Commemorating the five-year anniversary of the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center, CNN has proposed to air an all-day, real-time reenactment of the event. Their intent is apparently to make all the coverage match up to the original so completely that little children will freak out and go, Mommy! Mommy! Why are those people running away from that black cloud? (Or, maybe just Mommy, what's that movie you're watching?) and people are once again terrorized by a media vindicated by an the historic attack on our country.

If it was not obvious five years ago, people in this country (or at least, the media) are under the impression that parading our wounds somehow makes us a stronger country. It sickens me to recall the rush of patriotic sentimentality that bubbled up from our stomachs and out our mouths back in 2001. When I was in high school, I was very often the only person reciting the pledge of allegiance. There was such a powerful distaste for the patriotic even back in 1999 and 2000 that I was ridiculed by my homeroom for doing so. Flash forward to 2001. The television talking of nothing but 9/11, 24/7. It was as if nothing else was going ON in the world. America in hysterics. The other countries of the world calling up the president and expressing their solidarity (read: PATRONIZING PITY, as they watch this 225-year-old BABY finally being inducted in Terrorism as a Global Reality!!) while a sudden appreciation of and sentimentality for the American flag surges up like a wildfire among the people here. It's amusing but a little disheartening to recall that, only eight months before, when evidence of the election strongly suggested that the Bush family had disenfranchised whole districts of black voters in Florida, half the country would just as soon have spat on that flag.

And what have we got to show for our new experience in global problems?  Did anything else HAPPEN in the world in the month preceding 9-11-01? You wouldn't know it to have turned on your television or picked up a newspaper during that time. You wouldn't know it to do a web search on Google even today. Christ, even do a search on 2001 in Wikipedia or Answers.com and September stops at SEPT. 18th, with the anthrax scare. I ask again, DID NOTHING ELSE HAPPEN ANYWHERE IN SEPTEMBER???

But sometimes it just helps to narrow it down. Here are a few articles I was able to dig up dated Thursday, September 20, 2001. (Yes, in fact, thirty days hath September, and NOT eighteen.)

AIDS NOW SOUTH AFRICA'S TOP KILLER

AFGANS FACE HUMANITARIAN DISASTER

Zimbabwe is refused critical economic aid on account of their debts ---HOW BIG is our OWN national debt?!?!?!?!?

Don't feel too bad about not knowing about this stuff, though. How can we be criticized for being a complacent, uninformed country when it's so much more likely we saw nothing all that day except for our president yakking about good and evil and the new war on terror and further licking of the 9/11 wounds, in a State of the Union address that combines sugary speech-writing tactics with an almost total disregard for more pressing domestic issues like the national debt, the budget, unemployment, etc... In fact, this speech is a beacon, a powerful indicator of the kinds of things we saw from Bush in recent years, things like completely sidestepping issues so that you can practically host a drinking game with his speeches (I encourage you all to try it---just take a shot every time Bush says war on terror in that exact phrase!).

(Here it is, in all its eloquent glory.)

They have not attacked our core? They can't get us as long as we're not afraid? I beg to differ, Mr. President. Even now, five years later, we are still being bludgeoned by it, and our media is delivering all the blows. Everywhere, sloppy journalists are still reinforcing our exaggerated self-pity, calling 9/11 the worst tragedy in American history. See this ridiculous mention by the Detroit Free Press!

Is it really? Is it the worst? I don't know... **this** seemed like a pretty big one: Over 620,000 AMERICANS DEAD IN CIVIL WAR

But then again, maybe what CNN is doing, reenacting the coverage of WTC, isn't anything new after all:

Still, I can't say anybody who actually lived through the Civil War would be parading it around for fun or desiring to re-live this destructive and truly tragic event. You see, that's what really sets us apart from our ancestors: our devotion to show business. We're just so TICKLED that something actually HAPPENED to us, and that we're not the Lost Generation of Hemingway or Tyler Durden, that we're special and singled out as victims of a tragedy. How pitiful. I can only imagine what people around the world think of us, people whose daily ordeals getting drinkable water and edible food never grace our airwaves; whose families and communities are hit by constant onslaughts of what we have suddenly been introduced to as a real threat---Terror.

The fact is, I was proud to be an American BEFORE September 11, 2001. But after being bombarded with endless coverage and festering of pain, a part of me died---my patriotism. Now CNN is gonna drag the dead bodies through the TV all over again. And I can't imagine anything sicker or more obsessed.

I hope all you conspiracy-theorists are watching tomorrow, gathering your facts to prove that this was an inside job. Just don't leave out one very important group from your analysis of who was behind this----Make sure you fully implicate the news media in that. Indeed, they have really outdone themselves this time, in their sadistic and disgusting devotion to spectacle and victimization.