It's amazing that "new" footage of the World Trade Center disaster should emerge five years later but some has. A couple who lived 500 yards from Ground Zero shot home video that day and has now released their footage on the Internet. It runs about fifteen minutes and is very chilling because…well, because you hear a family watching the tragedy, wondering what's happening and commenting as they see it unfold before their eyes, practically in their back yard. Here is a link to it and I'll warn you that some of it is pretty graphic and that the connection may be overloaded at times. Thanks to Alan Light for being the first of many to let me know about it.
Also: Keith Olbermann did a long (almost nine minutes) and angry commentary on his show last night. He excoriated the Bush administration for many things related to 9/11 but mostly for the fact that Ground Zero is still, five years later, devoid of either a memorial or any new building. The piece was well-written, well-delivered and presented with a passion and clarity of purpose that I think we all, regardless of our political orientation, wish we heard occasionally from our leaders. I'm not sure I agree with his central thesis, however. A physical memorial to those who died on 9/11 seems almost trivial and unequal to our loss on that day…and to rebuild on that site strikes me as a lot more complicated than the White House just deciding someone should. I wonder how many companies would lease space in a new World Trade Center — even if it wasn't called that — and how many people would be willing to go to work every day in one. Here's a link to Olbermann's "special comment" on YouTube and in case you'd like to view it with his lips in sync, here's a link to it on the MSNBC site.