"Take Back the Memorial"

[Zhukov]

Why is the World Trade Center Memorial going to be used as an exhibit of things like the Nazi concentration camps? the Soviet gulag? the segregationist South?

I thought it was supposed to be about the terrorist attacks of 9/11....

I thought some people might be interested in this page:

http://takebackthememorial.com/

And it's not just a New York issue. It's an American issue paid for with federal money. There's a list on the side of that page of people you can contact to complain about the politics and moral idiocy some people have planned for the World Trade Center Memorial.

I for one don't want to visit the memorial some day in order to learn how awful we were to the Native Americans......

There is a place for that to be sure. However, that place is not Ground Zero.

 

[Zhukov]

It seems Gov. Pataki finally got wise to the anti-american propaganda some on the left are trying to insinuate into the WTC Memorial...

Gov. George E. Pataki delivered an ultimatum to two important cultural players at ground zero yesterday, demanding "an absolute guarantee" that they would not mount exhibitions that could offend 9/11 families and pilgrims to a proposed memorial nearby.

"I view that memorial site as sacred grounds, akin to the beaches of Normandy or Pearl Harbor, and we will not tolerate anything on that site that denigrates America, denigrates New York or freedom, or denigrates the sacrifice or courage that the heroes showed on Sept. 11," Mr. Pataki told reporters in Albany.

...but the terrorist sympathizers, the america-haters, the Communists, and all their friends at the New York Pravda are already trying to spin this into a censorship and freedom of speech issue...

Treading warily into the nexus of art and politics, the First Amendment and the symbolism of the twin towers site, Mr. Pataki made the demand after learning that one of the groups, the Drawing Center, has featured some politically themed and controversial artwork (like Abu Ghraib photos, and images that imply collusion between Pres. Bush and bin Laden; strange they don't mention any of that...) in its shows.

Gov. George Pataki's decision to side with increasingly vocal critics of the cultural plans for the World Trade Center site is not surprising, but it is alarming. The governor has been deeply and rightly sensitive to the concerns of the families of the victims of 9/11. Like all of us, he honors their loss and their grief. But by bowing to some of the survivors' growing hostility to any version of 9/11 except their own, Mr. Pataki is doing a disservice to history and to the very idea of freedom.

The protesters have objected to the proposed International Freedom Center, which they fear might someday (? no, there is no fear of a nebulous someday, it's happening right now....) sponsor discussions that cast America in a negative light, and to the Drawing Center, one of the cultural institutions invited to move to ground zero, which has displayed art that appears to criticize the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

......


What those lives stand for now is American freedom, in its full implication and all its contradictions. That is what has gone missing in the governor's remarks, in which he demanded that the cultural organizations promise never to display art that might "denigrate" the victims of 9/11 or America in general. Mr. Pataki has accepted at face value the tenor of the protests at ground zero, which are, frankly, a call for censorship, indeed for censorship in advance - for political oversight of an artistic process that has only begun to evolve.

It is no contradiction to hope that ground zero will become a place that commemorates death and reaffirms life at the same time. But it will be the worst of bad beginnings to turn it into a place where only grief is acceptable, where the vital impulses represented by the arts are handcuffed in the name of freedom.

Unbelievable (almost) and completely disgraceful.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/25/nyregion/25rebuild.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/27/opinion/27mon2.html?

 

[Annie]

I agree, you'll find more here:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/forums/showthread.php?p=292634#post292634

and here:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21698&highlight=soros+freedom