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Sunday, November 11, 2007

Worth Considering

By Michelle Malkin
November 11, 2007 08:00 PM Hey, do you remember Bobby Caina Calvan, the arrogant newspaper reporter who blogged about his snit fit in Iraq when a soldier asked him for identification–earning himself a Jerk of the Year nomination?

Well, Calvan’s MSM friends and editors have again come to his defense. They’re as clueless and snotty as he is. Armando Acuna, public editor of the Sacramento Bee, chose Veterans’ Day to mount his blog-bashing campaign and apologia for Calvan.

And on the same subject: Blackfive:
The mighty MM points out an example of complete tone deafness by the Public Editor of the Sacramento Bee in publishing a pitiful rationalization for the actions of their tone deaf and brain dead reporter Bobby Calvan, who I battered here. Let's read the tap dancing of the Sac Bee's conscience, now remember he is covering the ass of his jackass reporter who had the wrong ID and then belittled the gate guard for doing his job.

Even the mainstream media got into the act. On Oct. 25 USA Today’s “On Deadline” Web site wrote about the controversy, including running an excerpt from Calvan’s blog.


It’s as if the armchair critics were pointing a big, fat finger and saying, “Aha, we caught you!”


Well no, actually the little punk fronted himself out and we shined a light on it. Isn't that what you jagoffs are supposed to do? There was absolutely no cause for that reporter to disrespect a kid serving his country. But he did and the idiot Public Editor could have let diseased dogs lie, but NOOOOOO! On freakin' Veteran's day this maroon decides that's a great time for a primer about pissing on the troop's heads and telling them it's raining.


The American Thinker
What do these modern memorials to heroism and sacrifice have in common?

* The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. Designed by college student Maya Lin, it was unveiled in Washington, D.C. on Veterans' Day 25 years ago. It's a black granite thingy-a long, plain wall that lines a big hole dug 10 feet into the ground. It lists the names of the war's 58,000 fallen Americans and . . . nothing else.

In her first proposal to build the memorial, Miss Lin explained its purpose: "We, the living, are brought to a concrete realization of these deaths." That's it. Not to honor what they did. Just a reminder that they're dead. Thanks.

* The Flight 93 National Memorial. The National Park Service has decided to erect the "Bowl of Embrace," in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed to earth on September 11, 2001. Here's the plan: For their heroism in overpowering four Islamic hijackers and foiling their attempt to destroy the White House or the Capitol, the passengers are to be honored with . . . an empty field. It's little comfort that the field is surrounded by a stand of red maple trees planted in an arc that eerily resembles the crescent of Islam. The design's original name: "The Crescent of Embrace."

Like the Vietnam memorial, the monument itself has no inscription honoring anyone's actions-just 1970s-style wind chimes and the names of dead people inscribed on glass cubes.

* The National September 11 Memorial. On the spot where New York's mighty World Trade Center stood, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s anointed designer, Michael Arad, decrees that there be . . . an American eagle? How about a statue of the three firemen raising the American flag over the rubble? Heck no. Just two huge, square, "reflecting" pools. Maybe you can gaze at your navel through them. In a complex slated to cost $1 billion, this urban swamp is called "Reflecting Absence."

Absence, indeed. What these modern war memorials have in common with each other is nothing. They portray nothingness. They have no people in them, never mind men carrying guns or swords, statues of Winged Victory, or even doves of peace. Just death and names -- grief without glory.

Oddly enough, for structures that are purposely barren, the promotional literature about all of them says their purpose involves "healing." By "healing," I infer they must mean "sitting in the corner, licking your wounds and whining pitifully." It may not be surprising that both 9-11 memorials have failed to attract more than a fraction of the private contributions they need in order to be built.

Where did such parking-lot-style art come from? On one level, you might say it results from a misunderstanding between the memorial-creating classes and the war-fighting classes.

In the early 1980s, when veterans proposed adding an American flag to Maya Lin's memorial design -- a design that did not originally contain the word "Vietnam" -- the artist complained that installing a flagpole would be "like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa." I don't think she meant to compare herself to Leonardo. I assume she meant that a flag would get in the way of her Nothing.

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