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July 29, 2013

Michael Shulan: The Ugly UnAmerican [Bumped]

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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. -- - NYPOST.com
shulan.jpg
Mike "Michelle" Shulan

Posted by gerardvanderleun at July 29, 2013 11:07 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

I think I lived in America once as a child, I don't remember. That flag looks familiar but a lot like the one I currently see around. Everything seems so different now.

Posted by: Potsie at July 28, 2013 11:16 AM

It's different all right. Putzes like Shulan have always been with us, but they're ascendant now. He fits in perfectly with lead-from-behind 0bama, who never misses an opportunity to apologize for America.

Posted by: waltj at July 28, 2013 11:49 AM

The Shulans of America have always fed at the government trough, yet have always been "embarrassed" to be too much an American.

Posted by: indyjonesouthere at July 28, 2013 12:06 PM

This is the same opinionated crap that tried to turn the Vietnam Wall into an anti-war memorial. The same with the memorial in New Jersey.

Posted by: Peccable at July 28, 2013 12:18 PM

Here's an idea: no more nursing at the government teat for Shulan et al. Let the marketplace be the judge of their artistic merit. If they find buyers willing to spend their own money on the dreck Shulan and his pals are pushing, fine. If not, sux to be them. Better find a real job.

Posted by: waltj at July 28, 2013 1:32 PM

I'll be returning to NJ to visit family in late August. NJ was my home state, worked in NYC for 17+ years. I'll probably go into the City to visit former colleagues & friends. I almost wish this piece of information hadn't been shared with the public, or at least with me, just because it is but one sample of the majority that seized the opportunity of pulling together something, anything to memorialize the mass murder of our fellow citizens to make it all about themselves and their way of seeing the world. I wish I didn't know because it's just one more reason for me to want to stay away from the entire site. It is getting harder for me to plumb the depths of how much I despise that way of seeing the world.

Posted by: Kerry at July 28, 2013 1:39 PM

You're right, Potsie, the flag does look familiar, but it was in a better place when there were only 48 stars.

Posted by: Ed at July 28, 2013 3:30 PM

Why Shulan hasn't yet been removed from his job is a wonder to me.

Posted by: Kauf Buch at July 29, 2013 5:47 AM

I am an old man now but back in the day I might have looked this clown up and adjusted his attitude or his nose, whichever I was able to adjust first. Sometimes when you do that, you get a "twofer" and the price on the backside, is well worth it.

American's should tear into people like this and take them out. Permanently.

Posted by: Jack at July 29, 2013 6:35 AM

Americans should... but wont.

Posted by: Potsie at July 29, 2013 9:52 AM

Remember that cooking blogger who tried to cook everything in Julia Child's book for a year? In her first autobiographical book, she tells us all about working on the 9/11 memorial stuff, and how terrible everybody was for caring about 9/11. This is just more of the same. (And I'm sure it's a very wrenching job, but come on. Have some respect.)

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at July 29, 2013 9:54 AM

Do people not understand that Shulan is not exceptional? Only yesterday I ran into a 25 year old girl I knew as a teenager. She is teaching political science at Indiana University. Indiana, not Columbia. The confidence she held in her awful opinions were so impermeable to debate that she did not even suspect that I was the stuff her ridiculous nightmares are made of. Her bubble is not made of soap, but of a force field composed of the overwhelming entitlement which righteousness brings. These are the heirs to Puritan evangelicals, who lost God and found themselves. God was better.

Posted by: james wilson at July 29, 2013 10:05 AM

I guess the Great Gramscian March has reached its final destination. These degenerate parasites have taken over just about everything. And I do mean everything. How long before they've infiltrated the NRA? That may be the last bastion.

Shulan has a truly unfortunate, if appropriate appearance for someone holding his views. And yes, I do want to strangle him with that fey scarf of his.

Posted by: Don Rodrigo at July 29, 2013 10:50 AM

Posted by: native new yorker at July 29, 2013 11:59 AM

mr shulan raised millions of dollars for the families of firefighters and worked tirelessly for years, starting his own charity for 9/11 aid. Although I was not in the conversation, and do not know the man personally, this article is clearly an massive distortion of the truth. What have YOU done?

Posted by: Anonymous at July 29, 2013 12:04 PM

You wonder what the portrait in the attic looks like.

Posted by: Jewel at July 29, 2013 12:46 PM

I have never seen or heard anything that was too rah rah for America. Raising money has nothing to do with patriotism. I agree that the America haters are in all kinds of positions of power now, but I wonder what other system or country they care to be in, because most other systems do not let you denigrate the system that holds you.

Posted by: tripletap at July 29, 2013 1:00 PM

Raising millions of dollars for firefighters' survivors and saying stupid crap are not mutually exclusive. And Shulan looks exactly like the kind of guy who'd (a) be hired as a creative director and (b) say what he's alleged to have said. Really, how do satirists manage? It's getting impossible to caricature reality.

Posted by: Rich Fader at July 29, 2013 2:01 PM

fifty bucks he's super rah-rah about New York City. The same people who think patriotism and flag-waving is so ugly and insulting to the world get misty-eyed and filled with pride at the very name of their city.

They are fine with the CONCEPT of patriotism, just not its object.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor at July 29, 2013 4:38 PM

All sorts of money gets raised for all sorts of causes every day.

My wife worked compiling phone lists for United Way once. Her workspace was a rented condo overlooking Half Moon Bay. The four temps doing the work would look out the window at their six UW paid staff managers surfing through the work day.

That gig lasted two weeks.

It kind of changed how the Team did "charity" afterward, and that's a fact.

Posted by: TmjUtah at July 29, 2013 4:42 PM

@taylor,
as a former volunteer of Here is New York, the charity mr shulan ran for years with a group of other photographers and is the largest archive of images of 9/11 in the world, which he ran not as some billionaire but a regular guy who poured his entire soul into the recovery effort in new york, going himself down into the site at the height of the violence, you will see shortly that the narrative will change on this story. the reports are clearly misconstrued and I am sure we will hear from the author a correction.

Posted by: Anonymous at July 29, 2013 6:45 PM

I want to know who appointed him "creative director". That individual should be tarred and feathered along with Shulan.

Posted by: loufca at July 29, 2013 9:38 PM

...as I said, super patriotic about New York, but not about America.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor at July 30, 2013 6:25 AM

I just wanna smack that picture of Shulan upside the head.

Posted by: monkeyfan at July 30, 2013 4:09 PM

I wanted to email Shulan personally, but could not fine his email address.

So he's concerned 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." The 'event' was the horrible murders of 3000 innocent Americans by Muslims. What further meaning does this self-righteous useful idiot see? Has he ever served his country in uniform? Doubt it. He ought next be creative director for other 'events': The Nazi bombing of Guernica (of which he probably knows nothing), Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, My Lai (bet he's up on that). I look forward to having my view of these 'events' freed of distortion, the complexity of their meaning made clear by this eunuch.

Please forward this to him.

William Goldsmith, M.D.
LtCol (ret) flight surgeon, ANG

Veteran, Viet Nam, Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom

Posted by: william goldsmith, M.D. Lt Col (ret) USAF at August 20, 2013 9:59 PM

I wanted to email Shulan personally, but could not fine his email address.

So he's concerned 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." The 'event' was the horrible murders of 3000 innocent Americans by Muslims. What further meaning does this self-righteous useful idiot see? Has he ever served his country in uniform? Doubt it. He ought next be creative director for other 'events': The Nazi bombing of Guernica (of which he probably knows nothing), Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, My Lai (bet he's up on that). I look forward to having my view of these 'events' freed of distortion, the complexity of their meaning made clear by this eunuch.

Please forward this to him.

William Goldsmith, M.D.
LtCol (ret) flight surgeon, ANG

Veteran, Viet Nam, Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom

Posted by: william goldsmith, M.D. Lt Col (ret) USAF at August 20, 2013 9:59 PM

I wanted to email Shulan personally, but could not fine his email address.

So he's concerned 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." The 'event' was the horrible murders of 3000 innocent Americans by Muslims. What further meaning does this self-righteous useful idiot see? Has he ever served his country in uniform? Doubt it. He ought next be creative director for other 'events': The Nazi bombing of Guernica (of which he probably knows nothing), Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, My Lai (bet he's up on that). I look forward to having my view of these 'events' freed of distortion, the complexity of their meaning made clear by this eunuch.

Please forward this to him.

William Goldsmith, M.D.
LtCol (ret) flight surgeon, ANG

Veteran, Viet Nam, Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom

Posted by: william goldsmith, M.D. Lt Col (ret) USAF at August 20, 2013 10:03 PM

Thanks ken, I understand what you mean now.I agree with Marshall susteggions to develop shared leadership, it makes sense based on what I see everyday at work, in teams. I would add few additional susteggions:Proximity and frequent social interactions is a good way to develop shared leadership in a group. Shared leadership is a quite sophisticated social process so you will need to socialize frequently to make it happen.Consider you teammates as valuable resource at any time even if you didn't choose them (at any time is the difficult part). To convince your team members that you actually truly think that way, it will take time and you will need to walk the talk.Shared leadership is leading to a series of great benefits, one of them which doesn't come to mind right away is improved stress management.

Posted by: Waqas at December 30, 2013 5:45 AM

Yeah, that's the ticket, sir or ma'am

Posted by: www.yourlifeinsurer.com at February 9, 2014 12:31 PM

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