POSEUR ALERT

“Stockhausen wasn’t so wrong — in a media-glutted world, Sept. 11 couldn’t help but become the ultimate reality show. So enamored were we of its rare, shocking authenticity that we replicated its image into infinity and leached it of its meaning. Of course, it still works as a rhetorical cudgel that the administration can use to suspend the Constitution and most accepted norms of international behavior, but that just underlies how hollow it’s become — it’s a political device, like the Pledge of Allegiance, sanctimoniously recited on the Capitol steps.” – Michelle Goldberg, Salon.