9/11, the World Trade Center, & the Next New York Skyline
by Reason TVToday, I’ll be thinking less about the World Trade Center and more about my father and the relentless – probably unique – ability of New York City to bury its dead and move on without a backward glance.
My father was born in Manhattan in 1923, in a tenement building off Columbus Circle. A few years later, he moved to Brooklyn, a borough that was considered the country back then, a place that had more horses than cars. By the time he left there for good in 1966, it wasn’t the country anymore, that’s for sure.
He worked for Sea-Land, a shipping company that was one of the World Trade Center’s original tenants, and one of my very earliest memories is of my older brother and me playing in the company’s unfinished offices in one of the towers before the complex opened to the public in 1973.
Like many, probably most, New Yorkers, my father hated the Twin Towers at first, preferring the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, which had gone up during his childhood.
He’d seen King Kong when it came out in 1933, he explained, and he just couldn’t see the big ape climbing the towers. By the late ‘70s – after Philippe Petit tightrope walked across them, George Willig scaled them, Owen Quinn parachuted from them, and King Kong himself had been shot off them in a 1976 remake – he’d come around.
On a trip to Manhattan around then, he asked me if I wanted to see where he’d been born. He hadn’t been to the old neighborhood since before the war and was feeling nostalgic. We walked toward the Circle only to realize that not only the building he’d been born in was gone, but the entire street – paved over sometime in the ‘50s or ‘60s in the rush to build Lincoln Center, a place he’d never think of entering.
As the realization sunk in, he shrugged, turned to me, and said, “Well, do you wanna go see a movie instead?”
There’s nothing that will lessen the horror of 9/11 or do justice to the murdered souls interred forever at Ground Zero. But in a strange and beautiful and terrible way, New York – and America – will honor them most by pausing only briefly to pay our respects.
Written by Nick Gillespie and produced by Meredith Bragg.
Gillespie is the editor in chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com, and the co-author with Matt Welch of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong With America. Bragg is a producer for Reason.tv and a 2010 finalist for a digital National Magazine Award for best video.
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For more Reason articles and commentary on the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, go here.
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25 Comments
TIME BOMB
http://www.popmodal.com/video/9203/TIME-BOMB
I for one will never forget September 11, 2001, hearing about the attacks just before I left for school, I also had the privilege to make a few visits to the Ground Zero area over this past summer. I'm not sure a day has gone by since the attacks that I've not thought about it at least once and can definitely say that it was that day I became a politically conservative type person.
On my blog, I wrote a tribute to the people inside the World Trade Center today, and what they meant to commerce and ultimately our lives.
We can't forget the symbolism — and actual reasons — of why an epicenter of capitalism was attacked by the enemies of civilization.
In other news…
Alex Jones the cheer leader for lunatic fringe lefties like Van Jones, Rosie O'Donnell and Charlie Sheen along with some gullible "centrists" held a "George Bush derangement syndrome rally" right by ground zero today.
Alex Jones is clearly the pied piper of the tin foil hat brigade spewing nutty conspiracy theories about 9/11, he made his first accusations within hours of the collapse of the towers.
The bodies weren't even cold before his buddies Van Jones and Rosie chimed in to say "George Bush and the Israelis did it" and then he joined in a few days later.
If ever there was a more obvious leftist propaganda outlet, it is most definitely his website "Prison Planet" which masquerades as a "conservative media outlet" in spite of its daily Antisemitic and anti American diatribes.
This pretty much sums up his bull crap, this video was taken today at ground zero, the Antisemitic and anti American scumbag went on for hours standing shoulder to shoulder with his leftist scumbag pals…
http://www.youtube.com/user/vilemonkey?blend=3&am...
If you want to know how Alex Jones really thinks, watch this one…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCt189Fllx8
He makes Goebbels look like an amateur.
Here here.
That's a skyline we will never see again.
The new skyline will be pale and unimpressive in comparison.
Not an icon in the bunch.
Just another generic city skyline that at first you may not even recognize.
There are certain buildings and structures that you know where you are the moment you see them.
The Hoover Dam. The Trans-America building or the Golden Gate bridge. The Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids.
The Petronas Towers of Kulala Lumpur as well.
The Great Wall of China.
There is simply no substitute for these buildings or structures when you remove them.
In many ways they are a symbol no different from a well known brand name.
When you see a white ribbon across a red field you do not need to see the words Coca Cola..
The Golden Arches speak for themselves in all languages.
Any one in the modern world knows the Toyota symbol.
The Twin Towers were such a symbol.
I think we should have built some new TWIN TOWERS………….
twice as BIG, and twice as TALL as the ones that fell down.
THAT…………………………would have sent a message to the rest of the world.
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Damn skippy.
Missy, those were two VERY disturbing videos.
I agree that Jones is a tool for creating division and distrust among Americans. If the "progressives" and anarchists can create enough animosity among the citizenry, it will make it that much easier to control the "dumb masses." That's what PrisonPlanet and InfoWars is all about. Just consider "Eileen_For_Freedom," and her accusations against Cowboy Logic and myself; that we were both working in the White House basement, doing the bidding of the Bildebergers. If that's not the epitome of insanity, I don't know what is.
This design concept always appealed to me as well………………..
The F.U. Freedom Towers.
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/funnypictures/...
We should have rebuilt those towers right in place, inside two years. Shame on the powers that be for not doing it.
When i was in DC this weekend…………………i said hello to noblama from everybody.
http://i36.tinypic.com/2lw6v5g.jpg
Or three, with a tall one in the middle oriented eastward…
I spent several very sobering hours watching the History Channel's series on 9.11 today. It was time well spent. There were many stories about the brave men and women who placed others lives first, one story that was especially poignant regarding the frailty of life was about a man who was in the World Trade building that the plane his sister and niece were on crashed into, he helped a woman who was doused with burning jet fuel escape the building while bodies fell to the ground around them. He was fortunate enough to survive and see his own daughter who on that day turned 11, the woman died some weeks later. God bless our American heros and those who stand with us, the hell with the ones who wish us harm.
Thank you chopper.
Once again, right on point John.
Excellent post Missy, thank you for the links these will be helpful.
If you want to see Jones go completely bonkers check this out, the guy is dangerously batsh*t crazy….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct21YCEiWMM
It would be entertaining if he didn't have so many followers, by the way on your first link was that Van Jones I see at his rally at 0:16?
Good eyes, that's a really tough call, I really do see a resemblance but the angle of the video makes it really tough to say without a doubt that its him or not…
Love that one. That's the one I would have approved if I were in charge.
I heard today – can't remember where – that the new tower is not called the Freedom Tower, but just World Trade Center one because the biggest and newest tenant is China.
Does anybody else know if that's true?
Thank you!
If ever there was a more obvious leftist propaganda outlet, it is most definitely his website "Prison Planet" which masquerades as a "conservative media outlet" in spite of its daily Antisemitic and anti American diatribes. home projects
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