The Crescent of Embrace--Dishonoring the Heroes of Flight 93
Mark Steyn
at his usual best:
But each to his own. If Mr Murdoch sincerely believes in a “crescent of embrace”, let him build one – at the headquarters of a “moderate” Islamic lobby group, or in the parking lot of your wackier colleges. To impose it on Flight 93 – to, in effect, hijack those passengers a second time – is an abomination. Flight 93 is about what happens when you understand that some things can’t be embraced. Perhaps Mr Beamer and his comrades did indeed “look them in the eye” and saw there was nothing to negotiate, nothing to “embrace”. So they acted – and, faced with a novel and unprecedented form of terror, they stopped it cold in little more than an hour. Todd Beamer asked that telephone operator to join him in reciting the 23rd Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” He knew there would be no happy ending that day, but in their resourcefulness and sacrifice he and his fellow passengers gave their country the next best thing: a hopeful ending. That’s what the Flight 93 Memorial should be honouring.Not to be pedantic about it, but isn't "Crescent of Embrace" grammatically incorrect as well? It's kind of like the "Street of Hug" or "Circle of Kiss".
Sissy Willis argues that it's not that big a deal. I'd be interested in hearing the Flight 93 families on this; I know that some of them were represented on the jury that selected the design. Flight 93 is very important to me on a personal level, as I have mentioned in the past.
After 9-11 I found myself mired in depression for the first week, and hoped that the weekend would bring an improvement. But after spending Saturday watching some of the memorial services, I worried about my own mental health. So on Sunday I decided to devote the entire day to reading as much as I could about the hero flight. It was stunning how many connections to my own life I was able to find.
Jeremy Glick (kissing the baby above) was a big comic book fan as a kid and liked to pretend to be Green Lantern. He grew up a few miles from where I did, in a town which shared our high school. At first I thought he went there as well, so I sent an email to my sister. She wrote back that her husband had worked with Glick's father (!) and she remembered discussing the connection at a company picnic and learning that their kids had gone to private schools.
Todd Beamer (baseball cap) was described in various stories as living in Plainsboro, Hightstown and Cranbury, New Jersey. My sister lives in Plainsboro, but she's got a Cranbury address for mail, and my dad lives in Hightstown. Lou Nacke (far left) was another comic book fan, with a Superman tattoo on his arm.
My depression didn't lift completely, but it was quite a bit lighter by the end of that day. So I feel very protective of our Flight 93 heroes; they are not just a bunch of folks who died in a plane crash. If Lisa Beamer and Liz Glick are on board with the design as it exists, then I'll bite my tongue out of respect for them. But I want to hear that before I say, well, it's no big deal.
And this might never have become an issue without the anti-American exhibit proposed for the WTC site.
More: Michelle Malkin
has a column on this today.
Some design contest jury members reportedly raised concerns about the jarring symbol of the hijackers' faith implanted on the hallowed ground where the passengers of Flight 93 were murdered. But their recommendations to change the name of the memorial (to "Arc of Embrace," or some such whitewashing) were ignored.And
Captain Ed:
Nothing about this rather beautiful, beatific design reflects that courage and intrepidity. It instead insists on new-agey windchimes and areas of contemplation, which would have been excellent had the centerpiece of the memorial still recalled the valiant courage of the people who fought back instead of merely contemplated their fate. What do we have in place of that? A centerpiece that, inadvertently or not, invokes the religious symbol of the terrorists who used their religious fanaticism to rationalize their acts.
