To The Editor:
I found the timing and content of Emily Dalton Smith's "As American As a One-Day Sale" (Monday, March 11) to be both inappropriate and distasteful. While I respect her right to voice her opinion, I think it was a complete lapse of judgment to print such a piece, especially on the six-month anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Smith trivializes the attacks in the first paragraph of her piece: " . they should have crashed into the Mall of America." We should not forget that when those planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania, thousands of innocent civilians - men, women and children alike - were burned and crushed to death in an episode that would forever change individuals, families, America and the world.
Any reader can clearly see the point of Smith's article, and I think the same point could have been conveyed without the use of the current world situation as a metaphor. Although humor is a good tool for dealing with tragedy, making light of such a situation at such a time seems misguided to me.
Smith's points on commercialization and conformity in society today are certainly valid, but I think she should talk to families of victims or survivors of the attacks before suggesting that the terrorists did not "hit us where it hurts."
