I know I’m a bit late to the party so forgive me if anyone has already brought this up. This is the observation that always bothered me the most. I watched tower 2 get hit on live TV. The news anchors were going nuts describing the events like something out of Orson Welles’ infamous radio play edition of War of the Worlds. They tried to keep a somber and serious tone but there was an excitement in their voices as they vividly described fire, smoke, and chaos.

Do you remember that brief moment when the media called it the “World Trade Center Attack?” The abbreviation ‘WTC’ started to take over. You were assumed to already know what it stood for by that time. Get with the program.

Then that, too, started to change. It stopped being about where it happened. It started being about when it happened.

“On this day, September the Eleventh,” intones Dan Rather.

September the Eleventh. All the anchors picked it up. It was like every single one of these media ghouls was trying to ape the infamous FDR speech about Pearl Harbor. They’d found juicier meat than some silly radio play about Martians. I was one of those insufferable WWII teens at the time so I heard that little dog whistle. “A day that will live in infamy” was right on the tips of their tongues. They all wanted to say it even though they knew it was corny. But they all wanted to have that moment.

The day wasn’t over yet they were memorializing it. It already had an anniversary. September Eleventh.

Eventually it was just 9/11. “Nine-eleven.” It was like some advertising hobgoblin had noticed that if you put a 1 next to a 1 it looked like the WTC towers. 9/11. They had long since dropped the 2001 part. Who cares what year it is. You’re already supposed to know that part. We already told you. It was 9/11.

Music from The Shining starts to get louder. The twin towers meet in the bathroom of the Overlook Hotel. They start to argue over who the Caretaker is.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.