[....]

Fire Yourself

To his careers as a sometimes cash-challenged real-estate mogul, fragrance shill, and reality-show blowhard, Donald Trump has added architecture critic.

Standing beside a 9-foot-high architectural model in the atrium of Trump Tower, he announced that he had signed onto a plan devised by architect Herbert Belton and structural engineer Ken Gardner to rebuild the destroyed Twin Towers as a fortified version of the Minoru Yamasaki-designed originals. If the Freedom Tower is built, the world-class diplomat declared, ``the terrorists win.''

Trump decried the Freedom Tower design as ``not appropriate for freedom,'' and ``a skeleton.''

Belton and Gardner have been schlepping this ghastly proposal about for over a year. The details are predictably depressing: memorials in the old footprints that look like abandoned garden- show displays, a cluster of 12-story Miami-condo look-alikes posing as a memorial museum and ``Hall of Heroes.''

Lest fans fear Trump has lost his priapic interest in height for its own sake, a crude telecommunications antennae plunked on the north tower rises high enough to claim world's-tallest status.

Neither Belton, Gardner, nor Trump have found supporters among the firefighters, police, victims' families, downtown residential community (many of whose windows would be darkened by these hulks), nor the downtown business community (with the exception of a former tenant, John Hakala, who has energetically promoted the plan).

Shameless Synergy

Trump could not be bothered articulating what these feeble fakes symbolize. Let me help. These bumper stickers pointed at the sky express a crude, empty defiance.

Trump swore he would not stick his name on the towers in shiny metal letters. So what's in it for him? Well, an ad for his fragrance was pasted on the pink marble walls behind the model, well within range of the two-dozen TV cameras that showed up for the circus-like event. Trump mentioned ``The Apprentice'' at least half-a-dozen times, and said he may display the model in an upcoming episode. That's synergy for ya! Trump has defined shamelessness down, no easy feat in our civility-challenged era.

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- bill 5-21-2005 8:13 pm




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