I don’t have much to say tonight regarding this edition of the Flight 93 blogburst, because like everyone else I’ve been busy watching Sarah Palin rock the Republican house in Minnesota.  Alec Rawls, though, outdoes himself in this installment, which winds up, appropriately, at last week’s Democratic convention, where Islamic Society of North America President Ingrid Matteson spoke.

After watching Governor Palin mock and belittle the Dems, it’s hard to reflect on all their unsavory connections and associations and not feel that they deserve it.  So if some of what you read in today’s blogburst post outrages you, take heart that tonight in St. Paul an awesome lady promised to give government back to the people.  I know she’s not thinking much about the Park Service as yet, but I can’t think of a better place to start cleaning house.

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Alec Rawls makes an important point in today’s blogburst installment, and he is  rather perceptive in recognizing the opportunity presented by the closing ceremony at the just-concluded Olympic Games to illustrate a compelling and subtle argument.   Point is, not just any interpretation of an artistic production is possible or valid, but interpretive criticism that is consistent with relevant thematic, structural, and symbolic considerations cannot really be refuted or denied.  Art—and there can be no doubt that the architect and his supporters consider the Flight 93 National Memorial to be a great work of art—will always generate some obvious, no-brainer understandings and interpretations.

It would be laughable if the Chinese government denied the obvious symbolism in the closing ceremonies in Beijing, and it is laughable that the Park Service has denied the glaringly obvious Islamic motifs in the  memorial design.

“Crescent?  What crescent?  You mean that broken circle?”

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It’s just flabbergasting, the nutty idiocy of the Flight 93 Memorial Project folks. They were actually going to call their fundraiser a gala, no doubt in emulation of the Twin Towers Gala and the Beslan Massacre Gala. I’m sure they’re simply shocked that the family members didn’t much appreciate that particular word choice, because the project managers are nothing if not verbally inventive and proud of it. We complain about a crescent and they call it a broken circle. They babble on and on about healing, embrace, love, and eternity. It’s enough to gag.

In today’s news video, Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley is at it again. Idealistic to a fault, literally, she believes in turning lemons into lemonade, so she revels in all the controversy. This time we are told that the design competition itself is “internationally renowned.” Heck, I guess. It certainly got my notice, and I was hardly even paying attention when they decided gratuitously to offend my sensibilities. Of course getting my attention isn’t necessarily a good or desirable thing.

These ass hats are so full of themselves it’s astonishing, and that’s after all what’s wrong with the memorial design. It shouldn’t be a tribute to a bunch of New Age pinheads who think they’re smart and morally superior. It shouldn’t be about their laughable artistic vision or their humanistic ideals. It shouldn’t even be about healing, as if such a thing is at all within their capabilities.

As for extending to us their loving embrace, I must reciprocate in kind.

So embrace this.

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You can see a lot more of what Alec Rawls describes in today’s blogburst installment at the site of the National Park Service. The government’s propaganda for the awful design is proudly displayed there for all to see. Continually, our opposition to the proposed design is characterized there as a form of terrorism, which is rather amusing considering that we have all along employed the metaphor of retaking the hijacked plane from the terrorists. As Alec notes, the idea that we are hijacking the memorial is ludicrous, somewhat along the lines of a Flight 93 passenger complaining that the heroes were threatening the passengers by enlisting their help to take back the plane.

What I find most troublesome is the persistent allusion to healing, when in fact this memorial will do nothing even remotely of the sort. It is quite a peculiar concept of healing that extends the middle finger to those deeply troubled, as so many of us are about the planned Flight 93 Memorial design. What the architect and his supporters mean by healing us is disabusing us of the notion that there is anything wrong with incorporating Islamic imagery into the monument. They want not to promote healing, but to heal us—that is, to cure us.

Since Project Superintendent Hanley and her supporters are so obsessed with what she perceives as threats, I would like to clarify by issuing a real threat. None has been issued thus far by any of our opposition partners, at least none that I’m aware of, but I am nevertheless not speaking solely for myself here. My threat is based on boots-on-the-ground reality, so who can defend against it?

Ready? Here it is:

Build this atrocious monument to New Age hooey and we will construct alongside it a permanent condemnation, and we will build a perpetual controversy to surround it. Like the valiant and immortal deeds of our Flight 93 heroes, this will never die.

Now that’s a threat you can take to the bank.

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