I watched a documentary the other evening about 9/11 conspiracies. It was a perfectly vapid piece of programming, with entirely objectionable participants who basically thought the whole of 9/11 was a vast (right-wing) conspiracy to do something or other particularly sinister.
I've never gone in for all of that myself, but I am slowly coming round to the idea that perhaps the whole thing was orchestrated on a grand scale by television channels looking to cheaply fill up weeks and weeks of scheduling. They really have been attacking the subject with gusto. And abject tastelessness.
It's the fashion, this personalised nostalgia. Everyone everywhere is remembering where they were on that fateful morning. I was getting lost on a moped on the outskirts of Coventry, trying to get to the interview for the waitering job in the hotel I was to be employed in for the majority of my gap year between A-levels and university.
I'd never even heard of the twin towers and I only saw the stuff on the news because the television was on in the background when I got back home after the interview. It has not changed my life, nor did it particularly affect me in any way - it just happened. I'm not even sure about when people say that 9/11 changed the world - that sort of annoys me.
It didn't change the world, that particular terrorist attack. It's an arrogance to say so - it just brought something of the outside world to Manhattan. World War 2 was chock full of greater atrocities, more debasement of humanity and acts of treacherous evil, conducted by ordinary men and women in extraordinary circumstances. Likewise there were acts of heroism throughout that massive conflict, as there were in Manhattan 10 years ago.
But changed the world? It merely shaped a generation. Unless you believe the conspiracy theorists.
