(no subject)

[thanate]

I don't think I approve of the cultural tendancy to celebrate tragedies over and over in the name of memorial. Perhaps it's just that I don't care for the way americans tend to do it; somehow an awful lot of the sort of pagentry that one sees in the media seems either irreverant or overdone. Not to mention the sudden and excessive ill-informed patriotism movement of the last five years... How many americans know that it's disrespectful to wear your flag? And I mean, I'm not overly patriotic... I think there are good things about this country and bad ones, and I wouldn't really want to trade it in for somewhere else, but twelve years of public schools failed to instill me with anything but a dislike for american politics and government. And I'm not really into celebrating that sort of thing one way or the other. But that really wasn't what I was going to talk about...

You know the phenomenon about how just about everyone who was old enough to know what was going on can tell you where they were when they heard about kennedy's assassination? I grew up thinking that the version of that for my generation was when the Challenger exploded. I have a very clear early memory of my mother coming in while my cousin and I were having breakfast at the kitchen table and telling us that the space shuttle had exploded; I think it must have been a teacher work day, hence why we would still have been at home, but there was also footage of the shuttle going up that we saw at school afterwards. I was all of six at the time, and didn't really sort out until later that the engineer on that flight (and I think one or two others as well) was picked for the job from the same selection group my father got weeded out of several years before. Hence why my mother is glad he didn't become an astronaut after all...

But anyway, my first thought five years ago, seeing the news coverage of the second tower collapsing, was that the challenger had been eclipsed.

Comments

[gcbiggles.livejournal.com]

I don't mind the memorials so much as the constant re-broadcasting of original footage. I can't imagine anyone who was in NY that day actually wanting to see the towers fall, over and over again. It's probably damaging to people who are just starting to recover.
Personally, I think the pictures of people jumping get to me the most.

[fishy1.livejournal.com]

"But anyway, my first thought five years ago, seeing the news coverage of the second tower collapsing, was that the Challenger had been eclipsed."

I saw it happen on live TV. We had a school assembly every time a shuttle went up.

What a depressing day yesterday was. At least NPR had _some_ stuff on that wasn't memorial-y. (stuff about Gandhi, for example) I am glad i don't get network news...

I remember talking to my folks (maybe a year ago)about how we can mark generations by which disasters they have witnessed. The whole conversation was depressing, and what it implied was even scarier. "culture of vicitmhood" indeed!

[thanate.livejournal.com]

It's just a matter of making a big enough impression that a whole generation notices. And I mean, disasters are generally more sudden & easier to see. If there were an amazingly good sudden event, people would remember that too. But I mean, world peace or cures for AIDS aren't the sort of thing that happen all at once. It's like not being able to pinpoint the moment you fall in love or whatever... but you can tell the precise moment somebody dies.

most surreal day ever

[ohiolinkbody.livejournal.com]

I just remember standing there, holding a human heart in my hand, when my lab partner came in to tell us the first plane had hit a tower.