Tagged: September 11

Democracy in Vignettes

On September 29th, 2001, less than three weeks after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, one of America’s tentative popular steps back to some semblance of normalcy was the return of Saturday Night Live (filmed, of course, in New York). In an attempt to earn the right to make silly jokes again, the show began, in typically modern maudlin fashion, with...

Turning Sadness Into Sentimentality

I almost called this little essay “Turning Tragedy Into Tripe.” For I am thinking of the inevitable September 11th anniversary “memorials.” There are ways to remember life- or world-changing moments without turning them into emotional pablum. The modern world, however, has lost those ways, just as it has lost its way in general with regard to the meaning of history, the lessons of...