Before I start ranting, let me say this: I didn't live in New York City at the time of the 9/11 attacks. I was one of many thousands (if not millions) of people who chose to seek my fortune in the city after Osama Bin Laden and his gaggle of fundamentalist loonies declared holy war on America. But, in my defense, I currently live in Manhattan and up until about a week ago I worked for the City of New York. And guess what else? I can get blown to bits just as badly as a native New Yorker.
However, the fact that I live in (and pay exorbitant taxes in) the City That Never Sleeps doesn't entitle me to pimp the 9/11 tragedy for my own personal gain. That being said, why are non-New Yorkers like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck going to do with their upcoming "event" in Anchorage, Alaska?
Because the respective Beck and Palin camps are being so secretive about the nature of the "event", speculation has run wild about what will be discussed (or perhaps, announced) there. While Beck's denial that the date of his "Restoring Honor" rally wasn't timed to coincide with the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream Speech", there's no way he can claim not to have been aware of the significance of September 11th.
I completely disagree with the speculation that these two aren't dumb enough to announce a run for the presidency nor do I believe that it would damage them politically; many of the people likely to support a Palin-Beck ticket think Barack Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim and are so eager to see him tossed out of the White House that they will overlook the most tasteless Tea Bagger publicity stunts.
It is times like this that I wish Hillary Clinton rose from the relative obscurity of the State Department to talk about her 9/11 experience. Seeing that Sarah Palin served as nothing more than right-wing counter-programming during Clinton's historic run for the White House, she'd be the perfect person to shame Mrs. Palin out of her nefarious plans.
Afterall, on September 11, 2001, then-Senator Clinton was on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., a city under direct attack. (The plane that was re-taken by the passengers and crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside was headed toward Capitol Hill or The White House and yet another plane hit the Pentagon.) Not only was she terrified for her own life, Clinton was simultaneously worried sick about Chelsea, the one and only child she ever got to have; Chelsea was mere blocks away from the second tower when it fell. On top of that, Senator Clinton was one of the few elected officials who was directly responsible for meeting the political needs of the eight million New Yorkers who lived in harm's way. Why else did she and the senior senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, go to the White House to ask for twenty billion dollars in aid to New York the very next day?
In the years following the attacks, Hillary Clinton championed the cause of sick 9/11 responders and defended 9/11 widows from vicious personal attacks from Ann Coulter. And, unlike Palin or Beck, Hillary Clinton lived and worked in two cities that have been under threat of terrorist attack for nearly a decade.
While Clinton was doing all that, Palin was tucked safely away in Wasilla, Alaska, population 5,469. She was serving as mayor of the town, most likely making decisions that didn't directly affect her own constituents, let alone the grief stricken millions on the opposite coasts. If Levi Johnston is to be believed, she wasn't all that concerned about the safety of her children, pretty much ignoring them much of the time. And she's only travelled to the largest city in America only a few times in her life--not exactly good qualifications for someone who took it upon herself to denounce the plans to build a mosque at Ground Zero.
Alas, the likelihood that Clinton will make any commentary on this issue at all is virtually nil. Doing important things like brokering a Middle East peace deal tend to tie people up indefinitely. But still I can dream.
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