Yet another reason I’m glad I’m out of D.C.: No more constant 9/11 tributes every time I try to listen to the radio.
D.C. has every reason to have more 9/11 coverage in its newspapers and TV stations and news radio stations. After all, almost 200 people were killed when a plane hit the Pentagon.
It really gets me that the Pentagon has become almost an afterthought. The Washington Post ran an absolutely shattering account of five people touched by that particular aspect of the attacks, and it really hit me how much these people were forgotten about.
That being said, it may bring some measure of comfort to the families of these victims to hear their loved ones remembered on the radio every 20 minutes, but not this way. WBIG, the oldies station in D.C., which my mom listens to constantly, was airing the tributes at that interval, naming each victim and giving a little rememberance of each.
The station is trying to take the sympathy towards the victims and make it seem like they’re doing a public service for these people. Other music stations in D.C. are doing similar things, though not as often.
Individually, these stories can be touching. Collectively, they become obnoxious and exploitative.
In part, this is because they’re very poorly produced and use mawkish music to make them more affecting than they already are. The effect is to make them over the top and obnoxious. Not tributes, but ploys.
There’s all this hemming and hawing in the media about how to properly mark the anniversary of such a tragic event, and what these people fail to realize is that there really is no proper way.
Some people would like nothing more than silence to honor the dead, others would have their stories retold until the end of time, still others would debate what good ideas like the War on Iraq, which Dick Cheney is busy printing up t-shirts for, could possibly do.
I’m certainly not going to offer any suggestions on what to do. However, shame on WBIG for clearly screwing this one up.