Zero at the bone

In a recent speech on Wall Street, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg decreed that the site of the September 11, 2001, islamic terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center will no longer be called Ground Zero.

Ten whole years. I can just hear him: Oy! Enough already!

This is the same elected official who, Grand-Poobah style, has banned both the first responders (those who survived) and clergy from attending the commemoration ceremonies on Sunday.

Supposedly there's not enough room to accommodate the first responders.

Sound familiar? 

What is this anyway, Bethlehem on the Hudson?

There's room enough for the remains of those responders who died in the godless heathen terrorist-induced carnage. Room enough for their tears and sweat and blood and ashes. Nobody can ever change that. 

As for the clergy, and formal public prayers being offered up on the ten-year anniversary of the brutal attack on our homeland?

Well, that's just unthinkable. We simply cannot allow any reference to that sticky wicket of faith in God to skew our perspective.

Because we all know religion had nothing to do with the reason there's a Ground Zero in the first place.

I'm not sure Mayor Bloomberg deserves that dollar-per-year salary he takes from the good citizens of the greatest city in the world.

I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt but where this distinctly un-American mayor is concerned, I'm fresh out of benefits of doubts.

In striving to be oh so politically correct (a term I despise nearly as much as the concept it represents), Mayor Bloomberg has become unforgivably patriotically disconnected.

Not to mention a dhimmi-witted embarrassment to God and country.

Sir, you're no Rudy Giuliani. Not even close, my friend. He will always be the Mayor of Nine Eleven New York.

And to Americans, the site of that day's terror and agony will always be Ground Zero. Mayor, schmayor. Nobody gets to tell us what to call the hallowed spot.

So with all due respect, Hizzoner can take a flying leap into the East River. And wear a towel on his head while doing so.

With mind-numbing predictability, President Obama is front and center on the Always Forget bandwagon too. Dear Leader wants us to stop referring to Nine Eleven as a day of remembrance and instead, begin thinking of it as a day of service.

The usual blah, blah, blah from someone who's secretly glad Nine Eleven happened in the first place.

And yes, I do believe that and no, I am not sorry I said it.

However it would be unseemly for me to suggest what our traitorous blathering TOTUS should do, so I won't.

In 2008, with little fanfare, a memorial entitled Fallen But Not Forgotten was installed near the courthouse in Lexington, South Carolina, about five miles from my house.

One evening last week TG drove me over there to take pictures. The sky was pretty; it was getting towards dusk and I knew the light would be good.

I suspected the mosquitoes would be in a munchy mood too -- and they were -- but oh well. A girl's gotta do.

(Mosquitoes regard my person as haute cuisine. Or at least a happy meal.)

As I got out of the car I noticed a lady sitting in her vehicle a few spots away.

Soon enough she joined us at the memorial. Turned out she was Val Zaba, a commercial artist who collaborated on both the monument's design and its eventual realization.

Serendipity strikes again! I was honored to meet Val and to take her picture. She even showed us some of her original watercolors of the project.

She told us she had to fight city hall in order to keep the cross placed prominently on one side of the structure.

I'm glad Val had the wherewithal to win that battle. God bless her.

And God bless America.

May He preserve her glorious freedoms and confound her enemies both foreign and domestic. Especially domestic.

Never, ever forget.