Only in Modern Day America and Only in New York

I love New York. But the way they have let the families of the 9/11 victims hold the city hostage over the plans for the 9/11 memorial is ridiculous.

After watching the video below of the memorial site I was astounded at just how self centered our society has become. Ever since Mya put those two slabs of granite up alongside the National Mall and carved the names of the soldiers who lost there lives in VietNam every memorial designer is now obliged to pare down their design to the bare bones. As long as the victims names are carved in granite somewhere the design is hailed as a success.

So it is no wonder that the designer of the 9/11 memorial was compelled to come up with the two most depressing fountains in the history of the world. They basically consists of watching water run into seemingly bottomless pits. 9/11 wasn't a big enough tragedy without pouring (literally it seems) money into this?

The design is completed (if you can use that term) by a plaza of 600 trees. Of course in a politically charged atmosphere like Ground Zero (God I hate that term!) you can't just plant 600 trees. You have to come up with a overthought drainage plan. Just making sure the area was filled with good soil and properly sloped for drainage would have been way too simple.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/09/05/nyregion/100000001032326/at-the-heart-of-ground-zero.html