It's not that he fails to sympathize with the families of the WTC victims. His columns have told many of their stories. Just a week ago he wrote about a mother's desperate fight for the transcripts and tapes that recorded the last words of a daughter who died on the 106th floor of the north tower.

He has criticized what he regards as empty ceremonies that do not help the grieving families and poured contempt on Rudolph Giuliani, whom he regards as a self-aggrandizing phony: "Mention the World Trade Center to Giuliani and to him that means I, me, my catastrophe, my site, my workers, my fund, my all of it." And he has railed against the lies of the Bush administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, when they assured the public it was safe to breathe air at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the attack.

Further, Breslin wrote about another building's collapse, a whole book in fact: "The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez." (Free registration required.) In it he memorializes a 21-year-old an illegal Mexican immigrant day laborer whose death on a construction site in Brooklyn was caused not by terrorists but by the more common causes of building-code violations, corruption and greed. This is a death that implicates all of us in a tragic betrayal of America's promise, Breslin warrants, and it's no less notable than 3,016 murders by terrorists. Is he right? Make up your own mind. But Breslin has me wondering.

FROM THE MAILBAG

Straight Up reader Shane Hockin writes that he agrees with much of what Jimmy Breslin has to say about George Bush ("I agree with anyone who says he's a liar"), rebuilding skyscrapers at Ground Zero ("They should include big red targets on them to make them look appropriate") and Rudolph Giuliani ("To hear him talk you'd think he'd personally escaped the towers and carried thousands of people on his back to safety").

"But I totally disagree with Mr. Breslin's stance on the memorial," Hockin continues. "There is so much more to it than just honoring the victims and their families. This is an event that we need to remember, because it had a major impact on every single person in the country, and that impact will be felt for a long time. The memorial in no way slights everyone who has died in New York, as Mr. Breslin seems to insinuate. That is ridiculous.

"The fact of the matter is you can't erect a big memorial for every single person who dies, but you can for a group that symbolizes something that is a major part of our recent history. Besides, almost everyone else who dies under ordinary circumstances gets a memorial from their family. So I guess I just don't get his argument. I understand the protest against building towers and such, but being anti-memorial does not make any sense to me."