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Jewish World Review Jan. 17, 2002/ 4 Shevat, 5762

Ann Coulter

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The color of demagogy

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com -- THE New York City Fire Department commissioned a statue of the famous photo of three magnificent firemen hoisting an American flag at Ground Zero on Sept. 11. The men in the photo were all Caucasians, but the statue will instead portray one white, one black and one Hispanic raising the flag.

We should probably be relieved it's not going to be a statue of three Muslims in burkas raising the flag.

The decision to change the truth was made by the studio making the statue; Mayor Michael Bloomberg's fire commissioner, Nicholas Scoppetta; along with Forest City Ratner Companies, which owns the property at FDNY headquarters where the statue will be located. Fire Department spokesman Frank Gribbon explained that two of the white men would be eliminated in order to more accurately reflect all of the firemen who died at the World Trade Center.

Except, like the statue, that's a lie, too. A statue that accurately reflected the racial composition of the New York Fire Department -- as well as those who died on Sept. 11 -- would have to show 33 firemen raising the flag, one of whom would be Hispanic and one of whom would be black. (Blacks make up 2.7 percent of the NYFD, and Hispanics 3.2 percent.)

Liberals love erasing the truth. They call their lies "legally accurate," "affirmative action," "saving the Constitution" -- and now, "art." When the truth is gone, brute political power prevails. And manifestly, white men have no political power in modern America. They just rush in to save us when the nation is attacked.

But having emerged from months of therapy, Manhattan liberals have forgotten about planes flying into their buildings and can now cheerfully return to snarling about "angry white men," "white male oppressors" and "dead white men." After a few months of applause from terrified Manhattan liberals, firemen are no longer heroes. They are privileged white males again.

It is a privilege that allows them to be discriminated against in college admissions, jobs, government contracts, teaching positions, scholarships and so on.

Liberal race demagogues so love goading white men, they can't get their story straight on the American flag. The last word on the flag out of the left was that blacks do not share in white America's jingoistic flag-waving.

Four days after the attack, black firemen in Opa-Locka, Fla., refused to ride on a fire truck that displayed the American flag on the grounds that it was a symbol of the oppression of blacks.

Tennessee state representative Henri Brooks (D, needless to say) has refused to say the pledge of allegiance for nine years because "to stand up and salute that flag that waved over the colonies that enslaved us and did all the horrible things that the institution of slavery represented, would be a slap in the face to my ancestors."

Syndicated columnist Julianne Malveaux also refuses to say the pledge of allegiance, explaining "my lips can't move ... I think of (those words) as nothing but a lie. Just a lie."

In an interview two days after Sept. 11, black singer Alicia Keys said she was "torn" by seeing American flags all over New York. She, too, sees "lies in that flag. I can't suddenly be all patriotic."

Yet now, in that presumptuous way of theirs of always speaking for the black man, liberals simply assume that blacks would have wanted to hoist the American flag at Ground Zero. Who are these liberal honkies imputing patriotism to blacks? Haven't we seen enough of this type of Jim Crow elitism from the left?

Liberals constantly want to have it every single way. They are indignant at the possibility that President Bush might have acted to help Enron. When it turns out he did not, they fume: What? He did nothing! He should have done something!

They hate the American flag, but on the other hand, demanding that two white men be ousted from the Fire Department statue also has its seditious attractions.

Who are they kidding? What they'd really like is a memorial showing a diverse group of Americans burning the flag. Isn't that the essence of our freedom, really? The right to dissent and not some phony flag-waving?

Liberals are, at best, indifferent to America winning the war in Afghanistan. They falsely proclaim that "of course, everyone" is rooting for America, so they can stop talking about it and get back to stirring up class and race resentments at home.

Meanwhile, three men with real names raised that flag in that photo at Ground Zero: New York City firefighters Dan McWilliams, George Johnson and Billy Eisengrein. We know what they'd do if the situation were reversed.

After World War II, a statue was made of six American servicemen raising the flag at Iwo Jima. (Three of the six raising the flag were killed in the battle.) White male patriarchs didn't bleach Indian Ira Hayes off the Iwo Jima memorial. Back when the oppressors were white men rather than race demagogues, the truth still counted for something.


JWR contributor Ann Coulter is the author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton.

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