Everybody has something to say about today, and what happened five years ago, today.<\/p>\n
Where is the numerology for the ninth month and eleventh day? Or the date of the first Trade Center attack. Or the hit on the USS Cole. Or the attack in Madrid. The one on London buses and subways. What would have been the date on the shampoo bombs flown from London to the U.S.?<\/p>\n
These, simply are not our dates, like the first of the month or perhaps the Fourth of July. Mother’s Day? Now that would make us mad. These Gregorian dates may not fit the Muslim calendar necessarily.<\/p>\n
Why the Trade Center? If you or I were terrorists, or screenwriters, wouldn’t we pick the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Rushmore. …<\/p>\n
The Pentagon is not put on that many postcards. We are not sure about where the fourth plane would have hit, but the Capitol or White House are called likely. The terrorists were aiming for places that held numbers of people, too.<\/p>\n
The point is that the Trade Center and the Pentagon were the focal points of these particular enemies: American money and American might. Their aesthetic is different. It is not aesthetic at all. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everybody has something to say about today, and what happened five years ago, today. Where is the numerology for the ninth month and eleventh day? Or the date of the first Trade Center attack. Or the hit on the USS Cole. Or the attack in Madrid. The one on London buses and subways. What would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3839,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/09\/armistice-daze\/","url_meta":{"origin":235,"position":0},"title":"Armistice Daze","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"While watching a local 9\/11 commemoration Tuesday, a curious thought came to me, \"What day was Osama bin Laden killed?\" Did anyone in the audience know? I didn't know, myself. When the Al-Qaida leader met his fusillade of bullets is the smaller query. The larger one is, Why does America\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":134,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/07\/no-trash-cans-in-london\/","url_meta":{"origin":235,"position":1},"title":"No trash cans in London","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 7, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Thursday, July 7, 2005: No need to add excessive verbiage about the London mass-transit attacks. Suffice it to say that America shouldn't forget the Madrid attacks, which have been scarcely mentioned in the news media today. This sort of terrorism has an evening effect. Whether\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":231,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/09\/no-pox-on-this-tax\/","url_meta":{"origin":235,"position":2},"title":"No Pox on This Tax","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A pox of this tax, or a tax of this pox, (twist of Falstaff's line of Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 2) We should, as these editorials all attest, vote \"yes\" to all four of Fayetteville's tiny tax increases. Northwest Arkansas Times, and the Demzette. Should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2316,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/11\/war-paths\/","url_meta":{"origin":235,"position":3},"title":"War Paths","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2010 Ben S. Pollock WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sometimes you have to stop and think. Often thinking and writing looks like loafing. As Steinbeck wrote: \u201cI write many thousands of words a day and some of them go on paper.\u201d It can take quite a while. Visiting Washington's Vietnam Veterans\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Abe and Ben. Ben Pollock mini-tripod photo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Abe-and-Ben-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":264,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/01\/peak-experience-at-pinnacle\/","url_meta":{"origin":235,"position":4},"title":"Peek at Peak, Pique Experiences","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Pinnacle Hills Promenade, the new shopping center in Rogers inspired by The Truman Show, is wonderful to mock. It features Muzak-like music via outdoor Bose speakers. It markets itself as upscale while including tenants like Payless Shoes and Dairy Queen. Sunday marked my fourth visit -- and the first time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Brick Bats Reportage"","block_context":{"text":"Brick Bats Reportage","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/brick-bats-reportage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":417,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/04\/judge-date-by-her-cover\/","url_meta":{"origin":235,"position":5},"title":"Judge Date by Her Cover","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are three articles claiming with scant evidence that women are fiction and men non-fiction. The earliest comes from the March 24, 2008, edition of The New Yorker, which started out as possibly a look at where the two literatures overlap in either memoir or false memoir. But near the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}