The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 80

Tom Bernstein, who was one of the founders of the Freedom Center group that got the boot when they couldn't come to terms with the Pataki Administration's requirements for being sensitive to the families' concerns about anti-American content in the cultural center had a whopper of a statement at yesterday's meeting, entitled "What's Happening to the Arts at Ground Zero?," which was organized by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the New School's Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

He said:

But Mr. Bernstein said that arts organizations with an exclusive 9/11 focus would not "stand the test of time." Such a theme would also represent a retreat from the original mandate for the site, which was to pair a tribute to the dead with educational experiences for the living, he said.

"It's a much, much narrower vision - a significant departure," he said.

Why would a cultural center with a narrow focus exclusively on 9/11 be a failure? Apparenlty it's simply Bernstein's belief that this is the case, and there's nothing to indicate any factual basis for that assertion. He seems to think that he had the liberty to recast the 9/11 experience any which way he pleases, which is precisely the reason he got the boot in the first place. The lessons learned from the 9/11 attacks are that there are groups around the world dedicated to attacking and destroying our way of life. They have struck before, and they will strike again.

Meanwhile, there's still a feeling among those attending the meeting that the issues could be revisited in the future. Oh goody.

Underlying the evening's discussion was, nonetheless, a sense of "it ain't over yet" - that the essentials could still be revisited. Mr. Yaro said he had at one point thought that a Norman Rockwell museum might be a safe bet, but then reconsidered. "It's very difficult to think of cultural activities that aren't going to be offensive to somebody," he said.