I am probably a little obsessive about all this Osama Bin Laden coverage, but if you watched the crowds at Ground Zero and The White House - most of the revelers were rather young. They compromised of the generation who came out in droves to vote for Obama, a generation more progressive than any generation that preceded it.
Imagine if Hitler had somehow lived in hiding ten years after the end of WWII (near military barracks? in broad daylight?)? The idea seems completely ridiculous. At least Hitler knew the jig was up and did himself and his cross-dressing-black-face-wearing wife in accordingly. How Bin Laden evaded the US for ten long years can probably be best explained by Pakistan. (Is that crickets I hear? ).
The towers went down when I was 15 sitting in Geometry class. Another math teacher walked into the classroom and said a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers. Immediately my teacher and my peers thought this teacher was full of shit (this teacher had a reputation for being quite the prankster). But this was no prank. I saw on TV in real time the second plane crash into the second tower, and I think it's safe to say that I have tried and failed to erase that image from my mind for the last ten years.
For anyone 25 or younger, 9/11 has informed most of our adult lives. Our war was (still is?) with terrorism. Our Hitler was Bin Laden. I have never rejoiced over a death like this before and I refuse to be ashamed of it. I imagine on the day the world found out Hitler was dead nobody said "YOU SHOULD NOT CELEBRATE THE DEATH OF THAT MASS MURDERING FUCK HEAD!". I think the reaction was more along the lines of "I OUTLIVED THAT BASTARD!" followed by copious amounts of sex (sounds pretty good to me).
I wish my father were still alive to see this.
And continuing with my WWII comparisons, I leave you with one of Casablanca's best quotes:
"There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."
Amen.
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