the operational planner behind September 11. Ingrate.
A peculiar thing to see at the end of that article:
"Mohammed has not been charged in connection with the attacks, in which hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, leaving more than 3,000 dead."
In case you missed it, or have forgotten. September 11, 2001 has already been encapsulated into its one-sentence summary, ready for the textbooks of the future.
And now, I'm off to do a little dance before the Gods of Relocation, that they may bless me with a humble abode far from this Big Urban Target.
June 06, 2002
Last night, many Sapporos danced
Last night, many Sapporos danced upon my head. The Gods may be propitiated. Perhaps not. I don't know. I spent the evening trimming the plastic and foil from two-pack samples of Cipro and one-pack samples of Levaquin. I await the arrival of my supply of Potassium Iodide. Woo-hoo! Two broad-spectrum antibiotics and an iodine compound intended to prevent the absorption of radioative iodine into the thyroid after a nuclear event. I'm assembling a portable ten-day supply of each for myself and my significant other, along with an EAVAC-U8 smoke hood, a mini Maglite, a thousand calories' worth of Clif bars, and a Motorola T289 radio. All of which is intended to lend a helping hand with the odds on the event of yet another ass-Qaeda catastrophe in Manhattan.
The Cipro and Levaquin will help with nasty aerosolized bugs supplied by Iraq. The Potassium Iodide will assist in combating the long-term effects of radioactive fallout from devices supplied by Iran and built with German components. The smoke hood will supply 20 minutes of breathable air should the need to escape down the stairwell of a skyscraper filled with burning jet fuel present itself. The mini Maglight will assist in navigating said stairwell or traversing subsurface subway tunnels to avoid the worst effects of fallout on the way out of Manhattan. Clif bars will supply needed energy in an easily portable form. I can use the radio to talk to my sweetie and arrange meeting places beneath the city (unless the radio gets fried by the EMP.)
Clearly I'm grooving on the doomsday, chuckling into the irrational fear that people who don't live here try to tell me is "What They Want." Whatever, to that I say, whatever. I think that what they want is to kill us. Fear is incidental. Packing up antibiotics and iodine compounds makes me feel better; that's good. I work in a tall building: I'll be able to get down a smoke filled-stairwell. That's good, too, and practical besides. Maglights are handy in all sorts of ways. And the Clif bars may provide a snack some day. All good reasons to carry such items. Not the real reasons, of course. But when I used to commute into Manhattan from Jersey City five years ago, using the PATH line that's now been erased from the PATH system maps, I thought about assembling the exact same group of items, to use if I needed to escape the dread island. Turns out that I might.
June 12, 2002
Of course, work still continues
Of course, work still continues around Ground Zero. The Wintergarden--the ten-story glass atrium that faced the Hudson and connected to the North Tower--is being repaired in record time. For those who don't know, the Wintergarden is that tiny bubble of multipaned glass that used to squat next to the World Financial Center, facing the Hudson. Inside, it looked like this. All of that shiny marble had to be replaced, along with every pane of glass. I hope they seal the panes a bit better, this time. It looks pretty, but leaked like a sieve when it rained.
The last of the marble that should have taken to years to cut, prepare, and deliver arrived last week from Italy. Listen to this bit about one of the marble craftsmen who are rebuilding floors, Tom Teaman:
"Mr. Teaman, 45, said that he wished he could grab Osama bin Laden 'by the neck.' Instead, he grasped a perfectly honed chunk of grayish Fior de Pesco marble from a quarry in Italy."
That's a beautiful thing, somehow. It is the essence of the difference between Them and Us. We build. They destroy. Very simple. The Italians who quarry, cut, and polish the fine marble know this, too:
"'We didn't consider this a job,' said Ivo Lensi, a vice president at Campolonghi Italia in Montignoso, Italy, which supplied the Winter Garden marbles and granites. 'It is a duty, a responsibility. To show to the world that this crazy guy Osama has done nothing to us. These guys not only attacked the Americans, but they attacked us here in Italy.'"
So the work goes on. And, as always, those who create know what it means to do Good in this world.
June 24, 2002
*Munch* And now it's not.
*Munch*
And now it's not. In keeping with the entrepreneurial spirit of survival information-sharing, I would advise all of you who work in Big Tall Buildings to go here and get one of these. Why? Because about 75% of deaths in fires are due to smoke inhalation, not burning, and because hundreds of people died on 9/11 because they couldn't get down the single remaining stairwell in the South tower. Not because of fire: because of smoke and toxic gases. The EVAC-U8 smoke hood provides 15-20 minutes of breathable air. It's a chemically reactive filter, which means that it will eliminate carbon monoxide other toxic gasses before you inhale them. The hood itself is transparent and heat resistant. It will keep your eyes clear and prevent your eyebrows from being burned off.
They're $64.95 (I've saved you the research--safehomeproducts.com has the best price at the moment), but if you have to use one in a fire the company will send you another one for free. Also useful for hotels, airplanes, subways...any place that might catch on fire for some reason. I've got one, and it goes where I go.
Now, for those of you near something nuclear (or worried about having something nuclear blown up near you) you can protect your vulnerable thyroid--if nothing else--with Potassium Iodide (KI) tablets. There's a good FAQ on the hows and whys of KI tablets here (basically, it prevents your thyroid from absorbing the damaging radioactive iodine given off during a nuclear event by 'filling it up' with nice happy non-radioactive iodine. This will save you from thyroid cancer ten or twenty years down the road...assuming you survive, of course). You can buy Radblock KI from the ki4u.com site, but they use PayPal which I don't much care for because they require you to submit personal info. I bought my KI from The American Civil Defense Association using a credit card, no problem. The price is about the same, and I didn't have to give my genetic information to PayPal in order to buy it.
There! Astonished Head's Tips For The Practical Paranoid.
June 25, 2002
Sullivan calls our attention to
Sullivan calls our attention to this tasty bit of moral corruption from Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas:
“On Sept. 11, Americans were confronted by people ready to die as an expression of their profound moral commitments. Their willingness to die stands in stark contrast to a politics that asks of its members in response to Sept. 11 to shop.”
Uh--Stanley? I think the point is that we were confronted by people who were ready to kill 3,000 men, women and children as an expression of their "profound moral commitments." I don't know about you, Stan, but from where I stood on September 11--which was in an all-encompassing cloud of choking skyscraper dust--their willingness to die wasn't nearly as important as their willingness to try and kill me.
Article author Patrick O’Neill writes that Stanley is "not afraid to humanize those who flew jets into buildings on Sept. 11." How brave, Stan! Do go on.
And he does: “A people who have been bred to shop then can quickly become some of the most violent people in the world,” Stan says, “exactly because they’re dying to have something worth dying for.” Oh, wait--I must have missed the 19 shopping-crazed Americans who took out the twin Petronas towers in Malaysia to give their lives meaning. Did I miss that, Stan? Show me, you feisty thinker, you! I also seem to have missed the government-run genetic engineering program that is responsible for the irresistible urge every American feels at all times to buy things.
So this is what a doctorate from Yale gets you. And this, apparently, is what being "holy" means: to be so far removed from anything real or moral that your every utterance is laden with deep respect for murderous fanatics and contempt for the dead of September 11. After all, they were only following their genetic imperative to acquire wealth so that they could continue shopping, like the good little consumer animals that they were.
I encourage you to send a note to the editor of the National Catholic Reporter at ncr_editor@natcath.com.
Quietly, with no media fanfare,
Quietly, with no media fanfare, the very last bit of debris was scraped off of a windowsill...and the recovery efforts at Ground Zero are finally, truly, over.
July 08, 2002
To which I might add,
To which I might add, Amen and Amen, because I myself have similarly smoten various screeching primates of similar troop, especially today. It took eight hours and the combined efforts of various lawyers, agents, psychiatrists, theologians, and advanced materials specialists, but now I sit at home comfy in the air conditioning, blogging with Blogger Pro which is up while Blogger Not Pro is 404'd. That is a good thing and right now it is worth the $35 despite the complete ignoring of every question I have ever asked of Evan.
Back when I was peddling various New Agey self-help books along with the Big Book (not that one...this one) and so forth, one of the stress relievers often recomended by various experts in the art of relieving and/or avoiding said stress was the News Blackout. Avoid news, avoid it wearing shoes, avoid it while at zoos drinking booze, avoid it all the time, sit and watch a mime rather than read, hear, or see the news. I mean, the brand spanking-new vice-president of Afghanistan was assassinated on Saturday and I didn't even know about it until this morning. Or perhaps on Sunday, I'm not sure. And you know what?
Heaven help me, I didn't care.
There was this big tremendous rush of expando-vision after September 11, a vast influx of all the crap that's Out There, taken deep into the In Here, all at once, day in, day out, you can read it if you traipse back through the Astonished Head archives. It lasted for months...all the Big Nasties, all the Death Mongers, all the We're God's Favorite And He Says We've Gotta Kill Yous...all swirling around with wild surly abandon 'neath my brow. Until, finally. I'd. Had. Enough.
Right about the time folks started sailing up into the air and garden gnomes took up residence in my courtyard, my neuronal chemical soup (that's the medical term for brain) began poking me in the kidneys and warning me. Hey! You can't fix it. And this obsession is bad for your liver. I realized this was true: the adrenal glands perch atop the kidneys and were overstressed from all the fight-or-flight, and the liver processes the alcohol and copious quantities of China White that soothe the nerves and keep the shotguns safely unloaded in the rack. Sooner or later, said Mr. Brain, something's going to give, and it would be best for all concerned if you found another hobby for awhile.
So around about the time that commuters started blowing up again in buses along roads the desert, I started to deliberately tune out. And I continue to do so, seeking once again the safe refuge of ancient words written long ago. Because, you see, in those words...are the causal plonks that give rise to present BOOMs.
So: I deal with the Now by following the idea-tree back to its acorn youth.
And that, as Mr. Fidget would say, appears to be that, don't it, cats?
July 15, 2002
Back on June 25, the
Back on June 25, the last bit of debris was taken away from Ground Zero. Today, they've stopped looking for the remains of victims at the Fresh Kills landfill over on Staten Island, where all of the debris was taken. Workers there sifted through 1.5 million tons of rubble that arrived in 100,000 truckloads...they catalogued 50,000 personal effects...and so far, 1,200 people have been identified.
The enormity of the task ahead was staggering on September 12. That the task was completed with such rapidity does not lessen the immensity of the effort.
The emotional and psychological carnage of the aftermath among the workers and recovery crews will continue to reverberate for years to come. There are many nightmares ahead for many good people... sweat-tossed sleep interrupted by images all the more terrible for being remembered, rather than imagined... seemingly sourceless anger, lashing out at anyone available... relief sought in the blessed numbness of alcohol or drugs... even suicide, just to make the horror stop.
None of this is a measure of weakness. The task has been accomplished, in spite of the certainty that many would endure these subsequent traumas. The work was done because it needed to be done. The sacrifice of ease of mind was made because someone had to do it. Those who have endured this work deserve the gratitude of not just the victims' friends and family, but of the entire nation. They are civilians who exposed themselves to the horrors of war for the sake of a charred photograph, a bracelet, or an employee ID. Consider that the good thing to find was a piece of a body, because that meant that someone, somewhere, would have certainty.
How much stronger are these men and women of Ground Zero and of Fresh Kills, how much more courageous, than those craven attackers who felt ennobled by an instant's worth of pain, whose 'sacrifice' was over in a moment.
The sacrifice of the recovery workers will continue long after the last of them has left those sites of ruin, wreckage, and death.
If I look out the
If I look out the corner windows on the West side of my building, I can look down into the small park on the other side of Broadway. Before September 11, it was full of trees, about 40 of them, arranged in neat rows, each with its own patch of dirt overlaid with a decorative iron grate set. Folks ate lunch there, played chess, and so forth, enjoying the shade and the green. After the 11th, the trees were taken down. Most of them had been knocked over by the twin concussions of the falling towers: trunks six or seven inches thick, splintered and broken. Then they put a chainlink fence up, and installed some trailer-offices for Tully Construction. It was also used as a parking lot by the workers.
Now, it's mostly empty. I remarked awhile ago that I wanted them to replant with proper trees, not dinky little saplings. The idea of scrawny stripling trees, struggling to grow when all those other trees had already put in so much effort, seemed to me to be just about the saddest thing ever, for some reason
I was wrong.
Looking down into the park just now, I could see the squares of dirt where each tree used to stand. They've started to fill them in with concrete.
August 05, 2002
I happen to work for
I happen to work for a reinsurance company, so I'm not at all surprised at Swiss Reinsurance's attempt to weasel out of full payment to the owner of the World Trade Center. In fact, the company I work for used to be part of a larger company based in Switzerland, so I'm even less surprised. Only in the insurance industry can two planes flying into two buildings be considered one event. The number of sneaky clauses, Byzantine definitions, and downright fuzzy math involved in a reinsurance deal the size of the one that covered the WTC is truly astounding. This will go to trial, and Swiss Re will appeal it for as long as is humanly and legally possible. Then they'll figure out a way to appeal it again.
August 06, 2002
Not only are some New
Not only are some New Yorkers criminals, they're just plain stupid.
The NYT reports today that around 4,000 members of the Municipal Credit Union are under investigation for purposefully overdrawing their accounts to the tune of $15,000,000 after the 9/11 attacks cut off Credit Union ATMs from their computer networks. So far, 66 people have been arrested and another 35 are being sought for arrest.
Rather than simply cut off the machines following the attacks, the Credit Union--knowing that many of its members were policemen, fire fighters and other critical City personnel--kept the machines running without being able to verify that those making withdrawals had the money in their accounts. The theft began almost immediately.
Of course, the Credit Union was able to keep track of every penny, including who withdrew it and when.
"One man, an employee of the Housing Authority, never had an end-of-the-month balance that exceeded $130, prosecutors said. 'Nevertheless, he made 53 A.T.M. withdrawals ranging from $20 to $300 each, and charged 101 Visa purchases using his M.C.U. A.T.M. card between September 19th and October 22nd,' according to [Manhattan district attorney] Morgenthau's press release.
It continued: 'The purchases were at stores including Foot Locker, Jimmy Jazz, Joy Joy Jewelry, Bronx BBQ, Hot Booz Liquor and the 216th Street motel.'"
People who responded to the Credit Union's demands for repayments were given the opportunity to convert their negative balances into loans with deferred payment schedules.
Imagine! "You stole money from us. We know you stole money from us. Here, let us turn it into a loan for you."
I have to say that in terms of sheer schmuck-value, these folks beat the recovery workers who stole watches from the Cartier store in the mall beneath the WTC. Handily.
August 12, 2002
Fires. Corporate scandal. Terror warnings.
Fires. Corporate scandal. Terror warnings. Wondering what else is in store?
--Kenneth Cole
That, in its entirety, is a billboard that Mr. Cole and his ad execs have seen fit to raise along the West Side Highway. It's a plain black field with white lettering in 4,000-point type or whatever size is required to permit viewing from the highway below. I see it every time I'm heading out of the city via the George Washington Bridge, and every time I see it, I spit the same venomous response: Shut up, Ken! I hate that billboard. And I hate Ken for putting it there.
This is Kenneth Cole the fashion designer, not the late Kenneth Cole, former Director of the Domestic Council under Presidents Nixon and Ford. His series of subway ads for the Reaction clothing line are ubiquitous here in New York: lots of trendy bewhiskered young men and waify young women thrusting various Kenneth Cole products at the viewer with airy coolness. None of the models have any pores; it's quite astounding.
The demonstrable idiocy of using a veiled reference to 3,000 dead people to increase brand awareness of a line of unremarkable clothing isn't what sets me off when I read the billboard's blasé question. It's the attitude. Oh, yawn...Cole says. The American mainland was attacked for the first time since 1812. Thousands dead. Been there, seen it, bought the tee-shirt. Then, as an afterthought: Hey, why not buy one of my shirts?
Just when I thought I couldn't be more irritated by this fatuous, ill-considered bit of billboard blather, I visited his site. There, I clicked on the "Cole Poll." And I was asked:
Results of the "Cole Poll" are 35.3% "our" and 64.7% "their," with a little over 5,000 respondents.
I'm not as disturbed by Cole's oh-so-hip ads as I am by the genetically engineered blowjob dwarfs that Steve Madden uses uses to hawk his particular brand of crap. But Madden, at least, stays within the familiar and warped advertising realm of distorted womens' bodies. Cole, on the other hand, seems to think that he has something to say. If there is an industry less qualified to have an opinion about anything that matters, I can't think of it. Except perhaps the porn industry. But the last time I checked, that industry wasn't putting up billboards.
The fact that 65% of the respondents to the "Cole Poll" felt that the government was covering it's own ass doesn't bother me. There's some truth to that, I'm sure. But who, exactly, is Kenneth Cole to say so? How does he reconcile his snarky, lefty-cynical West Side Highway billboard-thinking with the Burmese sweatshops that produced his clothing? Or the fact that his shoes are manufactured in China (long recognized as a bastion of human rights and political freedom)? I suppose that if you can justify an allusion to vaporized corpses as part of a marketing campaign, you can justify anything. Or, it seems, you can justify it until you get caught.
Tommy Hilfiger, at least, was using the American flag to sell his wares before September 11, so his recent spate of red-white-and-blue ads weren't out of character. But Kenneth Cole is another sort of creature. He doesn't get to go sit in the corner with Harrelson, Baldwin, and Cruise and think about what he did. Those folks are just grinning empty-headed yutzes who are used to being listened to, and mistake that sensation for actually having thoughts. Kenneth Cole has decided that the dead of September 11 are fit salespeople for his products, and that the carnage of that day is the equivalent of "fires," "corporate scandal," and other "current events."
No, Ken doesn't get to face the wall with his fellow-travelling dolts. Ken has to go have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with each of the families of the September 11 casualties, eating with a different family for each meal. That's three meals a day, every day, for nearly three years.
He can pick up the check.
Just for kicks, you can write the company here.
September 05, 2002
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.
A reader writes: "Funny, I
A reader writes:
"Funny, I had written a note to Lileks saying I agreed that a lot of people in this country are too quick to expect everyone to have gotten over it [...] But now I agree with you, too. I think all of this hair-tearing is really an attempt to FEEL something, because they don't FEEL that they are FEELING enough about it.
And I want to shout at them, Guys, it's NOT something to be jealous of! It's not COOL to be a victim's family. It's awful, more awful than any of us can imagine, even those of us who were close enough to feel personal danger from the thing and to have post-traumatic symptoms, and the whole shebang.
There's an onion layer, and people who lost loved ones are in the inner layer, or maybe the rescue workers are in the inner layer, whatever, and people like you and [your coworkers] are in the next layer, and then people like me who saw it and had someone down there we were terrified for, and then those further uptown, and so on. It's not status; it's nightmare, it's trauma. I don't understand these histrionics.
Everybody just chill, it's not a hysteria contest, where everyone has to pretend to be the most noble by showing that they have the very most compassion about it. It sucks. It's death, mass murder, and these are not things to be posed for, or jockeyed into position. That's what pisses me off about all the movie stars being interviewed so they can get points for emoting. I know people are sick and get a thrill out of looking at accidents on the road, but this is way beyond the poor taste exhibited in that oddball human quirk."
September 19, 2002
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