Good.
A Vampire sucking off the last dregs of 9-11 inspired reflexive patriotic consumptive idiocy.  So the people who rushed right out to buy 'never forget' star spangled 9-11 T-shirts and flags for their car antennas and support the troops ribbon magnets and any of the endlessly nauseating commodified public piety crap might have a few bucks left to send to Avram Freedberg'?  Good - let them send him the cash if they want - anyone that stupid deserves to be bled for a few bucks.

Who gives a damn if Freedberg is a total sleaze and this sliver coated Liberean funny money bullshit isn't worth more than 31 cents?  

"the Franklin Mint specialized in shilling collectible Marilyn Monroe and Elvis dolls and ornately chintzy and overpriced chess sets, NCM seems to be going for the jugular in America by selling patriotism and nationalism by the pound."

What has NCM done that our own ruling class hasn't done with more style and greater impact since 9-11?

Exploiting patriotism has enabled a bunch of venal greedy mass murdering economic smash and grab assholes to make a huge mess of things while true believers in the church of 'America' sat around with lumps in their throat watching 'tasteful' propaganda & spectacle lionizing firefighters, policemen, and George W. Bush.  The patriotism of the American people was played like a banjo while the GOP and roll over blue dog Dem traitors robbed the future of America blind, drove the economy off a cliff, killed a shitload of patriots and crippled many more, raped the constitution, and told us all to basically get fucked and stop whining.

I get a little chuckle at how you want to point a finger at Avram Freedberg and say 'Hey everybody, THIS is outrageous!'.  

How is this any more offensive than anything else you'd find in the flood of offensive things we've been subjected to since 9-11?

"...when theft and high crime becomes obscenely obvious to even the blindest beer sucking idiot, it is always the Republicans who are in office." -- Joe Bageant

Well, all I can say is that the 24K gold-plated Star Trek plates I got from NCM are fabulous.

Yeah, the magnetic ribbons are tacky, as well as every other tchotchke dreamed up to commemorate September 11th, but this one...why am I so angry about this one?  What is it that is making me as mad as you, MB, when a racist revenge-fantasy t-shirt just makes me look twice?

• Maybe it's because of the shoddy artwork.  That doesn't look like the Twin Towers.  That doesn't look like New York at all.  If you showed me just the city panorama without all the trimmings, I would have thought "Hmm, looks like Kansas City has put up a couple of new buildings."

• And that brainwave about adding 9 and 11 to get 20, for 20 bucks.  Yeah, that's real clever.  You know, I always hated saying "9/11" to refer to the terrorist attack.  It's not a movie, it's not a convenience store, it's not a football play.  And the words "September Eleventh", when spoken, just sound very somber and serious.  If this thing happened on, say, March 6th, that's just weird to pronounce and hear.

• Plus, it's still like a little punch in the stomach to see towers standing up without any warning or context.  That spoiled Winged Migration for me when I saw it in 2003:  Go expecting a cool movie about birds, and halfway through you get one of the shots from the late 90s where the filmmakers caught a V-Formation with Manhattan in the background, and there they are, standing just like nothing ever happened.

• But I think the biggest reason is that there's some asshole up there doing the voiceover who's telling me that I need to get this piece of crap if I want to properly remember September 11th, 2001.  Say what you will about the magnets and the shirts, but I never encountered any advertisements for the stuff unless I looked for it.  Those milsurp shops and convenience stores knew that their target base would seek them out, and all they had to do was put up a little display next to the cash register, no creepy guilt trip needed.  These guys interrupted a completely unrelated Olympic qualifying meet to shove a piece of silver foil in my face and urge me to think about the terror attacks, for what seemed like 90 freaking seconds of airtime.

So sure National Collector's Mint, I'll give you $20, but forget the S&H.  I'll just cash it in for quarters, and show up at your office with your payment sitting in my sock, direct to whoever thought this up.

(is 3fingerspointback)

" Good - let them send him the cash if they want - anyone that stupid deserves to be bled for a few bucks."

Well, as P. T. Barnum may or may not have said "There's a sucker born every minute".  Whomever it's attributable to is of no relevance, it's true.  Goes along with "If it sounds too good to be true, that's probably right".  I've never understood why anyone would buy anything from the Franklin Mint, but this one sounds even worse.  Latching onto 9/11 just plain makes it despicable.

there's only one way to find out...

I don't usually allow my bile to flow over TV commercials.

Boy, I do.  When I'm trying to watch Jeopardy and one of my kids asks what's ED?  or What's Herpes?

Ugh.

By the time my daughter got her period, tv had already taught her women are supposed to feel like shit all month.

Now some jackass wants to profit from 911?

I missed it.  

3 letters  DVR  I fast forward through commercials and never watch anything live.  I have no time.  The only time I watch commercials is if something looks interesting and I back it up when the kids are asleep, or it's the superbowl, which we actually record just for the commercials.  We don't watch football at our house.  

Technology.  Look into it. ;)

"It was an ancient rule of Hawaiians that no one should hurt another bodily, or through theft of goods or through injury to feelings.These were the only sins."