Exploiting 9/11

Earlier this year, President Bush caught some flak when his campaign used an image of firefighters from 9/11 on some fund-raising literature. So far as I know, outside of art, politics and satire, that's been it. It's good to know that some things can be sacred after all.

Well, except in Australia. It seems that radio station Triple J used an image of the Twin Towers with a large banner with the Triple J logo photoshopped in as part of a promotional contest. Here's the story with the offending image.

The doofs at Triple J are unrepentant, of course. It's sad, because I used to listen quite a bit to Triple J on the Internet. Radio and most television in Australia, just like England, is government-funded, therefore there are no commercials. Triple J's mandate is to reach Australia's young people. The music mix is mostly Australian, with some American rock thrown in. No pop, only a little rap, just rock'n'roll, Oz-style. Plus, they are fifteen hours ahead of us, so in the afternoons, I can catch the morning shows (which are often pretty funny. One morning I heard the weather described as "pissing down rain right now in Sydney.") and in the morning you catch the more experimental overnight programming. They beat anything you can hear in Memphis, that's for sure.

I had expected someone, eventually, to abuse the memories of 9/11. I'm just surprised where and how it finally came to pass. And now that the embargo is broken, will we see more?