The comments are fun, too. The basement testosterone levels are so high mom’s going to need a new sump pump. But for capturing the stain that is Steyn this one is my favorite:

I went on 911day.org and posted “I will honor 9/11 victims by getting drunk and harassing Muslims”.

Mark Steyn is Canadian, isn’t he? Why, yes, yes he is:

Steyn, a Canadian[2] citizen, now resides mainly in New Hampshire in the United States.

I know there were plenty of non-U.S. citizens who died on 9/11/01, but who the fuck is this candy-ass to be lecturing people about what’s appropriate?

That said, I plan to avoid as much 9/11/01 coverage as possible today.

Mark Steyn is a turd. I’m sorry I read that disgusting mess of a post. There’s something wrong with a person who trots out the horrific elements of an event, like the tragic (there, I said it) deaths of people who jumped from the building, and tells about it with obvious relish. He’s like a rubbernecker at a car accident who stops to take pictures.

They were human beings, Mark. Borrow some respect and compassion from someone.

I am not happy with the idea of 9/11 as any kind of holiday, especially for people like me who live far away and didn’t know anyone whose life was lost or damaged by the attacks. My saying anything about it seems like an intrusion.

I do feel free to criticize the response from Dumbya and the people who got their fascist on as a result.

Peace to everyone whose life was scarred. Fuck you to anyone who’d use it as a war-porn call to violence.

I expect extra amounts of shit flinging from the fRightBlogs today because the President in charge when Bin Laden got killed wasn’t the one who strutted around in a flight suit.

Mission Fucking Accomplished, assholes.

and utterly fraudulent misrepresentation about the events of the day

Yes, there is absolutely NO mention of how every single Muslim on the planet secretly wanted to celebrate the attacks by killing a Christian.

Also, why does no one mention Dubya Bush would have flown around the planet backwards until time ran in reverse thereby allowing him to knock the planes out of the sky? So what if he couldn’t find his cape.

And, why does the liberal mainstream media refuse to show pictures of each mangled corpse? Clearly a plot to deprive RealPatriots* of the right to jerk off.

*Even ones who, you know, are aliens who aren’t patriotic enough to become U.S. citizens.

I can’t bear to read Mark Steyn stuff any more. I really used to try.

Just all the idiotic stuff he wrote about the Iraq war alone… If it weren’t a total waste of time (because nobody who likes him would pay attention) somebody should collect his old pronouncements and contrast them with what really happened.

To people like Steyn, a culture is not energized and unified by its noble aspirations, but by its Immortal Hurts and Deathless Grudges. In that sense, he is indistinguishable from the average Radical Imam, and less worthy to lecture Americans than the President of Iran.

Good post, Betty. I’m ignoring the day entirely but every now and then I watch something, or see someone, or read something and realize that it was done, or seen, or written before 9/11 and I kind of marvel remembering the person I was back then (younger, younger kids) and marvel at realizing how much of the last ten years has been devoted to cleaning up after Bush’s disaster.  Its hard to realize, because its our new normal, how the WOT simply pushed all normal funding, politics, and conversation into the political grinder. 

aimai

There’s something wrong with a person who trots out the horrific elements of an event, like the tragic (there, I said it) deaths of people who jumped from the building, and tells about it with obvious relish.

Exactly. I had to take a break from lurking at wingnut blogs a few months after 9/11 after they got their mitts on a particularly gruesome batch of photos and were busily salivating over them like babushkas clucking over a juicy jelly roll.

Of course, they thought it was shameful that the same photos weren’t plastered on the front page of every newspaper. Fucking ghouls.

a particularly gruesome batch of photos

Rest assured, they’re posting them all again today.

Remember the Alamo.

I just wish people would stop calling this death porn like there was something wrong with porn.

Rest assured, they’re posting them all again today.

Steyn , and the low life mouth breathers that comment on his droppings are like a bunch of serial necrophiliacs. They’ll ring all the mileage they can out of the 9/11 victims , then in a few days they’ll go back to their ritual humping of Reagan’s rotting corpse.

I kind of marvel remembering the person I was back then (younger, younger kids)

Same here. I was parenting a toddler back then, and now a teenager, god help me.

As a Latinist, it pains me to know that ‘vice’, ‘vicious’ and ‘vicarious’ aren’t actually related.

Because they ought to be.

ATTENTION, PEOPLE OF AMERICA:

Unless you lost someone on 9/11, you need to shut up. The further away from the events, in geography, or in degree-of-separation, the more you need to shut up.

Listen to a great man on another sad day:

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder…..

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

In honor of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 my daughter went shopping. George W. Bush must be so proud.

Krug has a short, terse piece that makes his feelings clear.

I wish I had that man’s spine.

God, Steyn is disgusting and loathsome.  I am heartened, however, by the growing number of people who are willing to look at the aftermath of 9/11 and how we as a society allowed it to bring out our worst selves.  Yes, there has been a lot of hagiography, but there has also been plenty of sober, thoughtful reflection.

That said, fuck Steyn and his commenters, too.

there has also been plenty of sober, thoughtful reflection.

Well, thoughtful reflection, anyway.  *hic*

I have to admit, this is the one day I’m kinda glad I don’t have cable and can’t get a single station in to save my life. It was surreal, but pretty remote to me when it happened—-I lived in Cali at the time & knew no one in any of the places hit. But the third or fourth day of it being the ONLY THING ON TV and nothing but repeating the same stuff as they did the day before, I was shell shocked, not because of the tragedy itself, but because the media circus tried to burn the horror of it on each and every one of our psyches. Yes, it was horrific. Did I need to watch it over and over and ad nauseum for DAYS? Not really.

So, today, kinda glad I’m sheltered from all the coverage it’s certain to be getting. I had enough of it back then. My heart goes out to everyone who lost someone, but for me, nothing else needs to be said.

I totally agree with you, Domynoe. There wasn’t anything new to learn from watching that footage over and over. In way, I think Katrina was more horrifying inasmuch as it kept getting worse over a period of days when no one who was supposed to be in charge was doing anything. I certainly don’t think one was worse than another—just that while both were horrible, the unfolding tragedy after Katrina seemed so preventable and we were seeing it in real time and screaming (well, I was, anyway) “What the hell is going on and why aren’t we helping?” With 9/11, it became clear pretty quickly that there weren’t many survivors to help. So it was just an endless loop of the same images.

Betty, thank you for the cute boxer picture, too. Doggies always make things a bit better.

Thanks for the various referrals - that WaPo piece and Krug’s brief post are both worthwhile.

I read somewhere that the “endless loop” terrified a lot of children at the time, because they were too young to understand that it was a loop, and they thought more and more buildings kept getting hit, day after day.

And how much does it suck to be Mark Steyn?  I don’t even care about whether he makes a lot of money, or if he’s satisfied with himself.  His mental landscape must be a smoking, oozing, stinking miasma.  If I were a good person, like generous or merciful or whatever, I’d pity him.  As it is, I just steer around him.

I might have to memorize Krugman’s post.  It’s the starkest, most honest thing I’ve read about the past decade.

... because its our new normal, how the WOT simply pushed all normal funding, politics, and conversation into the political grinder. 

aimai

I think aimai’s statement says it all in a nice, neat package. 

I had an email friend who was one of the many who died at a certain large bond trading firm, and I found the constant loop of the planes hitting the towers to be extremely traumatizing.  I eventually decided that this was the main point of showing that loop, because it both scared and enraged us, which is a mental place where no good decisions come from.