BrianGarst.com

Should someone so seemingly hostile toward accurately presenting the subject matter of a museum be its creative director?

This iconic picture of firefighters raising the stars and stripes in the rubble of Ground Zero was nearly excluded from the 9/11 Memorial Museum — because it was “rah-rah” American, a new book says.

Michael Shulan, the museum’s creative director, was among staffers who considered the Tom Franklin photograph too kitschy and “rah-rah America,” according to “Battle for Ground Zero” (St. Martin’s Press) by Elizabeth Greenspan, out next month.

“I really believe that the way America will look best, the way we can really do best, is to not be Americans so vigilantly and so vehemently,” Shulan said.

…Shulan told The Post he didn’t know that the way Greenspan described the discussion about the photographs “is the way that I would have.”

“My concern, as it always was, is that we not reduce [9/11] down to something that was too simple, and in its simplicity would actually distort the complexity of the event, the meaning of the event,” he said.

Shulan appears intent on ensuring that America is properly blamed, in his mind, for 9/11. He doesn’t want anything “rah-rah” American because that might evoke pride in the country from the museum’s visitors. America would be better off, rather, if her citizens didn’t insist upon being so damned American. They should heed instead his advice “to not be Americans so vigilantly and so vehemently.” What exactly that means is anyone’s guess.

What is clear is that Shulan does not believe ordinary Americans are suitably equipped with his level of sophistication to be allowed to experience the most iconic and recognizable photograph of the event at a museum purporting to memorialize it. Otherwise, they might mindlessly wave their flags and celebrate American liberty and individualism, actions which annoy the cultural elite and would no doubt embarrass Shulan at cocktail parties. He would much prefer Americans understand the necessary “complexity” in the murder of 3,000 noncombatant Americans by radical Islamic extremists, and take from that the proper “meaning,” i.e. that America is not a place to be celebrated.