The Disgraceful 9-11 Memorial and Museum

The Disgraceful 9-11 Memorial and Museum

 

Just about every attraction in America shuffles visitors to their big moneymakers, the gift shop, where they can buy usually tacky and always exorbitantly priced trinkets.  In addition to raising money for the shops, the trinkets serve as little reminders for the tourists of the time they spent at the attraction and allow them to show off their little bagatelles to friends and neighbors as proof they were there–before most of the junk is consigned to a drawer somewhere.

President Barack Hussein Obama dedicated the impressive and thought-provoking National September 11 Memorial & Museum last Thursday.  Despite his moving speech delivered next to the imposing Slurry Wall, the concrete monolith that prevented the Hudson River from inundating all of Lower Manhattan, many 9-11 survivors and victims’ families were repulsed at finding a gift shop on premises.

Hawking everything from key chains, NYPD dog vests, cheap jewelry, mousepads, tote bags, book marks, magnets, flags, pins, stuffed animals, cellphone cases to NYPD dog vests and toy firetrucks, the shop’s offerings were all designed and priced to cash in on a horrendous, unprecedented national tragedy, including one of its priciest items, a silk scarf with an old photo showing WTC at lunchtime ($95.) 

Located at the World Trade Center, the location of the Twin Towers where 3000 innocent souls perished on 9-11-2001, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum Gift Shop sits directly above 8,000 unidentified, partial remains of victims recently entombed beneath the museum.

As Diane Horning, mother of 26 year old Matthew Horning who died in the attacks and whose remains were never recovered and identified, bitterly observed, ”Here is essentially our tomb of the unknown. . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=37229.)