BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

ADD 2, Sept. 12, early evening — Our first addendum, intended to explain our remarks on 9/11/01, apparently did the trick. No one responded directly to our points made either there or in my answers to reader’s comments. So be it. Let us therefore be brief. First, we stand by our words. Second, the word “victims” is loaded and no longer has its previous usage. Third, more than victims, there is consequence. Cause and effect explains everything if one understands the dynamics and is willing to patiently examine underlying causes. The attacks on that day didn’t come for no reason, and they weren’t perpetrated by aliens from Fronab, that galaxy deep in space. We did it, to ourselves.  That’s the true tragedy of that day, one that few are willing to face. Fourth, the purpose of this website is to stimulate debate. Mission accomplished, to paraphrase a former president. Fifth, someone in the comment section asked if we were open to a debate. We answered yes. Set it up, keep it professional, and we’ll be there against any takers.

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ADD 1, SEPT. 12, 2018 — As I knew the second I hit the button that published yesterday’s column that the result would be insistent nd fierce, and so it was. That’s healthy, and that’s why this site exists: to stimulate, foster, and encourage debate. Though too often the comments section degenerate into a plague of “did to, did not,” occasionally we hit upon true deliberation. That happened today. That’s a good thing.

Please, therefore, permit a follow up. The germ of the column began with the incessant coverage of the hurricane. Relentless coverage of anything, particularly on that overgrown, underdeveloped medium of television, adds up to a kind of insult. Non-stop Florence this and Florence that, practically before the monster was a little more than Poseidon spitting far out in the Atlantic, became what such weather now turns into: A reality show, a made-for-TV soap opera that, to the networks and stations, sells ads and comes down to — surprise — money (another reason why commercial media disappoints us, particularly when we worked in it … here, there are no stupid executives to calm; we deal straight, from the top).

The Florence coverage brought Hurricane Hugo to mind, almost a generation ago. Anyone remember? Hugo was a devastating storm, probably as big or bigger than Florence, and the national coverage was proportionate to its effect. It was a story, but it wasn’t Armageddon plus the Second Coming. Locally, of course, is another matter. If a giant lightning ball were to threaten the existence of Pittsfield, we would expect local media to play it up big. Gosh, local radio might even give it a few minutes. Nationally, though, it warranted a few minutes from Walter Cronkite and then from Bob Gordon, your Channel 10 Atlantic Red Ball Weatherman. You were not pummeled with Hugo.

That was the background to our prefatory comments on Sept. 11, 2001. If you are 20, 21, 25 and under, you don’t remember that bizarre day. Much of that age group comprises a demographic highly sought by that low form of life known as a “TV executive” for ratings. Kids do not go to TV first, we realize, and they primarily get their news (you know, big stories like what’s up with Kayne West) from social media. It all combined to form a toxic media cocktail from which the uninformed could no more get a glimpse into the truth of history than they could attract flies with apple aceto that had gone years before its expiration date.

Let me pause here and allow you to reread the first four paragraphs of my column from yesterday. I’ll give you some time, before I come back and get into the infamous “There were no victims” statement. Traffic on this site has been brisk, traffic-jam proportions. There are those, I’m sure, who will attribute to me that TV motive of ratings. They would be wrong. I didn’t write inflammatory words for ratings. Allow me that much. OK, now, re-read the first four paragraphs, if you please.

Be back later

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(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY SEPT. 12, 2018) — Yesterday was the 17th anniversary of the so-called “terrorist” attacks. THE PLANET was live on the air at the time. No better place to be, but get over it.

Get over it, already. That awful day happened. Move on.

Why commemorate a catastrophic failure? There were no victims, just people who were in the wrong building at the wrong time because bureaucrats who knew the attack was on its way didn’t do a thing about it.  We did it to ourselves. That’s how friggin’ stupid we are as a species. So forget it. Forget all the wars. Forget every son of a bitch who killed or got killed in a battle. There were, there are, no “heroes.” There were or are only the lucky ones who lived to come back. Let there be war. Only don’t commemorate, nd forget the ribbons and medals.

Commemoration exists only for the weak, those who fear the PRESENT MOMENT. Commemoration lives in the dead past. The past is like modeling clay to be molded however one wants. It means nothing. People who live in the past are like mastadonian beasts that, having by good fortune escaped the tarpits, go back for a second look. When they get stuck again and die, they cry “victim.” F*** that. There ARE NO VICTIMS. There is only consequence.

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We know Big Stories.

THE PLANET broke the Son of Sam story in 1977. We directed the coverage that brought down the corrupt Pennsylvanian Congressman Dan Flood and the Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania, ignoring lying power company PR people who told us “Everything was under control.” We told a mob boss in the Poconos to perform an anatomical impossibility on himself and lived to write about it.

THE PLANET knows big stories. So let us tell you …

… THE FRICKIN’ WEATHER IS NOT A BIG STORY! Got that?

In the old days, we had hurricanes the size of a Texas Cadillac. They wiped out half the state of Louisiana, and guess what? The collective IQ of America shot up by 50 points — what we call a silver lining. Now, we got Hurricane Florence “bearing down” on the southern east coast. On Tuesday, South Carolina closed all its schools and ordered an evacuation, taking it out of the realm of free choice. What have we become, ladies and gentlemen? If you don’t want to come under direct threat of a hurricane, then don’t live in the coast. Move to Utah.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster told the press, “We don’t want to risk one South Carolinian’s life. We are not going to gamble on the lives of the South Carolina people.”

Why not? Risk it. Gamble away. Roll them bones. We love the odds. If they’re too stupid to get out of the way of 140 mph winds, let ’em have fun dodging flying trucks and refrigerators. The more the merrier. Pile ’em up like firewood. Throw in a locked-and-loaded mass murderer for good measure. And take Emeril Lagasse with you. … oh wait, he’s from Nawleans.

This is the South. They brush their tooth. They lost the Civil War and … were surprised. That’s the South for ya. We’re not saying they’re dumb, mind you, but when  Syracuse visited Clemson a couple years ago in football, the home fans did the wave. Fifteen kids in the student section drowned. We play them again on the road (Sept. 29). All fans will be required to wear life vests. They’re actually proud down there of the retard, Forrest Gump. In the South, fried butter dipped in lard is considered vegan. God help us.

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Look, it’s weather, whether or not. Weather is not a Big Story. Weather is weather. It’s a canary in a car wash. In the Northeast, we’ll all be driven crazy by the winter weather reports. The “meteorologists” will act like Mitch Miller conducting the Gang, loving every second of stardom. A four-inch snowfall will be a call to Joan of Arc, and JIV will get his kicks yankin’ it while announcing the shutdown of schools. Hey, this is Massachusetts, where a LBTGQA?LMNOP (fe)male married a frog dressed in Latex in a ceremony presided over by a consenting coat rack with pierced nipples. This is Pittsfield, where Carmen Massimiano invented the donut hole and Angel-o Stracuzzi bobbed for chestnuts. This is Pittsfield, where every druggie, welfare cheat, and scum is rewarded with an EBT card and every decent, honest, taxpaying citizen eats Shinola.

A hurricane’s a comin’, you say? Let ’em all drown.

Florence, do your thing, baby!

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“I play with convicts. Don’t number many. Soldiers of fortune, they don’t earn a penny” – Nils Lofgrin, from his song “Code of the Road.”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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