Illinoir

It seems to me that this Wednesday, September 11th, is a perfect day to go media-free. No news, no networks, no papers, no CNN.com…. This is probably the hippiest thing I’ll ever say, but I really can’t handle the way I know that the media is going to try to manipulate my feelings.

Has there been enough time that I can say, “I don’t need to see or hear another thing about this?” And that’s not to say that I want to forget it, not at all. I would like to attend a memorial service. I would like to remember and think about 9/11/01 and its impact and its victims and everything…but without the help of television, and without that sort of slant. Without commentary, without dramatic voiceover, without another fucking shot of an airplane flying into a building.

It reminds me of Maus and Art Spiegelman’s worries that too much has been said about the Holocaust and do we need another work about the Holocaust and haven’t we had enough of the Holocaust already? Of course, nearly 60 years have passed since then and there has been more time to mourn, remember. And admittedly, the Holocaust didn’t happen here, in our biggest city, to two of our biggest buildings, with television cameras filming the whole time.

If we’re going to cry about this on Wednesday, why aren’t we going to cry about the Holocaust? Why aren’t we going to cry about Hiroshima? Have you ever cried about Hiroshima? What about those two guys that were pulled from their truck and beaten to death by a mob on the south side last month?

So I’m meandering a bit here, but maybe one or two of my points are there. I recognize the importance, the impact, the devastation…. And I don’t know what to say…and I don’t think anybody else does either.

Beckett said:

“Any word spoken is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”

(As pointed out in Maus: “But then again, he said it.”)

And, he also said, “Words are all we have.”

And I said, “I’m sick of you pretentious and/or condescending and/or greedy and/or psuedo-intelligent and/or noisy bastards.”

[edit]See? This is what I’m talking about. The Onion always says what I can not.