The Twin Towers Toy
You know how callous Americans can be about tragedy in other parts of the world? Ho, hum; another 17 million dead in flooding in Bangladesh. Well, here’s the world holding up a mirror to that behavior: AP Photo/Peter Cosgrove.
12 Responses to “The Twin Towers Toy”
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August 29th, 2004 at 12:01 am
A friend and I placed wagers to see how long it would take for those toys to show up on ebay.
Great perspective.
August 30th, 2004 at 9:44 am
Callous?
You’re and a55h0le.
To bad you weren’t in one of those towers,
we’d all be better off.
August 30th, 2004 at 5:07 pm
ANOTHER 9/11 Toy has been found with BIN LADEN’S likeness between the towers:
http://www.wftv.com/newsofthestrange/3691006/detail.html
August 31st, 2004 at 10:26 am
> Callous?
>
> You’re and a55h0le.
>
> To bad you weren’t in one of those towers,
> we’d all be better off.
Ahhh … what a little sweetie from Foreign you are!
The sentiment is touching, especially as English is obviously not your first language :-)
September 1st, 2004 at 4:33 am
Americans are callous toward the plight of the rest of the world. That’s the reason they send so much aid and supplies and volunteers to tradgedy-struck regions. Recently when countries they oppose such as Iran (Bam) and North Korea (Fuel explosion) had tradgedies, they were so callous, they waited like, 15 minutes before they sent aid and offered their services. And that good-will is always returned. Like when global aid came pouring in after hurricane Charl—errrr–nevermind. It’s never returned. Quit being an ignoramous.
September 2nd, 2004 at 7:03 am
Perhaps you can explain exactly how flooding in Bangladesh is in any way similar to Muslim terrorists attacking buildings with commercial jetliners.
There are certainly enough Americans who feel guilty simply for being born in the greatest nation in recorded history that we shouldn’t be painted as “callous” by your broad brush. However, since I am not one of them you’re welcome to paint away.
For a nation as powerful as the United States is the USA has been surprisingly sensitive to the feelings of other nations.
I wonder if the Muslims were ruling the world (and some day they just might) if they would be so sensitive to your little excerise in infidel web design.
September 2nd, 2004 at 7:42 am
Uh, the two cases are similar because they lead to large numbers of deaths. Those deaths are viewed as tragedies by those close by, and as trivial joke-fodder by (some of) those farther away.
Within days of any given megadeath-causing tragedy in some distant corner of the world, jokes are circulating (at least in my part of America; maybe not yours) that make light of the event. This toy is an example of the same principle in operation in other parts of the world.
I’m not saying that there aren’t Americans who are sympathetic to tragedy in other parts of the world, or that there aren’t people in other parts of the world who are sympathetic to tragedies in America; there clearly are. But I still think the twin towers toy shown here is noteworthy as an example of the absence of such sympathy.
September 2nd, 2004 at 1:23 pm
Okay, so did a U.S. company create a toy commemorating the flooding in Bangladesh?
September 2nd, 2004 at 1:26 pm
I have no idea. If your point is that these two situations are not identical, you win. You win… um, something.
September 2nd, 2004 at 3:35 pm
My point is this- Americans generally don’t celebrate the suffering of others.
And although Israelis sometimes kill Arab civilians in Palestine and Americans have killed civilians in Iraq and other countries, they don’t throw parties when they do.
That’s as opposed to Muslims who shout “Allahu Akbar!!!!!” at the top of their lungs when an American or a Jew dies an ugly death.
September 2nd, 2004 at 3:58 pm
I’m aware that there are people in this country who maintain that it is commonplace for Arab muslims to do such things. But the people who maintain that aren’t the kind of people who inspire confidence in me that they’re actually informed and objective about Arab muslims’ social norms and belief systems. And at least based on what I know about you currently, I’d have to include you in that category.
And I’ve certainly seen Americans celebrating the killing by Americans of innocent Arabs. There are oodles of examples of that among the uglier elements in the right-wing blogosphere, especially since 9/11. Closer to home, I can still remember the laughs and high-fives being shared around at the post office by a significant chunk of my fellow residents of the rural mountain community I was living in at the time, on the morning after Bush 41 announced that “the liberation of Kuwait has begun,” and CNN started showing footage of bombings and missile strikes in Baghdad.
Now, you could certainly argue that that behavior wasn’t as overtly ugly as what you’ve attributed to Arab muslims. But for myself, I think the distinction you’d be drawing in that case is hopelessly skewed by your own cultural assumptions. And then you’d probably sneer at my use of the term “cultural assumptions,” and accuse me of some sort of wussy liberal moral relativism.
Whatever. I guess you’re just really lucky that unlike all those other people in the world, who were tragically born into cultures that delude them into assuming that _their_ frame of reference is the correct one, and it’s the rest of the world that is populated by amoral wack-jobs, you just happened to have been born into the one culture where that assumption is literally correct.
Woo! Go USA!
September 7th, 2004 at 4:12 pm
I don’t believe the American frame of reference is morally superior or inferior to that of any other culture.
What I do believe is that the U.S. is the greatest and most powerful country in recorded history and as such it throws its cultural and miltary weight around just as any other country in the same position would do. And as I stated previously I think the United States is a damn sight more sensitive to others than any other nation in a similar has ever been. And certainly more than an Islamist nation would be.
Indeed, we are a country with many people like you who are willing to flagellate themselves simply for their good fortune.
I’m not going to mock you for your wussy liberal moral relativism. I’m going to ask you if you believe in killing in the name of some ficticious God. I’ll ask you if you believe women are inferior to men and if you think they should be denied education and forced to cover their bodies and faces in public. And if you answer no to these questions I’ll know you’re not a moral relativist and that you have a basic understanding of why the U.S. is better than Islamist nations.