Remembrance can be a fickle thing. It is, all at once, simple and complex. Two days ago the country was granted first hand insight into the murkiness which is memory, both personal and collective.

Tuesday marked five years since the darkest day in recent American history.

The date remains inexorable, from our past to our future. There won’t be any way around this truth, nor am I suggesting that there should be. It would be foolish of me to preach about the dangers of dwelling on the past and forgetting to live in the present. Such aphorisms are made for seventh grade classroom wall posters, not for the opinion page. I know the value of catharsis.

But there are standards of decency which catharsis has blurred this week. Neat little PowerPoint presentations courtesy of CNN are not decent. Video footage surely already seared into the minds of this country’s citizens being played and replayed on a 24-hour loop is not decent.

Remembrance should be, as it was in many places, a private affair. While something can be said for the power of company, watching “memorial” news broadcasts all day does not count. Memoriam is not manifested in sitting in front of your computer with MSNBC on mute behind you.

Taste is a word that comes to mind. And as far as the media is concerned, last Tuesday leaves something to be desired.

Mourning, for those who called it that, is a meditation. It is not a TV special. But ABC didn’t agree. They didn’t think the average prayer vigil or local address encompassed the magnitude of the event at hand. So they brought us a dramatic interpretation of events which need not be dramatized.

I would have added that this was needless to say, but apparently, the concept begs some speech.

The blame game has been swirling of late. Pundits empty phrases like “war-profiteering” into the political ether between their cries of conspiracy, but the issue here is much sadder than anything any government cover-up has to offer.

What is at root here is simple misjudgment. What is at stake is greater.

The notion that solace can be found through misbegotten television specials and Hollywood adaptations is as unfortunate as it is absurd. Nothing new was found on Tuesday; just the same unanswered questions. We rehashed fear and unguided anger and let Hollywood package it up pretty-like.

Are these things necessary? Perhaps we, as a civilization, have not advanced as far as we tell ourselves we have when we go to sleep at night. Perhaps some of us do need to rehash pain, pixilate it and watch it streaming online. Perhaps the only method of healing is to take fear, make it into a slideshow and put it to music.

Sept. 11 is something that happened. It is something that will happen every year for as long as memory allows it. The question is: How do we shape this memory, and how will we allow this memory to shape us?