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15 July 2011

Still Wondering: Why'd it Take 10 Years to Build the NYC WTC Memorial?


Just the other day, those who run the World Trade Center's Sept. 11, 2001 Memorial announced that tickets for the place of remembrance -- which is slated to open Sept. 11, 2011 -- were now available to the public for procurement, via a website. Each day, 5,000 free tickets are to be allotted for the general public. 

Within minutes, the tickets for the first day were gone. And common sense would dictate that tickets for the first year may be very hard to come by for anyone but family and friends of those who died on that fateful day nearly 10 years ago.

Blueprints reveal a beautiful memorial -- including the two fountains shaped as the two towers were -- which are located exactly where the towers used to once proudly stand.

Yet the irony of it all is that on July 15, 2011 -- just under two months from the 10th anniversary of the attacks -- the memorial, tho expected to be open by then, still isn't finished.

How it's possible this memorial wasn't completed 8 years ago blows the mind.

And it's governmental bureaucrats who made this happen. Because for years -- for nearly a damned decade --  developer Larry Silverstein, former Gov. George Pataki, R-N.Y., New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and hoards of others bickered over what should and shouldn't be part of the overall Ground Zero site. 

And because they couldn't agree on the overall site, the memorial, which should have been ready Sept. 11, 2002, still isn't done. And it will have been 10 years from the time of the attack to its opening should it actually open in September.

And I have to tell you, based on past performance, it wouldn't shock me in the least were the memorial's opening to be delayed because it's not finished by Sept. 11 of this year.

Everyone -- no exceptions -- should be outraged by this egregious act of omission. That it took this long is as disgraceful as anything that has happened since that awful Tuesday morning of nearly 10 years ago.

My only hope is that it's ultimately ready for the 10th anniversary. 

If it's not, it would only serve as yet another reminder of how pitifully the entire rebuilding of Ground Zero has been from the get-go. 

None of this should have ever happened. Ever. And yet it did.

We can only hope to never have to see something this disgraceful again.

Odds and Ends

You call that fair & balanced?
-- Heard a great, yet hardly shocking stat, about the Rupert Murdoch/News of the World scandal in Great Britain -- and now, apparently here in the United States: For every one instance of the story being mentioned on Fox News, there are at least 10 mentions on all other news stations individually. Fair and balanced, eh?

And Pope Benedict XVI is considering conversion to Judaism. 

Who needs K-Rod?
The second half of the Mets season began today -- just like it always seems to start: With a loss, this year to the Phillies. Here comes the annual spiral, fellow Mets fans!

Timmy Dolan is a very sad, worried man
New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan has yet again demonstrated why he's stuck in the 1960s. In a recent interview, he tells the interviewer he's scared that now that same-sex nups are permitted in New York, that legalized polygamy can't be far away. Could one man be THAT ignorant? 

Clearly. 

And it's another reason why if I, like Keith Olbermann, did a daily "Worst Person in the World," Dolan would be the standing daily recipient of the award. And once again, Your So-Called Grace, it's rather clear that no gay man, or two men, or two women, would want to marry you. So give it up, please!

J-Lo Anthony split
Just read that Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony have decided to divorce. The irony here is that Anthony's character in "HawthoRNe" is responsible for breaking up Christina Hawthorne's marriage to Dr. Tom. Guess he has some sense of how to do this already thanks to the show.

Death penalty for Levi Aron
There really isn't a death penalty in New York, per-se, though it does remain on the books. But is there any question that Levi Aron, who mutilated little Leiby Kletzky, should be executed? It's monsters like him who make me want to support the death penalty, though for the most part, I don't.

Have a great weekend, one and all! See you sometime next week!

What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear them -- even if they differ from mine. Simply click the comments link directly below this paragraph and leave your comments. They can be anonymous, but only comments with names are guaranteed to be published. Those without names will be published on a case-by-case basis. However, please note that no comment with anything libelous or factually incorrect contained in it will be published under any circumstance.

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