|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
   |   |  |  | ||||
 | |||||||
| The Sound of Silence | |||||||
| Our columnist condemns New York City for its uninspired tribute plans for September 11-and gets massive back-up from Mario Cuomo | |||||||
| |||||
| Aug. 26 — It should have been a home run, but instead, it’s a re-run. I’m talking about next month’s commemoration of the Sept. 11th attacks. In a city still grasping for meaning and hungering for inspirational leadership, New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg has crafted a ceremony so drained of its lifeblood that it could be declared kosher. |
 |  | |||
 |
||||
|
| BLOOMBERG’S PASSIONLESS EVENT will begin auspiciously, with a citywide moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., one year from the instant when the first plane plunged into the north tower. | |||||||||||||||||||
|
It’s all downhill from there. First, New York Governor George Pataki will recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Nothing against the governor, but if I want to hear the Gettysburg Address, I’d much rather hear James Earl Jones than George Pataki. Next, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani will begin reciting the names of the 2,800 victims. Yes, the man who could’ve been elected mayor for life has been given a task more suited to a high school senior on graduation day. After that, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey will read an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence (hopefully not the inelegant excerpt complaining that King George “has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures”; talk about soaring oration!). The memorial ceremony will end at 10:29 a.m., to mark the moment when the second of the Twin Towers collapsed. Later in the evening, President Bush will tour the area and Mayor Bloomberg will read excerpts from President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech (hopefully not the part where FDR says, “I shall ask this Congress for greatly increase new appropriations and authorizations to carry on what we have begun”; What, am I watching C-Span?). And that’s how the day will end, not with a harangue, but a simper. Instead of rising to this once-in-a-lifetime chance to deliver a history-making speech about a defining moment in our history, America’s politicians have slouched toward Gettysburg to be reborn. Yet it is exactly Lincoln’s quiet-but-powerful example that they are betraying. As Lincoln biographer Garry Wills has pointed out, Lincoln’s goal at Gettysburg was not merely to commemorate a battle or hallow a cemetery, but to explain to his still-reeling country why 50,000 people gave their lives. “He actually used the scale of payment in dead bodies to boost the value of the thing being purchased,” Wills wrote earlier this month. That “thing,” of course, was preservation of the union and insuring that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” By demanding that we honor the sacrifice of the 50,000 dead—”those who here gave their lives that that nation might live,” as Lincoln called them—he was “creatively upping the ante of the whole American project,” Wills said. But rather than raise the bet, Bloomberg, Pataki, Giuliani, McGreevey and even Bush—who at least gave oration a try with his speech to Congress on Sept. 20, 2001—have folded. New York’s ongoing struggle to come up with a memorial to the victims that doesn’t offend anyone was the first indication that the World Trade Center site is not simply Ground Zero, but a black hole in whose gravitational pull no politician risks becoming trapped. And the inability of our elected officials to find their voice is just the latest example. What’s the matter, Messrs. Bloomberg, Pataki, McGreevey and Bush? Catastrophe got your tongue? (As a New Yorker, I’m saddened by the clear lack of leadership. But as a newsman, I’m disgusted. There’s nothing worth covering if no one is going to say anything. I’m tempted to ask my editor to send me to Springfield, Illinois with a seismograph to detect if there’s any rotation inside the 16th president’s grave.) It’s not symbolism they lack. For inspiration, politicians could merely walk over to New York’s City Hall, which is so heavily surrounded by cement barricades that it looks as though it’s in Kabul. Or perhaps they could take the subway up to the Citicorp Building in Midtown, where one of the skyscraper’s graceful pillars is being secretly armored against a future attack. Lincoln might have called these things symbols of “the great task remaining before us.” But today’s politicians don’t call them anything. They merely call Lincoln. Perhaps, the task of explaining September 11 is too great. Perhaps no politician is capable of delivering a speech that, like Lincoln at Gettysburg, would tell us how each and every one of the 2,800 funerals were a down payment on a stronger nation. |
||||||||||||||||||
|
So for a reality check, I called Mario Cuomo, a man whom many believe to be the best political speechmaker of his generation (before you accuse me of partisanship, I also called Peggy Noonan, who was Ronald Reagan’s great scriptwriter, but Noonan didn’t bother to get back to me). Not surprisingly, Cuomo was just as angry as I am. So rather than edit Cuomo (you don’t edit Mario Cuomo; you just start typing and figure out the punctuation later), I’ll let the man give his own political speech: “They just don’t know what to say about 9/11,” Cuomo said of his political successors. “They can’t figure out what it means to our society. They can’t explain why there are people who detest our way of life so much. They don’t have the answers. Of course, they have answers to the easy questions: Should we praise the solidarity that manifested itself after the attacks? Yes, but we have all said magnificent things about solidarity.” I asked Cuomo what he would say and quickly started typing again. “Lincoln explained that Gettysburg was the price we needed to pay to keep the nation together. Today, we need to use the same approach to call upon our nation to use the solidarity of 9/11 to deal with our nation’s quiet catastrophes.” When I asked for a list, Cuomo handed me liberal rhetoric—prescription drugs for seniors, helping the poor, curing disease in Africa, etc—but he’s right about one thing: How come our leaders can talk about solidarity after we’ve been attacked, but find themselves unable to evoke solidarity when there are day-to-day crises to address? The answer, ironically, is in Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech—although not in the part that McGreevey will read. Roosevelt said it was a matter of national unity that the government ensure “jobs for those who can work, the ending of special privilege for the few, the preservation of civil liberties for all [and] a wider and constantly rising standard of living.” “These are the simple, the basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world,” Roosevelt said. Cuomo saw the irony. “Today, we actually do the opposite,” he said. “Instead of evoking unity to save Social Security or provide health care, we give the richest one million people a tax cut. Why are those people not asked to give something back in the name of solidarity?” Because that’s a hard question. And today’s politicians only have easy answers. The other day, in fact, Pataki and McGreevey held a press conference announcing their intention of renaming Newark International Airport “Liberty International Airport at Newark” to honor the victims of September 11. Supporting the move, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the airport, issued a statement that speaks volumes about our politicians’ lack of vision: “The name ‘Liberty International Airport at Newark’ would be a powerful and permanent way to honor the countless Americans who have given their lives defending liberty at home and abroad.” Permanent? Certainly. But powerful? You don’t have to be Mario Cuomo to think that a more forceful demonstration of the victim’s legacy would be America taking a leadership role in fomenting world peace, ensuring security from terrorists and defending liberty all over the planet. But that’s a lot harder to do. And for today’s politicians, it’s apparently not easy to convey in a speech at a battlefield where 2,800 people lost their lives. Gersh Kuntzman is also a columnist for The New York Post and a sportswriter for The Brooklyn Papers. His Web site is at http://www.gersh.tv © 2002 Newsweek, Inc. | ||||||||||||||||||
| |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| |
|||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
|||||||||||||||
  |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||
Advertisement | ||||
Perspectives
