The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s passionate new security chief, who brought federal screening to Logan International Airport after 9/11, says the theft of precious artworks from the museum 18 years ago Tuesday is a form of “cultural terrorism” that must be resolved for posterity’s sake.
[From Putting the pieces together - BostonHerald.com]
"Terrorism." My dictionary defines it as "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims" - a definition that clearly does not fit stealing a painting from a museum. But the word is rapidly coming to mean anything that anybody really, really does not like, which is really, really not a good thing. Not only does it rob the word of its specific usefulness, but it also means all the laws that have been made (or broken) in the name, specifically, of fighting terrorism will come to apply to every crime du jour. Does calling art theft "cultural terrorism" mean we can waterboard suspects (if this guy knows where the ticking portrait is...), toss 'em into the brig for years without charges, subject them to kangaroo trials and disappear them from the face of the earth?
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