9/11: A Day That Will Live In Infamy, But Just To Make Sure We're Going To Run Film Of It Every 30 Seconds For The Next Week

Dateline: New York. The Morning of September 11th, 2001.

Now, seriously, I challenge you to find me a person on United States soil over the age of 8 with the capacity for normal thought and recollection who can't tell me the rest of the story of that day.

Now find me a person meeting the same criteria who can accurately describe to you the events of December 7th, 1941?

And yes, thank you, I am aware of the differences in terms of target and intent, but let's consider how many MILLIONS of people lost their lives as a result of THAT event, compared to the several thousand who have thus far died as a result of the attacks in New York and Washington DC.

Now, I realize that you über-Patriot readers have stopped reading at this point and am now working over your resources to discover who I really am so you can deport me or worse, but there really is a point to be made here... I have a child at home. A young one. One who occasionally sits next to me and watches what's on the television. Is it important that he understand the history of our nation, and how we have become for better or, at the moment, horribly worse, the America we are today? Absolutely. Is it imperative that he understand that there are people out there that mean to do him harm for things he has nothing to do with? Absolutely.

Is it necessary that he see, in vivid color and high definition and Dolby Surround sound, the last seconds of life and horrifying deaths of thousands of people, recapped from various angles and super slow motion, with play by play and breakdown? No. It is unnecessary and gratuitous.

By and large, Americans in the early 1940's learned of Pearl Harbor via a headline in the newspaper with a picture of a burning ship, or radio, where the scene was described to them with enough detail to get the point across without offending anyone. People who were not at the scene of the crime were not subjected to seeing people dead or dying, yet they got the point: America was attacked, innocents died, those that were responsible must be held accountable for their actions.

Usually I'm the one to jump up and down and cry foul when someone starts complaining about sex or violence on TV. As a parent, it is my responsibility to monitor and if need be control what my child watches, and under normal circumstances this would be easily accomplished with very little effort. In this particular circumstance though, unless I'm going to watch Sprout for the next 2 weeks, the images of 09/11/01 are unavoidable.

It is important that we never forget what happened. It is unhealthy and counterproductive to relive the event every 30 minutes.