Mommy, does American fly to Heaven?

It was a masterful attack. They took advantage of our open doors, lax security and corporate love of the bottom line. The INS couldn't stop them. The FAA couldn't stop them. The 27-year-old Colombian with no high school education and only the barest grasp of English couldn't stop them. Their plan was more successful than they dared dream, and it put a serious dent in an already struggling economy.

Americans, though, are survivors. We thrive on drama. We bounce back from tragedy and adversity with nary a scratch to show for our troubles. We eat terrorists for breakfast. And with the families of the World Trade Center victims demanding to profit considerably from the deaths of their loved ones, it's clear that Osama bin Laden and his ilk haven't won. Money still makes our world go 'round, and heals all our wounds.

The destruction of the WTC and 2800 of its inhabitants is unique in the history of American disasters. When large-scale disaster hits the United States, it's the double-wide set who usually feels the effects. Tornadoes rarely sweep through East Hampton, and Oklahoma City isn't exactly the Midwestern SoHo. But now, the victims are primarily middle-class white people who rarely have had to struggle for anything. Tragedy to them was having to attend two years at SUNY Albany before transferring to Cornell, and they don't understand why they should have to change how they operate. It's a strange day in America when Sharifa the Welfare Queen (D-Bronx) and Astrid the Domestic Goddess (R-Hopewell) share the common bond of extending their hands in ancipation of compensation they don't deserve.

Millions of Americans die each year. Drunk drivers kill them. Rampaging, psychotic former co-workers kill them. Cancer kills them. Cancer kills them in droves, but their relatives can't get Diane Sawyer on the phone.

Time doesn't want to do a photo spread of the children born in the months after their daddies died of pancreatic cancer. Mariah Carey isn't singing that a hero lies in them. They don’t have a $250,000 check waiting for them to soothe their pain and suffering. There is no billion-dollar charitable or government fund to turn to when they fall behind on the mortgage. They still have to pay their taxes. Any counseling they receive is paid for by them. They survive on their own -- barely, in some cases -- because they have no other choice.

The 32-year-old, lower middle-class woman who lost her husband in a car accident on September 10 struggles no less than the 40-year-old, upper-class woman who lost her husband to terrorism on September 11. Her pain is the same as she tries to identify the mangled, nearly unrecognizable remains of the man who brought home the bacon and gave her that loving slap on the ass as he walked in the door. Her financial status is downgraded because she too has lost half or even all of the family income. Her children, if she has any, also ask why Daddy didn’t come home.

But touching anecdotes -- "Mommy, does American fly to Heaven or only into buildings?" -- seem to evoke charitable donations only when Daddy had the foresight to be pulverized or incinerated live on national television due to the actions of foreign, non-Christian terrorists. And this prescience gives the family members a free pass to put their greed on display, without fear of harsh public criticism.

Irene Boehm, whose husband died in one of the towers, was worried that the compensation for pain and suffering -- $250,000 -- wouldn't be enough. ``They should have been at my house when they came to tell me they had identified my husband's remains and then they would see that the figures for pain and suffering are ludicrous,'' she said in an interview with the Associated Press. ``No amount of money is ever going to replace him but my children should never have to want for anything.''

Pain and suffering are generally provided to the person who experienced the pain and suffering, and in this case, that would be Mr. Boehm. And Mr. Boehm is dead. Sorry about your loss, Irene, but your emotional pain and suffering are no different than that of anyone who has come home to a blinking answering machine, only to learn that their husband/wife/kid/significant other is lying on a slab at the county morgue due to a drunk driver misjudging his level of impairment. Your husband’s life was not valuable to the country or to anyone outside of his social/familial circle, and to reward you for your loss not only puts a value on human life, it sets a dangerous precedent that encourages people to turn to the government when they experience an emotional loss.

Walter Matuza of Staten Island, was killed in the WTC, leaving his wife to care for three children, ages 10 to 3. His widow, Denise, estimated she'll get $300,000 to $500,000 from the federal fund after her late husband's 401(k) money and life insurance are deducted. "That's really nothing, just three to five years' salary," said Matuza in an AP interview. Ms. Matuza, it’s called a “free ride,” and it’s going to end real soon if we don’t start seeing a little prostrating. Call Dateline NBC, get on your knees in front of the camera, and give a hearty thanks to everyone who has gone above and beyond the norm to support people who are clearly ungrateful for receiving benefits that no one has received in the past. You do not deserve three to five years’ salary, and to say that’s “really nothing” shows your true nature. (Then, you do live on Staten Island, and we know the breed of woman that cesspool produces.)

"When people think we're going to get $1.65 million and we're still complaining, they think we must be greedy," said Steve Push, treasurer of the organization Families of September 11 and widower. "What they don't realize is that many families are going to get much less.”

When people think the families are going to get $1.65 million and they’re still complaining, we think they’re greedy because they are. They do not have a right to charity. They are not entitled to anything more than the life insurance, pension and Social Security benefits that a widow, widower or orphan would receive normally. And when they refuse to display even a hint of gratitude to the millions of Americans who tossed a few pennies in the woe-is-me bucket, they shouldn’t be surprised that their benefactors are wondering why they bothered.

"The typical victim is a widow at home with two young children who's been out of the labor market for five years," Push said. "She's going to be lucky if she has $40,000 a year to spend. Yeah, she could sell the house and move into an apartment. She could put the kids in day care and get a job. Why should she have to do that in order to subsidize the airline industry?"

The airline industry – intolerable though it often is -- is a necessity for the American economy. We can agree that airlines brought many of their problems on themselves due to mismanagement and ignoring their customers’ needs, but if the victims’ families are allowed to sue them into oblivion or irrelevance for actions that not even our intelligence agency could foresee, it will be a more serious blow to our economy than the collapse of the WTC. We need the goddamnmotherfuckingpieceofshitIcantbelievetheplaneisdelayedagain airlines. Your husband or wife’s demise isn’t that important to society. You’ll miss them. I won’t. I will, however, miss reasonable airfare and the convenience of traveling 2000 miles in five hours rather than two days.

The widow with two children is lucky if she has $40,000 a year to spend, and if the figure is that low, one can assume she didn’t know how to play the system for all it’s worth. She’ll have access to a pension, life insurance, Social Security payments, charitable donations, government funds and legislation that erases the federal income tax liability for most families from 2000 and 2001, with a provision that ensures a minimum of $10,000 in tax benefits to each family. Not only that, the new law shields from taxation employers' death benefits, charitable payments to the families and creditors' debt forgiveness. It exempts the first $8.5 million of a victim's assets from the federal estate tax.

According to the Census Bureau, the median household income in the United States is $35,000 – putting the widows slightly above what the average working-class family earns at actual places of employment. Normal people who lose breadwinners scale back on their lifestyles because there are few avenues that allow them to maintain the same standard of living. They sell the Ford Expedition and buy a slightly used Honda Accord. They sell the $250,000 5-bedroom colonial and purchase a $140,000 3-bedroom cape cod. They get jobs, and they put their kids in daycare.

And they do this because the government isn’t fearful that Joan Smith and her cancer-widow cronies will bring a billion-dollar industry to its knee due to their unending greed. Our tax dollars are supporting you, Mr. Push, Ms. Boehm and Ms. Matuza, because the alternative is years of lawsuits and the consequences thereof. The government is giving you this money to spare the rest of us from your protracted whining and foot-stomping, and if the million-dollar payday means I’ll never open the paper again to the tragic tale of a 9/11 widow trying to support her 10 kids on a fireman’s pension, it’s money well spent.

You've become the creepy aunt no one invites to dinner because conversation invariably turns to Daniel, the 7-month-old fetus that was stillborn due to horrific birth defects ... 20 years ago. There comes a point where one has to accept reality and move on. So, open your wallet, shove the million dollars in there and kindly shut the fuck up.

Providing jack-off material for white misogynists since 1997.

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