9-11 Widows Talk too Much*

9-11 Widows Talk too Much*

A great column on those ubiquitous 9-11 widows - the "Jersey Girls."

Here are some choice comments from this excellent article.

DOROTHY RABINOWITZ'S MEDIA LOG: The 9/11 Widows - Americans are beginning to tire of them.

Debra Burlingame--lifelong Democrat, sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, did manage to land an interview after Ms. Rice's appearance. When she had finished airing her views critical of the accusatory tone and tactics of the Jersey Girls, her interviewer, ABC congressional reporter Linda Douglass marveled, "This is the first time I've heard this point of view." . . .

. . . TV and newspaper editors were [interested in telling] a different story--that of four intrepid New Jersey housewives who had, as one news report had it, brought an administration "to its knees"--and that was, as far as they were concerned, the only story. . . .

The venerable status accorded this group of widows comes as no surprise given our times, an age quick to confer both celebrity and authority on those who have suffered. [Ed. note - what a profound statement this is.] . . . All that the widows have had to say . . . has been received by most of the media and members of Congress with utmost wonder and admiration. They had become prosecutors and investigators, unearthing clues and connections related to 9/11, with, we're regularly informed, unrivalled dedication and skill. . . .

. . . with every passing month, their list of government agencies and agents guilty of dereliction of duty grew apace. So did their assurance that it had been given to them, as victims, to determine the proper standards of taste and respectfulness to be applied in everything related to Sept. 11, including, it turned out, the images of the destroyed World Trade Center in George Bush's first campaign ad . . . .

. . . Ms. Breitweiser's analyses . . . of the ways the Sept. 11 attack might have been foiled. If the Federal Aviation Administration had properly alerted passengers to the dangers they faced, she asked, how many victims might have thought twice before boarding an aircraft? And "how many victims would have taken notice of these Middle Eastern men while they were boarding their plane? Could these men have been stopped?"

A good question. One can only imagine how a broadcast of the warning, "Watch out for Middle Eastern men in line near you, as you board your flight," would have gone down in those quarters of the culture daily worried to death about the alleged threat to civil rights posed by profiling and similar steps designed to weed out terrorists. Consider . . . what the response would have been if John Ashcroft had issued a statement calling for such a precaution, prior to Sept. 11. [Emphasis added.]

*"Kate! Time out, Kate! You've had three times now. That's enough for you. Women talk too much!" -- Mark Shields to Kate O'Bierne on "The Capital Gang," CNN, April 10