Mickey Kaus wasn’t impressed by the NY Times’ editorial plea for an anti-American museum at the Trade Center site. New York grantsmen don’t need any more nurturing:
But this isn’t an institution we need in the first place. Do the 9/11 attacks have to become the occasion for the creation of yet another well-upholsetered non-profit boondoggle for public intellectuals and granstmen, and the NYT culture critics who write about them? There are already plenty of institutions in Manhattan where the “vital impulses represented by the arts” can and do express themselves. The hollow, pompous rhetoric already generated by the Freedom Center’s defenders–“nurture a global conversation about freedom in our world today”–demonstrates that it is a highly unpromising venue for this expression.
He’s right and the Times is wrong. And pretentious.
Jeff Jarvis is also right.