2002-09-10 - 11:49 p.m.

Enough!

Ever since Lily has left for China, the television has been off 99% of the time. I find it a distraction and a time-waster. Today I turned it on because I wanted to watch a video while I was peddling on my stationary bike. The TV happened to be set to a network channel, and one of the afternoon soap operas was currently on. I stared in stupefied amazement as the soap opera characters held a candlelight 9/11 memorial.

On a frigging soap opera?!?!?! Okay, that's going too far.

As absolutely everyone on the planet knows, tomorrow is the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11. However, there has been such a dreadful media barrage in the preceding days it's made me want to lock myself in a cellar until the noise stops. I've been envying Lily living in China, free from the curse of the omnipresent media and its annoying obsessions.

There is this terrifying lemming mentality about the American media. Every source, at the same time, saying the same things about the same story, over and over and OVER again. It's like a very, very clumsy attempt at brainwashing.

It's gotten to the point where there are stories about the media's coverage of 9/11. What next? Coverage about the coverage about the coverage? On National Public Radio the other day I heard a story that hinted that we all are a tad obsessed with 9/11 - after all, the day after Pearl Harbor in 1941 all the radio stations went back to their usual programming. Well, I can't say anything about that, but I remember when President Kennedy got shot and the TV coverage of that seemed to go on for WEEKS. Then again, I had a different sense of time when I was four years old.

This is going to sound insensitive, but I think I've heard enough about 9/11 to last the rest of my life. It's not a matter of "lest we forget" - like ANY of us could forget that dreadful day - it's a matter of a powerfully emotional event being used to bludgeon us into stupidity. It's like looking at every TV show and billboard and newspaper and seeing "Your Mom Is Still Dead" as the headline. It's cruel. It's insensitive. It is not helping the healing process. Enough is enough.

I also don't like the way the Bush administration keeps calling up the ghosts of 9/11 as an excuse for each new curtailment of our civil liberties or some new and horrible foreign policy blunder. I hope that come November 2004 everyone remembers that George W. stole the office of president and then abused it recklessly.

I know that none of this is terribly profound, or terribly original. I just find it very disturbing that this tragedy is being turned into a media circus. While many Diarylanders and other diarists have written touching tributes or moving personal reminiscences, others have reacted differently. For example I find that this hate-filled rant is every bit as knee-jerk as the media's enshrinement of September 11. Instead, this person takes the point of view that America sucks, we deserved what we got, New York is a sewer, there are no heroes and people are basically no good. This person doesn't seem to realize that she IS buying into the bullshit, she's just turning it on its head. This is not thinking, this is just being contrary.

The people I admire most are the ones that have been saying the least on the subject, and I think I'm going to imitate them now and shut the hell up.

I find myself agreeing with this cartoon. Shouldn't there be some respectful silence?