They say 9/11 changed everything. Not really.
The National "September 11th" Memorial Museum opened this week on the hallowed ground where thousands were incinerated or otherwise pulverized by the worst attack on American soil in U.S. history. Former Mayor Bloomberg and hundreds of well-heeled visitors and dignitaries attended a gala black-tie reception to commemorate the Museum's opening, sipping pricey cocktails and (I'm sure) looking appropriately somber.
For 24 bucks you can tour the Museum, but the real moneymaker is the Museum Gift Shop, where overweight Americans adorned in Walmart fashions can waddle through a forest of overpriced made-in-China trinkets such as the America-shaped 9/11 Cheese Plate:
The cheese plate is in the shape of the continental U.S., with hearts where the attacks hit NYC, DC and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Because no cheese course is complete without a moment to "Never forget" (to take our Lactaid). Let's roll... that wheel of cheddar to Freedomtown?
Too cheesy? Then you may want to consider buying
the official FDNY dog vest to keep little Fido cozy--or maybe just a pair of earrings made from a tree near Ground Zero:
For example: FDNY, NYPD and Port Authority Police T-shirts ($22) and caps ($19.95); earrings molded from leaves and blossoms of downtown trees ($20 to $68); cop and firefighter charms by Pandora and other jewelers ($65); “United We Stand” blankets.
There are bracelets, bowls, buttons, mugs, mousepads, magnets, key chains, flags, pins, stuffed animals, toy firetrucks, cellphone cases, tote bags, books and DVDs.
You can pick up an assortment of oak leaf jewelry at the 9/11 museum gift shop.
Even FDNY vests for dogs come in all sizes.
Between 60 and 70 percent of the Museum's operating revenue comes from the gift shop and admission fees, so it's generally expected that Americans will do their patriotic duty and open their wallets. After all, wasn't it George W. Bush who told us to go shopping? And, by all accounts, Americans are
doing just that.
The Museum itself houses 8000 unidentified victims' body parts stored "out of sight." No word on how their former owners feel about the cheese plate. Also opening this summer will be an 80-seat café where one can scarf down "comfort food" and "New York made draft beers and American wines on tap." Yowza!
Some of the other goodies you can truck home for those moments of deep remembrance and reflection:
A leaf ornament molded from the swamp white oaks at the memorial is said to change from amber to dark brown “and sometimes pink around the time of the 9/11 anniversary.”
• Heart-shaped rocks inscribed with slogans such as “United in Hope” and “Honor.” One rock bears a quote by Virgil that is emblazoned on a massive blue-tiled wall in the museum: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” It costs $39.
And there's always the
"Museum CEO's" salary to consider. After all, it is New York:
John Feal, a Ground Zero demolition supervisor who runs the FealGood Foundation for ailing 9/11 responders, said he understands the need to raise money for costs, including six-figure salaries for execs like CEO Joe Daniels, who takes in $378,000.
By all accounts, the Museum itself is tastefully designed and packs a powerful emotional impact. Peggy Noonan simply
raves about it:
It is a true history of the day and its aftermath. You see the ruined fire truck from Ladder Company 3. The helmet of a fireman. The red bandana that Welles Crowther, a young equities trader, wore when he lost his life saving others in the south tower. There are things picked from the debris like bullets from the field at Gettysburg: a woman's purse, her eyeglasses, the shoes a man wore as he fled the collapse. The early reports on TV, the "missing" posters, Mass cards. The cross at Ground Zero, the votive candles, the tridents, the slurry wall, the survivors' staircase, which people in the buildings walked down to safety. And the posters and poems and banners and flags and funeral cards that were suddenly all over the city as New York, in the days and weeks after, began to come back.
And of course, the piece de resistance --as visitors enter the Museum, highlighted under glass and illuminated by a solitary beam of light, a
copy of the
Daily Briefing memo prepared by the CIA and given to a vacationing George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, 36 days before the attacks.
(No, I actually made that part up).
In fairness, the Museum is not Federally financed and receives no money from the City or the State. Defenders of the gift shop quickly point out that the Holocaust Museum in D.C. also sells commemorative trinkets, magnets and T-shirts, as does the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. And anyone who has toured New York City can get these types of mementos on the street or in shops throughout the City.
Still, it doesn't sit right with many, particularly those who were directly impacted by the killings:
“It’s crass commercialism on a literally sacred site,” Kurt Horning, whose son Matthew died on 9/11, said in a telephone interview Monday. “It’s a burial ground. We don’t think there should be those things offered on that spot."
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“They’re down there selling bracelets; they’re making money off my dead son,” said Jim Riches, whose firefighter son, Jimmy, died at the World Trade Center on 9/11.