Elle under fire for smiling snap at 9/11 memorial
FOR most people, the anniversary of the September 11 attacks in New York provides a chance to remember solemnly the almost 3,000 victims who were murdered by Islamist terrorists.
For veteran supermodel Elle Macpherson, the date gave her the chance for a grinning photo op at the Manhattan memorial.
On Monday, the 16th anniversary of the atrocity, the 53-year-old Australian shared this photograph (above) of herself posing at the site of the Twin Towers with her arm round her son, Cy Busson, 14.
With a broad smile, she stood in front of the yellow roses placed on the plaques engraved with the names of those who perished. Next to the picture posted on Instagram, she wrote: ‘9/11. Now.’ Not all her fans were impressed. ‘For the life of me, I will never understand why people pose in front of this memorial and take pictures and smile as if it’s just another tourist stop and not the grave of thousands,’ one commented. ‘Bizarre.’
Tourists posing for pictures at Ground Zero cause continuing anguish for grieving New Yorkers.
‘Every day, tourists with selfie sticks preen and grin by the memorial pools, inches from the engraved names of the dead,’ one local, Lawrence Levi, wrote in The New York Times recently. ‘The site’s rules of conduct prohibit “behaving in a way that is inappropriate given the solemn nature of the Memorial”. The use of selfie sticks fits that description.’
At least Elle didn’t go as far as one British stag party that caused outrage last year by taking selfies with a blow-up sex doll at the site.
Cy is one of two sons Elle has with her ex-fiance, Arpad ‘Arki’ Busson, the London-based financier. They split in 2005 and she went on to marry U.S. billionaire Jeffrey Soffer in 2013. Last week, however, I reported Soffer was claiming their wedding in Fiji had never been legally valid.
Shapely Elle has always been known as ‘The Body’, but can’t she occasionally use her brain as well?