Poacher Minor Poster
Joined: 16 Sep 2006 Posts: 72 Location: South East UK
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Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2006 9:42 am Post subject: Philip D. Zelikow, public myth expert! |
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Sorry if this is old news but it is the first time I have seen it.
Philip D. Zelikow is best known as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. On Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Zelikow on para 7, he is quoted as;
Prof. Zelikow's area of academic expertise is the creation and maintenance of, in his words, “public myths” or “public presumptions,” which he defines as “beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community." In his academic work and elsewhere he has taken a special interest in what he has called “‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events [that] take on ‘transcendent’ importance and, therefore, retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene. In the United States, beliefs about the formation of the nation and the Constitution remain powerful today, as do beliefs about slavery and the Civil War. World War II, Vietnam, and the civil rights struggle are more recent examples.” He has noted that “a history’s narrative power is typically linked to how readers relate to the actions of individuals in the history; if readers cannot make a connection to their own lives, then a history may fail to engage them at all” ("Thinking about Political History," Miller Center Report [Winter 1999], pp. 5-7).
In other words, he is an expert in covering up. . . and he was put in charge of the 911 ommission? |
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