I’ve been to a whole bunch of memorials. And for the most part, the people who go to them treat them more or less with the respect and dignity they deserve. The Wall in D.C., for instance, is a place where if you joke around, you will quickly find yourself at the center of attention of a great many people you don’t WANT paying attention to you (bikers *REALLY* don’t seem to brook a whole lot of screwin’ around at the Wall).

But then there’s the NYC 9/11 Memorial:

Tourists treating 9/11 Memorial like a playground

Presumably a number of these ill-behaved tourists are out of towners. But that applies at a *lot* of such memorials and such around the world, where the out of towners behave with some decorum. So what’s different here? It’s not that 9/11 has faded from memory. The 9/11 memorial is, from what I’ve seen, spectacularly uninspired, but that hardly would seem to make people turn it into a dump. Perhaps the density of visitors is too high? If there were half as many visitors they’d be better behaved; but as always seems to be the case, when you have too many people packed in too tight, behavior tends to turn to crap. Sort of a tragedy of the commons thing.

As Agent K pointed out: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”