Nixon In China, Putin In Bayonne

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in town for that big UN shindig, took time out to attend the groundbreaking for another big Sept. 11 memorial. This one, in Bayonne, NJ, features a 100-foot-tall bronze slab with a dripping teardrop in the middle.

Once championed by Jersey City, the controversial project was abandoned by the municipality after its main booster died in office.

One thing is for sure — Russians love, love, love stuff that more than a little resembles female genitalia:

“This monument will always give vivid embodiment to our unity,” Mr. Putin said through an interpreter. “Certainly, this is going to be a splendid memorial.”

How splendid remains a matter of debate.

Zurab Tsereteli, 71, the artist who designed the memorial, a massive 106-foot bronze-plated slab featuring a cracked fissure and a 40-foot tall nickel teardrop, called it “To the Struggle Against World Terrorism,” and intended it as a gift to the United States.

His earlier works of art, though, have often been met with scorn in Russia. An architecture critic there once derided Mr. Tsereteli as a “genius of kitsch.”

His 150-foot statue depicting Peter the Great at the helm of a ship was removed from St. Petersburg following protests.

His 9/11 memorial will circulate cooled water that will condense and then drip, as if the tear itself is weeping. The names of everyone killed in the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11 will be inscribed at the base, along with the names of those who died in the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Officials said they planned to dedicate it next Sept. 11.