Justin Sodano (among a host of others) points to Mark Steyn's piece dreading the predictable onslaught of mawk on the anniversary of 9-11.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."' I'm sorry. I just can't cope. I won't be able to cope until I've seen somebody's head on a pike, with an annual celebration of the fact, kind of like an American Guy Fawkes' Day. |