As you can see by this CNN video:
It’s sad to say this, but how else can it be said? Yes, the most significant thing to come out of this city in the past 25 years has nothing to do with a creative act by one of its thinkers or artists but an act of destruction that was imposed on it by a gang of criminals. The terrorists not only produced a terrible crime (and that’s what it was at the end of the day, a crime) but a kind of death cult that now dominates much of the city and what we hear about it. The dead, the dead, the dead.
New York City has become like a man who suffers from phantom limb syndrome—its mind is stuck on the traumatic moment of the amputation. Maybe it needs something like Vilayanur Ramachandran’s mirror box to help it move past that painful moment.
Not as good as your last troll article that actually landed you on Gawker, Charles. I don’t think anyone will take the bait that you actually think this is the only thing NY still has to offer. If that’s actually true; go spend some time there with the people.
banna, you actually think i have not spent time in new york. you actually believe that?
Yeah, sorry but this is too far fetched. It’s obvious that you haven’t been to New York in years, or if you have, you stayed safely locked away in a hotel room away from the “death cult” you presume to be tromping around the city.
Sorry for the double “away.” I have a word-order issue that sometimes makes it past the filter.
Maybe the reason the poster questioned whether you’d ever actually been to New York is the fact that you seem to be so comfortable labeling an entire city a death cult based on a single news report on a single issue.
Yeah because obviously Charles Mudede is an expert on New York City and knows everything about each and every one of the millions of people who live there and exactly how each and every one of them feels about what happened on 9/11. I lived in NYC on 9/11 and I wouldn’t presume to make any such kind of sweeping statement. But Charles knows everything. His privilege and Marxism make him an expert on everything. Go fuck yourself! Pissed off about the Gawker article? YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT NEW YORK OR NEW YORKERS.
Sounds like someone’s a little sensitive from getting called a hack yesterday on Gawker. You really think this little dust up that’s been inflated to the point of exploding by cable news is the most significant thing to come out of NYC in the past 25 years? What about Illmatic? or Ready to Die? Or Reasonable Doubt? Give it another news cycle and this mosque shit won’t even be remembered.
He has a point. What I find troubling is the same racist right wing that wants to take away citizenship from brown people born here is running a campaign in New York that appeals to bigotry and hate against Muslims. We need to say “No, this is not what New York is about.” It has the Staue of Liberty fercrissakes!
New York is obsolete.
#8 he has a point? NOTHING has come out of NYC in the past 25 years? I agree that woman’s crusade appeals to racism and hatred against Muslims. It is not, however, the collective unconscious of an entire city.
The only impressive thing New York City has done in the last 25 years is convincing the world that doesn’t suck.
/it
@10 What, exactly, has come out of New York that will be remembered by the world’s billions of muslims if the hate mongers succeed? What great work of art? What philosphy? It will forever be remembered as the city that gave in to hate.
Charles, the thing that troubles me is that (just like those on the Conservative Right) you seem to only be able to think in absolutes. If you see an article or story about New York City, then it must encompass all of NYC’s peoples and places. 8 million people in the city (and another 12 million or so surrounding it) are reduced to one idea, one belief – all of humanity can be described and demarcated within the boundaries of your beliefs. How lucky for the rest of humanity – You think therefore we are. I remember I used to believe that Marxist theories, feminist theories, etc could describe the world; of course I was 18.
Sorry Charles- but I’m also going to call bullshit on this. Your litttle “you honestly think I haven’t spent time in NY?” thing is even more hilarious. It just comes off like an ignorant, obnoxious tourist who came to NYC for a weekend, spent all of their time in Times Square or on one of those annoying double-decker tour buses and suddenly feels like they know ANYTHING about NYC or what it is actually about or what it’s inhabitants actually think about or produce. I have lived in NYC for seven or eight years now and can honestly tell you that the only time I ever hear about 9/11 is when someone outside the city, or some news organization, decides to troll for more views or legitimize their racist beliefs towards the middle-east. NYC is a big place full of talented, gifted people (much like every other major city) and it’s absolutely ridiculous to say what you did about it with a straight face and not expect people to call you on such bullshit.
Manhattan is overplayed anyway. Everyone knows Brooklyn is the new Manhattan.
This is not serious at all. Charles is just doing what Gawker did in their article by using ill-conceived stereotypes and gross generalizations.
@15, some people have a sticker on their car that reads: “My Other Car Is A…” i can honestly have a sticker that reads: “My Other City Is New York.” the only thing i can be criticized for when it comes to my frequent stays in that city is i rarely leave manhattan (brooklyn bores me to tears and i only want to visit the bronx and the queens in the hiphop tunes of my ipod’s 80s section) and spend way too much time in the tribeca area. i need to get out of tribeca more. for me, it’s jfk and the a train straight to manhattan–the only part of that city that actually works.
@17 – How can you tell that he is being facetious? Doesn’t he always use ill-conceived stereotypes and gross generalizations to make his point?
Mawkishness has no business in New York City. Enough is enough. Bloomberg is my absolute fucking hero on this stuff, and you remain my favorite flirty provocateur, Charles. Viva.
A-Rod ruined NYC.
The Sarah Palin of the left
I don’t think you haven’t spent any time in New York. My point is, if you think nothing has come out of New York as your headline proclaims, then you haven’t spent any time with the right (or any) people in NY.
New York sucks. Get over yourself.
@Charles: If you visit NYC on a regular basis and all you know or hear about is the “death cult” of 9/11 you need to find some new friends out here.
As Aedan points out, and I concur, the city has healed greatly from its wounds. I hate the fact that the site is still a gaping hole in the ground, but I don’t blame that on death and Muslims, I blame it on city, state and federal government and greedy developers and contractors.
I DO find those bus ads offensive because we don’t need to see that image over and over again. But I do not believe that the forces behind those ads are local. I don’t believe that most of the people behind the anti-community center harangue are local.
We’ve moved on — we won’t forget, but we don’t need to live in it.
Maybe you and the rest of the people outside NYC who feel the need to wallow in 9/11 need to do the same.
my bullshit broad stroke thought for the day.. the people who rush so vigorously to nyc’s defense are most likely the same people who argue that the south can only be noted for snaggle toothed homophobic inbreds and the last great american war.
…or something like that…carry on
@11 DEAD ON, It is really amazing the huge machine New York created to make itself relevant at all times when its just another fucking city.
Charles, You are right and wrong, There is of course a scar on New York that many new yorkers do not see, but it also doesn’t affect peoples lives as much as you suggest. But from the outsider perspective its HUGE, non-new yorkers cant shut the fuck up about 9/11.
And to the people who call bullshit on charles, YOU DON’T KNOW NYC, the fucking FIRST THING you should realize when coming here is that EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING is here. To say any sweeping statement of NYC and its people is foolish because there are so many fucking people here all viewpoints and people have a standing here.
@27: It’s funny — I remember talking to friends from Seattle a couple years after 9/11 and they couldn’t understand why I was still raw about it, their grief, shock, whatever had faded. Now, almost 10 years later, I’ve healed and now it’s the people from outside the area who are raw about it.
Strange.
Excuse me for intruding, but the local community board voted 29 to 1 in favor of the Cordoba House (notice that I don’t call it a mosque). Our mayor has eloquently defended the project. And there is evidence that support for the project is stronger among those who live closest to the former World Trade Center site.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/…
I myself live less than a mile from the site, and I strongly support the Cordoba House project. The notion that New Yorkers have given in to fear is laughable.
As for Mr. Mudede’s suggestion that nothing significant has come out of New York in the last 25 years, I would ask what his standard is for such an absurdly sweeping statement, and what, by that standard, Seattle has contributed that is so great? This is not a swipe at Seattle, a city that I am very fond of, just a defense of my hometown.
Um, besides all the things that make NYC infinitely better than pretty much anywhere else in America, New York City, or at least the institutions located there, has by far the highest concentration of people, businesses and institutions responsible for our current economic collapse. That’s pretty significant.
nyc gargles balls, good call cm.
@30 replace paris with NYC and shove it!
http://picturesforsadchildren.com/index.…
I was just going to comment that the “only thing New York has to offer these days” isn’t actually coming from New York; all of the organized opposition to Cordoba is coming from national political figures and activist groups, including the funding for that stupid ad campaign.
But then I read this: “brooklyn bores me to tears”
Charles, if anything, I usually come to your defense (see yesterday’s comment on your middle-class-shamelessness post) but with this comment, you lose all credibility with me. This is not a statement that can be made by a curious, culturally engaged frequent visitor to New York City. 100% fail.
Charles doesn’t like Brooklyn because he’s an old person. It can be a little scary out there for the over 30 crowd. His leftist, Marxist, fuck-the-middle-class crusading is obviously at home in an over-priced, yuppie haven like Tribeca.
@34 Well, could be, although I’m 40 and hardly even go into Manhattan on the weekends anymore because there’s too much interesting going on in Brooklyn. But I hadn’t even gotten to the part in his comment about Tribeca. Jesus H., *Tribeca*!? Really, Charles? Manhattan is the only part of New York that works? (what does that even mean?) And your “other city is New York,” huh? Dude. Why are you even posting about New York at all?
What’s the saying – Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it and remove all doubt.
@35 and 34 is proof how new yorkers have no sense of humor. they actually believe they are the only ones who read their neighborhoods. we in seattle make a joke about tribeca and they fall for it so hard.
Ah Chuck, just when I thought you weren’t funny you go and say New Yorkers don’t have a sense of humor. Now that’s the funniest shit you’ve said all day.
Well, I certainly think I have a sense of humor in general, but I’m not too proud to admit that in this case, it’s true: I don’t get it.
And I gather that all this New-York-hating is meant to be a middle finger at Gawker (not to mention linkbait), which is deserved enough I guess, but it does leave us New Yorkers who like both Seattle and The Stranger with a bit of a conflicted feeling.
This may have been the most lucid post Charles has ever written.
I know, I know: don’t feed the troll. But Mudede – you are out of your mind. Or more so than usual. In the last 25 years, NYC has perfected and ruined hip hop (the circle of life) on at least three occasions. Four if you count the secret of the Wu-Tang as its own phenomenon. Compare to Seattle, and we have what? Sir Mix-a-lot and the Blue Scholars. I mean even High Performance, arguably the best MCs to come out of the Pacific Northwest, are from Tacoma proper.
No matter what you think of the rotten apple, it (and north NJ) will always be the holy Mecca of hip hop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKjj4hk0p…