Well, here we are at September 11, yet again. Thousands of people died that day, thousands of lives were forever altered. I sympathize with anyone who lost loved ones that day.
I do not, however, sympathize with the many more thousands who have shamelessly kicked and punched their greedy way onto the victim bandwagon, the ticket to which seems to be getting a faint quiver in your voice, and a reverent look in your eye when you say, “9-11.” Nikki Giovanni, considered a major poet by many, stood before an auditorium at Virginia Tech after the shooting spree there and said, “This is our 9-11.”
Oh boy. In a way I applaud her. Without apology or pause she gave voice to the delusion (maybe she is a poet after all): we’re part of this too. We’re all in this together. We’re all victims.
I beg to differ. We’re not all victims. Many of us, in fact, have no connection whatsoever to the events at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania where the United Airlines flight crashed, except that we happen to live in the same country, which covers a lot of ground. We don’t let those facts get in the way where I live. My favorite example of 9-11 me-too! stupidity came on the second or third anniversary of the attacks. The city I live in is approximately 3,000 miles from New York. On the anniversary I recall, the head chef at one of the bitchiest and most expensive grocery stores in town was interviewed on the radio. People soothe their grief, he explained, with food. As 9-11 approaches, there tends to be a run on comfort food, such as mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese. People have called me unpatriotic for ridiculing those who hog the grief stage, clinging to 9-11 as their script. What’s truly unpatriotic, in my opinion, is exploiting a global tragedy to sell outrageously priced food to offer people ‘comfort.’ At any rate, since it’s supposed to be hot today I’ll skip making mashed potatoes, which I do love, and instead take comfort in wishing my friend Luci a happy birthday and my friends Cindy and Chris a happy anniversary.
I do not, however, sympathize with the many more thousands who have shamelessly kicked and punched their greedy way onto the victim bandwagon, the ticket to which seems to be getting a faint quiver in your voice, and a reverent look in your eye when you say, “9-11.” Nikki Giovanni, considered a major poet by many, stood before an auditorium at Virginia Tech after the shooting spree there and said, “This is our 9-11.”
Oh boy. In a way I applaud her. Without apology or pause she gave voice to the delusion (maybe she is a poet after all): we’re part of this too. We’re all in this together. We’re all victims.
I beg to differ. We’re not all victims. Many of us, in fact, have no connection whatsoever to the events at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania where the United Airlines flight crashed, except that we happen to live in the same country, which covers a lot of ground. We don’t let those facts get in the way where I live. My favorite example of 9-11 me-too! stupidity came on the second or third anniversary of the attacks. The city I live in is approximately 3,000 miles from New York. On the anniversary I recall, the head chef at one of the bitchiest and most expensive grocery stores in town was interviewed on the radio. People soothe their grief, he explained, with food. As 9-11 approaches, there tends to be a run on comfort food, such as mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese. People have called me unpatriotic for ridiculing those who hog the grief stage, clinging to 9-11 as their script. What’s truly unpatriotic, in my opinion, is exploiting a global tragedy to sell outrageously priced food to offer people ‘comfort.’ At any rate, since it’s supposed to be hot today I’ll skip making mashed potatoes, which I do love, and instead take comfort in wishing my friend Luci a happy birthday and my friends Cindy and Chris a happy anniversary.
