Posted on 08/30/2002 8:35:04 AM PDT by Pokey78
We are in the season of anniversaries - Elvis, Diana, the World Trade Center. August 16th 1977, August 31st 1997, September 11th 2001.
If the comparison is trivial and demeaning, don't blame me. Five years ago, my mistake was to compare Diana to Elvis - or Marilyn, that other tragic blonde icon whose candle-in-the-windiness was transferred to the late Princess and promptly became the world's best-selling single ever, dethroning Bing's White Christmas. I thought her lustre had the staying power of the other big-time celebrity demises. I was wrong.
But grant me at least a sense of proportion: The throngs howling on the streets around Kensington and Buckingham Palaces insisted we were on the brink of something far bigger, that the Princess of Wales' death had, to coin a phrase, "changed the world" - or at any rate that section of it under the rule of the House of Windsor. London was in the grip of a psychosis that week, a weird hybrid of American victim culture and English yob culture, with mobs outside Buckingham Palace - the "Ice Palace" - demanding that the Queen come out and feel their pain or they'd come in and give her some pain of her own to feel.
Her Majesty rode out the storm, as she has ridden out others. Five years on, Diana is a faded presence. Her groupies accuse the Royal Family of a sinister "establishment" plot to airbrush her out of the official record. Maybe they're right. But that's not the problem. The cruel reality is that "the people's princess" has been shrugged off by the people. Hers is a shriveled dwindling cult.
A-list chums like Sir Elton and Tom Cruise long ago checked out. Four years ago, official commemorations at the Spencer family estate at Althorp were already reduced to the likes of TV beach hunk David Hasselhoff, who sang his song A Brand New Angel - written for a deceased Baywatch character but, like Candle In The Wind, apparently of universal application. It began to rain, but he and the crowd prayed to the Princess for her to stop the downpour. "And she did," he said. "It was the most amazing thing." I subsequently prayed to her to turn her official Diana-trademark margarine from its golden hue to plain ivory so that we in Quebec would be able to buy it, but, alas, my prayers went unanswered. And now Diana margarine has been withdrawn from the market.
So her incandescent celebrity has guttered and died. But what's endured is a kind of ongoing karaoke Diana cult, with new and ever more transient personages briefly shunted into the limelight for the usual routine of teary candlelight vigils and mounds of teddy bears. In England this month, two girls were abducted. Eventually, their bodies were found. It is an appalling, grotesque, despicable crime and their parents' grief must be truly inconsolable. But, for the rest of the nation, "this vile crime," as the doctor and columnist Theodore Dalrymple wrote, "has been turned into something of an entertainment." As the media descend, so do the clichÈs, and the stock characters: a typically dysfunctional English village is converted into a "tightly-knit community"; with the girls still missing, the usually empty church is suddenly filled, with vicar, family and neighbours who never knew the victims all playing their roles. The length and breadth of the realm there are public displays of "mourning," though, as Dalrymple says, there must be something "tinny or ersatz in the outpouring of grief." How can there not be? Regret and quiet sorrow is one thing. But, when people weep, ululate, beat their breasts and surrender to wild Dianysian emotional feasting on the bier of someone unknown to them, they debase the very meaning of feeling.
These English spasms of masturbatory mawkishness are useful, because, in their crudely menacing way, they make explicit the coercive element in mass sentimentality. On this side of the Atlantic, the U.S. media have been looking for a Di phenomenon for some time, and did their best to fake one when John F. Kennedy Jr. died: If Diana was "the people's princess," then he was the people's socialite, the people's obscure magazine publisher, whatever. In fairness to those baying Brit morons, they did at least bother showing up. By contrast, the so-called floral tributes outside JFK's apartment were only ever shown in close-up, because the truth is that not only did they not begin to match the fields of tributes in Kensington Gardens, there was barely any more of a memorial than the roadside crosses and bouquets you see on the edge of a state highway when some anonymous kid gets hit by a drunk.
Which brings us to September 11th. In those first moments, no one quite knew what was happening, and so the events themselves set the tone. One plane hit, then another, then the Pentagon was smoking, the White House was evacuated, the towers crumbled, a plane crashed in Pennsylvania, there were other flights missing, there were bomb scares ... For a few hours that Tuesday it felt like the Third World War, and so commentators fell into war mode. And by the time the networks had shuttled Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters and the other glamorous pain-feelers to the scene it was too late to revert to the banality of "healing" and "closure" and all the other guff of a soft-focus grief wallow. It's very, very rare for the media to be caught so off-guard by an event that they lose control of their ability to determine its meaning. Within minutes of JFK Jr's plane going down, for example, you know Dan Rather was dusting off his Camelot lyrics and the producers were ordering up their "America's Son" and "America's Prince" graphics.
But a year has gone by. And there seems to be an effort to do on the anniversary what they were unable to accomplish on the day: to make September 11th 2002 an occasion for "coping." George Jonas and I have written on this page about the American teachers' union's plans for the day as an occasion for therapy, complete with "healing tools, routines and rituals" and a "circle of feelings" designed to help students "feel better" and "comfort each other" by having their "feelings" about September 11th "validated" in a "non-judgmental" way.
If you think America's largest teachers' union is just some minor fringe group of no consequence, then what are we to make of the ceremonies at Ground Zero itself? New York's woeful mediocrity of a mayor, Mike Bloomberg, has decreed there are to be no speeches: Instead, Governor Pataki will recite the Gettysburg Address, just as the third-graders do on small-town New England commons on Memorial Day. The Gettysburg Address is a fine address, but it's nothing to do with September 11th. It's as if at Gettysburg Lincoln had been told, "Well, this speech looks a little controversial. Couldn't you just stand up and recite the Declaration of Independence?" The nullity of Bloomberg's planned ceremony is an acknowledgment, even in the most sorely wounded city in America, that one year on there is no agreement on what Sept. 11 means. To some, it calls forth righteous anger and bestselling kick-ass country songs. To others, far more influential in the culture, it demands "healing circles."
Look, I'm sorry if some school kids aren't feeling chipper. Tough. But 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, leaving a gaping hole in the lives of their children, parents, siblings and friends. Those of us who don't fall into those categories are not bereaved and, by pretending to be, we diminish the real pain of those who really feel it. That's not to say that, like many, I wasn't struck by this or that name that drifted up out of the great roll-call of the dead. Newsweek's Anna Quindlen "fastened on," as she put it, one family on the flight manifest:
Peter Hanson, Massachusetts
Susan Hanson, Massachusetts
Christine Hanson, 2 Massachusetts
As Miss Quindlen described them, "the father, the mother, the two-year old girl off on an adventure, sitting safe between them, taking wing." Christine Hanson will never be three, and I feel sad about that. But I did not know her, love her, cherish her; I do not feel her loss, her absence in my life. I have no reason to hold hands in a "healing circle" for her. All I can do for Christine Hanson is insist that the terrorist movement which killed her is hunted down and prevented from deliberately targeting any more two-year olds. We honour Christine Hanson's memory by righting the great wrong done to her, not by ersatz grief-mongering.
Elvis, Diana, September 11th. I was wrong to compare Diana with Elvis. Don't let them Dianafy September 11th.
Once more, Steyn speaks forth the truth out of background confusion.
This was not an "accident", like Diana or John-John. It was not a self-inflicted death, like Marilyn.
It was an act of WAR! That War continues to this day, much to the chagrin and opposition of the syrupy Left.
Much of what is going on today is to prevent our further, successful prosecution of that War, which should be dedicated to bringing an ignominious end to those who foisted it upon us by murdering thousands of our innocent countrymen.
A pox on this NEA crowd, the professional celebrity mourners and unfocusing disemblers! What is needed is determined military action until all those who are responsible follow the same fate as their hapless and helpless victims. That, and only that, will begin to right the wrong and bring justice and safety to those who remain.
Have a dinner out. Go to a Broadway play. Buy a car. Get on a plane and f l y. That's my patriotic duty.
Scary.
Maybe I'll dedicate a torch song to him in tribute...
Imal
I hate to be the only one not jumping on the bandwagon (ok, I don't really hate it), but I really don't want to hear any opinions on how WE should grieve unless it comes direcly from the victims' families.
Not that I'm a fan of the media, but keep in mind that if the media is "parading" anyone around, it isn't done without their consent. The media certainly couldn't get me to do anything I didn't want to do, and I have to give enough credit to these people as well. So if they're there, it's because they want to be there, and they have their own reasons for that, whether you like them or not.
This Steyn fellow may have some good points, maybe the "healing circles" are a bit much, but I really don't care what a Canadian journalist, who admits he doesn't feel bereaved, thinks about any of this.
Yes, we should right the wrongs by combatting terrorism, that goes without saying. But anyone who doesn't feel any pain or loss, who doesn't want to partake in any kind of ceremony, is free not to do so. How others choose to commemorate this day is their business. Everyone has their way of mourning. I, for one, think the day deserves a moment of silence, but it doesn't matter what I think.
Until I hear from a victim's family who says "leave us alone and cool it with the ceremonies already," I will respect the efforts made to commemorate this day, even if I don't partake in them.
Better would be a rousing, patriotic gathering where we reaffirm our intentions of never allowing this to happen to us again. It needs to be a rousing, Kick A$$ ceremony that spits in the face of the terrorists and assures the country that we have not forgotten 9-11 and we will not forget what was done to our fellow Americans and that we are on our way to completing a very long journey that will require all the strength, and will, and toughness we can summon.
I agree.
Perhaps it would be better if we Pearl Harborify 9/11?
My point, previously posted on FR, of extreme agitation over all of this, precisely put.
Do not these dead, the dead of 9/11, deserve an original memorial thought of their own? Are we Americans so wussified that we cannot offer it on the most significant anniversary of these deaths?
I can tell you one thing. September 11 was the worst thing that ever happened in my lifetime. I'm not a drippy , showy sentimentalist, and I know what this writer means.
But September 11 horrified me in a way I didn't imagine before. The thought that 3,000 Americans were slaughtered and that I and my family might well be next was not some pop phenomenon to me. I laughed at nothing for three weeks, and I laugh every day.
I grieved in a real way, not for some pop pseudo-celebrity, but for the fact that the largest wholesale murder of U.S. citizens in the history of our country had happened in my lifetime, and that the future was very uncertain.
I resent the hell out of this author's pompous, condescending presumption that those who were not directly related to those killed in the towers are not bereaved.
Who in the hell does he think he is?
I agree with you, and I'll carry it even one step further. This author seems to presume that the only victims of 9/11 are those killed and their families and friends.
If this were a huge, unfortunate accident, that would probably be true.
However, that ignores the fact that our entire nation was attacked on 9/11. It wasn't just an attack on New York or the World Trade Center specifically. It was attack on us. It was an attack on our Constitution and our way of life. It was an attack on my family. It was an attack on me.
This author is not an American. Maybe that explains why he doesn't seem to understand how fellow-Americans can genuinely grieve and cry. It was the most horrible thing that has ever happened in my life. I cried for days. I literally grieved that my nation was threatened and the way of life I had always known was in danger. And that the young children in my family will most likely face this for the rest of their lives, and will never know the peace I have known.
I must admit, I can't understand the detachment of some people who say "Hey, it's their problem. It's a private matter."
It's not a private matter.
To put down Americans for feeling very sincere pain and shedding very real tears for what happened seems to me, in the words of Mark Steyn, to "debase the very meaning of feeling."
SD
There is no comparison between Diana's accidental death and the deliberate murder of over three thousand people on 9-11.
As with December 7, 1941, it is a day which shall live in infamy....lest we forget, and those that forget history are doomed to repeat it. Turn on the History Channel: you'll still see historical documentaries about Pearl Harbor.
I believe, as did my grandparents' generation in 1941, that the worst attack in this nation's history deserves to be remembered, not just to honor our dead, some of which were true American heros and true stories like theirs are what makes our culture into our culture, but so that we don't forget history and repeat it.... again.
As happened on 12/7/41, our world did indeed change: we lost our innocence....again. Despite Mr Safyre's By 9-11, we had become complacent and innocent all over again, and our world did indeed come to an end and we lost our innocence.....AGAIN.
9-11 : never forget.
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