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August 10, 2006
WB: A Date That Will Not Live in Infamy
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It is not surprising. 9/11 is always written and spoken about as 9-11, a spectacular horrifying event that is somehow not well situated in time, space (How many WTC buildings? – who can answer that correctly?), an event with no or or only a very weak plot line (no build up, no resolution – just a crisis) unrelated to other matters. No history, no future. It is more mythology than fact, (1) which goes part way to explaining why the % of Americans who believe that Saddam had WMD as increased, though no doubt FOX had something to do with that. Invading Iraq can’t have been because of 9/11, therefore, Saddam represented a real danger.
1) as treated by the Gvmt., the media, and the public at large. I intend no disrespect for the victims.
Posted by: Noirette | Aug 10 2006 16:16 utc | 1
The commemorations have been truly bizarre, one example.
From Slate:
The Pentagon’s Strangely Festive Ceremony
By David Plotz, Sept. 11, 2002.
“The Pentagon 9/11 ceremony this morning feels less like a memorial than a celebration. At the World Trade Center, they’re reading out the names of all 2,800 dead. In Shanksville, Penn., they’re tolling a bell for each Flight 93 victim. But here they run a slide show of workers rebuilding the Pentagon, capped by a triumphal shot of a hard hat snapping together an office cubicle. The crowd of 12,000 cheers.”
more:
link
Posted by: Noirette | Aug 10 2006 16:33 utc | 2
@ Noirette “9/11 is always written and spoken about as 9-11”
More than that: many people in the US refer to it as Nine-One-One, which is our universal emergency phone number, even further removed from an actual date. I try to remember to say September 11th, and also to be specific about _which_ World Trade Center attacks I’m discussing, so as not to confuse the Sept. 2001 attack with the WTC bombing on February 26, 1993.
Americans are very sloppy with language, and getting more so. I teach in a community college, and despair over my students’ inability to spell–then I see the atrocious spelling on television close-captioning (which more people use than one would suppose) and I’m less surprised. Lots of homophones, eggcorns, and phonetic spelling. In this increasingly oral/aural tradition, word roots that might be conveyed by correct spelling are lost. I appreciate the literacy level of the Whiskey Bar and Moon of Alabama.
Posted by: catlady | Aug 10 2006 23:05 utc | 3
catlady,
Followed the link to the eggcorn database, very nice!
Much closed captioning is machine produced, which may also help explain the pace at which the language is being refactored. I think I know I mean a “Yes” but it’s all wrong, that is I think I disagree; and that’s double-plus-ungood to some.
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 11 2006 4:08 utc | 4