Seth Masket claims that "the upcoming presidential election is the most important election in a generation":
The party occupying the White House when the economy does finally start booming will get the credit among the public for saving the country. It doesn't matter so much who was in power when the recession hit or whose policies helped or hurt the recovery. To a large extent, it's simply a matter of being in the Oval Office at the right time.
Jay Ulfelder poses the question:
Most of the time … poor governance is implicitly blamed on flaws in the character of individual leaders. Villains bring us down, and heroes make things right. Institutions, it seems, are irrelevant. As a scholar of democratization and a liberal by political philosophy, I really don’t like the message this pattern sends to my kids. Governance is a very hard and perpetual problem, and the parade of gods, kings, and magicians traipsing through kids’ fiction reinforces the authoritarian fantasy that benevolent dictators offer an elegant solution.
A reader writes:
One of your readers wrote: "Despite the amazing progress that women have made in many fronts on equality, they are still physically smaller, slower, and weaker than men." Audie Murphy, Medal of Honor recipient and the most decorated U.S. soldier of all time, was only 5'5" tall and weighed a scant 110lbs. He was initially rejected by the Navy, the Marines, and the U.S. Army paratroopers for being underweight. Yes, sheer brute strength and speed matter. But not so much as grit.
Murphy seen below. Another reader:
As a male veteran and someone who used to teach this debate to future military officers, I've always found such arguments very easy to counter (as did my former
students). The physical differences between the genders the reader points out are undeniable. But, of course, they are not universal. There are some women I served with who are stronger than me, faster than me, and could kick my ass. (And that's saying something: I was a wrestler in college.) So the answer to this is simple (and every man and woman I served with agreed, as I can recall): Figure out what the physical standards for combat are, and then just have that one standard for men and women both. If most women cannot meet those standards, so be it. Many men won't be able to meet them either. But some people will be able to meet those demanding physical standards – and some of those people will be women. Why is this so hard? One physical standard for both men and women. Whoever meets it can go to combat. End of story.
Another:
I notice that the writer left out endurance. Women have greater endurance than men, which is why far more women than men complete ultramarathons. No doubt speed is important, but endurance is equally so.
Another expands on that point:
Combat also involves going long periods of time without sleep, something the typical woman tends to be better at than the average man; reacting properly in stressful situations, again something the typical woman tends to be better at than the average man; working well as a coordinating group is also something the typical woman tends to be better at than the average man. Pick any small range of characteristics and one can bias the results to favor any group. The way to judge is someone is able to perform is to test them, not the particular subgroup they belong to. Some women are vastly more ready for combat than some men. Some men are better at combat than some women. The goal is to get the best at combat, regardless of their sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other irrelevant factor.
Another:
Chris Bodenner wrote: "In fact, given the rapid dominance of women in higher education, the battlefields of the future – reliant on robots – could be dominated by women as well. … Despite all the reader's objections, he still doesn't seem to reject the idea of women in combat units."
While I don't reject the *idea* of women in combat either, all it would take is one Blackhawk down-type engagment where a small force with women in the ranks is overrun or nearly overrun to end that experiment. Luckily, those sorts of things are huge outliers in today's combat situations. But in the future, as we rely more and more on small scale operations with just a few boots on the ground working with irregular or inexperienced troops as allies, I can see close combat becoming more of the norm. In the above type scenario one can only imagine the media hand-wringing over the women casualties in addition to the male chest thumping that the women's inability to cope in close combat endangered their male counterparts or "caused" further male and/or female casualties.
I don't think this is a valid argument against women in combat. I'm just saying be prepared for the inevitable.
An email that is sure to ruffle feathers:
I'm a straight 46-year-old male. I grew up as women became settled into workplaces and two-working-parent families became the norm, and by the time I was in college the old '50s stereotypes of "a woman's role" were so irrelevant as to be laughable. I think women make great CEOs, great mathematicians, great chefs. I was angry at the treatment of Anita Hill, Lily Ledbetter, and the millions who were discriminated against by Wal-Mart. I'm rabidly pro-choice. And I think the military should reflect society; I was shocked and disappointed when Clinton kicked off eight years of mincing triangulation by acceding to Sam Nunn's and Colin Powell's grudging offer of DADT. I'm sure women can do as well as men at carrying rifles, shooting off howitzers, patrolling dark streets in night-vision goggles. Probably better: they have more common sense, more patience, less testosterone coursing through their veins demanding that they do something stupid. I'm as feminist as they come.
And yet the idea of women in combat appalls me.
I don't think this is just me – I think this is something deep in our psyches. Asking someone to fight and possibly die on behalf of their community is strange, dark, mysterious, well beyond the simple axioms of tolerant liberalism. In almost every place and time (except perhaps for some very desperate places and times) it's been the preserve of young men. Sociobiology might explain it: if you want to keep the population going, a sperm-producer is more or less expendable, while a fertile womb is a precious resource. But whatever the source, for thousands of generations we've watched men going to war to protect women. The reverse just seems … wrong.
My generation grew up viewing the idea of women serving in the armed forces, as they might serve in any other profession, as natural and normal. But a woman on the battlefield somehow still seems to me like a crime against nature. Women are to be protected and cherished, not tossed in front of tanks to satisfy one general or another's strategic conceits. Perhaps I have this strong reaction because the Iraq war has already confronted us with some of the consequences. Are we really ready to accept women coming home (as many already have) in wheelchairs, with prosthetic limbs, untreatable burns, PTSD? Are we really ready for large numbers of women POWs? We have always grimly accepted the tragedy of children made fatherless by war. But are we really ready for children made motherless?
Derek Thompson points to the unevenness of productivity gains:
The reason why toasters are cheap and health insurance is not is that the productivity gains that made toasters — not to mention computers, media, durable goods, food, and clothes — more affordable are not spilling over into health care. The next chart from McKinsey tells the story: More than half of total productivity growth comes from computers and information technology. Practically zero comes from health care and education. In fact, one reason why heath and education are adding the most jobs today is that employers can’t meet new demand with technology or offshoring. They have to keep hiring people.
Walter Russell Mead agrees. Kevin Drum complicates Thompson's argument:
I'm not sure it's helpful to desrcibe education and healthcare as industries that have low productivity growth. This suggests that they're laggards who simply refuse to respond to consumer demand for more efficiency. But the truth, I think, is that we as consumers have demanded that universities retain much the same teaching model as they've always had, and we've been willing to back up that demand with ever more dollars. We don't want our kids going to electronic classes and, apparently, we don't want our state governments to subsidize public universities the way they used to either. On the healthcare front, there's been tons of new technology, but we, as consumers, don't want that technology used to provide the same old service at a lower price. We want it used to provide additional services. We've spoken loud and clear on that score.
The Bitly blog calculates how long shared links capture people's attention, using the half life of 1,000 popular bitly links:
The mean half life of a link on twitter is 2.8 hours, on facebook it’s 3.2 hours and via ‘direct’ sources (like email or IM clients) it’s 3.4 hours. So you can expect, on average, an extra 24 minutes of attention if you post on facebook than if you post on twitter. … The surprise in the graph above is links that originate from youtube: these links have a half life of 7.4 hours!
A reader writes:
Guevara basically did advocate genocide – a nuclear one:
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 Che was more bullish even than Castro or Khrushchev, seemingly unconcerned that the whole world was holding its breath over the outcome. 'The worst thing I heard about him,' says Hitchens, 'is that he was in favour of launching the missiles. That, for me, is a contradiction too far. You can't be a great revolutionary who wants to free the world and be a guy who wants to push the button. You can only be one or the other.'
Another writes:
The best antidote to excessive idolization of Che Guevara is Jon Lee Anderson's biography of the man. It's balanced, thorough and fascinating, and it shows what went wrong with Che. I highly recommend it.
Another:
A reader wrote, "But of all of the "revolutionaries" in history, he was a guy who did try to put a positive and a decent foot forward in achieving what he believed would be good for his people." I wonder if your reader is even aware that Che Guevara did little for his people. He was from Argentina, and to my knowledge, he did not commit any noteworthy achievements in Argentina. Perhaps in Cuba, but the Cubans aren't his people, as Winston Churchill isn't one of the American people.
Another sends the below image and writes, "As is often the case, The Onion nails it - though this time in their store." Another reader:
First, you posted the *very best* picture and capture from "Look at this fucking hipster". I looked through the whole site once and remember that one as being the best.
Second, this is not really here nor there, but Greenpoint is toxic. There's a lot of industrial waste there, which is why it was cheap until recently. I have a friend whose father was an industrial plumber, and the family blames his death at 50 from cancer on work he did at Greenpoint. My friend is from Bay Ridge, and he's a no-BS Brooklyn
guy: "These hipsters think they're discovering new places to live, that they're pioneers. There's a *reason* no one lived there." Big swaths of Brooklyn are polluted, and people who live there because they want to be cool can be kind of dim (people go out on the Gowanus in kayaks, etc.)Third, a guy like Che has to be viewed in the context of what right-wing locals did in Latin America, with very full participation from the CIA. Che was an ugly response to a lot of other ugly stuff that was going on there. If you look at Che from our perspective, he's a pretty awful guy. But I think that if you found yourself trapped in the Manichean universe that was Latin America during the days of the revolution, if you're forced to pick one side or the other, Che makes sense in a way he doesn't if you have more distance.
Finally, when you see a Che shirt in Brooklyn (and I'm not sure you really do, honestly), it probably means, "I hate my parents even though they send me the money to live here in Brooklyn, and believe me, that ain't cheap."
Another:
As someone who lived in Greenpoint for nearly a decade, your reader is completely ignoring the skinhead/neo-Nazi movement among the younger working class Polish of the area, which I always found far more troubling then the very rare "skinny Sarah Lawrence grad with the scraggly beard" wearing a CCCP t-shirt. Even a simple Google search of "greenpoint brooklyn polish Skinheads" will bring up mention of them in cafe reviews!
Today on the Dish, Andrew warned of the dangers of a GOP that operates like a religious movement and not a political party, and live-blogged the Tea Party debate in horror. The full reax is here, Andrew dared Hannity to admit Obama has cut taxes more than Bush did, and countered Maureen Dowd on Obama's "weakness." Pawlenty endorsed Romney, and Andrew and Douthat sparred over the viability index. It may be too late for Perry to save Social Security after he's bashed it so joyfully, and GOP consultants wanted Romney to get Perry to attack recklessly. Economists mostly agreed that the Social Security as Ponzi scheme analogy is flawed, and David Dow listed the Texas executions that are a result of unfair policies promoted by Perry. Garry Trudeau joined Andrew in being unable to put down Joe McGinniss Palin book, and then the Chicago Tribune promptly pulled the offending comic strips.
Andrew applauded Leon Wieseltier's 9/11 take on religious freedom in America, Sally Kern feared homosexuality more than terrorism, another 9/11-inspired Malkin award here, and Herman Cain sang the pain away. Terror invaded our televisions and our police departments, and readers submitted the art that touched them after 9/11. Andrew struggled to understand Max Boot's logic on the aftermath of the Iraq war, a reader echoed Andrew's appreciation of Mearsheimer's prescience, and Ali Soufan's book illuminated how torture was ordered by the White House. Internationally, Andrew urged Israel to take a leap of faith on Palestinian statehood, and congratulated Niall and Ayann on their very American union. Germany prepared for a Greek default, India scanned the irises of its 1.2 billion population, and Japanese men wore Hawaiian shirts to save the environment.
Uranium exposure doesn't just apply to female troops, guilt-trips help doctors wash their hands, and behavioral economics offered a politicians a way out from instituting harsher laws. A reader wasn't a fan of Jen Graves' race essay, and Anne-Marie Slaughter predicted the next wars will be fought by cyber-warriors. Steven Johnson predicted ripped jeans and the Roomba, Gregg Bernstein made the iTunes agreement actually legible, and fetal microchimerism means we never really leave our mothers. The Dish got psyched for pot culled from the bodies of naked resin-covered men and horses, birth control affects your memory, and the self-control showed by Jenga dog blew our minds.
Chart of the day here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.
–Z.P.
(Photo: Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Gov. Rick Perry during a debate sponsored by CNN and The Tea Party Express at the Florida State fairgrounds on September 12, 2011 in Tampa. By Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Perry and Romney's Social Security back and forth:
Here is where the benefits and risks of the Tea Party audience come in. All Perry needs to say, to win the Social Security exchange — for now — is that Romney is slavishly defending the New Deal. "If what you're trying to say is that in the 30s and 40s," he says, "the federal government made all the right decisions, I'm going to disagree with you." Brilliant in the GOP primary. Is challenging every element of the New Deal brilliant in a general election? More than it used to be…
In the GOP debate tonight, Perry doubled down on his slimy insinuation that Ben Bernanke's attempts to stimulate the economy with monetary policy are treasonous. This time he used the classic demagogic method of asserting that we have no way of knowing that an outrageous smear isn't true. Of Bernanke's motive for intimating that further monetary easing may be coming, he said "we don't know if it was political or not" — i.e., whether Bernanke is motivated by trying to help Obama get re-elected. Never mind that the being accused of treason for following a given policy course by the leading presidential candidate of one party would constitute a perfectly good motive for trying to maintain the other in office. Or that Bernanke is a Republican, and a Bush appointee, and a student of the Great Depression whose entire corpus of published writings support a more radical course of easing than he's pursued. From smearing motive to charging treason — that's the GOP way.
The only thing that really, truly stuck with me from the Republican presidential debate was Rick Santorum misspeaking and saying “court the illegal vote” before correcting himself to say “Latino vote.” I sometimes find myself discussing with other people whether I identify as Hispanic, and the answer is that I’m really not that strongly identified with my one grandparent’s Cuban heritage but this kind of thing really does piss me off more than being offensive about other groups of people would.
Let’s start here with the moment I screamed at the TV. I’m sorry, but the audience cheering the idea of letting a thirty-year old who got sick without insurance die is appalling. You can dislike the moral hazard, you can bemoan the fact that people don’t take enough personal responsibility, you can even wish that society wouldn’t have to be on the hook when uninsured people get sick. But don’t take pleasure in that fact. Right now, there are thirty-year olds who don’t have jobs, can’t find work, and can’t afford insurance. Letting them die if they get sick is not “good”. It’s not even “freedom”. Applauding that is depressing.
DiA:
No one stood out in my mind as tonight's clear winner. However, Perry did suffer from the onslaught on his vaccine mandate. He seemed shaken and many of his answers were simply incoherent. Huntsman seemed to lose the small bit of ground he gained in the last debate by missing opportunities to connect with the crowd and botching his attempts to be mean. Again, I thought Romney was steady and kept his head above water. I suppose that makes him the winner by default.
Mitt Romney was not as strong in this debate than he was last week but he's a long distance runner and was barely knocked off stride by his rivals. It wasn't a convincing win but a win nonetheless. In contrast, cracks are beginning to show in Rick Perry's candidacy, especially when he's forced to explain anything longer than a soundbite. The best news for Perry is that very few are watching these debates and his weak performance is unlikely to move his poll numbers that much.
Romney=jobs, Perry=anti-Washington. Anger beats hope every time. This crowd rightly wants somebody as mad about DC as they are.
9.56 pm. The weirdest debate so far: feisty but surreal. If I had to game this one, I’d say Bachmann stayed alive, Perry began very strong but wobbled, Romney did fine, and Ron Paul shone the way only he can. But clearly the crowd loved Perry the most. God help us. 9.54 pm. Oh God. Wolf Blitzer is getting cutesy. I’m throwing up in my mouth right now. As to the White House, we’re getting more beds, fewer tsars, the collected works of Hayek, a babe-wife, a bust of Churchill, sacred constitutional documents, flava, and a Harley. 9.50 pm. Perry all but coopts the Paul-Huntsman view of Afghanistan, but then wants a remaining “presence”. He wants to adopt non-interventionism, while not scaring the horses. Santorum and Gingrich are the only ones with neoconservative knees jerking. It really is over: Iraq and Afghanistan have seen to that. The most we’ll ever do is Libya for the forseeable future. In the end, neoconservatism abolished itself. 9.46 pm. Santorum wants to banish any notion of blowback. And what does America stand for? American exceptionalism! Then Ron Paul insists that foreign occupations, not American freedom, were the contributing factor to 9/11. And Huntsman reiterates his commitment to getting out of Afghanistan. Another great conservative answer. 9.44 pm. Gingrich grabs a bowler hat and a cigar. Really: an enormous security crisis? He packed more fear and hyperbole into one sentence than even Cheney can. Meanwhile, altogether now: God Bless Ron Paul. 9.40 pm. Perry is revealing some kind of compassion – if it weren’t framed merely as a way to crack down on welfare recipients. Huntsman mentions H1-B visas, a vital topic. But, with this crowd, I suspect the point didn’t get across. 9.34 pm. A tiny piece of reality peeps in: Latinos exist and they can vote. Perry gets booed for providing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. He stands firm. But it’s obviously a problem for him. He has had to live in the real world in a border state so that this issue is not an easy abstraction. But it is for Bachmann and she takes another whack. Perry has a black eye, and Bachmann has had a stronger second half. 9.32 pm. “What would you do to remove illegal immigrants from this country?” Not: how do we secure the border? But: how do we find these eleven million people and throw them out? Santorum seems genuinely offended by the brutalism of his party base. Perry, meanwhile, seems to want to militarize the entire border region. 9.27 pm. Just before she stalked off the stage to get her make-up freshened up, Bachmann rallied around her hatred of the Affordable Care Act. It played well to the crowd. But this debate is revealing how much of the far right oxygen Perry has now removed. 9.23 pm. I was surprised by the ineptness of Perry’s attack on Romneycare. But I am more surprised at the cheering of someone dying because he couldn’t afford intensive care. Yes, the GOP is now not only cheering executions; they are cheering people dying because thay cannot afford any health insurance. Cheering death by poverty. “Yeah!” came the cry at the thought of a twentysomething dying because he didn’t have insurance. I didn’t think I could be more shocked by the instincts of those in the Republican base, but I just was. 9.22 pm. Romney is now accusing Obama of cutting Medicare spending. Do they hear themselves? 9.20 pm. Wow. Romney is actually talking about how to cut healthcare costs. No, really. 9.18 pm. Cain wants to cut healthcare costs by repealing the first systematic attempt to restrain healthcare costs. Then … tort reform. By the way, I count two shots by now. 9.13 pm. Bachmann is accusing Perry of being a giant, walking syringe from big government. And now she’s accusing him of being corrupt, because of his close association with a drug company behind the HPV vaccine. And then Perry actually says that he cannot be bought for $5,000; you need to bribe him with much more money than that! Amazingly inept response. Then the Christianists take aim – a Bachmann-Santorum tag-team in defense of “innocent little girls”. And Perry is reeling. 9.09 pm. Now the recession of 2007 – 2009 is the “Obama depression”. Is there anything these people will not say? Then they’re going to promote tax reform and tax cuts – which is Obama’s position. At no point has anyone intimated that drastic austerity right now might actually hurt the economy in the short term. The sheer crudeness of this panderthon is gob-smacking. That must be why this debate has become so execrable. It’s not CNN’s debate. It’s a CNN/Tea Party debate. And so you almost force these people to be as craven and moronic as possible. 9.06 pm. Huntsman again pushes his tax reform, especially corporate welfare. 9.03 pm. Perry is alleging that Ben Bernanke is in collusion with Obama to attack the financial stability of the country in order to facilitate Obama’s re-election. And that is close to treason. Seriously. The mild-mannered, principled Republican appointee is now a tool of Obama. And the man making ths kind of charge – and refusing to take back his implicit threat of mob violence – is the front runner. Good God. 8.56 pm. If this were still a secular conservative party, Jon Huntsman would be an overwhelming front-runner, don’t you think? But they can’t handle him, can they? This debate is depressing me much more deeply than I’d expected. It’s that twinkle in Perry’s beady eyes that reminds me of W – but without even the smidgen of vulnerability Bush Jr had. 8.51 pm. Every time he has been asked, Ron Paul has brought up spending on wars and empire. It’s his trademark now. And he has the usual support in the crowd. 
8.49 pm. Does Perry really think that the stimulus created no jobs? Truly, a wretched little twerp, dispatched on Tea Party theology by Ron Paul. 8.46 pm. So far, we have repealed universal health insurance, Dodd-Frank, much of the Pentagon, the Department of Education, and are so-so on Medicare and social security. What should government actually do to help the economy? Cut and reform taxes. Unless Obama proposes to cut taxes. Then that’s more spending. 8.43 pm. Perry seems to believe that tax cuts will be paid for by tax raises. Seriously, this guy is frightening. He gets asked how to pay for tax cuts, and he gives us a lecture about spending. Now, tax cuts are government spending – just because Obama is proposing it. That really is staggering. They will offer no response on Obama’s jobs bill and can only really offer platitudes and doctrines. God this is depressing. 8.41 pm. Huntsman offers a serious case for tax reform. Goes down like a lead balloon. 8.39 pm. Round One: Romney wins easily on points, but Perry reveals a kind of smug teflon smirk that this crowd is lapping up. There you see the choice – and Perry seems to me to be winning. As he strutted onto the stage he looked like a rooster in an Italian suit. He really is like W, but as a parody of the brash, slick and callous side of him. 8.38 pm. I think I’m going to have a shot every time I see a non-white person in the crowd. 8.37 pm. Bachmann is also on a roll of buzzwords. Is Palinism contagious? 8.35 pm. So they all want to repeal Obamacare, but no one wants to touch the Medicare Prescription Drug Entitlement. Blow me over with a feather. 8.33 pm. Santorum just gave us the doctrine – with all the boogey words “big government”, “one-size fits all”, Washington blah blah blah. Zzzzz. 8.30 pm. And the biggest applause of the night goes to Newt Gingrich for saying that Barack Obama is “scaring” the American people. Then he uses what I think is a reference to the effects of a national default as if it were a free-floating threat to senior citizens. Pretty much disgusting, when you think about it.
8.21 pm. “Frightful”: a very Romney word. But then he goes for the kill. Is social security unconstitutional and should be taken from the federal government? A really fascinating exchange, this one, with real blood on the floor. And it’s clear who won the argument: Romney did. He pwned Perry on his core position (exposing his latest USAToday flip-flop for what it is), and on his attempt to quote Romney, Romney’s response was devastating. It was a bad misquote.
And yet, Perry seemed to win the exchange. He is like a distant offspring of Reagan and George W. Bush – but with much more radical ideas. I’m sorry but I do not find him charming. He has the charm of a televangelist, and the smugness.
8.17 pm. Bachmann blathered on about social security and Medicare. If this was supposed to be her come-back, she barely sputtered out of the gate.
8.10 pm. Well, it turns out you don’t need that Kazakh sweat pot to get through these debates. This is the trippiest, cheesiest, weirdest debate I’ve ever seen. A little WWF, a little American Idol, a little Olympics, a little reality show.
(Photo: governor Rick Perry, by Win McNamee/Getty.)
Submissions from the in-tray continue to overwhelm. A popular suggestion is the memorial seen above, arguably the greatest piece of 9/11 art. The photo's March 11, 2002 caption reads:
Memorial lights at World Trade Center Site shine skyward after being lit for first night. By Keith Torrie/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images.
A reader writes:
No doubt this painting has crossed your radar. For some of us Gerhard Richter is the greatest artist of our time and, despite the palpable uncertainty and unheroic treatment of his version of the 9/11 event, titled "September", it is the definitive work of art on the theme for me. How weirdly antiquated – to "paint" the event, and to do so in a way that raises questions as much as pretends to answer them.
Another:
I've long felt that Blue Man Group's "Exhibit 13" was the single best work of art created about 9-11. It's a sweet, touching song and the visual aspect is based on found papers from the towers that blew into Brooklyn.
Another submits South Park's "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants" episode:
From Sharon unable to pull herself away from CNN to the absurdity of schoolchildren sending dollars to Afghanistan to Looney Tunes homage with Bin Laden as Elmer Fudd, Matt and Trey nailed the moment in the moment. What's more, they did it without being mawkish or sacrificing South Park's edge.
The Onion also didn't go soft. Another:
To answer the earlier reader who chimed in with Wilco's "Jesus, Etc.", the song does indeed pre-date 9/11. But the mythology stems from some odd coincidences that warrant its inclusion as a sort of "accidental" piece of 9/11 art. It helps that it is simply a beautiful song; through the years it has unofficially replaced my wife and I's wedding song.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the album containing "Jesus, Etc." was officially released in 2002. But this was only after a famously textbook record company skerfuffle
documented in Sam Jones' film "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" in which Wilco was dropped by its label (Reprise) and bought back the record. Before the upheaval, the album was originally slated to be released on…September 11, 2001. Around this time, low-quality versions of the songs were beginning to appear on file-sharing networks, so the band went ahead and streamed the album for free the week after September 11 and released a proper physical copy the next spring.
Had Yankee Hotel Foxtrot seen its original release date, what would have hit shelves the morning of September 11th is an album bearing a stark photo of the twin Monarch towers in Chicago. Halfway through the record you'd hit "Jesus, Etc.", which contains the lyric "Tall buildings shake, voices escape, singing sad, sad songs." The song's overarching theme that ultimately all we have is each other, and that's God's love is the currency he spends through us, absolutely sounds like it could be an emotional overlay for the day and its aftermath. Even (and especially) knowing the song's similarites to 9/11 are only coincidental, it makes for a powerful emotional resonance. It's one of those songs you just want to sit people down and make them hear.
Several readers submitted examples of "accidental art", or simply songs that deeply resonated in the wake of 9/11 based on a similar theme or sentiment. One prominent example from cinema:
No discussion of 9/11-inspired art can be complete without James Marsh's beautiful, transporting documentary "Man on Wire", which I truly believe is the great 9/11 film. Though the attack itself is never mentioned, it hangs over every single frame of the film, which takes us back to a magical pre-9/11 lower Manhattan fantasy land to recap Philippe Petit's glorious wire-walk between (and triumph over) the Twin Towers. As Bryan Appleyard put it so eloquently back when the film was released, it's both a tribute to the pre-9/11 world and a repudiation of the attack itself. I honestly believe that the film should be broadcast on network TV every 9/11 to remind us of the incredible act of beauty that took place there decades before the terrorists brought it down.
Another example of accidental art that carries its meaning in context:
On Tuesday 9/11 the nation watched the towers fall. On Thursday 9/14 I attended a PJ Harvery concert in Chicago. The tour was for the album Stories from the City Stories from the Sea, an album about New York City released almost a year earlier. The album included songs with such titles as Big Exit, We Float, Kamikazi, and This Mess We're In.
PJ strode out on stage, alone, with a guitar. Lit by a single spotlight she addressed the audience. They had thought about canceling the show, especially given the material of the album, but had decided to go on with the show. She immediately launched into a solo accoustical version of This Mess We're In. The opening lyrics are:
Can you hear them?
The helicopters?
I'm in New York
No need for words now
We sit in silence
You look me
In the eye directly
You met me
I think it's Wednesday
The evening
The mess we're in and
The city sun sets over me
I remember the chills, I remember the tears, I remember jumping at loud sounds that filtered in from outside the auditorium, I remember cheering and screaming louder and longer than I think I have at any performance, and I remember being so grateful to gather in public and join in a collective grieving with my fellow citizens.
PJ didn't write the album in response to 9/11, but the events of that day gave the lyrics and meanings of each song new weight and pogiancy. For me, "Stories" will always be about 9/11, what we saw, how we responded, and how we healed. Here is a user-made 9/11 tribute to those died that day featuring the album version of "This Mess We're In" (which features Thom Yorke of Radiohead).
Several readers submitted the poem "110 stories" by the late John M. Ford. Another:
I've seen almost every field of art mentioned except for architecture, which is the one art actually involved in rebuilding the WTC. I'm not talking about the boxy glass office buildings currently going up but about the design for the original urban master plan. Arguably, when taken together, all the
designs from the competition for a new development at Ground Zero constitute a memorable artistic response to 9/11. But the winning master plan design, "Memory Foundations" by Daniel Libeskind, which is now being implemented (albeit in a modified form) deserves special mention here. It is highly unusual for an architecture development to appeal to the emotions, but that was the point of Libeskind's proposal.
It was – and still is – explicitly about history, memory, tragedy and the sanctity of human life. In the architect's own words, "My idea in the master plan was that this was a place of the spirit. This is where people perished. It was not a piece of real estate any longer." The proposal also weaves American history into the new urban fabric in inspired ways: World Trade Center 1 (formerly the "Freedom Tower") will be 1,776 ft. tall to commemorate the country's founding, and the new memorial will celebrate the slurry wall underneath the WTC – a heroic piece of concrete that withstood the attacks thereby preventing Lower Manhattan from being flooded by the Hudson. These elements might be unusual and controversial, but I think they qualify "Memory Foundations" master plan as a worthy 9/11 work of architectural art.
Amy Davidson also marvels at the new WTC site:
It’s not because I have any disdain for the old World Trade Center. I miss the Twin Towers. It makes me angry when I hear them called soulless. They were part of my hometown’s landscape, the constant compass pointers on the city’s street grid—my true south. I thought they were beautiful. My senior prom was at Windows on the World. But for the last several years, my child and I have walked by the site on our way from our apartment to school, talked about the buildings’ progress, and watched them rise. I am ready to love them.
Her coworkers at The New Yorker recommend Netherland, among other works. Scott Galupo responds to the thread here. Previous installments here, here, here and here. The discussion continues on our Facebook page.
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