The new 9/11 Museum at the former site of the World Trade Center might be New York City’s hottest tourist attraction right now, and both the museum and its gift shop of items in questionable taste have been in the news lately. Here’s the latest head-scratcher featured online: a map-shaped cheese plate marked with terrorist attack sites.
No, we are not kidding. Yes, someone thought that this would be a good idea, and someone designed and manufactures it.
A cheese plate shaped like a map of the continental United States would be unusual and unwieldy, but kind of patriotic. Maybe it would work for a highbrow Independence Day celebration. It’s the three dots on the map signifying Arlington, VA, Shanksville, PA, and New York City that make the plate unappetizing.
Gift shops are a big revenue center for museums; no one disputes that. Most of the items in the museum are at least on theme and not completely crass. Still, some victims’ families find the entire commercial enterprise distasteful. Is it in poor taste to sell beautiful photos of the Twin Towers when they stood? What about stuffed search and rescue doggies?
“It’s hard to corporatize something that is essentially a cemetery,” one Manhattan resident who was a preteen at the time of the attack told the New York Post.
This 9/11 Cheese Plate May Be The 9/11 Museum’s Most Tasteless Souvenir [Gothamist]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
