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Language Does Matter: Sept. 11 Wasn't A "Plane Crash"
November 14, 2006
I used to always listen to liberal-leaning National Public Radio in the car, even as I was morphing from a Democratic-leaning independent to a libertarian-leaning Republican in the 90s. NPR was at least intelligent, in-depth, and thoughtful. I might not be especially warmed by reports of an art gallery in New York showcasing a crucifix in a jar of urine, but I knew I could always count on NPR to explain why this was an important socio-cultural statement. I guess it was around the time I heard a long interview on NPR with a person who was introduced with great fanfare as a lesbian Marxist poet from Grenada, that I began to reach the end of my rope with the network. I have nothing against lesbians - though to all advocates of same-sex marriage, I say, you have no special moral claim to redefine this institution to your liking; voters should decide state by state, and please bag the stale "homphobia" cant directed to opponents. No, it was more the confluence of identifiers; the "can you top this"-ness of it all. I realized before long I would be subjected to an NPR interview with a handicapped transsexual Chilean socialist playright; but I would likely not be hearing much about a really great white Christian male writer from Louisiana. Unless of course he'd written something damning about racial oppression. So, long before NPR shamed itself with the sneering, jeering piped-in BBC commentary in 2003 on the early phases of U.S. and British engagement in Iraq, I tuned out. But on a whim I tuned in to the Seattle NPR affiliate a few years ago, after the September 11 terrorist attacks on America, and heard some Noam Chomsky wannabe discoursing on what it all means that the media and U.S. populace now so often refer to Sept. 11 in a kind of shorthand. We call it "9/11," or "Sept. 11," and that is suppposed to be enough of a signifier for what actually happened on that day. Cripes, what a lot of worthless navel-gazing, I thought at the time. I was wrong. Language does matter: especially in regard to Sept. 11. I was reminded of that by an Associated Press story authored yesterday by Devlin Barrett and e-mailed to me by Rosenblog reader Erik Deutsch. It is about the nascent 2008 presidential bid of Republican Rudy Giuliani, a great favorite of mine, who was of course Mayor of New York when suicidal Islamic terrorists who hated the United States attacked on the same day NYC and the Pentagon, and were aiming for the White House as well. Here is the paragraph that caught Erik's attention. Giuliani, who was in his final months as New York City mayor when a pair of planes crashed into the World Trade Center's towers, became a national hero. Within hours of the attack, the mayor was visiting the site, caked in dust and walking through the chaos — a moment replayed repeatedly on television. As Erik wrote to me: 'A pair of planes crashed'....that's how you (Barrett) want people to remember and associate 9/11??? Are you kidding me??? I'll go a step further. Here is how the sentence in question should have read. Giuliani, who was in his final months as New York City mayor when a pair of planes commandered by Muslim jihadists crashed into the World Trade Center's towers and killed nearly 3,000 innocents, became a national hero. Or, substitute for "Muslim jihadists" the phrase "Muslim terrorists" or "Islamic terrorists" or "U.S.-loathing Muslim (or Islamic) extremists." There are two previous references to Sept. 11 in the story, which are not as scandalously casual as Barrett's "plane crash" reference, but these are standard shorthand ("Sept. 11 terrorist attacks" and "the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001") lacking any reference to the who and why. The word Muslim is not used once. Yet their religion, Islam, as they interpreted it, was an essential component of the attacks. The ethnic, political and moral cleansing of Sept. 11 - so casually executed - exemplifies why the mainstream media is no longer trusted. Associated Press has a history of liberal bias. I have documented examples of that here, here, here, here, and here. Because so many newspapers rely heavily on AP (or equally biased Reuters) wire copy for national and international news, their slant significantly informs that of print and broadcast media in scores of U.S. markets. To really face the enemy, we must not hide the truth of who and what he is, and what he has done. I hereby propose a Gold Standard for all editors, commentators and reporters referring to Sept. 11. Never detach the phrase Sept. 11 from "Muslim extremists" or "suicidal Muslim jihadists." And never detach the phrase Sept. 11 from "killing almost 3,000 innocents." Unless, like Ward Churchill, we really mean to say the WTC victims were "Little Eichmans." TECHNORATI TAGS: RUDY GIULIANI, SEPTEMBER 11, ASSOCIATED PRESS, MEDIA BIAS, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 14, 2006 11:06 AM Comments:
Thanks for the Blog Matt. I couldn't believe it when I read it. I imagine the AP would call the attack on Pearl Harbor, "When some U.S. ships surprisingly sank". I love your revised sentence! Unfortunately the msm will never, ever, use such language. Erik. Posted by: Erik D. at November 15, 2006 09:12 AMFirst, calm down. Second, try looking at the details of 9/11 before you get angry about someone calling it one thing or another. Remember the old quote, "Minds are like parachutes-- they only work when they are open". One thing that struck me as odd in the days after 9/11 was Bush saying "We will not tolerate conspiracy theories [regarding 9/11]". Sure enough there have been some wacky conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day. The most far-fetched and patently ridiculous one that I've ever heard goes like this: Nineteen hijackers who claimed to be devout Muslims but yet were so un-Muslim as to be getting drunk all the time, doing cocaine and frequenting strip clubs decided to hijack four airliners and fly them into buildings in the northeastern U.S., the area of the country that is the most thick with fighter bases. After leaving a Koran on a barstool at a strip bar after getting shitfaced drunk on the night before, then writing a suicide note/inspirational letter that sounded like it was written by someone with next to no knowledge of Islam, they went to bed and got up the next morning hung over and carried out their devious plan. Nevermind the fact that of the four "pilots" among them there was not a one that could handle a Cessna or a Piper Cub let alone fly a jumbo jet, and the one assigned the most difficult task of all, Hani Hanjour, was so laughably incompetent that he was the worst fake "pilot" of the bunch, with someone who was there when he was attempting to fly a small airplane saying that Hanjour was so clumsy that he was unsure if he had driven a car before. Nevermind the fact that they received very rudimentary flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, making them more likely to have been C.I.A. assets than Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. So on to the airports after Mohammed Atta supposedly leaves two rental cars at two impossibly far-removed locations. So they hijack all four airliners and at this time passengers on United 93 start making a bunch of cell phone calls from 35,000 feet in the air to tell people what was going on. Nevermind the fact that cell phones wouldn't work very well above 4,000 feet, and wouldn't work at ALL above 8,000 feet. But the conspiracy theorists won't let that fact get in the way of a good fantasy. That is one of the little things you "aren't supposed to think about". Nevermind that one of the callers called his mom and said his first and last name ("Hi mom, this is Mark Bingham"), more like he was reading from a list than calling his own mom. Anyway, when these airliners each deviated from their flight plan and didn't respond to ground control, NORAD would any other time have followed standard operating procedure (and did NOT have to be told by F.A.A. that there were hijackings because they were watching the same events unfold on their own radar) which means fighter jets would be scrambled from the nearest base where they were available on standby within a few minutes, just like every other time when airliners stray off course. But of course on 9/11 this didn't happen, not even close. Somehow these "hijackers" must have used magical powers to cause NORAD to stand down, as ridiculous as this sounds because total inaction from the most high-tech and professional Air Force in the world would be necessary to carry out their tasks. So on the most important day in its history the Air Force was totally worthless. Then they had to make one of the airliners look like a smaller plane, because unknown to them the Naudet brothers had a videocamera to capture the only known footage of the North Tower crash, and this footage shows something that is not at all like a jumbo jet, but didn't have to bother with the South Tower jet disguising itself because that was the one we were "supposed to see". Anyway, as for the Pentagon they had to have Hani Hanjour fly his airliner like it was a fighter plane, making a high G-force corkscrew turn that no real airliner can do, in making its descent to strike the Pentagon. But these "hijackers" wanted to make sure Rumsfeld survived so they went out of their way to hit the farthest point in the building from where Rumsfeld and the top brass are located. And this worked out rather well for the military personnel in the Pentagon, since the side that was hit was the part that was under renovation at the time with few military personnel present compared to construction workers. Still more fortuitous for the Pentagon, the side that was hit had just before 9/11 been structurally reinforced to prevent a large fire there from spreading elsewhere in the building. Awful nice of them to pick that part to hit, huh? Then the airliner vaporized itself into nothing but tiny unidentifiable pieces most no bigger than a fist, unlike the crash of a real airliner when you will be able to see at least some identifiable parts, like crumpled wings, broken tail section etc. Why, Hani Hanjour the terrible pilot flew that airliner so good that even though he hit the Pentagon on the ground floor the engines didn't even drag the ground!! Imagine that!! Though the airliner vaporized itself on impact it only made a tiny 16 foot hole in the building. Amazing. Meanwhile, though the planes hitting the Twin Towers caused fires small enough for the firefighters to be heard on their radios saying "We just need 2 hoses and we can knock this fire down" attesting to the small size of it, somehow they must have used magical powers from beyond the grave to make this morph into a raging inferno capable of making the steel on all forty-seven main support columns (not to mention the over 100 smaller support columns) soften and buckle, then all fail at once. Hmmm. Then still more magic was used to make the building totally defy physics as well as common sense in having the uppermost floors pass through the remainder of the building as quickly, meaning as effortlessly, as falling through air, a feat that without magic could only be done with explosives. Then exactly 30 minutes later the North Tower collapses in precisely the same freefall physics-defying manner. Incredible. Not to mention the fact that both collapsed at a uniform rate too, not slowing down, which also defies physics because as the uppermost floors crash into and through each successive floor beneath them they would shed more and more energy each time, thus slowing itself down. Common sense tells you this is not possible without either the hijackers' magical powers or explosives. To emphasize their telekinetic prowess, later in the day they made a third building, WTC # 7, collapse also at freefall rate though no plane or any major debris hit it. Amazing guys these magical hijackers. But we know it had to be "Muslim hijackers" the conspiracy theorist will tell you because (now don't laugh) one of their passports was "found" a couple days later near Ground Zero, miraculously "surviving" the fire that we were told incinerated planes, passengers and black boxes, and also "survived" the collapse of the building it was in. When common sense tells you if that were true then they should start making buildings and airliners out of heavy paper and plastic so as to be "indestructable" like that magic passport. The hijackers even used their magical powers to bring at least seven of their number back to life, to appear at american embassies outraged at being blamed for 9/11!! BBC reported on that and it is still online. Nevertheless, they also used magical powers to make the american government look like it was covering something up in the aftermath of this, what with the hasty removal of the steel debris and having it driven to ports in trucks with GPS locators on them, to be shipped overseas to China and India to be melted down. When common sense again tells you that this is paradoxical in that if the steel was so unimportant that they didn't bother saving some for analysis but so important as to require GPS locators on the trucks with one driver losing his job because he stopped to get lunch. Hmmmm. Further making themselves look guilty, the Bush administration steadfastly refused for over a year to allow a commission to investigate 9/11 to even be formed, only agreeing to it on the conditions that they get to dictate its scope, meaning it was based on the false pretense of the "official story" being true with no other alternatives allowed to be considered, handpicked all its members making sure the ones picked had vested interests in the truth remaining buried, and with Bush and Cheney only "testifying" together, only for an hour, behind closed doors, with their attorneys present and with their "testimonies" not being recorded by tape or even written down in notes. Yes, this whole story smacks of the utmost idiocy and fantastic far-fetched lying, but it is amazingly enough what some people believe. Even now, five years later, the provably false fairy tale of the "nineteen hijackers" is heard repeated again and again, and is accepted without question by so many Americans. Which is itself a testament to the innate psychological cowardice of the American sheeple, i mean people, and their abject willingness to believe something, ANYTHING, no matter how ridiculous in order to avoid facing a scary uncomfortable truth. Time to wake up America. Debunking Popular Mechanics lies: Poopular Mechanics staff replaced just before laughable “debunking” article written: Twin Towers’ construction certifiers say they should have easily withstood it:
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