{"id":183,"date":"2002-09-11T13:59:00","date_gmt":"2002-09-11T18:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/?p=183"},"modified":"2010-10-20T12:52:57","modified_gmt":"2010-10-20T17:52:57","slug":"183","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/?p=183","title":{"rendered":"More 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Stewart brilliant last night.<\/p>\n

“First Lady Laura Bush has said that young children should stay away from the television tomorrow. I’d also like to encourage adults to stay away from the television. And teenagers. And old people. And I like good tower collapsing footage too. And I’ll accept your tributes from CBS and NBC and ABC and MSNBC and CNN…even a ‘very special’ Will and Grace. But a ‘very special’ Access Hollywood?”<\/p>\n

or something like that. If Jon Stewart agrees with me, hell, how can I be wrong?<\/p>\n

Checked www.cubs.com<\/a> this morning to see what time their game was today, and greeted on their site by images from NYC: the twin tower light dealie they did a while back. ESPN.com with pictures of baseball fans and flags. The Sun-Times a picture of a huge American flag with the caption, “Let Freedom Ring.”<\/p>\n

Let Freedom Ring? Today? How bout a better headline of “Please don’t fly our own fucking planes into our fucking buildings again?”<\/p>\n

Can I even listen to the ballgame today? Surely Pat and Ron won’t go overboard…but they won’t fail to mention it. How baseball is insignificant in the scheme of things; how baseball helped heal the nation; how….blah blah blah.<\/p>\n

We have no obligation to this. If there was footage of the last time the World Trade Center was blown up, or Oklahoma City, or…Jesus, we’re too close to this. Jon Stewart again:<\/p>\n

“People re-enact the Civil War….but they didn’t do it in 1865.”<\/p>\n

And that’s what I’m saying. Why should I see the same footage of the same planes crashing into the same buildings that I’ve seen every day for the past year? It’s burned into my head. It’s in there and it’s not coming out. It’s pointless for me to watch it again. And I think it’s pointless for people to say “let’s roll” and “let freedom ring” today. What’s going to happen next<\/i> year? The year after? I mourned that week. I mourned that whole month. I’m done doing that. Stop making me cry about this. Stop squeezing my heart. We were supposed to grow up and move on.<\/p>\n

Okay okay — I know. If this whole nationwide grief\/mourning\/whatever helps with some closure….fine. Great. Good. If people aren’t feeling better tomorrow…. How long can we let it kill us? What does happen on September 11, 2003? 2010? If the networks are still showing that fucking footage, I’m going down to the stuidos and…. You know? <\/p>\n

Am I desensitized? I don’t think so — not when any piece on NPR has the ability to make my morning drive a bit more exciting for the tears in my eyes. Not when any public display of emotion or enthusiasm (except for chanted “USA! USA!”) can choke me up. Am I denying these feelings? Am I denying them for others? Am I just sick of feeling sick?<\/p>\n

There’s no answer, no good answer. Just a real deep need on my part to keep away from all of it. It’s a beautiful fucking day out there, and we are alive…and some are not, but that’s always<\/i> been the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jon Stewart brilliant last night. “First Lady Laura Bush has said that young children should stay away from the television tomorrow. I’d also like to encourage adults to stay away from the television. And teenagers. And old people. And I like good tower collapsing footage too. And I’ll accept your tributes from CBS and NBC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[39,207],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant","tag-39","tag-jon-stewart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}