Sheryl McCarthy
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a man I met in Times Square gave the most insightful reaction I had yet heard to what had just transpired in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington. "Americans need to be careful about what we do in the world," he told me.
| I'm glad you consider that insightful. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was thinking it was time to flatten a considerable amount of foreign real estate and sow the ground with salt. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, prior to the first plane hitting the WTC we were at peace with the world. |
At a time of such anguish, suggesting that there was a political and historical backdrop to the terrorist attacks seemed like heresy to a lot of people, and such talk was suppressed for a long time.
| No it wasn't. Similar babble erupted on the left almost immediately. The only problem they ran into was that at the time people weren't in a mood to listen to it, so most people suggested they shut the hell up. |
That fear of a deeper analysis of 9/11 was behind Gov. George Pataki's decision to pull the plug on the proposed International Freedom Center that was to have been part of the memorial site at Ground Zero.
| A "deeper analysis" of 9-11, of course, leading to the inevitable conclusion that it was all our fault. But we've spent the past four years digging through all sorts of evidence, not just that associated with 9-11, and we've come to the conclusion that there's an organized assault on the West and its values, orchestrated in Soddy palaces and mosques, managed by Arab and Pak agents, executed by Arab and Muslim cannon fodder. We're at war with SPECTRE with turbans, Ernst Stavro Blofeld with dancing girls, the Council of Boskone holding a diwan. If you're fairly stupid and you assiduously avoid paying attention, then you might miss all that, but that fact shouldn't give you a right to screw around with a memorial on the site of the first attack. |
It was a sad denouement to what started out as a plan to make the site not just about grief and loss, but to help us understand the significance of that day.
| We've got the significance of that day: dead people, lots of them. Islamic treachery. The heroism of the men and women of FDNY and NYPD and the people of New York. That's a lily that doesn't need gilding, much less gelding. |
Pataki's retreat - he said there was too much controversy over the center - came as no surprise. But Sen. Hillary Clinton's decision to join the opponents came as a shock, and is more proof that she's willing to do whatever it takes to advance her political career.
| Whatever she is, it isn't stupid. And perhaps, since she was in fact New York's senator at the time, even she's not long on patience when it comes to the usual suspects crawling out from under their rocks to take over what started as and should have remained a memorial to the heroism of New Yorkers. |
Political correctness, plain old politics and the fear of exploring the larger issues behind 9/11 were what sank the Freedom Center.
| A true statement, though I don't think it's true in the sense she intended it. It was the overwhelming political correctness of the "Freedom Center" that caused the people involved to gag at the thought of it sullying the site of the WTC. The nation has a short attention span, but it's not quite as short as some people think it is. |
A small group of 9/11 victims' relatives and first responders were allowed to wrest control of the site from the rest of us, even though they're a tiny fraction of those who will use it.
| But since the original idea was to honor the dead, including the first responders who gave their lives trying to rescue them, it's somehow appropriate to me that the "small group" was allowed to wrest control of the site from "the rest of us" — presumably including me. |
They'd already run off The Drawing Center, an art museum that was slated to be part of the site, because they said it had hosted exhibits that were political and controversial. Now their victory is complete.
| Does my heart good to know that. |
After 9/11, President George W. Bush told us the terrorists "hate us because they hate freedom." So what better theme than the larger meaning of freedom for the memorial site? The dead are already getting a separate memorial and a museum dedicated solely to the events of that day.
| But why was it essential for the "Freedom Center" to go on the WTC site? Why did it evaporate when told it had to go someplace else? The message wouldn't have been the same in Brooklyn? |
What did the Freedom Center want to do that was so terrible? To show freedom as a constantly evolving world movement in which the United States has played a leading role. To explore links between those who died on 9/11 and others who came to the United States in search of freedom. To replay some of the great freedom struggles, from those of Gandhi and Martin Luther King to Tiananmen Square. To capture the words of defenders of freedom from George Washington to Nelson Mandela. To exhibit documents that are the basis of freedoms, from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence. And to remind visitors of the different definitions of freedom.
| Which has precisely what to do with the site of the terrorist attacks against a great nation at peace? Merely hashing and rehashing the same old left cultural icons, putting Mandela and Washington in the same sentence, burping up Tiananmen Square, trotting out Gandhi and Martin Luther King to show to us yokels, doesn't say anything about their relationship to the virulent Islamism that's at war with us. There's lots of cultural and moral equivalence, not a hell of a lot of indignation at people who chop off other people's heads and want to supplant democracy with rule by holy men. |
I see nothing subversive in this.
| Lots of the rest of us do. |
But the opponents said such wanderings would distract from the focus on 9/11, and could be used to politicize the site and criticize the United States.
| I just said that. Ascribing the sentiments to the sites opponents doesn't address the truth or falsity of the sentiments, does it? |
The center's sponsors promised not to bash America. But in this period of mindless patriotism, Americans are still hesitant to engage in a thoughtful analysis of the forces that collided on that day.
| Sheryl, you're making the assumption that patriotism is "mindless" only because you don't happen to agree with it. [Pause here for Sheryl to bitch about me questioning her patriotism...] Patriotism can in fact be quite a reasoned feeling; you're confusing it with Jingoism, in fact. You mentioned Washington a few paragraphs back, though I suspect you know more about Mandela than you do about him. His patriotism wasn't "mindless." The patriotism of those who are concerned with the defense of the nation today isn't "mindless," wither. Our enemies have announced their hatred of democracy, their hatred of all religions not their own, their contempt for races non-Arab. Many of us engage in thoughtful analysis of the way the world's going each and every day. We just don't come to the same trite conclusions you do. So piss off. |
This national myopia allowed the Bush administration to wage war based on the erroneous theory that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks.
| This political myopia allows writers in Newsday to keep making the discredited statement that the Bush administration thought Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks. It's a lie, Sheryl. We know it's a lie, even though you keep repeating it for your own obscure political or vanity ends. Just drop it. MoveOn to find another lie that's not so easily discredited. |
A certain egotism characterizes the families of some 9/11 victims. They have exploited the international outpouring of sympathy for their loss in every possible way.
| That's because their loved ones were murdered. They weren't even murdered in something remotely understandable, like a holdup. They went to work one morning, their hair combed and their teeth brushed, and someone killed them because they were there. If the families of the 9-11 victims were more like Cindy Sheehan you wouldn't be accusing them of egotism, would you, Sheryl? |
But while they have the right to grieve and memorialize their dead, they don't have the right to force the rest of us, in our public spaces, into an endless orgy of grief.
| Nor does a small clique in New York have the right to force the larger rest of us to wallow through the same old cultural and moral equivalence claptrap. |
Frankly, a museum whose exhibits will always focus on a single day sounds boring.
| How boring do you think the day was for the people who were killed there, Sheryl? And taking that thought about how boring it would be, why don't you move the Freedom Center to the Pearl Harbor? They've only been concentrating on the one incident for 60+ years now, so they're probably bored to tears. |
With the Freedom Center now history, I don't know how Pataki and the other Ground Zero officials will come up with a museum that truly serves the city while adhering to the strict demands of those families. Which is too bad. It could have been something really great.
| But more likely something really trite. And having read Sheryl's defense of it, I'm guessing trite. |
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