The Freedom Tower

The only blunder that even comes close to this blunder is 911 itself.

“City and state officials are celebrating their commitment to fill space in the Freedom Tower. But there seems to be less cheering — and considerable distress — among people who might actually have to report for work every day in the symbolic replacement for the destroyed World Trade Center,” the New York Times reported.
How could every politician even remotely associated with the World Trade Center disaster and the reconstruction of Ground Zero have been so near sighted not to have realized that politics as usual in this case could not dissuade rational people from seeing this pink elephant in every room where the redevelopment of site has been discussed for the last five years.
Oh, they might have been able to get a clue when design after design was thwarted, turned down, twisted and rejected by even the most indifferent observer. There might have been some signals coming from firefighters who journeyed to this “job site” from firehouses around the world to search for the remains of 911 victims. They always brought the quiet dignity and sincerity few politicians can muster, even with the best flacks and handlers guiding their every move.
The governors of New York and New Jersey, the usually astute New York City Mayor Michael Blumberg and both the Republican and Democratic candidates running in the race for the top job in the Empire State all signed on to this Titantic blunder. Yesterday they committed themselves to sign leases to occupy one million square feet of the Freedom Tower of the more than two million square feet of space in this building developers have had mighty problems filling. When the governors and the mayor joined forced with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, they made one colossal blunder. They forgot to ask the people who work for them if they’d just go along for the ride.
Today, union after union, employees of agency after agency said no, they would not go to work if their bosses paid them to work in the Freedom Tower.
Oh my God, what a blunder these blockheads have committed. The tax collector, the meter maids and the bean counters for the public agencies in charge of buying light fixtures say they’re not risking their lives for a paycheck from people who failed to protect their colleagues at least twice before at the same address where that gave blunder new meaning.
I see a flurry of news conferences being planned right now where the Pink Elephant sitting in the center of Ground Zero still won’t be discussed. Neither will an idea I heard this afternoon from a college student in Connecticut that seemed to make more sense than anything I’ve heard from the designers, the Port Authority and the developers, the mayor of the largest city in the world and everybody else sitting on what is probably the most expensive real estate in the world. I haven’t look close enough yet but yesterday one of the brains behind this blunder said they were renting space down there for about fifty bucks a square foot. You can’t rent a tree house in Arkansas for that kind of money, never mind in a highrise in New York, New York.
There’s a clue right there. Something’s up. Something big too.
A student in my class at Western Connecticut state university is the kind of student I love. She’s nervy, careful and measured in what she says, but when she’s sure, she squeezes off a head shot. Oh yes, she’d read the stories in yesterday news or at least heard what passes for broadcast news on CNN. No, it wasn’t CNN because she says she doesn’t have a television. She must have read it somewhere online because she pondered the idea of people moving into the Freedom Tower for a moment in class yesterday, then she quietly said something that sent that pink elephant scurrying from 306 White Hall in Danbury to a safer room on campus.
“No one in my generation is going to work in that building,” she said. “No one. Its too soon.”
A young man sitting behind her was visibly upset by what she said, so he spoke up too.
“Well me,” he said, “I’d work there. I’d work there and I’d dance on the roof.”
A roof that many believe will catch fire again, I said.
He didn’t flinch or bat an eyelash but he flashed me a look, an unmistakable look that another man would recognize immediately. It said “go ahead. I dare you to try it again. I dare you come back. I’ll be waiting for you this time.”
It was a threat and I knew it wasn’t aimed at me. It was a headshot too and if he had really been shooting, the shot would have been dead on and I know who he was aiming at and it wasn’t that pink ass elephant I saw scurring down White Street andd across the midtown campus heading for higher ground.