Instant Replay
With the anniversary of September 11th looming ahead, we are being inundated with images of the attack and its aftermath, everywhere you look, it’s there. I will never forget that terrible day, nor do I want to, but I am tired of reliving it over and over again. A recent poll claims 69% of adult Americans think of 9-11 every day. How could they not? The images are inescapable, every news network in the country plays the footage at least twice a day. On Tuesday, I received the current issue of Time Magazine and of course, the issue was dedicated almost entirely to 9-11, but what struck me as odd was the people they chose to profile. There was a survivor, a death benefit accessor, and the one that got me was a little girl who lost her father. Her profile was in the middle of the magazine amongst the chilling facts and statistics. In her article, she stated her favorite network was the Food Network and her favorite personality was Emeril because he was funny. This might seem a bit odd when you first read it, but not when you hear her reason. She can’t bear to watch other networks because she doesn’t want to see her father’s murder and death anymore. The Food Network never talks about 9-11 or shows any footage and she feels safe watching it. I couldn’t help but think Time betrayed her by burying her article in the middle of the issue forcing the reader, in this case her, to page through countless images of the very thing she is trying so hard not to see. Clearly they failed to recognize the message this scared, sad child was trying to send them.
The other day I decided to watch one of The History Channel’s specials on the gathering of artifacts from the World Trade Center for memorials and museums. I thought it would be a responsible and interesting program. To some degree it was, but I was disappointed to learn the History Channel had succumbed to propaganda as well. Before each commercial break in the special, they would go to a firehouse and ask a fireman what he remembered about 9-11. Most of them remembered friends who had died or scenes of horror and fear for their lives, there was crying and sadness, and suddenly, I found myself crying at a show that was supposed to be about museum curators’ search for artifacts. To me, it is still so fresh, so in the now. I need distance to stop grieving, to face the reality of the loss, without becoming cold to a murder scene by watching the events of that Tuesday morning in September countless times on television. We all know what happened, now it is time to give the survivors, the families of the victims, and ourselves a little peace, to mourn, to move on, and to never forget.
September 5th, 2002 at 10:18 am
Oh, my God! I watched that same special on the History Channel. I agree with you; I wanted to watch it because it seemed interesting, but there I was crying and reliving the same feelings I experienced when it happened. AND, every time I got to the point where I would stop crying, they would throw something in there that would get me started again!