Posted on 10/02/2001 9:33:22 AM PDT by mombonn
How Words Spoken on Sept. 10
Came Back to Haunt the Speaker
By JERRY GUIDERA and ROBERT TOMSHO
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
AMHERST, Mass. -- The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have transformed Jennie Traschen, a University of Massachusetts physics professor, into a target of harassment and hate.
Critics have publicized her home and e-mail addresses on the Internet, leading to a flood of nasty calls and computer messages. On her answering machine, strangers have made crude sexual remarks and denounced her as a traitor.
"This nation has been spit on by the likes of this trash," said an anonymous visitor to an Internet chat site. Another wrote: "These Marxist traitors should be hanged with piano wire and left to rot in the sun."
Unlike the backlash against Muslims and Arab-Americans, however, the attacks on Ms. Traschen have nothing to do with her ethnicity or religion. They were sparked by what the diminutive 45-year-old said about the American flag the night before four hijacked planes killed thousands and unleashed a maelstrom of emotion involving patriotism, security and fear.
People in this college town are used to speaking their minds. On the evening of Sept. 10, several dozen of them turned out to do just that at a meeting of the five-member select board that governs Amherst. The meeting had been called to settle a dispute over how often to fly 29 American flags that a group of veterans and volunteers had hung from lamp posts along the town's main thoroughfares.
Roderick Raubeson, a 59-year-old former Marine who heads the town's Veterans' Services office and the local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, had long been troubled that Amherst, known for its liberal political bent, had never adequately honored its military veterans. And so, in early August, he used $1,000 from the Veterans' Services budget for commemorative activities to buy the flags that he and others then raised downtown.
The flags raised a stir in this town of 36,000 people. Some residents wrote letters to local officials opposing the display altogether. Others said that flying so many flags every day made them just part of the scenery and eroded their meaning. But many local veterans lobbied for the flags to be flown for months at a time.
With several flags already flying daily at government offices, many town officials thought that any additional display should be confined to commemorative holidays, such as Flag Day and the Fourth of July. The issue grew more heated after Labor Day, when the flags were taken down pending a public debate and a decision by the select board at its Sept. 10 meeting.
Ms. Traschen didn't think twice about going to the town hall to make her opinions known. As a little girl, she had attended antiwar protests with her late father, a World War II veteran who often told her that free speech was among the rights the flag stood for. As an adult, she has frequently spoken out against U.S. policies ranging from the deportation of Central American refugees to Washington's support for the now-fallen apartheid regime in South Africa.
At the meeting, which was taped by a public-access cable-TV channel, Ms. Traschen urged people to lobby for more spending on education and health care for veterans rather than on hanging out more flags. Nervously tapping her open hand on the table in front of her, she also said that the flag had not always represented policies to be proud of. But it was one blunt comment that would be reported by local media and repeated again and again on the Internet.
"What the flag is," she said on the eve of disaster, "is a symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and oppression."
In hindsight, Ms. Traschen wishes she had explained her thoughts differently. But then, in a town nestled in a peaceful valley in western Massachusetts, she had never had to choose her words with painstaking care. "There's been a level of repercussion that was totally unanticipated," she says.
Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, the country awoke to the horror unfolding in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The calls to Ms. Traschen's home began Wednesday morning. In the first, it took 20 minutes to calm down an irate man from Seattle, who then warned her that her home address and phone number were already circulating on the Web. Another caller asked to speak to the "terrorist sympathizer." One suggested that she move to Afghanistan.
For a time, Ms. Traschen and her husband, also a physics professor, tried to discuss the issue with callers. When the attacks grew more vicious, however, they contacted local police, who mounted additional patrols past their home and put an electronic "tag" on their telephone so that operators would know that any call from the residence should immediately be treated as an emergency.
For a time, additional police officers were also stationed outside town hall, where officials fielded dozens of angry calls and e-mails from around the nation. Some senders had heard rumors that Amherst had ordered the flags taken down after the terrorist attacks; others were convinced that the town had banned private citizens from flying the flag at home. "We had all kinds of messages," says Town Manager Barry Del Castelho. "It was mostly people telling us to leave town or leave the country."
What had happened at the Sept. 10 meeting was that the town's select board voted 4-1 to fly the 29 flags only on six specified holidays. In the wake of the terrorist attacks the following morning, however, a group of men in a pickup truck went to the town offices on their own, retrieved the flags and returned them to their downtown sites. Since then, a local pub owner has vowed to raise money to buy even more flags for the main thoroughfares.
Mr. Raubeson, the man who started the flag displays, condemns the threats that Ms. Traschen has received. He also defends her right to free expression -- with one caveat: "When you speak your mind like that, there are consequences."
In light of the terrorist attacks, the select board hasn't determined if it will remove the 29 flags. If there is another public debate, Ms. Traschen doesn't know if she will be there.
Not that the events of Sept. 11 have altered her opinions. "To many, many ordinary people in countries around the globe, the U.S. has done terrifying things," she says. "If I think about the flag, I have to think about it from the point of view of those people."
But in Amherst, as in other towns and cities, some things have most assuredly changed since the terrorist attacks. Ms. Traschen no longer tries to discuss the flag with anonymous callers. And unsettled by the sound of her own ringing phone, she frequently leaves home to study or write.
Though fearful about future turmoil for the three-year-old child that she and her husband are in the final stages of adopting, she did write a letter to the local newspaper explaining her views. After receiving what she called "a spate of e-mails that were especially violent and several were obscene," she wanted to vent a little and talk to the locals.
"It was a good thing to do," Ms. Traschen says, noting that at the farmers' market, a lot of people came up to her and said they understood. But she remains upset by the episode and its implications.
"People are going to have a much harder time speaking their minds in this community," she says.
Note that what she regrets is that she didn't explain her thoughts differently. IOW, no regrets about the message, just the way it was received. She still believes that BS about the US as terrorist state, and only wishes she could have made that BS easier to swallow: wringer her hands, thinking, "Oh, how would Bill have said it?" That's not even what I'd call "remorse"!
These fascists social engineers really make me nauseous. If they hate the US and the flag there is more than one way to leave.
Why do they stay? Because true Americans will respect their freedom of expression. Name one other country that would do the same? But that veteran is right, "what you say has consequences."
Unless you've lived in a cave the past decade, you know that if you ever said something politically incorrect you found yourself in either senstivity training or anger management!
Well those same rules should apply to those who say things like Comrade Trachens has said. I found her statements OFFENSIVE and UNCOMFORTABLE!
Obviously she doesn't know when to shut up.
Ah, yes. Plenty of us. Put away that broad brush, jackass.
Hate America?
Do you know any better countries?
Go there, then. Leave your Ivory Tower.
You'd really like how women are treated in Islamic countries.
What she said is protected by the first amendment, but when you shout fire in that crowded theater, ma'am, don't cry foul when you get trampled.
FRegards,
CD
Yeah, I generally get something along the lines of "Well, what about the crusades, and the way Lyndon Johnson used to act all the time?"
Although I do have to admit to getting awfully sick at my stomach when Clinton would go around bombing places every time he needed to "wag the dog."
If I stood in the public square extrolling the vitues of Hitler, I would expect that outrageous statement to make thinking people mad, I would expect to get flamed. Sure I would have the right to say what ever I wanted, but that in no way should negate the majorities free speech to tell me I am a putz. It is pretty silly to exercise your rights of free speech then whine at the rebuttals.
Hah!! They'll probably name a building after her, just like they named a library after W. E. B. Dubois, famous Commie.
Dear Ms. Traschen:
I am terribly sorry that you have been threatened because of your use of your first amendment rights. I find threats to be counter productive to all of our rights.
At this time in our nation's history I have a very hard time with anyone criticizing the display of the flag of the United States of America. I do not care that people from other nations may find it offensive, I find many of their flags to be offensive, but I do not and will not dispute their right to fly them here in the USA, or anywhere else for that matter.
What I do find offensive is an American citizen who is reaping the benefits of this nation's form of government finding fault with those who choose to display their love of their country.
It is people like you that have caused my husband to be very thankful his parents chose to leave Massachusetts when he was but a young child. Not only were he and his sisters born there, but so was his mother. However, on his father's side he is a descendant of a brother of Nathan Hale. You may remember that name, he was a Patriot (with a capital P) of the Revolutionary War, a man that gave his life to permit you to freely express your disdain for our Flag.
This is a time when all Americans, of all political stripe, must come together for the sake of the legacy of this great nation. Divisiveness amongst ourselves will only give the perpetrators of the horrors of 9/11 fuel for their anti-american fires. It may seem a narrow viewpoint, but I believe that anyone who finds the display of the Stars and Stripes to be offensive should not be reaping the benefits of living in the United States of America.
If my comments are offensive to you, so be it. I will make no apology to anyone for my love of my country.
Gabrielle (full name and address)
The editorial page and the regular WSJ staff are not the same, at all. The news dept is somewhat liberal, the editorial page is quite conservative.
It’s real simple! She offended my country and me. So now I want to offend her. You can choose to cower and hide under the assault of the left. I choose to fight back.
The funny thing is that she assumes people from Amherst "speak their minds" in the first place. Amherst's legendarily stauch liberalism and uber-PC mindset make Edward Kennedy seem a palatable, patriotic free-thinker by comparison.In Amherst, if you're not more liberal and correct than the average rabid N.O.W. member, it's not a question of speaking one's mind---it's assumed you don't have a mind in the first place. Amherst is every Massachusetts stereotype writ large, and I feel sorry for the good country folk that make up the vast majority of western Massachusetts' population and but a tiny sliver of Amherst's. They are good Shay's Rebellion folk, and they don't deserve this kind of crap.
GREAT e-mail.
Courteous, but firm, concise, and persuasive.
I hope she reads it.
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