NYT: Your Slip Is Showing-Again

NEW YORKERS are now assured by their governor that the Freedom Tower is back on track, that it will be redesigned and constructed with efficient dispatch.

Maybe, which would be nice (at least for those who want that inevitable magnet for trouble built at all). But think how much nicer it would be if New York had never had to endure the embarrassments of the last several weeks.

In other words, the reporter wonders what all the fuss is, when she doesn't even want anything built at the site. Building something would only lead to the eventual terrorist attack because the site is a target.

Odd reasoning: "Build it, and the terrorists will come."

It is an embarrassment that the NYTimes agenda about downtown is blatantly against development downtown. Should NYC, and indeed the US, cease building any structures because they are inevitable magnets for trouble. And this comes from a throwaway line contained in a parenthensis. It just as easily could have been edited out of the piece and not diminished the content any. However, keeping the phrase in the piece sheds more light on WTC reporting at the Times than anything else in this particular piece.

Would the author, Joyce Purnick, complain that rebuilding the Pentagon after it was heavily damaged constituted a magnet for trouble. After all, the Pentagon is home to the Department of Defense - where planners decide how to fight wars, conduct current operations, and envision new weapons and their uses.

It is an embarrassment that the City and State haven't gotten their act together to rebuild Lower Manhattan. However, it is also an embarrassment that the Times continues to show its bias against downtown reconstruction without openly stating its own real estate interests lie with development elsewhere, specifically in Midtown at its new headquarters.

The rest of the article is dedicated to calls for more openness in the development, which is silly considering that the LMDC and other entities have engaged in an open process whereby they have taken comments on every aspect of the project.

The problem isn't too much secrecy. It's that there are too many cooks, and too many inept cooks at that, working on rebuilding downtown.