Daniel Harris is at it again in his Kitsch analysis of 9.11. I'm not getting a Salon premium either to read the entire thing -- I already regrettably know it's going to be the same retread: talk endlessly about consumer culture and how it's cheapened 9/11 and what it's meaning is. His analysis is always so paperthin and smug that I find it as tawdry and cheap as the products he's deriding. Well - he goes after another sacred cow (undoubtedly to generate controversy) and all I can think of is - what's the bloody point? Last decade - when Irony was still considered high form, you could analyse how AIDS discourse was creating some ill fated kitsch --- but now, Irony isn't so much dead as we've come to accept the fact that we're a retail culture, and everything is game... Anything is up for interpretation, Kitsch is a given in quite a few circumstances --- and in times of fervor -- we're going to probably message patriotism in any possible venue or way possible (and thus, some of it becomes Kitsch... Look at past examples of war propaganda - some of it was probably just as bad) It doesn't take a cultural theorist to pick this apart... I guess I'm less offended that he's going after 9/11 discourse, only that he's trying the same tired arguments. Load o' crap, folks!