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The Freedom Tower gets a new name
No more Freedom Tower. The tower being built atop Ground Zero to replace the Twin Towers which fell in the devastating terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, will now be known as One World Trade Center.
Steve Sigmund, the spokesperson for the Port Authority (who owns the site), says the name is more marketable. One World Trade Center is the address of the future building.
To be fair, "Freedom Tower," does sound a little bit like it came out of a comic book, and it reminds us of that whole "Freedom Fries" debacle which was so generally embarrassing.
One World Trade Center. Personally, I want to open a burger shack nearby and name it Another World Trade Center.
Gallery: One World Trade Center
Filed under: United States, News
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nailbunny Mar 27th 2009 9:44AM
I personnally see this as a great improvement, the name suggests a sort of unity that could be read by some as ideology conducive to what the Freedom tower name was meant to represent, but it sounds like the name could also be construed as utilitarian if one chooses, which is closer to the real purpose of the structure in the first place.
C. Muehlhof Mar 29th 2009 5:27AM
Personally, I see it as just another concession to the Chinese. Freedom Tower would hardly be acceptable to their latest acquisition. I wonder if there's anything else in America that we can sell to the Chinese?
Travis Mar 27th 2009 11:01AM
Personally, I think it's a terrible name change. Sure, the words World Trade Center when taken abstractly could have the ring of global unity. But we've had a World Trade Center before, and to me it rings of nothing but business and economics, and all of the mind-numbing paper pushing, statistics, business suits and business meetings that go along with it.
Now, Freedom Tower, on the other hand, stands for something. It says, we're not a country whose core principle is making money (i.e. Trade, i.e. capitalism, i.e. all the things that half the world hates us for to begin with, calling us the Great Capitalist Satan or whatever), but we're a country founded on Freedom, which makes you, the people who attacked us on 9-11-01, against freedom, i.e. the bad guys.
It would have sent an even stronger message had we finished it, I dunno, 5+ years ago. A message that we are strong enough as a nation to be able to rebuild that quickly, to recover that quickly, from even this, the most destructive terrorist attack ever on US soil. In short, that you can't hurt us, you can't stop us. Freedom (not trade, not business, not business-as-usual everyday Wall Street corporate blah blah blah, but the actual high ideals that our country was founded upon) will win the day.
davidw Mar 27th 2009 2:27PM
i dig it.. whereas the 'freedom tower' name can easily be interpreted to be a finger in the air to anyone who would dare stand opposed to some american ideal, the 'one world trade center' carries a great deal less useless ideological opposition. now, if only american foreign policy would speak similarly.
Alex Mar 27th 2009 4:12PM
I'd love another name change, sooner than later;
"Truth Tower"
for when the People of this country finally find out what really happened on 9/11 Hint: Bin Laden hasn't been charged with anything to do with 9/11. If you don't believe me - check out the FBI wanted poster for him. Can you find anything on there about 9/11?. http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm There are a thousand other reasons to question the "official" conspiracy theory.
Hugh G. Reckshun Mar 27th 2009 8:26PM
"Steve Sigmund, the spokesperson for the Port Authority (who owns the site), says the name is more marketable."
~~~~~~~~~~~~
And of course, what is "marketable", and what isn't, supercedes all other considerations.
It's pretty obvious we've fully recovered from the trauma of 9-11. In New York and the rest of the USA, it's business as usual -- and that means lots and lots of marketing.
Maybe this brings to light one of the things al qaeda was questioning -- what are our values, other than the pursuit of dollars, marketability and profits?