Why I love Charlie Pierce

[ellid]

His comment on NBC's coverage of the Olympics on this weekend's edition of Only a Game is spot-on:

"I wish American television would stop using Tiananmen Square as a set. This is a freaking grave. This is a place where a really bad thing happened. We would not tolerate French television coming to New York and using Ground Zero as a backdrop for talking about how happy and merry New Yorkers are. The corporations that own and sponsor the US coverage of the Olympics have to tap dance around the Chinese human rights record, but my Lord let's not use this place as a backdrop. People died there."


And died there less than 20 years ago. How soon we forget!

Comments

[helwen.livejournal.com]

While I agree that China's human rights record needs work (and they aren't the only country...), having been to China I don't see Tiananmen Square in particular as being a horrible place to use for newscasters. First of all, it isn't a grave, at least not for the student protestors. Secondly there are a lot of tourist attractions around there - e.g., Mao's mauseleum is off of one side of the square, and the main entrance for the Forbidden City is off of another side of the square.

The square is used on a daily basis for business, play, arts performance (we saw a Zen poet painting calligraphic figures in water there), practicing tai chi, and for just generally hanging out and socializing. Of course the people there haven't forgotten what happened, but they're not going to let a huge place like the square not be used.

[kamion.livejournal.com]

I don't think one can compair Ground Zero with Tiananmen Square, the last has a large history of which the students protests are a part.
Ground Zero was solely born from the desaster that destroyed the WTC, without 9-11 Ground Zero would not have existed. And as long as construction compagies haven't build a new complex it is a scar that still insn;t healed.
Tiananmen isn't a scar but an active place like Time Square or the Red Square in Moscow.