YEE-HAW!
The offensive "Crescent of Embrace" idea for a Flight 93 memorial is slated to be modified.
GET THE STORY.
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
View all posts by Jimmy Akin
All the brouhaha was over nothing, anyway. The real design didn’t look anything like the crescents you see on flags like Turkey’s.
Come on, pha, even you don’t think ALL the brouhaha was over nothing. You’re just being contrarian. Even apart from the crescent issue, brouhaha was definitely warranted. All this “embrace / healing / bonding / contemplation” nonsense is definitely worth some brouhaha.
Anyway, it’s not really accurate to say that “the REAL design” didn’t look ANYTHING like the crescent you see on flags like Turkey’s. I mean, if it didn’t look ANYTHING like the shape on the flag of Turkey, they wouldn’t both be crescents. ALL crescents look SOMETHING alike; that’s why we call them all the same thing. (And the artist and controlling committee were clear that it was to be CALLED a crescent.)
even you don’t think ALL the brouhaha was over nothing
You’re right. Almost all of the brouhaha was caused by people photoshopping images of the design so that it would look like something it didn’t. They should bear most, if not all, of the blame.
if it didn’t look ANYTHING like the shape on the flag of Turkey, they wouldn’t both be crescents
Look at the original design. The trees do not even form a half-circle, whereas Turkey’s crescent is significantly more than a half-circle. The memorial design was barely more than a quarter-circle arc. If the designer had never used the word “crescent” for it, few people ever would have. The two are not really similar.
the artist and controlling committee were clear that it was to be CALLED a crescent
This is yet another example of people blatantly overstating the case. Paul Murdoch clearly said “You can call it all kinds of things. We can call it an arc. We can call it a circle. We can call it the edge of the bowl. The label doesn’t matter to us in terms of intent. We have no objection to calling it something else.”
As imprudent as it may be to step back into this –
The “brouhaha” accomplished what was intended; the scrapping of the current silly design.
In today’s political climate, if you want to achieve something, you sometimes need a brouhaha (Ha-Ha!).
The real shame would have been to have this travesty as our latest national monument.
the scrapping of the current silly design
We all agreed that it was a poor design, and we’re all hoping the new one will be better.
I’m kind of split on this. I can see how people might interpret this in different ways, and that is generally the danger associated with symbolic monunments, especially ones that memoralize horriffic events. To be honest though, if I didn’t hear the comparison made to the islamic crescent, I wouldn’t have had a problem with the design. Regardless, if the design invokes a bad connotation for the families of the victims, then by all means, it should be changed. They should have the final call. Steven, I also think your comments to pha might have been a little uncharitable. The accusation of contrarianism just for the sake contrarianism (correct me if I interpreted you wrong) and all the capital letters didn’t set well from this side. Just my 2¢.
What’s in a name? that which we call a crescent
By any other name would taste as sweet;
A crescent is a crescent is a crescent is a crescent.
my apologies.
Couldn’t you find a better link to share this story with? Aside from being pompous and bombastic, Mike Rosen is a bigot. I live in California, and work in Los Angeles, so I probably took his snide, petty comments about the people here more personally than others might.
I’ve recently been to Washington D.C. and seen most of these memorials he discusses. The Vietnam Memorial continues to impress me. The new FDR memorial is also very good. The new WWII Memorial left me cold. It’s typical of the sort of memorial Rosen calls for – too big, too impersonal, and trying to be all things to all people.
But his comment about it being time for “killing them” is really over the top. There may be terrorists and insurgents that will be killed during this conflict, but to openly call for their deaths just isn’t right.
I’m sure there are better news sources for this story than a big mouth talk radio host.
“The new WWII Memorial left me cold. It’s typical of the sort of memorial Rosen calls for – too big, too impersonal, and trying to be all things to all people.”
I think he was talking about the Marines’ WWII memorial. If you want a “trying to be all things to all people” memorial, try that proposed 9/11 memorial with the multicultural firefighters.
The Marines memorial (a statue of the famous flag raising over Mt Suribachi) and the new WWII are not the same. I share Lou’s opinion, the new WWII memorial is not good.
I was also not impressed by the proposed Flight 93 memorial, but many of its detractors extremely overreacted. Some of them revealed a real ugly side and consequently caused me to lose some respect for them.
Chris, Pha, if the “crescent” label wasn’t significant, why did the architect (Murdoch) and controlling committee insist on using it over the written objections of the selection jury?