Tabloid Formula: Gin Up Controversy, Follow Up Day Two, Pile On Day Three

Because of course if you don’t build 80-story towers there then the terrorists will have won. I mean, everyone thinks so:

The last thing Ground Zero needs is a sorry-looking pair of stumpy low-slung buildings where chi-chi retail chains would peddle jewels, jeans and lingerie to tourists.

That was the emotionally charged verdict of 9/11 families Friday on a Port Authority plan to erect temporary stump-like structures in place of two of the towers long planned for the World Trade Center site.

“It’s a national embarrassment,” said Rosaleen Tallon, a biology teacher whose brother Sean, a 26-year-old probationary firefighter, died in the collapse of the north tower. “Rebuilding towers at the site was supposed to make a powerful statement of our grand resolve. Building chintzy, second-rate placeholders to sell retail goods makes a very different kind of statement.”