Here we go again: The folks running the 9/11 Memorial Museum are trying to downplay America’s patriotism and resilience after the 2001 terrorist attack — much as officials did a decade ago at another facility planned for the site.
According to a new report, officials tried to nix the famous photo of three firemen raising the stars and stripes over the rubble at Ground Zero.
Why? It was too “rah-rah America.”
As first reported in The Post, a new book quotes the museum’s creative director as saying he preferred material that was not “so vigilantly” and “vehemently” American. In the end, the chief curator suggested including three others of the same event so as to “undercut the myth of ‘one iconic moment’” that the firemen photo represents.
They still don’t get it. To the terrorists, the Twin Towers symbolized America, its freedoms and triumphs. To the victims and survivors, it heralded our resilience.
But this isn’t the first time Ground Zero planners succumbed to lefty political correctness: The International Freedom Center, recall, was booted from Ground Zero after a Post campaign decried efforts to put the attacks in a “broader context” — by fomenting a potentially anti-US debate on “the meaning of freedom.”
Now, the 9/11 museum’s creative director tells The Post he’s concerned that a “too simple” image like the firefighter photo would “distort the complexity of the event.”
Let’s be blunt: No complexity can overshadow the simple fact that America was attacked by people motivated by their extremist ideology and their hatred of everything this nation stands for.
Sometimes it really is all about symbols. Too bad the folks at the Ground Zero museum don’t seem to understand that.