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New York, 8:53 PM
Sat Nov 28
9 posts in the last 24 hours
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09/15/09
09/15/09
(1) It isn't just "advocates of Israel" who are concerned about Garlasco's peculiar "hobby." Critics of Israel, including Helena Cobban, M.J. Rosenberg and Daniel Levy were moved to protest. (Hey, John Cook, it's called "Google")
(2) Garlasco was caught lying, and lying is bad, m'kay? He declared: "Precisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people,
including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things." However, under his online pseudonym, Flak88, he wrote: "So I am trying to figure out what to do. My book is close to done, but I am not sure if I should put my name on it. If folks at work found out I might very well lose my job."
09/15/09
09/15/09
That being said, I completely disagree with the premise that collecting Nazi junk is inherently disturbed. I don't know anything about this guy, but I certainly hope the reports that there are worse sides than this to him are accurate, because I don't think it alone forms sufficient ethical grounds for canning someone.
09/15/09
09/16/09
09/15/09
People are curious about this stuff, but the fact that you can't see/observe it adds to the mystique in a bad way. I think it'd benefit us all to expose some of these artifacts openly--and demistify them.
09/15/09
09/15/09
You sound *exactly* like the right-wing apologists you so rightly skewer when they attempt to explain why "Barrack the Magic Negro" isn't racist per se.
09/15/09
09/15/09
Yes. Of course it does.
Best call in for questioning everyone who owns a copy of that last "Batman" movie or has ever watched "The Exorcist," then. Or, if your point is that the Nazis were real and the Joker is imaginary, better make sure everyone who ever played "Battlefield: Vietnam" votes Democrat.
Logical fail.
09/16/09
09/16/09
09/15/09
So, I would take it that, based on your professional assessment of Garlasco there is something wrong with me as well?
I mean, after all, you can't possibly have an interest in collecting parts of history without having something wrong with you right?
"Does it make its practitioners apologists for Nazism, or Nazis themselves? No."
So. What exactly is the problem? What did this person do specifically, aside from collect items that you seem to see as distasteful to possess?
What about people who collect confederate money and uniforms? What about Brits that collect colonial American memorabilia?
This article doesn't simple seem weird. It is weird.
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
Myself, I collect Kanye West memorabilia, and hope no one will judge me for it. (Too soon?)
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
Not that I'm implying anything about the strength of Mr. Spielberg's anti-Nazi sentiments (I'm really not), but one can be fascinated by things that one finds morally repugnant.
Also, ask most boys who are into war stuff what their favorite war is, 90% will tell you World War II. The gear was cooler, the cause was just and it was really, really big. Ask those same boys who had the coolest uniforms and equipment, most will say the Nazis.
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
Oops, I guess that makes me a Nazi.
09/15/09
So, that's the reality. Unfortunately our man seems to have gotten all bogged down with with the whole "perceptions" thing.
I don't think he should be sacked.
09/15/09
Of course "the fascination bears some relationship to the magnitude of evil." There's a reason Nazi memorabilia is more popular than Coast Guard memorabilia. It belonged to a psychotic regime that people, decades later, are still trying to wrap their heads around. And there SHOULD be an investment of meaning in this stuff. It's the symbol of something terrible. I think it's better those things be preserved and remembered for what they were than buried and forgotten.
09/15/09
There may be some dark recesses in Garlasco’s character and imagination, but I doubt they reflect on the HRW or even his work for that organization.
The most unfortunate analogy I can muster: he is like a left-wing Teg Haggard, the equivalent of a conservative Evangelical Christian pastor who denounces homosexuality and campaigns against gay rights all the while pursuing gay sex in his personal life.
09/15/09