#9/11 firefighter documentary

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

Dave: as someone around for 9-11 and the “NEVER FORGET NUMBER #1 GREATEST TRAGEDY EVER IN HISTURY” response to it i am in thrilled and invigorated by the fact that younger people just make amogus memes and tikiok nonsense about it. a huge chunk of america cared more about it than any entire genocide and thought you would cry learning about it. they hoped it’d make every generation patriotically angry forever and ever and want to join the military. instead you photoshop the towers into squidwards house and shit. never stop lol

Karkat: I’M PHYSICALLY UNABLE TO TAKE 9/11 SERIOUSLY, ENTIRELY BECAUSE MY GRADE 9 ENGLISH TEACHER WAS BIZARRELY OBSESSED WITH IT. WE BASICALLY HAD AN ENTIRE UNIT ON 9/11. WE WATCHED THAT DOCUMENTARY FROM THOSE STUDENTS THAT WERE DOING A DOCUMENTARY OF FIREFIGHTERS AND WOUND UP GETTING THE ONLY FOOTAGE OF THE FIRST PLANE HITTING. WE DID A NOVEL STUDY OF A BOOK ABOUT SOME KID BEING IN ONE OF THE TOWERS FOR TAKE YOUR KID TO WORK DAY AND HIM AND HIS DAD SQUEEZING PAST THE WRECKAGE OF THE PLANE TO ESCAPE IN TIME. WE WATCHED THAT NIC CAGE MOVIE OF HIM BEING A FIREFIGHTER DURING 9/11 THAT GETS STUCK IN AN ELEVATOR SHAFT WHEN THE PLACE COLLAPSES. I AM DEAD FUCKING SERIOUS, WE HAD TO MAKE UP FICTIONAL PEOPLE THAT DIED IN THE ATTACK, WRITE AN OBITUARY FOR OUR 9/11SONA’S, AND THEN WRITE AND DELIVER A EULOGY AS THEIR GRIEF-STRICKEN PARENT.  AT ONE POINT IN THE UNIT THE TEACHER CLARIFIED THAT SHE HADN’T PERSONALLY LOST ANYONE TO THE ATTACK, NOR WAS SHE ANYWHERE NEAR NEW YORK WHEN IT HAPPENED. SHE NEVER BOTHERED TO ASK IF ANY OF US HAD ACTUALLY LOST SOMEONE IN THE ATTACK, WHICH KIND OF SEEMS LIKE A THING YOU SHOULD DO BEFORE MAKING US INVENT FICTIONAL VICTIMS TO GIVE EULOGIES FOR.  THE UNIT BEGAN WITH HER DEMANDING TO KNOW WHERE WE ALL WERE ON THE DAY OF THE ATTACK AND WHAT WE REMEMBERED, AND SHE STARTED CRYING WHEN WE TOLD HER THAT 1. WE WERE TWO YEARS OLD AT THE TIME AND COULDN’T REMEMBER SHIT FUCK, THE CLOSEST THING WAS ONE OF THE OLDER KIDS KIND OF THOUGHT THEY REMEMBERED BEING VERY CONFUSED AT ADULTS FREAKING OUT OVER THE TV BUT THAT COULD HAVE BEEN LITERALLY ANYTHING, AND SO THIS MEANT THAT 2. WE WERE THE LAST CLASS SHE WOULD EVER TEACH THAT COULD POSSIBLY REMEMBER 9/11. PROBABLY DIDN’T HELP THAT SOMEONE POINTED OUT THAT WE WERE THE CLASS BORN IN 1999, SO IN TWO YEARS SHE’D HAVE STUDENTS THAT HADN’T EVEN BEEN BORN DURING 9/11. THAT MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE TEACHER CRYING OVER THE WHOLE THING.

Karkat: WE’RE ALTERNIAN.

[thelegoninjagomovie]

9/11 facts

There are a few photographs of inside the twin towers during 9/11. The only video recording of inside the towers comes from the North Tower lobby. It can be seen in the documentary '9/11' by the Naudet Brothers. They were originally filming a documentary about New York firefighters. It also contains the recording of Flight 11 crashing into the North Tower. (source 1) (source 2) (source 3. video of the crash)

There were several phone calls made on 9/11, though few have had their audio released. One from victim Peter Hanson to his father described people vomiting. The most famous released call is from Kevin Cosgrove. Cosgrove was the vice president of the Aon corporation. (source 1) (source 2)

Christine Lee Hanson, daughter of Peter and Sue Kim Hanson, was the youngest victim of 9/11 at 2 years old. She and her parents were going to Disneyland. (source)

The oldest person to die on 9/11 was Robert Norton, aged 85. He was a retired marine. Norton and his wife were about flight 11. (source. under 'fatalities' catagory.)

In total, 8 children died on 9/11 on the planes. (source)

In many pictures of the North Tower impact hole, a waving woman (and sometimes a man) can be see. Many believe her to be Edna Cintron, who worked at Marsh McLennan. But a theory points out evidence that she was likely Jeannette Lafond-Menichino, who worked at Guy Carpenter on the 94th floor. Edna worked the 97th floor of the North Tower, from which there were no survivors. (source)

No jumper has ever been officially identified, but some, such as Falling Man, have been "identified" by their families. (source 1) (source 2) (note: "faller" is the new term that many in the 9/11 community have decided to use instead. For recognition and consistency's sake, i'll use the term "jumper" in this post.)

A big brother contestant lost her cousin in the 9/11 attacks. They filmed her reaction to learning the news that her cousin wasn't able to be located. Her name was Tamatha Freeman, and more can be learned about her here. (source)

National Geographic has a personal connection to 9/11. They lost two employees when American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the pentagon. They were accompanying three children and their teachers. (source 1) (source 2) (note: The mother of Bernard Curtis III (seen in white) did an interview for the 2021 Nat Geo 9/11 documentary. it's heartbreaking, but I highly recommend it. It can be found here.)

The final death on 9/11 in New York was a homicide. His name was Henryk Siwiak. A polish immigrant, he was not killed in the attacks, but shot on the street later that night. He had gone to the wrong place mistakenly, believing he was heading to his new job. (source)

The 9/11 victims compensation fund has had a very tumultuous history. Comedian Jon Stewart was a strong advocate, and often butted heads with Mitch McConnell over it. The fight came to an end in 2019, when President Trump signed an act into law that permanently reinstated the fund. (source)

Seth Macfarlane nearly died on 9/11. He was supposed to be on American Airlines flight 11. His seat was given to Carol Bouchard. This is a common fact, but I wanted to provide evidence. Page 40 of this flight log shows his cancellation.

EMT Ernest Armstead is known for his role on 9/11 as a first responder. He is the one who spoke with the 'Black Tag woman'. His story has never once changed, though some believe he may have hallucinated her due to the graphic and stressful situation. (source. This contains very graphic content.)

Patrica Massrai learned that she was pregnant the morning of 9/11. She and her husband Louis were on the phone when she suddenly said "oh my god.". The line cut immediately after. She most likely saw flight 11 approaching from the north tower. (source)

Firefighter Gary Box was killed on 9/11, and his body was never recovered. Years later, a photo was discovered of him running to the twin towers, as his truck was caught in traffic in the Battery tunnel. (source)

Moira Smith was the only female NYPD officer to die on 9/11. (source)

A Burger King on 106 Liberty Street was a temporary NYPD headquarters on 9/11. (source)

Asbestos was outlawed in New York halfway through the construction of the twin towers. The first 40 floors of the north tower contained asbestos. Between 300 to 400 tons of asbestos was released when the tower collapsed. (source)

The first person to die during the 9/11 attacks was a man named Danny Lewin. He was killed on flight 11. He spoke arabic, and overheard the terrorists. He was stabbed to death when he tried to stop them. (source)

The 9/11 attacks have an estimated 3,000 death toll. In comparison, the Iraq war, a direct result, saw a death toll estimate of 4.5 million. (source)

[dreamwatch]

STWG daily drabble - 20/09/23

Prompt: really late

c/w 9/11 attacks - there are no specifics

(This is… a weird one. I was watching a documentary about 9/11 earlier so that’s clearly what triggered this. Also, I might have taken some liberties with that prompt… )

****

He hasn’t moved from the sofa for hours. 

The images haven’t changed. He’s been watching them all day. Steve’s already turned the television off twice and tried to pull him away, but he won’t go. He doesn’t know if Steve is trying to protect Eddie or trying to protect himself.

He hears the bedroom door click, socked feet padding softly down the hall.

“It’s really, really late, Eddie. Come on.”

He looks at the clock. It doesn’t feel like there’s an early or a late right now, a morning or a night. Just never ending fear and horror played out on a tv set.

“I want you to quit.”

“What?”

Eddie turns to face him, and Steve looks exhausted. They’ve asked for volunteers, there are firefighters from across the city making the twelve hour drive tomorrow, and of course Steve volunteers. Of course he does.

“You heard me.”

They stare at each other, two thirty somethings in their pyjamas in a Mexican standoff. He’s not going to be the one to give in. Steve is so painfully tolerant of his petulant bullshit that he never has to.

Steve let’s out a sigh that carries such weight, a rolling news cycle let loose into the air in their apartment. He sits down on the couch, elbows on knees, all sluggish movements and heavy limbs. Pained. Lost. 

He’s always been so strong, always Eddie’s hero.

(How handsome he looked on graduation day, the dress uniform, Eddie wearing the gloves and his hat, laughing, loving, happy. A future.)

“Eddie…”

“I don’t want you to do this.”

Another sigh.

“I won’t be gone long.”

“You don’t know that.”

“And they’re not going to do anything else -”

“You don’t know that! You can’t possibly fucking know that!”

Steve stands and grabs the remote from the coffee table, points and clicks. The horror shut out. But it’s still in the room. It’s been let loose now, like radiation, can’t see it but it’s there. They live in a time now where there was a before, a line of demarcation cut across dates.

He feels Steve’s hand tug at his.

“You’re right, I can’t know that. I don’t know when I’m coming home. I don’t know if it’s safe. So can we please just go to bed so that I can spend some time with you before I have to leave?”

They stare at each other, two thirty somethings in their pyjamas, an unspoken conversation this time. They’re scared. They’re going to be okay. They love each other. 

Steve pulls him up from the couch, and they hold hands, turning the lights off behind them as they head back to their bedroom.

[superbdragoncollection-stuff]

A fascinating documentary:

As jingoistic and imperialist as the response was to 9/11, no matter how much certain folks took advantage of it, the event was still a terrible tragedy. A non-state actor used our own civilian planes as weapons to hit civilian targets. It was the deadliest day in firefighter history, at 342 dead. The US spent all the goodwill it had doing stupid stuff, yet that goodwill existed in the first place for a reason.

This documentary crew happened to be on hand following a fire department when it happened, and accidentally caught one of only three known recordings of the first plane. The crew then captured enormous amounts of valuable information, from reactions on the ground, to the events that transpired at ground zero. These firefighters did everything they could to save people, many lost their lives. Even if it had been a tragic accident, the first plane at least, it would have been a nightmare. 80+ floors, no functional elevators, heavy equipment...yet they did it anyway.

There were real heroes that day, despite everything that followed. There were the air traffic controllers who got every plane down safely. There were the passengers who stopped United 93 from hitting its intended target. And there were the firefighters, who charged in without hesitation to save lives, and lost so many of their brother and sister firefighters in the process.

Many of them continue to have health problems to this day, and the same folks who took advantage of the situation refuse to pay for their medical bills, or offer compensation for the pain they suffered.

I highly recommend this documentary.

[news4dzhozhar]

Confounding, Unresolved Questions About Boston Marathon Bombing Suspects - WhoWhatWhy

April 15 marks the 10th anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing. Within days of the horrific attack, our news site, WhoWhatWhy, concerned about a growing list of anomalies in the face of a rapidly forming (and unvetted) media narrative, began investigating. In the weeks and months that followed, we produced dozens of articles and podcasts scrutinizing and establishing the facts. 

Conflicting particulars emerged at the time — and much remains unclear. But according to American Manhunt, a recent Netflix documentary featuring key law enforcement figures, the following is a timeline of events after the explosions.

Per standard practice, the early investigation quickly focused on closed-circuit footage from local businesses. As FBI agents pored repeatedly over the video without success, the bureau got a lucky break when a member of the public reached out with still photos showing a bag on the ground near where the explosion would take place. The FBI matched those photos to a young man in a white hat, and later to a seemingly related man in a black hat.

What followed in rapid succession was a manhunt, the shooting of a police officer, and a climactic scene in which the two suspects, brothers from a Muslim immigrant family from Chechnya, were cornered in a firefight. The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died when the younger one, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, accidentally drove over him while escaping. Dzhokhar was eventually found hiding in a boat in a neighborhood backyard. 

After a trial in which he did not testify, nor asked why he had committed the act of which he was accused, he was convicted and is on death row in a federal maximum security prison. 

The story of the Marathon bombing is a fascinating one. It’s also an important one. It was the first major act of “domestic terrorism” since 9/11, and came just as public sentiment was calling for a relaxing of the extraordinary police state measures imposed after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Bostonians for the first time were ordered to “shelter in place” and the entire country was seized by a sense of panic and dread. Public sentiment then shifted; fear of Muslims again surged. 

Ten years later, the vast majority of the outstanding questions and anomalies we raised at the time have still not been addressed. 

As this was a watershed event, we believe it is the duty of the media to ask the tough questions, not simply parrot whatever the authorities say. 

Sadly, in a time of widespread “fake news” put out by a broad range of agenda-driven actors (including, sometimes, government itself), it is increasingly difficult to do serious, agnostic investigative reporting without being smeared as “conspiracy theorists” — i.e., crazed individuals who invent fanciful scenarios.

However, our work speaks for itself and we will not be deterred. We believe that what we do is based on core principles of journalism, and represents a critical activity in the public interest. And we remind you: Digging into tragedies does not mean denying them. To the contrary. It means working hard to understand significant events in all their complexity — and contextualizing them.

We’re not the only ones seeing anomalies and unanswered questions. Ed Davis, who was Boston’s police commissioner at the time of the bombing, says in American Manhunt that he considers the bombs to have been way too sophisticated, and the detonation of both bombs too flawless, for the two brothers to have done it without help. 

***

This is the first of what we hope will be a series of articles looking at the matter. Today, we focus on some fascinating underreported aspects, including intriguing similarities between this event and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy exactly 50 years earlier. 

At the same time as the bombs went off at the Marathon, a suspicious fire broke out at the John F. Kennedy Library down the road, prompting observations of all the things the two historical traumas shared in common. 

In the case of the JFK assassination, no one had any idea of who had done it — but within a short time of the shooting of the president, a police officer (J.D. Tippit) was shot in another neighborhood, inflaming police, who then received a tip and closed in on Lee Harvey Oswald in a movie theater. In the case of the Marathon bombing, no one knew who had done it, but several days later, MIT campus police officer Sean Collier was shot, inflaming police, who,  following a tip, went on a wild scramble searching for the brothers. 

Both police shooting stories had many anomalies — including questions as to why the police officers happened to be in the locations they were when shot. Tippit’s reason for being where he was remains opaque. As for the MIT officer, Collier was sitting in his car parked next to a building on a plaza at night on a nearly empty campus, which MIT community members told us struck them as unusual; we were unable to confirm why he was there, and one MIT police officer rushed us outside and told us in hushed tones that he couldn’t say a thing about it, but that there was more to the story. 

MIT administration asked us to leave campus because we were asking questions about potential student eyewitnesses to the shooting itself. It appeared to some that Collier may have been waiting to meet someone. 

As with Oswald’s reason for killing Kennedy (friends said he was actually a fan of the president), no motive has ever been offered for the Marathon bombings other than an unverified assumption by narrators that Tamerlan was self-radicalized and simply decided to take this extraordinary action ruining the lives of others and his own. The younger brother’s abrupt about-face on Islam is even more baffling. 

As for the shooting of the officer, the official story is that the brothers, who had one gun, needed another. No one explained why they could not simply have bought another gun, either in advance or at that point when their identities were not yet public. Or why they would have even gone through MIT at night and known the officer was parked there, off the empty street.

Dzhokhar was described by friends and teachers as popular, easygoing, and resolutely apolitical, without any hint of religious extremism. His older brother, Tamerlan, was only socially observant until some time before the bombings, when his behavior dramatically changed and he became strikingly more outwardly devout. This was in roughly the same period he was seeking US citizenship so he could try to qualify for the US Olympic boxing team. 

Dzhokhar might be able to shed some light on these questions, but he hasn’t said anything publicly — not during his trial, and not since. 

Attempts by WhoWhatWhy some years ago to interview him were rebuffed by the federal government, which gave us a classic run-around: One agency would tell us that we had to speak to some other agency, and then we were told that Dzhokhar would have to indicate that he was willing to speak with us — but then the authorities involved made it impossible for us to let him know we were trying to reach him. 

The reasons advanced for keeping him isolated — and away from the media — make no sense. For example, he’s identified as a threat to communicate with other “terrorists,” yet the prosecution in the trial stated that he and his brother operated alone and had no confederates or sponsors. 

We suspect Dzhokhar’s elder brother, who many believe was the instigator, would know much more than his younger brother but, like Oswald, Tamerlan was dead within days of the event. Dead too, sometime later, was a close friend of Tamerlan’s, shot by an FBI agent during a related interrogation. 

More on all this to come. 

[superbdragoncollection-stuff]

I was just watching a famous documentary on the firefighters at 9/11. The filmmakers were doing a documentary on the life of firefighters and accidentally caught some of the only footage of the first plane hitting. As they documented the resulting chaos, they capture some of the most human elements of the story.

Whats really eerie is that in the deadliest day in firefirefighter history, the department the documentary crew was attached to didn't lose a single person.

Somewhat ironically, I think possibly the most human story about 9/11 is the one about the tree they found in the rubble.

About thirty days or so after the attacks, as rescue workers were trying to clear the wreckage and find the bodies of the dead, they found this little tree branch sticking out, otherwise unremarkable…but it still had leaves. And do you know what they did?

They dug out this tree. They dug this burnt and blackened tree out of the pile, took it out of the city and re-planted it to give it a chance to survive. To grow back. Just because they saw these leaves. And by some miracle, it did, and ten years later they brought this now 30-foot-tall tree back to lower Manhattan to plant it in the memorial at ground zero. They brought the tree home.

And is that just not…the most human fucking thing? These guys saw this one thing in that pile that was still alive, and they said dammit, we’re gonna save this little tree. We can’t save anything else, but we’re gonna save this tree. And they did.

Say what you want about people, but I truly believe we are good at heart.

[naturecoaster]

Tunnels 2 Towers Run & Walk

Come out on November 9, 2024, and join the Tunnels 2 Towers Run/Walk to raise funds for an organization whose mission is to honor the sacrifice of firefighter Stephen Siller who laid down his life to save others on September 11, 2001, as well as our military and first responders who continue to make the supreme sacrifice of life and limb for our country. This is a 5K (3.1 miles) walk or run event. Anyone can run, walk, or experience this event. This event will be the second annual Tunnels to Towers Run & Walk event in Brooksville and we are excited to bring together the community to honor first responders, remember 9/11, and raise funds for the Tunnel to Towers programs. On November 9, you can join friends and family on the Tunnels 2 Towers Nature Coast Run/Walk through Tom Varn Park in Brooksville to help raise funds to support the Tunnel to Towers programs to honor those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, by supporting our first responders and military who make extraordinary sacrifices in the line of duty! Registration will remain OPEN through Saturday, November 9, 2024, and close promptly at race time. Registration prices on race day will increase by $10 for all registrations except for First Responders. You can register for the race in the morning at the event site - it opens at 7 am. For more information on the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, please visit www.t2t.org. Help Raise Funds with a Team or a Donation If running isn't your jam, you can still help raise funds for this wonderful cause by clicking here and making a donation. Start your own fundraising page and you will be able to accept donations online. Do you want to donate cash/money? We can help you with that. Contact us at brooksville@t2t.org and we can walk you through the process or you can send donations directly to ATTN: Brooksville 5K - 2361 Hylan Boulevard Staten Island, NY 10306 - please give us your information so we can add it to your very own T2T fundraising page. Visit the 9/11NEVER FORGET MOBILE EXHIBIT After the race, visit the 9/11 NEVER FORGET MOBILE EXHIBIT during the day and plan to stay in downtown Brooksville to enjoy after-race fun at the Veteran's Music Festival.   The 9/11 NEVER FORGET Mobile Exhibit is a tribute to all who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, including the 343 members of the Fire Department of New York City (FDNY) who made the ultimate sacrifice, and all who continue to lose their lives to 9/11-related illnesses. This high-tech, 83-foot tractor-trailer transforms into a 1,100-square-foot exhibit to further educate people across the country about the events of that tragic day. Welcomed around the nation, from the Black Hills of South Dakota to Florida's Nature Coast, the memorial provides interactive education; including artifacts such as steel beams from the towers, documentary videos, and recordings of first responder radio transmissions. Interactive guided tours are carried out by FDNY firefighters who provide firsthand accounts of the day and its aftermath. The 9/11 NEVER FORGET Mobile Exhibit, which has traveled to nearly 50 states and Canada has educated over 650,000 people to date. To date, Tunnel to Towers has delivered over 1,000 mortgage-free homes to our nation’s heroes and committed over $500 million across all of our programs. This year the Foundation is delivering over 200 mortgage-free homes to catastrophically injured veterans and first responders, Gold Star families, families of first responders who leave behind young children and more than 1,500 housing units to combat veteran homelessness. The Tunnel to Towers Foundation made a promise to “NEVER FORGET” those lost on 9/11 and the continued impact the attacks have on America and its first responders. FAQs about the Race are available here. Read the full article

[tmarshconnors]

Remembering September 11th 2001

Watching 9/11: Inside the President's War Room on AppleTV was like opening a time capsule from the darkest day of my childhood. I was just eight years old, and I can still recall the chaos and confusion as I was rushed into the main hall of my school. There, we gathered in silence, eyes glued to the screen as the unthinkable unfolded. Planes hit the Twin Towers, and the world changed forever.

The documentary stirred emotions I hadn’t felt in years, emotions buried beneath the layers of time and the rush of life.

As I watched the events of that day play out once more, I was transported back to that innocent child, who couldn’t fully grasp the magnitude of what was happening but felt the fear and uncertainty in the air. The images on the screen were the same ones that haunted my young mind for years, images of destruction and despair, of lives lost and a nation under attack.

No matter how much time passes, we must never forget what happened on September 11, 2001. That day, the world stood still, and we all bore witness to a moment that would reshape our lives and our collective history. It was a day of unspeakable horror, but also one of extraordinary bravery and resilience. The firefighters who rushed into the burning buildings, the passengers who fought back on Flight 93, the countless heroes who emerged in the aftermath—these stories remind us of the incredible strength of the human spirit.

In the years since, there have been countless debates about who or how it started, but one thing is indisputable: September 11th changed America and the world forever. Our sense of security was shattered, our way of life irrevocably altered. The ripples of that day are still felt in the policies we live under, the wars fought in its name, and the scars it left on our collective psyche.

The innocence of my eight-year-old self was lost that day, replaced by a somber understanding that the world could be a dangerous place. Yet, amid the sorrow and the fear, there was also a profound sense of unity and resolve. Strangers comforted one another, communities came together, and a nation found strength in its darkest hour.

As I reflect on those memories, now with the perspective of an adult, I realise how crucial it is to keep them alive. To honour those who perished and those who survived, to teach future generations about the courage and resilience that emerged from the ashes. We owe it to the past and the future to remember September 11th not just as a day of tragedy, but as a testament to the enduring human spirit.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, was the same after September 11, 2001. The world we knew was gone, but in its place, we found a deeper sense of what it means to be human. To love, to grieve, to stand together in the face of unimaginable loss. As we move forward, let us carry these lessons with us, keeping the memory of that day alive in our hearts and minds.

May we never forget.

[qippabtch]

The Roof is on Fire: Part 3 (Too Soon?)

Content warning: discussion of 9/11, trauma and PTSD recovery, and a house fire, as well as a dead pet.

"…and then we were both howling. It's probably sheer luck that we didn't crash on the way home, because the rest of the drive was spent in hysterics, taking turns volleying fire-related jokes: "Did you hear about the fire in the shoe factory? Many soles were lost."   "Why do ducks have flat feet? To stomp out forest fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? To stomp out flaming ducks!"  "My grandfather always said, “Fight fire with fire.” He was a great man, but a terrible firefighter." …while the stereo played that old familiar song, and we laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all. "The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire..." And that's when I knew I'd be okay." (Part 1: Backstory)

What I would've given to be there the night that Gilbert Gottfried gave what, to this day, remains one of the most iconic performances at a Hollywood Roast. It was the roast of Hugh Heffner, which means it was bound to be lascivious. Pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable is part of the tradition of the Hollywood Roast, and Gottfried himself has a long and rather sordid track record of doing just that. 

“I have to catch a flight to California," Gottfried tells the audience. "But I can’t get a direct flight. They said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first.”

This is a joke that, today, might have seemed pretty tame compared to a lot of the 9/11 jokes that have been made in the past twenty-odd years. But it elicited groans of disgust and furtive boos from the audience. Gottfried-- already famous (infamous?) for a sense of humor that some might credit to his gumption, while others will call inappropriate and insensitive-- became one of the most, if not the single most controversial and iconic public displays of gallows humor ever uttered before a crowd.

The phrase, "Too soon!" could be heard among the boos of the audience that night. Two decades later, Vice released a documentary by that name, raising the question: at what point are we allowed to laugh after something terrible happens?

Apparently, two weeks was enough time: enough to laugh, if not to at the tragedy then at least in the midst of it. As the news continued to rehash the attacks over and over, the host of that year's already controversial Roast launched into another joke, and suddenly an auditorium full of people went absolutely hysterical with laughter.

"I'd lost an audience bigger than anybody has ever lost an audience," Gottfried explains later. "People were booing and hissing... oh my God. I was floating through outer space." So, he thought, "why not go to an even lower level of hell?"

"The Aristocrats" is one of the dirtiest jokes of all time. Gottfried himself didn't write it, and he certainly wasn't the first to tell some version of it. The routine has been around in comedy circles for years. Every comedian who uses it has a unique retelling, taking the same generally dirty premise and adding in whatever other repugnant details seem right in the moment. Gottfried's version was no exception, and it may have become the most famous, in part, for some of the repugnant details he includes.

You might think that an audience sensitive to the airplane-hijacking reference wouldn't have responded much better to this depraved ditty, but what happened next was a sensation in the world of comedy.

“The laugh was so deep and cathartic that people were coughing up pieces of lung,” recalls reporter Frank DiGiacomo. “It was amazing... he had united everybody in that one moment."

Gottfried himself was even a bit shocked at the overwhelming response. "The audience was going wild (with) the biggest laughs I ever heard."

What rang out from that auditorium was the sort of laughter that shook stadiums, changed lives, saved teetering comedy careers. World-renowned celebrities dressed to the nines in elegance and class were falling out of their seats, crumpling designer suits as they clutched their sides. Faces well-known to glamour magazines turned red under layers of concealer and cream, contorting as the uncontrollable need to laugh overtook them all. Tears stained glittering gowns as the unthinkable happened, as the people in that room were released, for that one shining moment, from the weight of tragedy, the shackles of couth, the hollowness left by weeks of endless mourning.

It was the sort of laughter that healed.

"I’ve always said tragedy and comedy are roommates," Gottfried explains. "Wherever tragedy’s around, comedy’s a few feet behind... sticking his tongue out and making obscene gestures. When you go to a funeral, the guy at the podium will say embarrassing stories about the guy in the box, and people will laugh... (and) hold their hands over their face like, Oh, I shouldn’t be laughing at this."

But why shouldn't they be?

I think it's a shame that funerals are considered universally inappropriate places for laughter. That isn't to say that churches full of grieving families dressed in black ought to be treated as basement improv clubs or the cemetery as a stand-up audition. No doubt many of those burying their loved ones just won't be in the mood for glib.

But when I think of my own funeral, of the time when it will be my loved ones gathering because I'm the guy in the box, I like to imagine a room filled with laughter. I want to know that they're remembering me as I am now, laughing and playing and pretending death isn't just one missed turn signal or grim-faced doctor's proclamation away from us all.

The trauma of losing my house in a fire pales considerably next to stories of rescue workers and those trapped within the rubble on September 11th, 2001. Which is why I do not intend to compare the two, or hold others to my own timeline of recovery. My intention is never to criticize those who prefer to mourn in more traditional ways, but rather to pose the question: Is there such thing as a universal standard of "too soon"? 

When I told a firefighter from one of my towns that I had lost my cat in a fire, he was sympathetic. 

"I'm so sorry to hear that," he told me. "I'm sorry you had to lose a family member in such a horrible way."

I shrugged. "Sure, I guess I did lose a family member, and that's pretty sad." Then my grin turned sideways. "But I got a pretty cool frisbee out of it."

In between approving guffaws, he slapped my shoulder amiably and said, "Oh, you're going to fit in just fine here."

By "here," I know he didn't mean that town's fire department. What he had meant to express was his  I'd adjust nicely into the public safety field, because I had demonstrated competence with the national language of first responders: gallows humor.

Discretion is key when utilizing humor as a coping mechanism. Part of discretion is knowing how long to wait before laughing at something. Two weeks after 9/11, there were still funerals going on. Firefighters and officers who had braved the rubble of the city's once proud monument to commerce were still reeling from the catastrophic events that threatened the American way of life. Family members were still inconsolable, and many of the children of the fallen had not yet fully realized that Mom or Dad really wouldn't be coming home this time. So that, perhaps, was too soon. 

But twenty years later, jokes about 9/11 can be funny, as Jimmy Carr proved in 2022 with this absolute knock-out. Legend has it Carr tested the joke on Davidson himself, and Pete gave his go-ahead before it was told in front of the Hollywood Roast crowd. In this way, he proved that a joke, far darker than Gottfried but told twenty years later, can be laughed at without guilt.

It's as they say: tragedy + time = comedy. The twin masks of the theater represent the relationship between the two. Along with comedians, first responders are among those who have cracked the formula for dealing with hard shit. We cope with the difficult things we have to witness every day by deciding, at some point, that it has to be funny. It has to be funny, or else the trauma wins. Tears of sorrow will eventually become tears of laughter, as soon as you're ready to allow them to.

Knowing the rules is important. You can't laugh at someone else's trauma until they laugh at it first, and even then it's often wise to leave the joke-making to them. You also can't be insensitive to the fact that not everybody is comfortable with gallows humor. Knowing your audience, respecting the healing timeline, engaging in a way that will draw people together rather than drive them apart-- these are the skills comedians both professional and amateur must develop before attempting to get the tears flowing.

Though risky, dark humor can be incredibly healing. Cliché as it sounds, shared laughter brings people together. Memes about unpleasant mundane experiences go viral because we see ourselves as well as each other in them. The fact that our experiences are universal means that we're all in this together, and that means that no matter what happens, none of us are ever alone.

Pain is the most reliable constant in all of human history, a "common thread" tying together the entire human race. We all suffer, so why shouldn't our suffering at least mean something? At least when we also choose to share in the struggles of life, we can end the day by laughing together, too.

[signeficunt]

can i hear all u have to say on 9/11 please i am way too interested in it also

omg ofc i'm always happy to infodump about my special interests lol!

(sorry this took a while this post became really long lmao)

i first became interested about 9/11 through the lost media community, when i saw ppl talk about the "LOL superman" video (supposedly an old shock video showing close-ups of the jumpers lying dead on the ground) though i personally don't believe it exists. but it was through that discussion that i found out about r/911archive, which is an amazing resource for anyone interested in 9/11, as it not only mostly factual (speculation does happen there ofc but conspiracy theories generally aren't tolerated) but it's also filled with thousands of kind and helpful people who are just as interested in it as i am lol

recently i've been watching lots of archived footage of the events, mostly news footage but some home videos too, and the naudet brothers who were filming a documentary about firefighters when 9/11 happened (they actually have footage of the first plane hitting the north tower! highly reccomend checking it out on youtube if you have the time!) i actually have a playlist with currently 28 videos in it that i can share if u want! i would say that the absolute best footage of that day comes from eyewitness news. This footage specifically (i hope the link works) is really, really good imo, as they actually caught the collapse of the south tower while standing basically a few meters away from the WTC, absolutely incredible footage imo!

Other footage which i find really interesting is from (i wasn't aware of them before since i'm not american and also born after 9/11), the way you can hear the audiences reaction to the news really hammers home how shocking this actually was, i can only speculate but it really feels like there was this attitude that the WTC, the pentagon and america in general were untouchable, and 9/11 kinda spelled out to people that this wasn't the case at all...

i will add one more video which i found interesting (otherwise this post will go on forever) and that's . i've often heard people who were alive when it happened say that they felt like the world stood still, and after seeing that video i think i understand.

people often trivialise 9/11 by making fun of peoples reactions to it and what not (and i agree that 9/11 has been used to justify awful things) but now that i've seen so much footage from that fateful day i just can't stand that kind of behaviour. and i've joked about it too in the past, in fact if you went through my archive right now you could probably find some post from last year mocking the event, but i really regret it tbh. like nearly 3000 people died (and many more died in the following war) so it's just not funny to me anymore

there's lots of footage which i find interesting but for the sake of this post not being super long i won't go on lol, but u can always send another ask or DM me if u wanna talk more c:

[televisionianestamisimemology]

Every 9/11 I get annoyed by the lack of people asking the basic question of why was it okay to build a tower that would collapse 40 minutes after being struck by an airplane? Skyscrapers are in the sky. The sky is where airplanes go. Even if collisions are rare, isn’t the risk of 50K office workers dying enough of a reason to design towers that can withstand one bad or drunk pilot?? The answer is simple. It cuts into profit margins.

To understand how this came to be acceptable it helps to talk about modernist building design and its cocaine- fuelled capitalist pursuit of “efficiency”. Modernist design not only entailed stripping away all superfluous design elements that detracted from achieving a perfect blend of form and function but it also regarded redundancies in structural integrity as a necessary compromise. A building was considered as safe as the regulations mandated.

And so acknowledging that there are flaws in modern architectural design opens up a Pandora's box that calls into question the safety of most tall buildings and the profit-driven reliance of an entire real estate industry on their 'big and cheap' construction. As with any topic that challenges the interests of a massive industry, public discourse is shaped around it. Think of how for four decades society never discussed the efficacy of recycling. Turns out it was all a PR stunt. Why are we finding this out now? It’s because it was a fact that was inconvenient to a massive plastics petroleum/plastics industry and private industry has a big influence on public discourse.

The inconvenience of the idea that modern skyscrapers could collapse from a fire led to it being taboo, which explains the conspicuous lack of knowledge within the New York City Fire Department about the possibility that the Twin Towers could collapse - knowledge you’d think a fire department in a city made up of modern skyscrapers would have known. 

Not only did fire departments not know of this as a possibility, but they also didn’t have a strategy for fighting fires in skyscrapers. I was in New York that day and spoke with someone who was on the 50th floor when the first plane struck. He was in the bathroom at the time, and the impact knocked him to the floor. What he told me runs counter to all the documentaries made about this day. Firefighters were telling people not to leave the building as they climbed up. They were entirely uninformed about the potential for structural failure. Moreover, what was their plan once they reached the fire-affected floors? Utilize fire extinguishers? There appeared to be a glaring lack of knowledge among the fire chiefs.

And so I see firefighters as victims, and see these heavy handed commenorations of their bravery as missguided at best and at worst an glossing over of the capitalist drive to walk the line between profits and human life. I wonder if the lack of discussion of these things is because, if we were to really face the facts, which is that modern buildings are made with winning contracts of real estate companies in mind rather than human life, then we’d need to reevaluate, not just building design of 80 percent of our buildings, but all the ways in which capitalism is an engine of destruction. This explains why corporate media is the biggest propagator of this narrative, which is that the only takeaway there is to be had from 9/11 is that a lot of brave people died. This is far better than the alternative. Modernist design is a perfect illustration capitalism and so many o criticize the modernist building design is to criticize the company that owns corporate media and our society as a whole.

I’m not suggesting there’s a conspiracy here. No one is in the newsroom at 60 Minutes writing the 100th emotionally overwrought piece on the bravery of firefighters in an explicit attempt to hide the culpability of building industries and the lack of backbone of the city to address building collapse as a real possibility. These campaigns of misdirection and misinformation occur organically. Information presented by corporate media follows the path of least resistance. Just as you don’t do things at work that would upset your boss, NBC Nightly News doesn’t write stories that examine the perils of capitalism evident in the collapse of the twin towers, and definitely doesn’t want to report on anything that could offend their boss’s boss’s boss who might be the biggest office building real estate company in Manhattan. 

[hairenya]

What kind of god allows one of his chaplains to die needlessly while selflessly doing his work? How can one call a god like that good?

[gay-jesus-probably]

OF ALL THE WAYS YOU COULD'VE ENDED THE 9/11 REBLOG I WAS NOT EXPECTING "We're Canadian" ??!!::";??¿ WHY WAS YOUR TEACHER OBSESSED WITH IT THEN

I HAVE NO IDEA. Like, I was understanding at first in the unofficial 9/11 unit, it began with the novel study of the book, and even though I found it a bit weird that there was a book about a pair of fictional 9/11 survivors, it wasn't so bad. It was definitely interesting to read a disaster survival book where all the action happened at the start of the disaster, and half the book was just going down a whole lot of stairs; from what I remember, there really wasn't a focus on patriotism, and there was some interesting stuff of the kid abruptly faced with his own mortality, and the specific terror of being stuck in a life threatening situation with your child. And definitely some exploration of survivors guilt near the end, as the kid was friends with a classmate whose dad was a firefighter, and passed his friends dad going up the stairs while they was going down. And sure it was a little weird that the teacher cried a little at the start about how we were her last class that had any memory of 9/11, but y'know it was a big tragedy and American media has been dedicated to making sure people who experienced it can never heal from the trauma, especially focusing on not letting anyone forget it happened. So I can understand why someone might get a bit emotional when confronted with the reality that the passage of time meant that she was never going to teach students that actually remembered it.

After we did the novel study we watched the documentary, and I was like yeah okay, this still makes sense, we read a fictional novel about this real event, now we're getting some visual context and looking at the real disaster. And then after that we watched the Nic Cage 9/11 movie, and I started thinking man we sure are spending awhile on this topic, I'm not really sure if this still counts as a novel study given how far we've wandered away from the actual novel. And then we were given a 'creative writing project' to write OBITUARIES, specifically for people we invented who died in 9/11, and then I was really wondering what in the fresh baked fuck was going on. But again, the justification was there, because we did ask the teacher what the fuck she was thinking, and she explained that knowing what an obituary is and how to write one is unfortunately useful knowledge, and it's probably for the best if we know how to do it long before we're ever going to need to. Very fucking strange and kind of insensitive, but there's some logic to the whole thing so I guess this train is still on the tracks.

...But then we had to take the fake person from our obituaries and follow it up with writing a eulogy for them, and then deliver our fake eulogies in front of class, to give us more public speaking practice??? With part of the grading rubric being how well we sold the act of being the grief-stricken parent of our fictional 9/11 victim? And that was about the point that I realized no, this train hopped the tracks a long time ago, and we've somehow kept on rolling anyways.

All of this fucking nonsense was in direct contrast to our Social Studies teacher, who frequently joked about how post 9/11 paranoia and aggressive airport security standards ruined his life, because some fucking asshole tried to blow up a plane a few months after 9/11 by hiding explosives in his shoes, and that asshole happened to have the exact same first and last name as my social studies teacher. So literally every single time my teacher had to fly somewhere, it would begin with him arriving at airport security, immediately being arrested on charges of having a name, and spending several hours sitting in a holding cell while they quadruple checked that no, the Shoe Bomber has not somehow been quietly pardoned of his three consecutive life sentences, he has not escaped from maximum security prison without anybody hearing about it, this is literally just Some Guy, and it's not actually illegal to be named Richard Reid.

[klapollo]

if you want to see 9/11 as more of a human thing and less as a "patriotic" symbol i'd recommend watching the naudet brothers documentary. it's by two french documentarian brothers who were filming a movie about a manhattan firehouse when the attack happened. they have probably the only footage in existence of the first plane going in. each brother followed some of the firefighters into a different tower.

it's very disturbing. you see how nobody had any idea how things were gonna turn out -- they thought they were just gonna climb up, put out the fire and call it a day. you hear the smashing sounds of the jumpers' bodies hitting the ground. you see the first tower collapse from the inside. there's footage they chose to exclude of someone exiting an elevator engulfed in flames and basically melting. they got separated pre-collapse and thought the other died and when they reunite that night they try to be cool but they eventually just break and it's all devastating. it'll probably be on tv tomorrow but it's on youtube (simply called "9/11") and it's not an easy watch but i think a lot of it is a sobering reminder of what gets lost in all the politicization.

[petrosapian]

i have such mixed feelings about 9/11 jokes... on one hand i really do understand the way the day has been coopted and used by american uber patriots to endorse and push for modern imperialism and bombing of the middle east.... but its still an immense tragedy where thousands of innocent people died and lead to the destruction of millions more. the world trade centre was an office building. all types of people worked there. lots of people needlessly died not only due to this but also due to gross negligence, the walkie talkies that were used by the fire department were defective from corrupt deals not letting people evacuate when they should have. like i was a kindergartener in manhattan when it happened i dont remember it but my mother sure did. she told me how she was terrified in our apartment while our neighbors went out to watch the towers go down. i do remember the next day there was a clown taking photos with children in front of the firestation, which now has plaques commemorating the firefighters who were lost that day. i remember going to protests with my mother against the iraq war when she told me they were killing children, just like me, over seas. i remember in 7th grade when i lived in centre PA i was the only one sobbing my eyes out when our teacher showed us a documentary about the day. i also know how the events after 9/11 fractured the muslim community in nyc making people more distrustful since nypd sent in under cover cops to monitor us.

this country's mourning of 9/11 certainly is insincere when many of the first responders are still suffering from cancer and other medical complications from being in those buildings and we have politicians on all sides using this tragedy for political gains while turning around and calling nyc "liberal elites" and "not real america" jokes at their expense are good and well but don't lose humanity in the process