Debra Burlingame sure knows how to make an analogy, doesn’t she? In ceaseless effort to besmirch any public comment about the WTC that doesn’t originate from spectacularly original mind, or Karl Rove’s pocket, she popped of this one today:
Her criticisms began with the opening gallery. “So the very first experience that the visitors will get when they come from Cedar Rapids, Portland, Ore., and Tallahassee, Fla., was not how we experienced 9/11 but how the people, say, in Bangladesh experienced it?” she asked.
“Imagine erecting an edifice at the U.S.S. Arizona where before we hear their story, we get the world’s view, maybe the Axis powers’ view of World War II,” she said. “I can’t imagine how they’re thinking.”
Now I usually have to wait a long time before I can hit people over the head with my putative victimization (white, male, straight, etc. I’m of Italian descent, but I keep living in places lousy with Italians, so that usually gets me nothing), but finally, I get to trumpet my experience over hers. I am here to tell Debra Burlingame to back the fuck off, since I am a descendant of a victim of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Just like Hitchens’ finding out he is Jewish, I did come late to the impact of this victim status. Certainly I knew my whole life that my great uncle’s name was on the Arizona memorial, but I did not realize it enabled me to relentless belittle anyone who had political or social opinions that contradicted mine.
And using her fascinatingly tortured logic, her pronouncement today, which showed an amazing lack of consideration for the feelings of the Families of 12/7 (this is support group I started earlier this morning — actually, you just witnessed its genesis; I’d invite you to join, but you need to produce a death certificate. Otherwise, find your own date-based tragedy) — a fact I can’t definitely ascertain, but it doesn’t matter specifically what the other families think, as their experience is absolutely unique and others cannot pass reasonable judgment either way — so her callous and ill-considered appropriation of our experience invalidates any and all her comments to date and for the indefinite future. In other words, since she lacks the personal experience of an historical event that lives in the memory of the entire country, there is no way for her to speak meaningfully about it, or anything else now, forever.
Which is useful, since the Freedom Center up and remembered that being about Freedom is about, well, speaking one’s mind without fear of someone trying to supress your actions out of twisted ideological hatred and fear. Sure, it only took the one of the most important American historians quitting in disgust to get them to this point, but you have to break a few eggs, right?
The entire fiasco is beginning to feel like the freeway scene in Altman’s Nashville, where most of the main characters in the film mill about randomly, willfully or incidentally ignoring others with whom they are later found to have intricate connections. By the end of the scene, the camera pulls back and amibent audio reduces everyone’s individual conversation into an indecipherable mass, everyone stuck in place by an unseen logjam out of which no one can see the way. But as long as we have the spirited efforts of Burlingame, we at least have a sign post indicating who is either morally bankrupt (everyone else) or incorruptable (her, just her). We eagerly await her next dispatch.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.
Bangladesh? The new axis of evil.
Debra Burlingame sure knows how to make an analogy, doesn’t she? In ceaseless effort to besmirch any public comment about the WTC that doesn’t originate from spectacularly original mind, or Karl Rove’s pocket, she popped of this one today:
Now I usually have to wait a long time before I can hit people over the head with my putative victimization (white, male, straight, etc. I’m of Italian descent, but I keep living in places lousy with Italians, so that usually gets me nothing), but finally, I get to trumpet my experience over hers. I am here to tell Debra Burlingame to back the fuck off, since I am a descendant of a victim of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Just like Hitchens’ finding out he is Jewish, I did come late to the impact of this victim status. Certainly I knew my whole life that my great uncle’s name was on the Arizona memorial, but I did not realize it enabled me to relentless belittle anyone who had political or social opinions that contradicted mine. And using her fascinatingly tortured logic, her pronouncement today, which showed an amazing lack of consideration for the feelings of the Families of 12/7 (this is support group I started earlier this morning — actually, you just witnessed its genesis; I’d invite you to join, but you need to produce a death certificate. Otherwise, find your own date-based tragedy) — a fact I can’t definitely ascertain, but it doesn’t matter specifically what the other families think, as their experience is absolutely unique and others cannot pass reasonable judgment either way — so her callous and ill-considered appropriation of our experience invalidates any and all her comments to date and for the indefinite future. In other words, since she lacks the personal experience of an historical event that lives in the memory of the entire country, there is no way for her to speak meaningfully about it, or anything else now, forever. Which is useful, since the Freedom Center up and remembered that being about Freedom is about, well, speaking one’s mind without fear of someone trying to supress your actions out of twisted ideological hatred and fear. Sure, it only took the one of the most important American historians quitting in disgust to get them to this point, but you have to break a few eggs, right? The entire fiasco is beginning to feel like the freeway scene in Altman’s Nashville, where most of the main characters in the film mill about randomly, willfully or incidentally ignoring others with whom they are later found to have intricate connections. By the end of the scene, the camera pulls back and amibent audio reduces everyone’s individual conversation into an indecipherable mass, everyone stuck in place by an unseen logjam out of which no one can see the way. But as long as we have the spirited efforts of Burlingame, we at least have a sign post indicating who is either morally bankrupt (everyone else) or incorruptable (her, just her). We eagerly await her next dispatch.