The 9/11 Cheese Plate

Never forget.

It just should’ve been two modest, quiet, solemn memorials. Maybe a few new buildings on the perimeter. The rest, a park with a pond. Open and free. It wasn’t a place to ‘rebuild’. Gettysburg is hallowed ground because people died there.

Ground Zero is a gravesite that they’ve swept up and poured concrete over. Cordoned off and compartmentalized so they can direct all mourning into one area, while developing office space in the remaining area. And they’ve built an uninspired, stunted tower that’s only devoted to financial wealth, to recoup a billionaire developer’s lost profit. Yet it’s referred to as ‘The Freedom Tower.’ And they built it along with a memorial that allows much less reflection and peace than it does excessive emotional exploitation.

And it’s taken just 4,745 days until they were ready to start charging $24 admission. Ground Zero appears to be anything but resilient. It appears completely disturbed. The meaning has been flipped backwards to accommodate tourists and to dramatize the already unfathomable instead of providing a personal space for those affected.

Strip everything away but the space, keep the comfortable and private places to sit, display the names, and whatever else makes sense to anyone who goes there to mourn, who have a right and reason to mourn or to reflect.

Words and displays without political agendas, that’s all that should be there. Anything else is just perverse — especially a gift shop selling hoodies and America-shaped cheese plates.

Remember the cheese plate. They’ve since removed it from the shop.

The biggest sellers now are $39 stone hearts.