Hillary Clinton has now come out against the International Freedom Center.
“I cannot support the IFC,” Clinton declared last night in a strongly worded statement in response to an inquiry from The Post….
“While I want to ensure that development and rebuilding in lower Manhattan move forward expeditiously, I am troubled by the serious concerns family members and first responders have expressed to me,” Clinton said.
The Post pats her on the back in an editorial (this could cinch her Blairesque endorsement from Murchoch):
It’s time for Pataki and Bloomberg to pull the plug. Now, even Hillary agrees.
Good for her.
The New York Times, meanwhile, continues its snippy, condescending, insulting, and disrespectful tone toward the families of the heroes and innocents of September 11:
But since late June the Freedom Center has been caught up in a vitriolic protest called the Take Back the Memorial movement, whose leaders claim for themselves the right of deciding for the rest of us what we should know and think about 9/11.
Quite the contrary, Times: We don’t want a center that will do precisely that. Let us all bring our own thoughts and questions to this place and not have them brought there for us.
And in its news columns, tomorrow’s Times writes a puffy piece about the IFC’s founder, Tom Bernstein (a few weeks after publishing a fair piece about the leader of the opposition, Debra Burlingame):
In fall 2001, not long after hundreds of makeshift hospital beds had been set up at Chelsea Piers to receive injured survivors from the World Trade Center – beds that were never used – Tom A. Bernstein, president of Chelsea Piers, envisioned reclaiming ground zero with the power of an idea.
The idea was freedom, embodied in an institution that would transmit its value to future generations. To build it, Mr. Bernstein said in 2004 he expected “years of intense labor, contentious debate and struggle.”
He is getting them….
Mr. Bernstein, who counts President Bush among his friends, has had to defend the center from those who say that it would be jingoistic by depicting an unblemished America as well as from those who complain that it would be un-American by dwelling on failures of social and foreign policy.
Well, yes, indeed, he has had to defend himself and for good reason.
In that piece, I see the first cogent description from Bernstein of his connection with the theme of freedom — a connection I questioned yesterday. Bernstein said:
Historically, if you look at the response to tyranny – in our view, terror being a modern variant – the only response, and the necessary response, and the crucial response is a reaffirmation of the values that are under assault. The central value here, and around the world, is freedom.
Fine. Who won’t salute the freedom flag? But this was not about an oppressed people breaking free. This was about criminals commiting murder. Bernstein tries to draw a parallel with the Holocaust Museum (moving past his attempts to draw parallels to the Gettysburg Museum). But that, too, doesn’t fit. The Holocaust Museum is, truly, about the crimes of the murderers. The IFC is not about the crimes of the islamofascists. That would at least be more relevant. But neither is appropriate at this place, at this time.
: The LMDC now has a form (not forum) to submit comment directly (with an odd heiarchy used to identify the commenter). I just cut-and-paste my post from yesterday. If this were a forum, we would be able to see what fellow citizens say about the IFC. But, not surprisingly, it’s only one-way, not transparent.
In any case, I urge you all to go to the site and leave your comments as well.
