The September 11 profiteers

LOIS GRIFFIN knew she was losing it when the audience started to laugh. The killer question had been: "If elected, what will you do about replacing the old boiler?" It was obvious from the look on her face that Lois hadn't given adequate thought to the old boiler issue.

As the audience hooted and hugged itself, Lois realized she'd have to do something desperate if she was to fulfill her dream of being elected to the board of James Wood High.

Then, suddenly, came a thrilling flash of inspiration. "9/11!" she declared. The crowd roared. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again," she continued, banging her fist on the podium, "9/11!" Pandemonium.

Her opponent, husband Peter Griffin, sighed as he contemplated inevitable defeat. "There's no answer to that."

Peter is the Family Guy on the television program of the same name, considered the greatest show on earth by those of us who would rather not watch anything on TV which isn't preceded by a warning that viewers might find the next program offensive.

In real life, things are more serious. Back in 2007, Rudolph Giuliani was gearing up to have a rattle at the Republican nomination for the following year's presidential race. His strongest suit, he reckoned, was the fact that he'd been mayor of New York City at the time of the atrocity.

So someone on his fundraising unit came up with the wizard idea of asking supporters around the country to associate themselves with the pain of New York City by donating $9.11 each to Rudy's campaign coffers.

Mistake. No sooner had the begging letters been dispatched in bundles than the International Association of Fire Fighters had a statement on the wires declaring that "firefighters and their families reject [this] attempt to use the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to fuel a political campaign." Exit Giuliani.

The point is, there are limits. Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck must have come close on 9/11 last year with their anniversary fundraiser in Anchorage for "heritage projects," tickets from $73.75 to $225.

This year on September 11, Newt Gingrich unveiled his new movie America At Risk, which purports to expose President Obama's failure to address the attempts of "radical Islam" to impose Sharia law on the country. Gingrich's website notes that those who can't wait for the release may "pre-order your copy now for just $19.95, plus $4 shipping."

BUT IT'S back at Ground Zero that the real money's being made. The National September 11 Memorial and Museum will cost $700 million to build and will have an annual operating budget of $60 million.

America's Second World War memorial cost $175 million; the Korean War memorial $18 million; the Vietnam memorial $8 million. These are all publicly owned. But the 9/11 memorial is a private affair--apart from being publicly funded, of course.

"Nobody asked for this enormously expensive memorial," says Glenn Corbett, professor of fire science at New York's John Jay College, seen as an expert on most 9/11 matters. "A lot of people and a lot of companies are making a lot of money out of 9/11."

The memorial isn't open for business yet, but its gift shop is fully operational--with stones from the World Trade Centre for $100 to $1,000, and necklaces saying "No day shall erase you from the memory of time" at around $125 a pop.

Meanwhile, major corporations have been gifted billions to stay or move into the area around Ground Zero, and the bonanza is by no means over. The recent issue of the Village Voice cites a couple of startling figures: $1 billion to Goldman Sachs for its plush building across from the site, $764 million for a Durst Tower in midtown Manhattan and a Bruce Ratner office tower in Brooklyn.

In other words, some of the biggest and most profitable companies in the U.S. are being paid vast sums of public money to operate in districts vaguely relevant to 9/11 in which they'd very likely have chosen to operate anyway. Who would have thought it--that Goldman Sachs would make $1 billion from al-Qaeda murdering 3,000 New Yorkers? Apart from Goldman Sachs, that is.

"When we were eating and sleeping post-9/11 stuff, the powers-that-be insisted that these subsidies would rescue lower Manhattan," Bettina Damiani of the watchdog group Good Jobs New York told the Voice. "Ten years and billions of dollars later...we need to do some rethinking."

Retired fire captain Jim Riches, who lost a son on 9/11 and then lost his health from laboring in the dust on the site for months afterwards, is quoted also: "This is a place for reverence and remembrance, not a revenue-generating tourist attraction. This is obscene. This is the same as people selling stuff on the streets."

That's the thing about The Family Guy. Seen in context, it isn't really offensive at all.