Last
week, as the staff of The Appalachian was busy putting together
the Sept. 10 issue, a question for opinion writers glared down from
the bulletin board: “Was 9-11 really ‘the end of the age
of innocence?’”
When I look around a year after the attacks, I see the all out media
blitz surrounding the anniversary. I see that “American Idol”
winner Kelly Clarkson sang the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial
and that our society has returned to its pre-9-11 fixations of dieting,
“reality” shows, and celebrities, and I have to wonder:
Is it innocence, or just being clueless?
9-11 was a massive tragedy, with over 3,000 lives brutally lost.
Can any corporate executive in their right mind possibly think it
is a fitting remembrance to the victims and their families to bombard
audiences with a horde of specials and their attendant commercials?
I hoped, in the weeks following 9-11, it had been the end of something,
not innocence, but apathy and complacency. For a brief moment, people
seemed to wake up and realize that police, firefighters and paramedics
do far more good than any celebrity could ever dream of, that politics
and events in the rest of the world do matter, and that life is
fragile and precious.
Even before the anniversary, advertisers had started using patriotism
as a selling point for cars or whatever else they were hawking that
week. As disgusting as that exploitation was, I still thought that
for once the entertainers and advertisers would tone down their
constant selling as the anniversary got closer.
Sadly, I was mistaken.
Over the past two weeks, MTV has started talking about how 9-11
changed pop culture (why do we care?), and every other network has
followed suit, issuing a horde of specials and remembrances.
To be honest, I am probably not the most unbiased observer on this
subject. I have never liked advertising, and my television watching
is mostly limited to “The Simpsons.”
Still, while I can understand an advertisement-free remembrance
on the day itself, it’s obvious the media overkill currently
assaulting our senses is more about making money than remembering
and learning from a tragedy.
The “American Idol” mess is just the best example that
we have not learned nearly as much as we should have. At the same
place where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a
Dream” speech, the winner of a tawdry, televised contest was
the one to sing the song that’s supposed to personify our nation
on a day that’s supposed to be a “solemn remembrance.”
Enough.
The problems and dangers that led to 9-11 and
that grew out of it are still staring us in the face, and the generation
hit hardest by them will be ours. I hope that at least some people
have not forgotten what that day taught us and did something better
with their time Wednesday than having spent it glued to a television. |
