Rabrrrrrr's WTC Ground Zero uncourteous disrespectful tourist morans rant

[Rabrrrrrr]

So, I was downtown today, and thought, what the hell, time to go visit Ground Zero again. I stop in every couple months, say a blessing, remember my dead friend, my old office, and the wonderful times I had in the WTC and at Windows on the World and the viewing platform, and go through the memories 9-11. Pretty much always a powerful and introspective time for me, and, while painful in its way, it's also enjoyable (if one can say that).

So tonight I'm there, and I guess too much time has passed, because now, for the first time, I saw a shitload - and I mean a shitload - of tourists just lollygagging around. I've learned to deal with the filth who sell souvenirs there, and wish to hell the cops would come through and annihilate them. But today, the tourists just seemed to not care as much as they used to. It used to feel more solemn, more holy, or at least more respectable. Today, nunches of tourists were having their friends take their pictures with them standing in front of the pit, smiling, looking pleased and pleasant and vacuous and utterly incapable of any understanding of what happened there, and what that space means to a hell of a lot of people. Kids were allowed to climb on the fencing, people would look at the pictures for a moment or two then go back to their supersize f-ing pepsis from the BK or other swillhosue nearby, stuffing their faces with food and drink and talking loudly and buying souvenir "TRAGEDY!!!!!" photobooks the salesman creeps are hawking, and deciding which of the "WE'LL NEVER FORGET!!!!" buttons to get: the ones with the WTC wrapped in the flag, the eagle, or Jesus.

DAMMIT!!!

I came within inches of SCREAMING at some stupid dunderhead chick party, taking pictures of each other smiling nonchalantly in front of the pit.

Fuck 'em.

I was pissed for minutes, until I got my calm back. But now I'm pissed again.

And this was Americans, Indians, Chinese, people from just about everywhere.

Makes me ill.

[Zomby Woof]

1. feed my misanthropy brother!

Feed it! :nuke:

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. And they were wearing brown shoes!

The philistines!!

Seriously, though, mostly they weren't. But they're still assholes.

[SpiralHawk]

12. "Brown shoes don't make it...

why try, you can't fake it."

- Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention


(Actually, I have a "thing" for my brown rough-cut leather cowboy work boots, and I cruise all over town and the high desert plains and mountains in them.)

[Rabrrrrrr]

13. cowboy boots, while they might be brown, are not "brown shoes"

so I bear you no enmity. :-) Boots, on the right person, can be quite elegant and appropriate and cool. On the wrong person, they're just pretentious idiocy. I am quite sure that you are of the former camp. Since you know Zappa, you aren't a fool, whether dancing or cruising, even if you happen to be cruising for burgers)

[Joanne98]

3. I'm sorry

It's all so commerialized. It's that way with everything. I hate it.

[MuseRider]

4. My son

was there a few weeks ago, he said basically the same thing. At 18 he understood the significance of the site and was stunned by the way others were acting. I am sorry you had that experience today. Sad way to behave IMO.

[DS1]

5. Dude. MousePie Attack.

See other thread.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. LOL!

Wish I would have had it.

Toss one of them at the blond idiot woman (cute though she was) and she'd get a sense of what happened at the pit. Then she'd scream, "You asshole, have you no respect!" and I'll say, "Respect begins with you, <very derogatory term for a female>"

[LeftPeopleFinishFirst]

7. I went in Dec 2001, it was so solemn and respectful...

I can see it's a totally different atmosphere now. :(

*shakes head*
There's not much to say that you haven't already, I guess.

[Rabrrrrrr]

9. I was there last April, too, and it still felt like people cared about it

It's a little bit flippy now, I'm sure, because the PATH train is open right there, so there's also a shitload more people and it IS getting a sense of more normalcy because of that, and the opening of another skyway. But these were all tourist idiots, coming to "See Holy Ground and gets me a t-shirt and buttons for the whole family back home to show 'em 'bout my trip to new york city cuz I'm a fucking Christian patriot!!"

It's one thing to walk by one one's way home to the subway, etc., and not really pay attention to the pit, and quite another to have gone there intentionally to "feel good about myself for showing my respects for our dead American heroes!" and then be flippant and assholish about it.

[LeftPeopleFinishFirst]

8. I went in Dec 2001, it was so solemn and respectful...

I can see it's a totally different atmosphere now. :(

*shakes head*
There's not much to say that you haven't already, I guess.

[LuLu550]

10. I saw a difference between six months after and last year

but it was bound to happen. This is what we do in America. Veteran's Day began as WWI Armistice Day and now it is just a day off for shopping. I was in Paris on Armistice Day a while back and it is solemn there, people bowed their heads in silence when the church bells struck 11 a.m. Everyone was quiet, even the teen-aged girls from England who had been chatting moments before.

We are a country with no heart...everything becomes a Disneyland version of what it once was...WTC a snow globe or a T-shirt proclaiming outrage while loud people grin at the camera.

That is why we have such problems with the right wingers. They want the Disney version of everything, Disney politics, Disney 9/11, Disney war in Iraq.....

Thanks for getting me started....

[Rabrrrrrr]

11. Thanks for feeding the flames!

I agree with what you say about the Disneyfication AND it's relation to the right wing/republican "we respect everything, unlike the damned liberals!" cult.

Though I have to say that the Arizona Memorial, even when I went back two years ago, was still maintained with solemnity. But of course, people don't go out unitl after they've seen the movie they show, and the announcer guy says, "Remember, you are going to a gravesite, so please be quiet and solemn."

Maybe we need to start doing that at Ground Zero - remind people who should otherwise be considered too stupid to breed that they are supposed to be solemn and respectful.

[SPQR]

14. You remind me of the time

I stopped in to the house where Abraham Lincoln died. It's a small rooming house across from Ford's theatre, where they carried his body and laid him on a (too short) bed. It was summertime, I had some free time, and I'd already seen Ford's. So I stepped in and was in the front hallway when the guard on duty politely, but quite firmly, admonished me to remove my hat. It was a well-deserved reprimand, and I was mortified.

[Rabrrrrrr]

15. And speaking of the Arizona Memorial, I could be wrong on protocol

but I believe that at the Memorial, people should take their hats off. While overall the mood was reverent there, etc., I saw quite a few people, including older men, who kept their hats on there. Is that perhaps a place where you don't need to take hats off? I just don't know.