According to the official website of the 911 Memorial and Museum, 911memorial.org…
The National September 11 Memorial Museum will open as the country’s principal institution concerned with exploring the implications of the events of 9/11, documenting the impact of those events and exploring 9/11’s continuing significance.
However, the iconic photograph, which accompanies this post, was almost left off the museum’s collection…and you are not going to believe the reason why…
Michael Shulan, the museum’s creative director, was among staffers who considered the Tom Franklin photograph too kitschy and “rah-rah America,” according to “Battle for Ground Zero” (St. Martin’s Press) by Elizabeth Greenspan, out next month.
“I really believe that the way America will look best, the way we can really do best, is to not be Americans so vigilantly and so vehemently,” Shulan said.
Shulan had worked on a popular post-9/11 photography exhibit called “Here is New York” in Soho when he was hired by Alice Greenwald, director of the museum, for his “unique approach.”
Eventually, chief curator Jan Ramirez proposed a compromise, Greenspan writes. The Franklin shot was minimized in favor of three different photos via three different angles of the flag-raising scene.
“Several images undercut the myth of ‘one iconic moment,’ Ramirez said, and suggest instead an event from multiple points of view, like the attacks more broadly,” the book says.
“Shulan didn’t like three photographs more than he liked one, but he went along with it.”
Shulan told The Post he didn’t know that the way Greenspan described the discussion about the photographs “is the way that I would have.”
“My concern, as it always was, is that we not reduce [9/11] down to something that was too simple, and in its simplicity would actually distort the complexity of the event, the meaning of the event,” he said.
Shulan was living in Soho on Sept. 11, 2011. He helped organize the “Here is New York” exhibit shortly after the attack, and it grew to include thousands of photographs taken by professionals and ordinary New Yorkers. The collection was later donated to the New-York Historical Society.
Being me, I began to research Mr. Shulan’s background. As the article explains, his claim to fame is the collection of striking photographs of the Big Apple, which he took in the aftermath of the horrific events of September 11, 2001. So…why was he named Creative Director of the museum? On his artistic ability alone?
Au contraire, mon frere.
It was his political ideology which got him the job.
Posted at the online version of the Harvard University Student Newspaper, thecrimson.org, I found the following article titled, “Freshmen Discuss Action in Case Congress Ends Student Deferments”, dated March 10, 1971…
Nearly 200 Harvard freshmen met in the Freshman Union Monday night to discuss possible ways of counteracting President Nixon’s proposed abolition of H-S deferments granted after April 23, 1970.
The freshmen agreed to meet again next Monday in the Union Lounge to focus on specific proposals, including suggestions for a letter campaign to Congressmen and civil disobedience at Boston draft boards.
Monday night’s meeting grew out of a series of discussions among several members of the freshman class about the now-imminent threat of the draft. Nixon asked Congress on April 23, 1970, for the abolition of all student deferments granted after that date, and Washington sources expect passage of the proposal this spring.
“The important thing that came out of the discussions was a really strong feeling of togetherness.” said Mark Hunter ’74, one of the participants.
At the Monday meeting, a large group favored political action to fight for retention of II-S deferments, but others claimed that the problem was greater than just the question of student deferments.
Michael Shulan ’74, one of the members of the original discussion group, said, “We got scared into thinking about the draft, but now that we’ve started thinking it doesn’t much matter whether they take away the II-S.”
One freshman proposed financing an antiwar, antidraft drive through a 10 per cent surcharge on all dope dealing. “It would provide antiwar revenue and a moral justification for smoking,” he said.
Mmmm…a Far Left Activist and a Hahvahd Graduate…mmmm…isn’t President Barack Hussain Obama a Hahvahd Graduate? And wasn’t he a Far Left Political Activist, also? Small World, Huh, y’all?
Why would a former Collegiate Anti-American Far Left Activist be appointed the Creative Director for a Museum memorializing the worst ever Terrorist Attack on American Soil?
It is all a part of Obama and the rest of the “Progressives’ quest to “radically change” America. They do not believe in America Exceptionalism, American Patriotism, and Love of God and Country.
To them, America is just another nation, and to them, we “had it coming” on 9/11/01. Somehow, in their feeble little minds, they believe that America slighted or aggrieved the Muslim World so horribly, that they were driven to attack us.
The ungrateful ignorance that Liberals, or Progressives, demonstrate, through their damaging Machiavellian schemes to bring down this “shining city of a hill”, proves to me that they just don’t understand the cost that our fellow countrymen have had to pay to defend and preserve our American Freedom, whatsoever.
So, why have these Progressives failed, so far, to bring down this nation?
The answer is simple. Allow me to present a very special teacher to explain it to you, gentle reader:
Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom.
When the first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were no desks.
‘Ms. Cothren, where’re our desks?’
She replied, ‘You can’t have a desk until you tell me how you earn the right to sit at a desk.
They thought, ’Well, maybe it’s our grades.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Maybe it’s our behavior.’
She told them, ’No, it’s not even your behavior.’
And so, they came and went, the first period, second period, third period. Still no desks in the classroom
By early afternoon television news crews had started gathering in Ms. Cothren’s classroom to report about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.
The final period of the day came and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the desk less classroom, Martha Cothren said, ‘Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what he/she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom. Now I am going to tell you.’
At this point, Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it.
Twenty-seven (27) U.S. Veterans, all in uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. The Vets began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand alongside the wall. By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place those kids started to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned.
Martha said, ‘You didn’t earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you. Now, it’s up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don’t ever forget it.’
By the way, this is a true story. And this teacher was awarded Teacher of the Year for the state of Arkansas in 2006.
Most Americans understand the Cost of Freedom. Freedom is not free.
Never forget September 11, 2001.
Until He Comes,
KJ
Kingsjester's Blog 