Isn’t it ghastly? Will we be accused us of capitalizing on the nation’s grief? Is it still too soon?

Those were just some of the questions we faced when deciding whether to replay NBC’s 9/11 coverage when I was General Manager of MSNBC back in 2006. As I watched MSNBC air that coverage for a sixth year today, many of those same questions remain.

On Fox News Sunday today, host Chris Wallace brought up the subject of the 9/11 First Responders bill, which would provide healthcare coverage to those who were first responders at the scene on 9/11. Senator Jon Kyl told Wallace “It’s a lot of money, so my early response is that I am skeptical about that bill.”

Today Glenn Beck unveiled his vision for Ground Zero. If Beck were in charge One World Trade Center would take the form of two towers, each twenty-five stories taller than the original with a “big fat ‘come and try that again’ sign on top of them.” Also, they would have been completed years ago — using the “bare hands” of Beck and his viewers — and would “be built in a way that they would have resisted attack.” There’s more.

For a variety of reasons, 9/11 is usually a TV-free day for me, with the exception of the observance of the moment of silence. As such, I had no idea that MSNBC had been doing this for the last four years, and that the decision to do so sprang from Mediaite creator Dan Abrams:

Eight years ago Philip Bump was living in California and woke up to the already-burning Twin Towers – a moment that would have seemed dream-like had it not been instantaneously jarring.

Like a growing number of others in a time obsessively concerned with the “digital divide”, he went to his desktop computer to get more information. Unlike many others, though, he took screen grabs of the sites as he visited them.

9/11 is a date that has come to represent a lot of complicated ideas. Memories of the attack come with a real sense of unity and global support that immediately followed. Suddenly it became a political football, used to exemplify a lack of patriotism (or a pre-existing bias). But judging by the coverage in today’s Newspapers, we seem to have moved on, or have at least started the process…

The front page and accompanying photo of today’s New York Times is about how the New Yorkers feared after 9/11 has not come to pass. Eight years on every one who lives here is well aware this is not the case! But does anything demonstrate the emotional recovery of the city better than today’s New York Post cover?