Olbermann: Republicans Hijacked 9/11

RNC 9/11 Tribute: War Porn

Holy Mother of Fuck.


Olbermann's reaction:

9/11 McCain 9/11 Bush 9/11

Bush to invoke 9/11 as reason to elect McCain

President Bush will tell Republicans on Tuesday night that the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, means voters must elect Sen. John McCain of Arizona as president “to protect America.”

Speaking Tuesday by satellite and relegated to a less-visible slot before the national broadcast networks begin covering the action, Bush will then offer McCain as the only candidate who understands “the lessons of September 11, 2001,” according to excerpts of his remarks released in advance.

HEY! HEY, YOU! 9/11! MCCAIN! 9/11!!!!

YOU WILL DIE IF YOU DON'T VOTE FOR MCCAIN!!!!!! 9/11!!!

Roger Friedman's Cloverfield Controversy

The best controversy is the fabricated controversy; the controversy which comes into being through the rantings of a jackass with a soapbox. Without these controversies we as a nation might have to tackle actual problems and actual controversies that truly affect people's lives. Luckily for us there are people in the world like Roger Friedman, a jackass with a Fox News provided soapbox.

You see, while everyone else was dismissing Cloverfield as a stupid Blair Witch knockoff Roger Friedman had the clarity and sense of purpose required to see Cloverfield for what it really is: An insult to the memory of 9/11:

"But Cloverfield also inadvertently disses New York for what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, by re-enacting scenes of buildings exploding and massive clouds of debris for fun and profit."

You see, by setting a disaster movie in New York City (a first, for sure) and then destroying buildings in New York City (again, an unprecidented feat in cinema) Cloverfield is commenting on 9/11 and insensitively mocking its memory. Because any building exploding in New York is somehow related to 9/11, so says Roger Friedman.

Then there is the notion of turning a profit off of the memory of 9/11. Yes, because Cloverfield is trying to profit off 9/11 whereas a movie such as, oh I don't know, World Trade Center was not. I'd love to hear an explanation of the arbitrary line that makes World Trade Center a beautiful piece of Americana and Cloverfield an opportunistic, insensitive monstrosity.

But the most endearing part of the article has to be this:

"Does no one recall what was said following the World Trade Center disasters? There was such sensitivity about the huge human losses that images of the Twin Towers were erased from movie posters and excised from films.

Yet six years later, the "Cloverfield" gang is cool enough with it to show New York being pulverized. Very quickly and without warning, downtown New York is destroyed. The first bit of damage is depicted by a World Trade Center-like structure exploding and collapsing downward, sending off a cloud not unlike those my friends ran from that day."

These two paragraphs have everything. They are a literary Smörgåsbord of vapid rhetorical shit. The hurt emo pleading of, "does no one recall?", the vastly inflated "huge human losses" because, yeah, New York couldn't stand to lose 5,000 people (I totally just went there), the imagery of the phrase "images of the Twin Towers", and the cherry on the top, the personal note of "my friends ran from that day". It would send shivers down my spine if it didn't send bile to my throat.

The problem, though, is the beginning of the second paragraph: "six years later"

Look, you obsessed shitrag with your psychologically enfeebled peon followers: Get THE FUCK over it. And if you can't get over it; if you're going to spend the rest of your life emoing yourself out over something that happened in 2001? Then do us all a favor and just slit your damn wrists now while you listen to The Cure.

Because healthy human beings, reasonable people, get over things. We deal with it. We move on. If you spend your entire life drawing labored comparisons to that time some planes hit a building in 2001 you're never going to develop as a human being; you'll be stuck in a state of arrested development forever incapable of actualizing your full potential. You'll be a perpetual child.

Grow the fuck up.

I'm not saying that Cloverfield is a good movie or that it is beyond critique. But it's not a fucking commentary on 9/11. It's a monster movie set in New York because, dipshit, New York is a great setting for movies.

Was The Day After Tomorrow out of line when it froze New York?

Was the King Kong remake incredibly insensitive when it placed a Monkey in New York?

Was Spider Man insulting the memory of those brave souls who lost their lives on 9/11 by covering New York in webbing?

No?

Then shut the god damned fuck up you whiny little bitch.

It really topples my towers.

On Patriot Day, 9/11, we're supposed to remember the 2,974 fatalities of the 9/11 attacks. We're supposed to take part in the media frenzy of rebroadcasts, interviews, and slide shows. We're supposed to read articles full of flowery rhetoric which tell us about the "greatest terrorist attack on U.S. Soil". And then, depending on the political slant of the author, we read either the token jab at the Iraq War, or the token pronouncement of how the Iraq War will one day rectify the situation.

But what strikes me on this day, what "topples my towers", if you will, is how we've really blown this entire thing up to be something far greater than it actually is.

Six years ago a group of crazy religous fanatics flew two planes into the World Trade Center. All told, 2,974 people died. And I think that instead of rebroadcasting the Today show from that morning, instead of hanging wreaths at Ground Zero, instead of dwelling on it, and instead of blowing up brown people I think we need to shut the fuck up and move the fuck on.

Even the non-assholes are being idiots about it. Olbermann's "this hole in the ground" Special Comment really fails to miss one important aspect of this whole idiotic obsession of our country: we need to move on.

It's been six years. People have told me to get over things that happened weeks, months ago. When I continued to obsess about a loss two years after the fact people told me I was being stupid. Yet now, here we stand, a country watching rebroadcasts of the Today show from 9/11/2001 six years after the fact.

Shut up, already.

This nation has suffered plenty of misfortunes in its history. On December 7, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. People died. And I really don't give two tugs of a dead dog's cock at this point. Shit happens. I think it's time to toss 9/11 onto that pile of historical indifference as well. Instead of being head-up-our-ass stupid and obsessed with the deaths of 2,974 people we didn't know maybe we ought to stop being stupid white people scared shitless at the realization of their own mortality and just go back to our normal lives instead of clinging to this tragety for the sake of politics, idiotic wars, and ratings.

Take the flag pins off your lapels. Stop being assholes to brown people with beards. Get those flags back to full mast. Bring our troops home. And for Fuck's sake somebody rip out Rudy Giuliani's god-damned larynx.