It has been a year… A meditation
: This Wednesday at 8pm, I will be delivering a meditation at my church’s memorial service (all welcome; none proseltyzed; address and directions in New Jersey here; click on map).

Here is my near-finished draft of my sermon: The impact of 9.11, a year later. I’ll be eager to hear any reaction from those who dare to read this much; just email me.

Thanks.

California state of mind
: Greg Beato send me email pointing out that Norah Vincent is a New Yorker. Doesn’t change anything I have to say below. It’s the LA Times that chose to publisher her drivel. Besides, California is just a state of mind.

: Sarah Navarro (aka Rhesa) sends me a nice email disavowing the opinions of other Californians.

Her blog also points us to a story at the California Patriot (no, I’ve not heard of it either and I will refrain from the obvious oxymoron gags) saying that Berkeley has banned The Star-Spangled Banner and God Bless America from 9.11 observances. Reality or parody? Always hard to tell in California — especially, of course, in Berkeley.

The “Star Spangled Banner” is too patriotic, divisive and political, so organizers of UC Berkeley’s day-long tribute to the victims and heroes of 9-11 are excluding it. “God Bless America” is doubly excluded. Not only is it patriotic, but it also mentions God, something else that is taboo next Wednesday.

The Sept. 11 Day of Remembrance, sponsored by the Chancellor’s office, the student body government and the Graduate Assembly, will also feature student leaders distributing white ribbons, instead of the red, white and blue ones they had originally planned.

“We thought that may be just too political, too patriotic,” said Hazel Wong, chief organizer for the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). “We didn’t want anything too centered on nationalism-anything that is ‘Go U.S.A.’”

Wong said the event organizers are “trying to steer away” from anything political, and that, she said, includes singing the National Anthem and displaying the red, white, and blue. She said they don’t want politics disrupting mourning and grieving.

Not political? You dolts. This is all about politics. This is all about patriotism. Jerks.

: This UC Berkeley idiocy only gets funnier (and more pathetic). The Daily Californian, the university paper, reports that they will now distribute red-white-and-blue ribbons.

While the university has planned numerous events to commemorate the first anniversary of Sept. 11, Chancellor Robert Berdahl overruled a decision by student leaders to distribute white ribbons to students during the memorial….

He added the student leaders had initially chosen white ribbons because multicolored ribbons were too costly.

But student leaders said the decision was not based on financial concerns.

“It’s true that (white ribbons) are cheaper,” said Graduate Assembly President Jessica Quindel. “But I was at the meetings, and the decisions had nothing to do with the prices.”…

“Jessica does not speak for the university. I speak for the university,” Berdahl said. “(Red, white and blue) ribbons don’t offend anyone.”

: See also Karl Martino on a key difference between the coasts on 9.11: The East Coast lived this trauma live; on the West Coast, it was a TV show, already packaged and “punditized.”

: By the way, I used to live in and love California. But I left many years ago. And since then, I have come to see that, despite appearances, California is small. It’s the me state. In the north, it’s about small societies and correct politics. In the south, it’s about the oddities of an industry.

Unfair? Of course. Gross generalizations? Naturally. Only to illustrate a point, my friends.

California: The other America
: I see a divide in this country over September 11. It cuts north-and-south right at the California line.

Californians don’t get September 11 — because it’s not about them.

And isn’t everything supposed to be about them?

Here are two pieces printed in LA, each with its own cynical, sick, disgusting, and wrong take on this week’s anniversary.

First, here is Norah Vincent in the LA Times:

Scratch most Americans these days and you’ll find that many of them have made a big change in their lives in the last 12 months, something not obviously attributable to Sept. 11 but a response to it nonetheless.

It might be something as outwardly trivial as finally sticking to the Atkins diet, quitting smoking or taking up yoga. Then again, it might be something monumental like ending a decades-old bad marriage or quitting a cushy job to pursue a life in the arts. But whatever it is, the impetus behind the changes we made is essentially the same for everyone.

Deep down we all did it because we knew that it might have been us in those towers.

What horrid, self-absorbed Californiathink that is! Mass murder becomes an excuse to pamper yourself with a diet or a divorce or a yoga class! Arrrrrrgh! Can’t she hear herself? Can’t she hear what a California cliche she is? And they wonder why the rest of us laugh at them out there.

If anything, September 11 should perhaps motivate you to try to better the world rather than yourself.

Now move to this hateful blob of bile from Jill Stewart in LA’s New Times.

She complains — with typical left-coast knee-jerk (or just jerky) PC logic — that because we have not mourned enough over victims of earthquakes in India or floods in Nigeria, we have no right to mourn our American victims of September 11. I would have loved to have read what she would have written in 1946 about the Holocaust: You can’t mourn the Jews if you don’t mourn the comrades, eh?

She complains about the families of the victims suing the Saudi government. I say again: arrrrgh! I can imagine no better legal cause to root for today.

She complains that the rescue effort of New York’s police and fire departments wasn’t good enough. Well, lady, they saved thousands of people… including me. And I shall forever be grateful for their effort and for their sacrifice.

She would begrudge us even a year’s mourning.

Indeed, I say without shame to America’s ever-growing, increasingly troubling and loudly throbbing Cult of Nine Eleven, “For God sakes, get a grip!”

Get a grip, people, before this unholy rapture gets its grip on you.

And she complains about Lisa Beamer getting TV time. I note a small, cruel, and truly offensive trend in Beamer backlash and even Beamer bashing here; I saw something attacking her as a mother in a blog last week; my computer mercifully died in the meantime and I can’t find the link again, so I can’t prove that this, too, came from a Californian. Stewart just has something against widows and orphans; she doesn’t like the widows and orphans of New York cops and firefighters getting sympathy, either. Heartless bitch. (And yes, I know that’s unPC. I don’t give an S or an F.)

Stewart’s advice:

So, on September 11, I suggest that you not light a candle for the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Plenty of others will do so for you.

Perhaps we should instead light a candle for the cold, dead soul of Jill Stewart.

: Matt Welch notes the contrast between Stewart’s California claptrap and James Lilek‘s heartland heart, exhibited in this simple, brilliant piece about the death of a little girl — the same age as his own Gnat — at the hands of those evil terrorists:

Little Christine was Gnat

Just desserts
: So the Daily Mirror is suffering plummeting circulation. They say it’s because they got serious after 9.11. Could it be, instead, that they printed a bunch bilge from the likes of Pilger?

For a three-hour cruise…
: To heck bringing back The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres with real people. The sitcom they should revive as a reality show is Gilligan’s Island: Take real people; trap them on an island with nothing but cameras; make them figure out a way to get off. It’s better than Survivor because they’ll actually have a goal and won’t have any dumb pagan rituals; it has all the drama of Cast Away; this is a real challenge.

The dog ate my email
: Netscape just ate all my email. Anil Dash says he thought we’d already settled this; Netscape is evil. But I signed a pact with the old devil AOL/Netscape/Time/Warner/Turner/et/al and had my work and personal email in there and it just ate it. So if you sent me anything of note in the last two weeks, you would have to rely on my memory… and that’s not reliable.

Business not as normal
: One company’s plans to do no business the morning of September 11th, from Contentblog.

Killer ap
: Sprint gives us Doppler weather radar on phones. Now, finally, I start to see a need for those color screens.

Well, duh
: The FBI finally admits that the July 4 shooting at LAX may be terrorism, says the Forward.

Jahrzeit
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