Slashdot Mirror
FEMA Removes 9/11 Coloring Book For Children From Website
FEMA has decided to pull a children's coloring book entitled, "A Scary Thing Happened" from their website. The coloring book contained three images of the twin towers on fire for children to color. Rose Olmsted, the coordinator behind the book said, "I stand firm that it was a very well thought-out and useful resource for kids, but it's obviously being misinterpreted by a lot of people." Since people are so upset about the coloring book, I can only assume FEMA's plan for a human remains concentration game will be put on hold.
Censorship is a bigger danger to the American Public than any FEMA publication.
Bruce Perens.
But given the level of ignorance and PCness in this country, not at all surprising. Games and coloring books are two ways kids learn, remember and process things. I recall growing up with coloring books that depicted, for instance, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Nazis, etc. It didn't turn me into a hateful monster or give me terrible dreams; it helped me learn, remember and understand. I've talked to several friends about this (I have friends across most spectrums you can come up with) and they reached the same conclusion.
We've become absurdly over-sensitive as a nation.
It's like trying to take guns and cannons out of civil war coloring books.
It happened and it's history. People need to know the truth.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
In those coloring book images, you can clearly see that the towers were rigged for demolition! See, I just drew in a team of CIA operatives with a TNT plunger! COVER UP! I call COVER UP!
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
This is just the first government agency publication to be pulled. To come:
FEMA's Katrina Snorkel & Search underwater body hunt field kit
The SEC's Big Book of Why Daddy Contemplates Suicide guide to financial hardship for kids
The FDA's Crush&Snort Mortar and Pestle Set
Look for a complete list to be published by early summer.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I mean, I'm just sayin'...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Here's a copy of the coloring book: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/pdf/femacoloringbook.pdf
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Where the hell did you grow up? Certainly not in the U.S.A., if you think that coloring in a terrorist attack is so worrisome, what's your opinion on the public television they'll be watching in just a few years? I say we quit pretending and come to terms with reality, this happened. It was a very real thing, a 'turning point' (using this term lightly) in American history.
What happened to "9/11 - Never Forget". When did it become "9/11 - Never Forget, But Don't Tell the Children!!".
This isn't about us pretending, it's about children pretending. Learning about the futility of existence should be a suprise saved for later in life.
A certain amount of desensitization is necessary to live.
I open the paper every day to see a two-page spread of people who died. If I wasn't desensitized to death to a certain degree and instead had a huge emotional reaction to everyone who had died, I'd be screwed.
You don't want kids to be callous, but you don't want them to live in fear, either.
I remember when I was between the ages of 6 and 10 I use to draw battles with tanks, jets, and stickmen. I had people falling into volcanoes, getting blown in two by bombs, getting hit by "tracer" round gunfire, etc. Guess what, I'm still pretty normal. I don't have the urge to blow anyone up or shoot anyone.
While I agree it's a bit odd to have the twin towers getting hit by airplanes in a coloring book, I wouldn't have a problem with my kids coloring the picture.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
The coloring book was a well thought out resource then for allowing toddlers work out their emotions from that event.
Honestly, can you imagine how scary it would have been to be a 4 year old during 9/11? We adults, the folk they looked to for guidance, were primarily broken. Most of the people I knew back then were completely at a loss on how to act, what to think, or even what to say, they just sat there organically BSOD'ed.
Now imagine you are a kid and your parents are doing this, and the TV is saying we are under attack, showing buildings falling and people jumping out. Over and over again.
The kids back then needed something to help them cope, and giving them the opportunity to draw it in a coloring book, as much as it sounds counter intuitive, is pretty much the standard "coping technique" any child psychologist will suggest for children who've experienced a tramatic event.
On the other hand, I really don't see it being as useful today. I would have supported removing it, not because of 'negative pressure' but simply because it was no longer relevant or useful for the purpose it was created.
Yes.
One thing that I have never really understood.... whats so bad about being desensitized?
I mean really, do we think that the proper reaction, in just about any situation, is to immediately reduce yourself to a quivering blob of jelly? Isn't desensitization exactly what you want when a major event happens and you have to keep a calm and level head and act rationally?
I mean seriously, other than a bunch o fhand waving about the bogus dangers of "desensitization" is there really any way at all that this could be, in the least bit, harmful to children?
Seriously, if we had been a bit more "desensitized" to this extremely rare event, by a very small number of people (who are mostly all dead or captured), then maybe we wouldn't have overreacted so badly.
At current count, adding security to cockpit doors is the SINGLE change I have seen since 9/12 thats made anyone any safer. In reality, the attack vector was one that relied on passengers believing they would be involved in a bloodless standoff that was exploited. 9/11 was a 100% self correcting problem, as it educated airline passengers to a new type of terrorist plot.
As of about 11 am on 9/11 the plot could not have been repeated ever again. No new "security measures" were needed. However, being nation of ultra-sensitive cowards who like to hide behind big police forces and military might, we did a lot more than that.
I see desensitization as a good thing. Lets have them color in some suicide bomb belts while they are at it. so maybe next time we can act like mature adults rather than sacred little children.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
..to teach kids about bad stuff.
Hansel and Gretel -- your parents can't feed you so they abandon you in the woods to starve to death. Kids had to be exposed to the realities of the world, which despite our attempts to pretend otherwise, were way worse for your typical non-aristocrat in 17th century Europe. Abuse. Abandonment. Starvation. Fairy Tales served as a way to expose kids to what might happen next.
How is that story -- which was a real threat back when famine and starvation weren't just inspirations for pop music sing-alongs -- any worse than a 9/11 coloring book which tries to help kids understand what happened?
We're so fucked when the response is to just shelter kids from everything. Shelter them from nothing. Expose them carefully and they will learn.
...The individuals on the terrorist training cards are no more random than the airplanes, tanks, and trucks on the NATO/Warsaw Pact training cards.
They're not used to fuel hate, they're used to familiarize soldiers with the appearance of specific human beings so that they don't pass by unnoticed. Kind of like "wanted" posters, but made in a way that they're likely to be looked at more often.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
I notice YOU haven't published the coloring book on YOUR site either, Mr. Perens. Therefore, by your own logic, you are a censor.
Except that is not censorship. Nobody is banning anything. FEMA is choosing not to use our tax dollars to publish a coloring book on their own web site. Calling that censorship dilutes the meaning of the word, and it demeans the struggle against real censorship.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Exactly, things always end up on a larger scale later in life. The sooner you have certain life experiences the better you are. Think about chicken pox, when you are 4 or 5 chicken pox is just a few days sick, a few oatmeal baths and some lotion, on the other hand, when you are 40, chicken pox can get you hospitalised rather quickly. Or think about drinking, the kid who drinks a bit when he is 15, throws up and then only occasionally drinks compared to the kid who is 21 and drinks enough to have alcohol poisoning because he doesn't know when to quit.
Early exposure to things almost always leads to better handling of it and less severe consequences then later in life.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So that's why they flew air force one over New York City. They were making a live action version of this comic book.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The coloring book was created and posted 3 years ago, meaning during the Bush administration.
Now, would you care to rescind your flamebait?
Because the people who are asking them to take it down are silly, that's why. Things like coloring or drawing pictures (and talking about the pictures thus drawn) of traumatic events is good therapy. Removing something that supports that is silly.
So yes, the government should be accountable to the people. But they should also know when a few people are being silly and complaining about something that is actually worthwhile.
On the other hand, kids that are of a coloring-book age (like my 5-year-old) at this point probably don't remember September 11, 2001, anyhow.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Umm... it's still torture, even if you can argue that it was defensible.
If I walked into a camp in Pakistan and shot Osama Bin Laden in the head, it would still be murder, or at the very least, assassination (aka, fancy political murder). Whether it was justified or not does not change what the action was.
Now, given that everyone tortured under the Bush regime had *not* been committed of a crime, that multiple serious studies have shown that torturing is not a useful way to acquire reliable information, and that there has been no proof submitted to the public that the torturing was in any way useful... I'd argue the justification of it, too.
For those of you too lazy to go searching for it (I'm rather surprised I'm not in this group this time) here's a copy of the coloring book. I'm sitting at work coloring it right now, yay!
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/pdf/femacoloringbook.pdf
Well, that's funny, because I am a supporter of the current administration, and took time off of work to help Obama be elected.
I am pro-government. I am also pro full-disclosure, transparency, and full discussion. I am not so pro-government that I take everything they do as good, and am very relieved that Obama just hinted he would revisit the state secrets issue. I think government only works when it is of the people, by the people, and for the people.
As you can see from my recent article, I have an interest in emergency preparedness. I looked through the FEMA coloring book and, first, it's not by FEMA. It's by a local emergency preparedness team. Second, it's a really good job. I'd show it to any child. It would help the child understand how to cope with an emergency by being prepared.
So, hyperbole, knee-jerk, and hysteria on you, sir.
Bruce Perens.
Yeah, it's only torture when other countries do it. When our country does it, it's a valuable interrogation technique.
But hey, just because torture is generally considered an unreliable method of gaining information, why shouldn't we do it anyway? It proves we're tough, right?
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
And having spoken before seeing the link to the coloring book, I see that I'm wrong in part. I assumed due to the summary and the linked article that this was a 9/11 specific coloring book and thus that it was no longer relevant.
Now that I've read it and see it's a general "any disater" book that simply has two pictures that one would assume were the 9/11 attacks on the twin towers, I wouldn't have even supported removing it due to it's relevance.
The people putting pressure on FEMA to remove it are idiots, and FEMA is a bit silly for removing it just to please them.
I am well aware that I am "Bruce Fricken Perens" :-)
Well, I see a few problems here.
I actually read the book. 911 is not centrally featured, it's just one of a number of disasters. There are also fires, floods, etc. And there is a really nice talk, at a child's level, on how to be prepared. Now, a child who knows how to be prepared is going to be more confident of getting through an emergency.
I had a big demonstration of this during a dinner-time earthquake a few years ago. Valerie and I just looked at each other in shock across the table, and it was Stanley, then 7 years old, who said "duck and cover!" and got us moving. He'd been well trained in school.
So, I'm bothered that this resource has been removed just because it had photos of the world trade center burning and being hit by an airplane that a child could color in. That's how you get a child to think about things. Most children would draw in people either running, or helping others, or catching the bad guys. Or all three. That's how they think, and that's how they tell others what they are thinking, which a parent can use as a cue to talk things through further. I downloaded the PDF. My kid is a bit old for this now (he's 9) but he is pretty well trained in self-reliance anyway.
I am also disturbed that some over-sensitive people get to tell our government how to give all of us services. That sounds undemocratic to me.
Bruce Perens.
Whoah there, Bruce. Please point out where the article claims that FEMA took down the coloring book due to pressure. Actually, the article does not state WHY the book was removed. Unless you have access to information we don't, you are making completely unwarranted assumptions.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Please show us where the article makes any claims whatsoever as to why this coloring book was taken down. This is the problem I have with claims of censorship, for all we know, FEMA had a contract to keep the thing up for six years and it just expired. Or they ran our of space on the web server. Or it was an accident. We just don't know, and assuming it was due to public outcry is unwarranted.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton