Don't Cry for Us, Oklahoma
strausbaugh, john
"Don't Cry for Us, Oklahoma" NewYork's great new wave of immigration is not black or Latino, much less Middle Eastern or European, but Asian, and especially Southeast Asian. Over the decade of the 1990's, the number...
...Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world.Your tax-deductible contributions are welcome...
...Meanwhile, Latinos will take their turn dominating the ranks of public employees, from the marriage-bureau clerks to the school principals, just like the Irish, Italians, Jews and African-Americans before them.The Asians will get theirs later.The artists and architects will finally shake the overvalued urge known as "style" and head in a revolutionary direction known as "content...
...This city isn't anywhere near having bounced back yet, but it will, because that's what NewYork City is all about...
...The changes to look for next...
...They will help those wounded in mind, body and spirit, not by talking about lessons, but by helping them navigate the contours of an alien landscape...
...Grief, no doubt you would write that...
...In 1923, Greece and Turkey agreed to the resettleThey have never contributed a penny to their maintenance...
...Too often the rhetoric of healing seeks not to bind spiritual wounds, but aims to resolve them too quickly...
...So far, close to $1.8 billion has offered to the Israeli Arabs, who, despite enjoying a higher stanbeen spent on their maintenance...
...But I bet it has a lot more in common with the many big-little whitebread Midwest/Western cow towns I have seen-St...
...Grief think the Healing Industry is muscling in on his turf too soon...
...Their new sisters and brothers...
...That more than 50 years...
...If we recover too fast for you, Dr...
...You guessed it: Through UNWRA Relief, the surrounding countries and despite having the same civil rights United States contributes more than 60% of the total cost...
...Do I detect a rift between the competing Grief Industry and Healing Industry...
...Does Dr...
...The conviction that rebuilding would be an offense against the dead won the day...
...N m 0 U NewYork's great new wave of immigration is not black or Latino, much less Middle Eastern or European, but Asian, and especially Southeast Asian...
...The one parallel linking the two cities, that they've both been sites of terrorist attacks, is so obvious and superficial as to be a useless cliche...
...Now that's change...
...But the Jews of Arab fled in 1948...
...Theirs will be voices of experience, seeking to bring John Strausbaugh is editor of the NewYork Press...
...Following the collapse of refugees from Arab countries, who fled those countries to settle in its North African empire, France accepted close to 1.5 the newly formed Jewish State of Israel...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 33 kindness to those no longer just fellow citizens, but soul mates,' Oh my God, what hideous grief-counselor palaver.You can almost see the author in his deacon's weeds, wringing his bony hands and crying big crocodile tears of phony sympathy for all us poor brothers and sisters in sorrow...
...In both cities, there were immediate calls for the reconstruction of the ravaged buildings as an act of defiance against the terrorism, and a desire to `get back to normal: In Oklahoma City, however, many argued that the site was sacred ground...
...we've been having the most subdued and contemplative holiday season in memory...
...Brainy tyros they were, too...
...There never has been, and there certainly is not now, a Jewish "refugee" camp in Israel or anywhere else...
...That is of course the whole idea behind the demand for the "return of the refugees...
...We've been holding our funerals and memorial services and concerts...
...When estimated to have been about 650,000...
...Nowhere did the events of Sept...
...we volunteered to over-capacity and raised millions of dollars in aid...
...Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail...
...We're not Oklahomans, and this ain't Oshkosh...
...the dole of the world, and armies could operate without have taught their hopeless interference...
...I've never been to Oklahoma City-I'm as clueless about it as Linenthal is about New York City...
...New York's Asians will finally become a bloc no politician can write off, which will be obvious to all when the Mayors start making ritual visits-and they will-to the other side of the international date line...
...They have been sup- of them...
...Last summer, they were all enrolling in fitness centers that looked like cocktail lounges with Cybex machines, and the mantra went: "Pecs, abs, delts, lats, obliques, traps and quadsyou can't be too rich or too ripped...
...Linenthal specifically indicates that indeed we have...
...New Yorkers have in fact shown tremendous respect for "the enormity of the event," and for all its victims, and for all those involved in rescue and recovery efforts.We've been grieving in our own way, pal...
...11 resonate more than in Oklahoma City, New York's new sister city...
...given full citizenship by the fledgling, impoverished, and embattled What are the facts...
...the Jews...
...Yasser Arafat insists that there can be no peace unless those "refugees" are allowed to "return" to Israel...
...Many in Oklahoma City know too well the new world New Yorkers now live in," EdwardT Linenthal intoned...
...If they have low scores, all that means is they just came through Immigration...
...The invading If the Arab nations truly decided to make peace with Israel and armies were defeated...
...Nice light, but don't give up your lease in Jersey City yet...
...Is NewYork to be invaded by well-meaning Frenchies, West Virginians, Brits and Los Angelenos, all intent on talking us through these terrible times...
...It was astonishing and painful one month after Sept...
...in 1945, Another side of the "refugee" story...
...They just handed every likely lovely their business card and waited for the calls, which they got with an almost lustbusting inevitability...
...Apart from the unsolvable social problems it would create, the introduction of, say, even one-half of the 5 million who claim to be "refugees" would, with one stroke, dramatically alter the demographic makeup of the country and would inevitably destroy the Jewish State...
...Who asked you...
...as Israeli Jews, are not happy to live in a Jewish state...
...650,000 "refugees" swell to 5 million...
...Grief, stay in Oshkosh and promote your book in Columbine...
...But that is not acceptable to the Arabs...
...Every one of those million people...
...Yes, Dr...
...I don't know where he's from originally, or how much time he's ever spent in NewYork City, but this piece suggested he understands nothing about NewYork or NewYorkers...
...And keep the trauma club membership cards, thank you very much...
...Have we become a Nation of Grief...
...What disrespect for the enormity of the event.What disrespect to think that a month's pause in the work of the everyday was considered enough before consigning the thousands of the dead to the anonymity of a cultural body count...
...We know how to grieve...
...At least three years before 9/11, the mating game in NewYork got turned on its head...
...But there is another the resettlement of 3 million Germans from Poland and side to the "refugee" story...
...Linenthal is "a professor of religion and American culture at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh," and the author of a book called The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory...
...and, just as Israel did with Jewish refugees from Arab countries, These so-called "Palestinian refugees" have not been allowed integrating them into their societies and making useful citizens to settle in the "indivisible Arab nation...
...Those "Palestinian Refugees" Who are they, what is the real stork Although, in view of the violence of the Palestinians, negotiations with them would seem fruitless, or at least a long way off, one issue that will arise again is that of the "Palestinian Refugees...
...As a representative of the Grief Industry, Linenthal is, of course, against rebuilding at the World Trade Center site, preferring an Oklahoma City-style memorial park of some sort...
...We are family...
...It is clear that the "Palestinian refugee problem" is a red herring, kept alive by the Arab nations for their political purposes, and with cynical disregard for the great number of impoverished people who live in these camps...
...Their work done in Columbine, in Oklahoma City, in all those other places stricken by acts of violence or sudden destruction, they flocked east to New York City, bringing with them their long dogooder faces and their pious rhetoric about "healing" and "bereavement" and "trauma" and "spirituality" and "recovery" One of those vultures landed two Sundays ago in the pages of The New York Times, offering a nearly pornographically mawkish argument that since Oklahoma City and New York City have both been sites of terrorist attacks, they are now joined in "A Sisterhood of Grief...
...Those who stayed, and their chil- plish it by accepting the "Palestinian refugees" in their countries dren, are full-fledged citizens of the state of Israel...
...And stay home...
...The aging, flimsy glass-box office buildings of midtown and lower Manhattan will house artists' studios...
...This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME Facts and Logic About the Middle East PO...
...They the Arabs living there to have kept them in misery, on leave, so that the invading is the real cause of the "Palestinian refugee problem...
...Listen, if Oklahomans really have become the professional bereavers this guy portrays them as, and if droves of them really are descending upon NewYork City with gentle words of experience to share with their new soul mates, I have some advice for them: Shut up...
...11, the wisest thoughts, I think, will come from the Oklahomans...
...If the Arab nations were willing to solve the "refugee problem", the legitimacy of Israel could no longer be questioned...
...Were I to make an argument for memorialization, the first sentence would be: "` An unprecedented act of terrorism on American soil demands the unprecedented use of some of the most valuable real estate in NewYork City as memorial space...
...Things turned out differently...
...In fact, acceptance in their countries might also be ported in camps since 1948...
...Old hands knew that the trick was, in the words of one assistant principal, to "go down the lists and check off every Asian name you come to...
...In 1948, on the day of their backs...
...What have the Arabs, the invaded the new country richest people in the world, from all sides...
...For many in Oklahoma, images of smoking ruins, dazed survivors and grim rescue workers resurrected the slumbering wounds of April 19, 1995, when 168 died...
...We also believe in picking ourselves up and moving on...
...They arrived in Israel, quite literally only "with their shirts on How did this exodus come about...
...Now the number who forced to flee, they left behind land, wealth, and a long history...
...Give them six months, and they'll lift your whole boat for you...
...We're New Yorkers...
...I didn't say when...
...We have virtually no overhead...
...That title is a giveaway: it's in this guy's professional interest to keep Oklahoma City "in American memory...
...Who dard of living, education, and health than Arabs in any of the pays for that...
...Their words will be firm, honest, gentle...
...Don't for Us, Oklahoma TBY JOHN STRAUSBAUGH he vultures from the Grief Industry have been circling over Manhattan since a certain morning last September...
...By this past summer, the ratio of girls to boys in Manhattan was so girl-heavy (as first reported in The Observer in July) that boys no longer even bothered expending the time and energy required to chat girls up in bars...
...The cabby and the shrink will be succeeded as New York characters by the house-call computer swami and the diversity consultant.The bond market will become a heaving crap shoot, and the line bankers, as well as the I-bankers, will have themselves a boom with esoteric instruments such as Joshua Tree Federal 1 0-years...
...Before there is any talk of healing, there must be reflection, an awe-tilled accounting of what was lost...
...11 to hear people proclaim that it was time to `move on,' that we needed to put mourning and grieving `behind us,"' Linenthal declares...
...More than 12 million (!) Muslims and refugees was immediately accepted, resettled, taken care of, and Hindus were exchanged between India and Pakistan...
...Of course, maybe he's retooling this piece for The Washington Post, with proper find-and-replace substitutions...
...They are firmly committed not to allow Israel or any "non-believers" to be in control of any part of the Middle East...
...What about all the other cities and towns around this country that have been sites of disastrous events, with multiple deaths and/or large-scale destruction-earthquakes, twisters, floods, fires, race riots, mad gunmen, ferries sunk, bridges collapsed, chemicals spilled...
...It's hard not to see them coming.The girls will either read The Rules, which say that girls must never ring up boys, or else move to Boston and Cambridge, where, for some reason, when Cupid strikes, the targets stay struck and get married...
...What about London, Paris, Jerusalem, Belfast, all terrorist favorites...
...The total number of those who fled in 1948 is lands have a history going back thousands of years...
...Please, all of you, if that's your intent, stay away...
...They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines...
...Each newly created trade school in the system had to enroll its share of students with subpar reading scores...
...It has been a sticking point in past negotiations and will without question arise again...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 You deserve a factual look at...
...To respond well to the fullness of such events, we cannot forget how they live on long after the fact," he opines...
...These "refugees" are the children and mostly grandchildren of those who left Israel during the 1948 War of Independence...
...They could return after the expected quick vic- youth the "skills" of suicide missions and of slaughtering tory in that "holy war", get their property back -- and that of defenseless and unarmed men, women, and children...
...Of course, virtually none of them ever lived in Israel Jewish settlers opened economic opportunities in what had -- they are the children and mostly grandchildren of those who been a desolate country for centuries...
...In fact, from what I've experienced of the cowering mood in DC, the Grief Industry might do well to shift its focus there...
...They have been practiced throughout hisare satisfied to leave their Arab brethren in those miserable camps...
...Little is heard of the 800,000 Jewish Czechoslovakia was arranged...
...Family members of the dead and survivors have traveled from Oklahoma to NewYork to be at the trade center site with their new sisters and brothers...
...Louis, Kansas City, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Denver, etc., etc., etc.-than with New York City...
...They now make up almost 60% of the vibrant and the proclamation of the State of Israel, five Arab armies productive population of Israel...
...The Arab countries, among them some of the richest in the world Population transfers are common, especially in the who fritter away their enormous fortunes on undreamed luxuries, wake of wars...
...What is this...
...And anyway, who is this Oshkosh professor to tell any NewYorkers they're showing disrespect...
...Why isn't Washington, DC, mentioned as a third sister...
...ment of 2 million Greeks and 800,000 Turks...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 . THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 35...
...One thing won't change: lunch...
...No end is in sight...
...That's how we deal...
...And guys like this are our new family counselors...
...Jewish State...
...You have heard The Arab "refugees" who fled Israel left little wealth and little about those "Palestinian refugees", who claim "right of return" history, since most of them had not come to "Palestine" until to Israel...
...Are they all our sisters-in-grief too...
...The mantra for such young men about town had always been "You can't be too rich or too thin...
...And so typical of the Olympians at The New York Times, our make-believe hometown daily, to have printed this ignorant contumely, this self-serving insensitivity hiding under the mourning rags of false empathy...
...Over the decade of the 1990's, the number of white students declined ten percent (177,000 to 160,000), while the number of black students rose four percent (354,000 to 367,000), Hispanic students 22 percent (325,000 to 397,000)-and Asian students 67 percent (73,000 to 122,000...
...tory...
...It is that, and that alone, which is the real cause of the "Palestinian refugee problem...
...NewYork now belongs to what some in Oklahoma City call `the trauma club.' Both cities are joined at the hip through bereavement.Amid the torrent of words raining on NewYork, as we all still try to make sense of Sept...
...wish to return has swollen to almost five million...
...Those who had left became refugees - to put an end to the century-long strife, they could easily accom- people without a country...
...It's an insult-an astonishing and painful one-to have this Hickville academic tell us we're not grieving the right way, like the good survivors of Oklahoma City...
...It is being kept alive and is being used as a "non-negotiable" bargaining chip, for the purpose of destroying the State of Israel -- a feat that the Arabs have attempted several times by military means, but which has always ended in disastrous failure...
...In frightful The Arabs are committed not to allow any "non-believ- done with their "refugees" in radio broadcasts, they urged ers" to be in control of any part of the Middle East...
...Box 590359 San Francisco, CA 94159 Gerardo Joffe, President Visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501(c)(3) organization...
Vol. 35 • January 2002 • No. 1
