Iconic Ground Zero photo was nearly excluded from museum for being too 'rah-rah' American (rating, terrorism)

[plwhit]

The director (amongst others) of the World Trade Center Memorial think this photo is "too American".

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.

Fight at WTC Memorial over iconic flag-raising photo being overly patriotic - NYPOST.com

So now we can be too patriotic?

[bUU]

The term "rah-rah America" is not the same as "patriotic". The term Shulan used includes connotations and nuances that the term you used doesn't have. If you change what someone says, or otherwise refuse to acknowledge the distinction between what they said and how you chose to change it, then you will have difficulty understanding of the point that someone was making.

The reality is that there are some photos from 2001 that would be too over-the-top for presentation in the museum. The reaction some people had to the terrorism was offensive rather than "patriotic". Luckily, there were comparatively few instances of that, but the fact that those people were outliers is indeed what would disqualify depictions of their "rah-rah America" exhibitions (exhibitions of blind hate) from consideration for the museum. They weren't representative of the reaction of the vast majority of Americans (which was at times fear, at time sorrow, and at times resolve), and therefore even a single reflection of them in the museum would give their offensive perspective more emphasis than it is due, given how few people held to such perspectives.

Of course, the photograph in question, here, doesn't come close to being an outlier. It seems to me to be a perfect representation of the sentiment of the vast majority of Americans at the time. I have no idea what Shulan was thinking. He probable has gotten so caught up in the pressures of responsible curating that his perspective - his ability to distinguish between representative and outlier - has been compromised.

[Goinback2011]

Leftists are mad.