Glenn Beck: Crazed 9/11 Trajedy Whore

I was watching Glenn Beck on the FOX News channel yesterday. Yes, I know... After showing the obligatory montage of the 9/11 attacks set to ominous music that he plays every year to remind us why we should be scared of terrorism he actually started saying something I agree with. Ever on the verge of tears of course, Beck was lamenting the fact that eight years after the World Trade Center had been destroyed there was still just a huge hole in the ground where it used to stand.

He basically said that this is fucked up, and I agreed with him. Then he said that since the Empire State Building was completed in 400 days we should definitely have been able to build the new Freedom Tower with its memorial to fallen Americans in eight years, and I agreed with him. Then he began to decry the name change from "Freedom Tower" to "One World Trade Center", and I agreed with him. Then he said that the change was made to keep from offending people who don't like freedom, and I said "Wait, what the hell...?":

You know why we're not even calling it the Freedom Tower anymore? It's gonna be One World Trade Center. One World, isn't that great? Oh, might be too offensive to call it the Freedom Tower, we sure wouldn't want to have anybody offended by that! We want to make sure we have the occupancy there. Really?! They used to call it the Empty State Building. Do you want somebody who's offended by freedom in that tower? Who could they be? Oh well, China, China. I don't want anybody in the Freedom Tower who's offended by freedom, do you?

Now obviously communist China is hardly a bastion of freedom but I found it a little hard to swallow that we'd changed the name strictly because it offended them or anyone else. It turns out that it was hard to swallow because it wasn't true:

...this week, the owners of ground zero publicly parted ways with the Freedom Tower name, saying it would be more practical to market the tallest building in New York as the former north tower's name, One World Trade Center.

...others privately repeated fears that have plagued the building as negotiations with major corporations to take up space in the tower came and went: that the 102-story Freedom Tower's name could make it more susceptible to future attacks than a symbol of defiance against it.

"The fact is, more than 3 billion dollars of public money is invested in that building and, as a public agency, we have the responsibility to make sure it is completed and that we utilize the best strategy to make certain it is fully occupied," the agency said in a statement Friday.

Agency chairman Anthony Coscia was more critical in remarks Thursday, when the Port Authority announced its first corporate lease at the tower with a Chinese business center.

"As we market the building, we will ensure the building is presented in the best possible way," he said. One World Trade Center is "easiest for people to identify with, and frankly, we've gotten a very interested and warm reception to it."

So Beck was telling the truth when he said that the name change was made to better facilitate its occupancy but he flat out lied about the name offending China or any of the major corporations which might become future occupants. It was changed by a group of bureaucratic businessmen for marketing purposes in order to ensure a larger profit. It was Glenn Beck's good friend capitalism. The Invisible Hand had scratched out the old name and written in a more profitable one but for right-wing screechers like Beck it's better for ratings to rail against non-existent political correctness than corporate profit motives.

And as to those legitimate, yet in my opinion exaggerated fears, that the old name might have made the building more of a target? Beck had this plan for how he and his followers would have redesigned and built the new building:

The Freedom Tower would have been done years ago and it wouldn't have been the Freedom Tower, it would have been the Freedom Towers because we would have built both of these towers back the way they were before except we would have built them stronger. We would have built them in a way that they would have resisted attack. And do you know what my guess would...? They would have been 25 stories taller and have a big fat "Come try that again!" sign on top of it.

Brilliant. We're having trouble filling the tower with paying occupants because of fears of another terrorist attack and Beck's (who will not ever personally be working there, mind you) response is to dare our enemies to do it again. Does this style of arrogant schoolyard taunting remind you of someone else?


Just like every other chicken hawk screaming about how tough we should be in the face of terrorist danger neither of these men has ever been a rescue worker nor have they served in a combat zone. This is the type of tough guy bravado that passes for patriotism amongst the political right in this country now that their savior Ronald Reagan has passed away into that great Drug War in the sky. Hallelujah!