What goes around on 9/11, comes around on 9/11

"Handing Out Hors d'Oeuvres, Then Recalling the 107th Floor," by Dan Barry, New York Times, 1 September, p. A1.

Poignant story here that needs little comment: about a bunch of former Windows on the World workers who are now serving at various Republican Convention events while having to listen to the GOP wring every possible bit of emotion out of the 9/11 attacks for political purposes in this very tight presidential election season.

I got to spend a lot of time interacting with various Windows on the World personnel during the lengthy set-ups for each of our "economic security exercises" that we conducted atop World Trade Center 1 on the 107th floor in the years 1999-2001. It was an amazing restaurant and conference facility, like nothing else in the world. As proof of this judgment, let me point out that Windows on the World wasóat the time of the attacksóthe highest grossing restaurant (per square foot of space) in the entire country.

Now, of course, it's nothing. Windows on the World no longer exists except in the painful memories of those who survived or who lost their loved ones in the attacks. To listen to the GOP employ that day so blatantly in its convention imagery is to evoke a strange sense of ambivalenceóat least within me. I mean, everyone wants that day to be remembered alright, but it cannot be evoked for any suffering or loss that isn't logically traced to some future worth creating. In other words, it can't be used in an open-ended fashion to justify all sorts of new rules that scare too many people, both here and around the world. Rather, it must be used to rededicate ourselves and our country to a "happy ending" that puts all the suffering of that day into proper perspective.