Mr. Kurtz's Neighborhood: Lest We Forget

I think there is one crime worse than murder, and that is selling suicide as an act of virtue. - Ayn Rand

This morning's lead editorial in the Whines takes aim at a small, selfish group attempting to limit freedom of expression at Ground Zero.

For nearly four years now, the 9/11 families - those who lost immediate family members in that tragedy - have provided an inestimable service to this nation. They helped drive forward the inquiries of the Sept. 11 commission. They helped formulate any number of the projects being developed at ground zero. They have reminded us conscientiously of what was lost on that day.

Ahh, a spoonful of sugar before the cyanide.

But in the past few weeks, we've watched a handful of vocal family members, who may not represent a majority of 9/11 families, change the dynamic at the World Trade Center site for the worse. They have begun a movement to "take back the memorial," which means, in essence, eventually purging ground zero of its cultural partners, including the International Freedom Center.

And just who represents these "cultural partners"?

This protest resulted in a shocking response in late June from Gov. George Pataki. He openly joined the criticism of one of those institutions - the Drawing Center - for an exhibition that it sponsored, in another part of town, that contains controversial images of 9/11 and America's role in the world. And he has called on all the cultural partners at ground zero for reassurances that their programs will harmonize with the concerns of this small group of family members.

This, from the Daily News, on June 23, 2005:

We have nothing against silly, self-important, half-baked pieces of "political art" per se. If someone of the "political artist" persuasion chooses to believe that a drawing of a jetliner dive-bombing a naked, spread-legged woman constitutes a sagacious 9/11 statement - "Homeland Security," this specimen is titled - then fine, draw away, and let the product freely hang in whatever private gallery chooses to display the thing, and let all who would admire it come around and do so all they please.

But not at Ground Zero.

Works such as "Homeland Security" belong nowhere near the sobering pit where the twin towers stood, but the prospect of such a sacrilege arises because Gov. Pataki and his lower Manhattan minions have given space there to a SoHo art gallery called The Drawing Center. What were they thinking? Did they even take two minutes to glance through The Drawing Center's catalogue, which, besides "Homeland Security," also features such artistic creations as:

# The infamous hooded Abu Ghraib figure, the wires falling from his wrists to arrange themselves into the word "Liberty."

# A connect-the-dots organizational chart fancifully linking George W. Bush to Osama Bin Laden and former Texas Gov. John Connally and some oilman here and some financier there.

The Slimes continues:

The World Trade Center site is of enormous importance to all New Yorkers, to all Americans and to people around the planet who have united to fight the insidious forces that led to 9/11. Mr. Pataki's job is to represent all those deeply interested parties. By attempting to appease one small, vocal group of protesters who are unlikely to be appeased anyway, he is abrogating the rights of everyone else. And he runs the risk of turning ground zero into a place where we bury the freedoms that define this nation.

Let's see now; "one small, vocal group of protesters (and the Governor) are apparently not part of 'all New Yorkers or all Americans united to fight the insidious forces' that this "newspaper" has, in it's hysterical hatred of the administration, supported and aided.

Further:

There must be no mistake about this. If the Drawing Center is forced to withdraw from ground zero rather than accept the censorship of exhibitions that are yet to be imagined, no other respectable arts institution will take its place.

What was offered as an open invitation to restore the artistic life of Lower Manhattan will have turned into an invitation to provide only the kind of cultural offerings that please a vocal group of people whose genuine grief has already taken on a sharply political edge. Those are unacceptable conditions that would undermine the very purpose of the arts. If the International Freedom Center must continually bend over backward to placate a handful of angry family members, then all of its commitment to the conscience of that site, to what it can teach us about the character of freedom in the world, will have been compromised.

Respectable? See above, in the Daily News article. As for 'restoring the artistic life of lower Manhatten', that doesn't have a God damned thing to do with Ground Zero and the slaughter of thousands of innocent, productive individuals. It's a matter of free enterprise, something this rag should look up when they can take time out from their masturbatory self-regard.

After all, it's certainly a relief that the Grimes has no 'political edge'.

'Unacceptable' to whom? The paper that got it's "reputation" from the Stalinist toady Walter Duranty, and made a lot of folks very rich while gnawing at the ankles of Capitalism and individual liberty?

This is about power, people, and by any means available. These consumate second-raters will use every conceivable route they believe to be undetectable to that end. What else are they good for?

And if I had to rely on the New York Times to teach my children about the character of freedom in the world, I would strangle them at birth.

Comments

Don't you love how the original group of activist families -- the anti-Bush, p.c. ones the "paper of record" refers to as "the" 9/11 families -- are just good-hearted citizens with no political agenda?

Posted by: Sissy Willis | 07/12/2005 at 10:47 AM