
Who Was the Falling Man from 9/11? (2016) - gmays
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a48031/the-falling-man-tom-junod/
======
gambiting
I'm always surprised that people chose to chastise and berate someone for
trying to find facts and truth. The article talks about how trying to simply
find out how many people jumped from the towers is met with disgust and
condemnation, both in-person and online - with webpages dedicated to baiting
people searching for it on google, and offering an offensive statement telling
those people to get lost and that they should be ashamed of themselves for
looking.

I don't know, maybe something in my brain doesn't work quite right, but I
never understood it - knowledge is knowledge. When we search for something,
the desire to find the answer should never be shamed, even if the answer is
shameful in itself.

~~~
jdm2212
The disgusting part isn't wanting to know who he is. It's tracking down the
family, and when they refuse to talk, crashing the dead man's funeral to show
his widow and daughters the picture of him moments before his death.

> All that remained was for Peter Cheney to confirm the identification with
> Norberto's wife and his three daughters. They did not want to talk to him,
> especially after Norberto's remains were found and identified by the stamp
> of his DNA—a torso, an arm. So he went to the funeral. He brought his print
> of Drew's photograph with him and showed it to Jacqueline Hernandez, the
> oldest of Norberto's three daughters. She looked briefly at the picture,
> then at Cheney, and ordered him to leave.

~~~
leetcrew
yeah, there's nothing inherently wrong about trying to figure out some fact.
the problem arises in how you go about doing it. once you start asking
questions that bring up painful memories, you have to consider whether the
fact finding is actually worth bringing up all that pain. seems like this
particular fact wasn't really worth it.

related but different: something can be an ironclad matter of fact and at the
same time be entirely inappropriate to mention, depending on the venue.

------
Uehreka
I read this article when it first came out four years ago. I’m not generally
someone who needs/heeds trigger warnings (though I’m cool with having them for
people who do) but this is probably one of the few pieces of journalism I’ve
read that really viscerally fucked me up. I think it’s the way the first few
paragraphs vacuum away the politics and history and just isolate these moments
of true existential horror, then make you imagine them over and over again
from different angles... Yeah, it’s a lot.

I definitely recommend people read it. Read it because thinking about death is
important. Read it because the questions about history and how we document it
are important. Read it because it’s just damn good writing. But read it on a
sunny afternoon with plans to do something fun later, because the headspace it
puts you into isn’t somewhere you may want to stay too long. Your mileage may
vary.

~~~
JKCalhoun
Honestly, for me it's been enough years that reading the article did not have
the effect on me it might have had years ago.

------
RandomBacon
Unless there is some deep insight in the article, I feel like the person's
identity is not something we need to know.

It was a terrible situation. What benefit comes from knowing? Are we supposed
to judge that person for not wanting to suffer slowly instead of taking a
faster route? Or are we supposed to commend his bravery or sacrifice?

~~~
srean
> Are we supposed to judge that person for not wanting to suffer slowly
> instead of taking a faster route?

Speak for yourself there.

As for me, identity makes him a person, a possessor of human qualities,
something more than an increment operation on a counter.

~~~
kryogen1c
> Speak for yourself there.

What do you mean by this? OP's implication seems reasonably obvious. Are you
saying it made more sense not to jump?

~~~
srean
That the call to be judgmental is OP's personal construction that he/she is
trying to ascribe to others who likely do not share that trait.

------
User23
I don't mean this to be insensitive, but when I first saw that image I was
struck by the resemblance to the Tarot card The Hanged Man.

------
JKCalhoun
American — unaware there were so many photos, so much footage of falling
people from September 11, 2001.

