Posted on 01/10/2002 9:43:54 AM PST by narby
Racial Changes Made in Ground Zero Firefighter Tribute
It happened more than two weeks ago, but at least one New York City firefighter is still steaming over the politically correct changes made to a sculpted tribute to the firefighter heroes who raised the American flag at Ground Zero just hours after the World Trade Center was leveled on 9/11.
The three flag-raising fireman, as depicted in a widely publicized photograph taken by New Jersey's Bergen Record, were white.
But when a statue commemorating the event was unveiled at the FDNY's Brooklyn headquarters on Dec. 21, the three white firefighters had been replaced by a more racially diverse trio of unidentified Fire Department staffers.
The $180,000 statue is the first memorial to the 343 firefighters and emergency medical personnel killed Sept. 11, reported Newsday at the time.
The racial modifications came at the behest of Fire Department officials, artists with Studio EIS, located on York Street in the Dumbo section, told the paper.
Our firefighter-reader complained:
"What Firefighters McWilliams, Johnson and Eisengrein did inspired the people of the United States in one of its darkest hours. ... This photograph is as sacred as the famous photograph and sculpture of the U.S. Marines raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. ...
"The 343 firefighters [who] were killed at the WTC (54 of whom I knew personally) consisted of all races and creeds.
"But the fact is that the three firefighters who hoisted the Flag on the afternoon of Sept. 11th at the WTC were white and should be depicted as such."
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Nothing new to me.
Next up, the "racially correct" mix of firefighters...see white just won't do..too racially oppressive. See, those firefighters were given all the advantages, that's why there weren't any blacks or chicanos or muslims or women raising the flag. We all know that they weren't given the same opportunities and so they were discrimminated against when the flag was being raised. See, the fire department is not integrated enough. Time for a victim's lawsuit.
SICK, SICK, SICK
RECTIFY PHOTO NYT 091601P1. DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD SUBS NOT TRUE RE BBS SPEECH 092001 AND ADDL. RECTIFY WITH DOUBLEPLUSGOOD RACIAL MIX. END OF TRANSMISSION
WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH
The scary thing is that I can translate this.
Kinda makes you wonder about some of the things you were taught in history class, eh?
By JAMES TARANTO
Ministry of Information
New York's firemen are called the "bravest," but it seems the Fire Department is utterly craven. The Weekly Standard's Beth Henary reports that the FDNY is rewriting history in order to satisfy "multitulcutural" sensitivities:
ENDFirefighters Dan McWilliams, Billy Eisengrein, and George Johnson were captured in a now-famous photo, raising a flag, Iwo Jima-style, over the ground-zero wreckage. Copies of the photo--both legal and illegal--have spread throughout the world; the Record, the New Jersey paper that holds the copyright, is not enforcing it. So it would have seemed reasonable for the statue commemorating the moment, a model of which was unveiled on December 21, to have replicated the photo exactly.
Not so. At the request of the New York Fire Department, the sculptors who worked on the statue replaced McWilliams, Eisengrein, and Johnson--all white--with firefighters of three different races, because people of all races contributed to the rescue effort. While that is certainly true, the fact remains that it was those three firefighters who hoisted the flag. After all, the men depicted in the Iwo Jima monument, fashioned after another famous photo, are the individuals shown in the picture.
What? No limp wrist? And what about a red scarf sticking out of the back jean pocket? (It's significant on which pocket, but I can't tell you how.)
Can someone please tell me where I can find this video clip? I've tried before, but I can't find it.
I see now that there is a web site devoted to this very topic, somewhere here.
Can somebody explain the difference between the Commissar Vanishes and the topic we are discussing here today? Oh, I see, the liberals would explain to us that they are well intentioned in such "improvements".
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