In Memoriam: Pop culture that helped us mourn 9/11/01

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Entertainment Weekly: In Memoriam
From ''The Rising'' to ''Rescue Me'' to ''United 93,'' here are the movies, songs, and pop-culture events that helped us mourn the 2001 terror attacks
by Gary Susman

....''Holy F---ing S---: Attack on America,'' The Onion.com (2001) The editors of the satirical newspaper The Onion had a post-9/11 challenge when they created one of the first responses to the event — how, after all, do you crack jokes about a tragedy? But on Sept. 26, the Onion.com produced a whole issue that managed to strike just the right tone. Among the headlines: ''U.S. Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is We're at War With,'' ''Hijackers Surprised to Find Selves in Hell,'' and ''God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule.'' They even took aim at their own sensibility in an article headlined ''Gen-X Irony, Cynicism May Be Permanently Obsolete.'' ''This earnestness can't last forever,'' a fictional source noted in that story. And, for better or worse, it didn't.

The Concert for New York City (2001) As big, noisy, and messy as the great city it celebrated, the Oct. 20, 2001, VH1-aired charity show was an exuberant Irish wake. Kevin Smith offered a hilarious short film in which New Jerseyans expressed their profane regrets for the tragedy. The Who played a monstrously loud, life-affirming set (their last performance with the late John Entwistle) that led the grieving cops and firefighters to pump their fists in the air. Long Islander Billy Joel — playing with a fallen firefigher's helmet on his piano — got tears flowing with deeply felt versions of ''New York State of Mind'' and the suddenly topical ''Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway).'' And then, of course, there was the firefighter who got onstage and invited Osama bin Laden to kiss his ''royal Irish ass.''

''Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning,'' Alan Jackson (2001) Yes, the line about not knowing the difference between Iraq and Iran is embarrassingly insensitive. But other than that lapse, Jackson's country hit illustrates how 9/11 affected Americans everywhere, turning Middle Americans and Southerners into New Yorkers for a while: ''Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day?/ Teaching a class full of innocent children? Driving down some cold interstate?'' Jackson sings over a gentle, rootsy backing band, complete with weeping steel guitars.

The Rising, Bruce Springsteen (2002) The men and women who died in the World Trade Center were husbands and wives, sons and daughters — and quite a few of them were also Springsteen fans, as we learned in The New York Times' ''Portraits of Grief'' series. The Boss took note, and responded in summer 2002 with the 9/11-themed The Rising, his strongest album in years. The simple, mournful ballad ''You're Missing'' is sung from the perspective of a spouse who's lost a loved one: ''The evening falls/ I have too much room in my bed/ Too many phone calls.'' And the bluesy ''Into the Fire'' marshals the power of the E Street Band behind a firefighter's tale: ''Love and duty called you someplace higher/ Somewhere up the stairs, into the fire.''...

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