Sunday’s Sermons: 9/11 Tributes, Emotionally Appropriate or Milking It?

That potentially infuriating title isn’t meant to signal that I already know the answer (unlike most pieces on this site), and I want to say upfront that I legitimately don’t know. On the one hand, it is the ten year anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, a massive event that ripped a hole into American history and gave shape to the last decade. On the other hand, what are these specials really paying tribute to?

There are hundreds of specials, tributes, in memorandums, memorials, and “special” remembrances that have taken place this week, and I’m not sure I gained a deeper perspective watching the (literally) 12th one than I did the first one. These specials have an almost robotic rhythm to them as if the makers are covering items on a checklist: talk about noble victims, check, mention Guiliani/Bush/Cheney or another “celebrity” from that day, check, mention that firefighters died, check, show “disaster porn” footage of the attack, check, talk to someone who lost a loved one on that day and ask them where they were when their loved one died, check.

So I’m really torn on this issue. I do feel respect MUST be paid to this tragedy but I also feel this nagging sense that the tributes are so shallow that they run the risk of diminishing just how massive this tragedy is. In one way or another, 9/11 has changed the lives of every American. Some Americans (like Pat Tillman) joined the Army specifically because of it. Some Americans on all sides of the political spectrum have taken a much stronger interest in geopolitics (myself included). Some mothers feel just a little more worried every time their child gets on a plane to fly anywhere, even if it’s from Birmingham to Nashville. And some Americans have stockpiled a frightening number of guns since then and see Obama as a closet Muslim anti-Christ.

These specials recap that horrifying day but the inherent problem in them is that they rarely look forward. They might make a passing reference to the still going Afghanistan war or the constantly evolving War on Terror or add Osama Bin Laden’s death as a nice bookend. But they don’t seem at all interested in the post-9/11 feeling. We now live in an age where anything is possible, be it wonderful (the election of the first black president) or terrible (the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression) or horrifying (3,000 Americans dead in a single terrorist attack). Even beneath our anesthetized, Facebook, uber-comfort living digital age, there is something that just feels awfully…unsettled about our times. As if we’re in a transition period and know it, but don’t exactly know if we’re transitioning to something good or bad.

The majority of the 9/11 tributes I’ve seen pay comforting tribute to all the lives ruined on that day, but there’s a stubborn, strong undertone of flag-waving hopefulness underneath it all. They strike the mood of American resilience in the face of tragedy while ignoring very real questions about our purpose in Afghanistan (Bin Laden is dead but soldiers are still dying there everyday, comfortably out of the view of American houses), if we’re giving up too many freedoms for the illusion of safety, if Arab Spring makes terrorist organizations irrelevant in the Muslim world or given them greater power, and if Americans have really learned anything or just become experienced at blocking out (if anything, our reality-TV star driven culture seems more shallow and less aware of the world today than it did then). I guess I understand the tribute special’s preference for comfort food over uneasy questions, but I’m still not sure anyone really believes it.