With the second anniversary of 9/11 almost upon us, we're about to be inundated again by television documentaries on the World Trade Center, the attacks on it and the Pentagon, and even by a fictionalized replay of those events — although public officials and the news media have made less extensive plans to mark the anniversary than last year.

I may be no one to talk, having done my share of 9/11 stories: A deadline report on the day of the attacks, another on the day after, a week later when the New York Stock Exchange reopened, and yet again on the first anniversary of 9/11. But here's the TV deluge anyway:

+ Sunday night's "Rebuilding Ground Zero: Engineering the Future," "Collapse: How the Towers Fell" and "Attack on the Pentagon," all on the Discovery channel, and the Showtime movie "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis" (starring Timothy Bottoms in a heroized portrait of Gee Dubya Shrub managing events);

+ Monday night's Ric Burns documentary, "The Center of the World," on PBS (with original music that sounds like a Phillip Glass rip-off);

+ Tuesday night's "Surviving September 11th: The Story of One New York Family";

+ two syndicated documentaries broadcast throughout the week, "9/11: Clear the Skies" and "9/11: A Tale of Two Towers"; plus several on the History Channel, including "The World Trade Center: Rise and Fall of an American Icon";

+ and on Thursday, the second anniversary itself, two documentaries: "In Memoriam: New York City, 9/11/01," on HBO, and Frontline's "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" on PBS.

Amid all this, perhaps we should keep in mind Jimmy Breslin's single-minded, little-publicized columns about not making martyrs of those who died at Ground Zero. Breslin argues against memorializing their deaths more than we do others who have died under ordinary circumstances. He wrote on Friday in Newsday:

[N]obody ... has exclusive ownership for memorials and the like. Since the attack, some 140,000 New Yorkers have died. ... It happened to be pretty tragic for their loved ones, too. If we have a memorial for some people, then we should have one for all.

Breslin, ever the contrarian, has been arguing for a long time against turning Ground Zero into a glorified cemetery. It's not a popular position to take. Neither is his position on future skyscrapers at Ground Zero. He sees no virtue in them because he believes they'll be flattened again. He thinks their reconstruction is a symbol of overweaning pride. Breslin has always been wary of hubris. It's one of the lessons of his streetwise education — and he keeps reminding us that it's a lesson worth remembering, especially for those in power far above the streets.