sdr, I totally agree that until you’ve seen and experienced what WTC was, you can’t fathom how many lives it affected. I didn’t work there, but I lived in Manhattan for 7 years before 2001 and visisted WTC a few times – which is a total different thing than working there, I admit. And to me too it’s still incomprehensible. Your analogy with Grand Canyon is good, but not close enough – Grand Canyon is something relatively static, WTC had a life, a pulse of its own, like a small town if you want.
I agree that TV commercials spoil those moments, but that would have been done with any story, regardless of how tragic, exciting, or great. That’s the TV’s way of being. I didn’t feel that this event was particurlaly commercialized or politicized. Could have been treated with more respect by the media, and not pepper it with commercials,probably.
[quote=sdrealtor]I’ve got real mixed feelings on this. (…)As for the heroes, many if not most of these were not soldiers or public servants but rather ordinary people standing up to help others at their own peril which is a very different thing.
In the mid 1980’s, I worked on the 97th floor of the North Tower everyday for a year. Many of you have no idea how big these buildings were and how many people were involved. Each building was home to over 30,000 workers each day. Combined these buildings disappearing off the face of the Earth is not that different than Temecula suddenly vanishing. But it’s not just the buildings. Beneath them was an entire world of workers in a city below the ground. Restarants, stores and a transportation hub for the PATH trains that brought workers into downtown NYC/Wall Street from NJ. I used to take that train everyday. Coming up from the station was a line of HUGE escalators, there had to be 20 of them and they were as long as any I have every seen. For 2 solid hours each day and evening they were jammed packed with a sea of humanity. There had to be close to a million people passing through that station each day. When I see others minimizing what all went down I suspect they have no idea of the actual scale of what happened. It is beyond comprehension to me and I was there hundreds of times. Then there was everything else that went on around it and the clouds of dust enveloping the area for days. If you havent been to this place you must go and see if for yourself. Just like you must go see the Grand Canyon. Neither can be appreciated in pictures or video.
On the other hand I don’t like the commercialization of the great tragedy that this was. Watching football with 12 year old son yesterday we spent a lot of time talking about it. Every once in a while there would be a great, solemn video come on about the tragedy that would move us. Each time it ended with either a Verizon, State Farm or other logo. My son would turn to me each time and say “Dad why did they have to kill that great moment?”[/quote]
