{"id":392,"date":"2005-06-13T17:57:58","date_gmt":"2005-06-13T21:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=392"},"modified":"2005-06-13T16:05:58","modified_gmt":"2005-06-13T20:05:58","slug":"turning-tragedy-into-excess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=392","title":{"rendered":"Turning tragedy into excess…"},"content":{"rendered":"

The September 11 tragedy left a particularly bitter taste in my mouth. Part of it was of course, the obvious reasons: naturally you get a bit angry when a hostile party threatens your way of life, kills thousands, and justifies it in the name of a god, any god. But a good portion of that bitterness became more and more sizeable when I saw what an incredible sense of entitlement and of greed began to engulf the victims of this tragedy, as the the September 11 victim conpensation fund<\/a> geared up to pay out benefits to victims and their family members.<\/p>\n

At first, as I saw what was going on, I wanted so bad to speak out against the greedier folks trying to collect<\/a>, but doing so would easily brand you as unpatriotic fool (amazing how we use patriotism so much these days to silence the voices of reason). But now that we’re starting to see the outright excesses of some of these folks, and their resulting downfalls, I feel I just have to say my peace.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The whole point of the fund, mind you, was to compensate victims for their loss without totally bankrupting the airlines and other entities that might be found liable other than the terrorists (which aren’t exactly easy to collect from these days). This is because we live in a very litigious society; and people feel that if they’ve been wronged, someone<\/strong><\/em> owes them money for it. So, a little devil’s deal of sorts had to be made if you wanted money from the compensation fund: if you claim with the fund, you can’t sue the airlines or anyone else over the tragedy to obtain more damages. You would just take your compensation award from the fund (usually upwards of $1 million; sometimes in the tens of millions of dollars if the damages could be proven and justified) and be on your way.<\/p>\n

Well, that was the first big controversy. You see, quite a few of the potential applicants wanted to have their fingers in as many pies as possible<\/a>, and felt that people SHOULD<\/strong><\/em> be allowed to claim and<\/strong> sue. Still others felt that $1 to 3 million in compensation wasn’t enough; their pain was worth far more than the others, and they should get special<\/em> consideration, to the tune of $10 million, $20 million, $100 million. Yes, apparently victims have a class structure, too. And when the greedier parties didn’t get the amounts they wanted, they waged negative PR campaigns against the fund. They called Ken Feinberg<\/a> a heartless bastard, because we all know that if you don’t want to give someone more money than they’re entitled to (and even such entitlements are relative), you’re a heartless bastard, right?<\/p>\n

Well, now one of the misers is in the news, for her excess, her downfall and her shame<\/a>:<\/p>\n

With a seemingly bottomless bank account, she threw herself into expanding and renovating her 1,800-square-foot Northport, L.I., home, a project she and Dan, her “soul mate” of 15 years, had discussed doing together.<\/p>\n

She didn’t stop until she nearly tripled the square footage, and spared no expense in decorating and furnishing her dream house.<\/p>\n

“That’s what kept me alive,” she said. “Staying up late ordering chandeliers from catalogs.”<\/p>\n

She spent $350,000 installing a full basketball court, also equipped for volleyball, tennis and Rollerblading, and a heated pool and hot tub in the back yard.<\/p>\n

The kitchen has white marble countertops lined with gleaming appliances she rarely uses. The floors are rich Brazilian walnut.<\/p>\n

A red-white-and-blue den, which includes a shrine of Dan’s mementos, features four Peter Max paintings of the Statue of Liberty, which ran her $15,000. There are seven flat-screen TVs around the house. In the finished basement stands a $20,000 cherry-wood pool table.<\/p>\n

The walls are decorated with sports memorabilia, including a Boston Celtics ball autographed by players on the team that once drafted her husband, who played professionally in Ireland.<\/p>\n

In her master bedroom, she added a glass-enclosed fireplace that also serves the bathroom, with its claw-foot tub.<\/p>\n

With the house makeover done, she really started to splurge.<\/p>\n

Opening her walk-in closet, Trant said, “This is my addiction.”<\/p>\n

A floor-to-ceiling shoe rack is filled with $400 to $1,200 pairs: Prada, Marc Jacobs, Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Emilio Pucci, Vera Wang. Handbags include Fendi and Judith Leiber, designs priced at $5,000 each. The gowns have labels like Versace, Christian Dior and Roberto Cavalli – each costing her thousands.<\/p>\n

“It’s disgusting. I’m ashamed of it,” she said, adding she hopes that telling her story will help others with the same problem. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I agree! It IS disgusting. And, I have no sympathy for you, whatsoever. The first thing everyone says in cases like this is “Money can’t bring x person back, but…” and then they go on to find some pathetic justification for their attempt at collecting an egregious amount of money. Now, this person’s spent her heart out, and her soul is still empty. I’m surprised she’s not trying to sue someone for that emptiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 9\/11 victim’s compensation fund, turned in a greedy free-for-all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sociopolitical-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}