COLUMN: Keep your souvenir
The attacks on the World Trade Center brought us to a halt last week. Everywhere, people huddled around television sets to watch the tragedy unfold. Workers stayed home, stunned by the awfulness of what many are calling the future of war – a war that will be fought among us by terrorists.
It’s amazing to watch Americans wake up and remember themselves. Flags are flying everywhere – almost like it’s the Fourth of July. But this time we seem to recall what the flag means. Many retailers are sold out of Old Glory. Even tattoo parlors are taking reservations from folks who want it inked into their skin forever. Yes, it’s amazing to see how in a few minutes an entire nation can erupt from tepid, disconnected citizens to full-fledged patriots. We should have been this way all along.
While so much of this has been horrible, it’s reassuring to see we are still a family – still the Americans that have always been so famous for uniting in the face of adversity.
The 11th didn’t change everything, however. Take the spirit of capitalism, for instance. There must be a thousand ways to donate money to assist victims of the attacks. Every television channel covering the event regularly displays the various charities accepting them. Large corporations are pouring out millions of dollars in relief money. This is particularly admirable, considering the shaky financial future that may be awaiting them.
Yes, such devastation might have made capitalism pause for a couple of seconds, but that was all. Unfortunately, with all this goodness, there has to be a dark side. And after news of the tragedy began to air, it didn’t take long for a few dark practitioners of free trade to retool for the next big money-making opportunity.
Within hours of the attack, the online auction site, eBay, was flooded with World Trade Center memorabilia. Sellers were hawking anything from postcards of the buildings to videotapes, bits of rubble and, according to one source, “more grisly mementos seized by bounty hunters.”
Such irreverence is not without precedence. eBay has had to deal with this kind of thing before – banning memorabilia from the Dale Ernhardt accident and the death of John Kennedy Jr. in 1998.
Capitalism is wonderful. I can’t imagine living in a world without it. Still, it seems that no money-making opportunity goes unexploited anymore – regardless of the cost to society. It’s difficult to understand how some people can be callused enough to disregard such monumental human suffering in an attempt to make a buck. They say a thing has no value unless there is someone willing to buy it. I hope, in this time of national tragedy, that none of us are.