Buzz Bissinger: Bissinger: Where is the silence of tribute?

THIRTY SECONDS ago I opened an email. It was from HBO reminding me to watch "Beyond 9/11: Portraits of Resilience" this Sunday.

I won't.

I am sure that the marketing boys and girls at the cable network are still high-elbowing each other over the cleverness of starting the show at 8:46 a.m., the moment when American Airlines Flight 11 exploded into the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

The time isn't clever. It is commercial whorishness trading on the 2,753 who burned to death or suffocated trying to save someone else or jumped out of windows in helplessness. I won't be watching because one of the people featured is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. There is an untold story on Giuliani, how he became a war profiteer off 9/11 with $100,000-a-pop speeches on security measures and damage control. It was blood money, and maybe he gave it all to charity, but I doubt it.

I don't care what any member of the media or the Internet has to say on the subject of 9/11, which means that you and I are trying to shut out hundreds of meaningless stories and television specials and reports on NPR (whose coverage has been by far the worst).

There is nothing new. I don't care about the impact of 9/11 on security measures at suburban malls. I don't care about the impact of 9/11 on cargo ships. I don't care about two bloviates talking on "Radio Times" about changes in the treatment of trauma in the post-9/11 age. I don't care about the pundits and the radioheads engorging their thumbs with rapacious sucking.

I actually would be interested in hearing what some of the 25 percent who live in poverty in Philadelphia have to say. My guess is, they would say that 9/11 didn't change the wretchedness of their lives one damn inch.

The media - including the Daily News and the Inquirer - cannot resist the anniversary syndrome. Tenth-year anniversaries are the most irresistible of all, particularly when it involves an apocalyptic event. We all remember 9/11. We don't need to be told what it means. If the media have done anything, they have managed to turn the phrase "the loss of loved ones" into a benign cliché because of endless invocation. We don't need reporters groping around like headless chickens trying to find originality in the absence of any. All it does is further trivialize what happened. It only makes us numb and, yes, even bored.

My son went to a Quaker school in Philadelphia. Every Friday there was meeting for worship. The best part was the moment of silence that could last for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, until someone rose with something to share. There was beauty in that silence. It did take you to your core.

But the silence of tribute, the best form of tribute, has been lost in the incessant blather of today's society. A tree falls in the forest and a thousand talking radio goons seize on whether or not Obama is responsible.

There could have been a push for a national 5-minute moment of silence to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Millions would have participated; their private thoughts would have been more meaningful than any of the tsunami of swill until, of course, the microphones came out and people were asked what they were thinking about.

I know I am stupid to even suggest a national moment of silence. Too much bother. The dime-novel emotional assault by the media will continue. Until, on the mercy of Sept. 12, when the media will immediately turn to some other perceived catastrophe that will resonate for at least a week before turning to something else.

9/11? What 9/11?

Been there, exhausted that. Sorry, dear public, for all the overkill junk. That's our job now. More isn't ever better but it's always more. And just wait until the 20th anniversary. Even better, the 25th.