We have a new winner for the dubious honor of most cynical exploitation of 9-11: Newsday columnist Ellis Henican has it right when he writes that New York development mogul Donald Trump "towers in tackiness." He used the final episode of his sick reality-TV series "The Apprentice" to show off his model of a rebuilt Twin Towers (identical to the original but for armor plating) and assail the "Freedom Tower" now planned for Ground Zero as "the worst pile-of-crap architecture I've ever seen in my life." Now, we agree the proposed Freedom Tower is indeed hideous--but no more so than the unimaginitive dual monster-blocks the Rockefellers built and Trump would rebuild. And this criticism can only be considered pathetic coming from the man who has (as Henican puts it) "littered the skyline with his garish Trump Tower, Trump Place, Trump World Tower, Trump International Hotel and Trump-Almost-Everything-Else-He-Can-Think-to-Slap-His-Name-On."

While Trump denies he would similarly name the rebuilt towers after his pompous self, he has clearly appropriated the controversy over Ground Zero's future as a vehicle for his own towering Edifice Complex. He seems to object most strongly to the Freedom Tower's lattice-like upper third as unmanly. "If we rebuild the World Trade Center in the form of a skeleton," he actually had the chutzpah to intone, "the terrorists win."

So this self-aggrandizing jerk wins the WW4 Report award for most cynical exploitation of the 9-11 disaster--an honor perviously held by one-time New York gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Cuomo. (George Bush is too obvious, and his exploitation is so hubristic as to be in a class by itself.)

See our last blog post on the ongoing debacle over Ground Zero redevelopment.