Westchester Housewife: Meet Debra Burlingame

Opinion Journal.com ^ | October 1, 2005 | BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN

[Gadfly-At-Large]

Rage renders some people incoherent and others blind. It causes some to flare up--fiercely, but briefly--and then to burn out. In others, it does no more than instill sadness, and paralysis. Yet in Debra Burlingame--the 51-year-old sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame, the pilot of the plane that was crashed into the Pentagon by terrorists on September 11, 2001--rage has fueled eloquence, an impressively mulish obstinacy, and an almost eerie moral clarity.

[Gadfly-At-Large]

This is a must read. Everytime this woman talks, I wish that she'd run for office. She's clearly an effective advocate.

[Vigilanteman]

She's splendid and she gets it! She has more intelligence inside her lower intestine than the collective "Jersey girls" do in their heads.

[NaughtiusMaximus]

Anyone connected to the so-called "Freedom Center" urgently needs to have their passports torn up and then be deported to Pakistan.

But that's just a toned down opinion meant for public consumption. My real opinion is that they be made into bacon and their remains tossed to wild dogs.

[freebilly]

Finding interlocutors on the telephone wasn't always this hard for Ms. Burlingame. After her op-ed appeared in the Journal in June, she received calls from political players in Washington, asking her to drop her opposition to Mr. Bernstein's project. She is prepared, only, to name John Bridgeland--a former director of the Domestic Policy Council in President Bush's White House, deputy policy director for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, and, after 9/11, the first director of the USA Freedom Corps Office. He called twice "to discourage me . . . no, not discourage, to 'explain what was actually going to be happening [at the Freedom Center],' and that I'd 'got it all wrong.' I said to him, 'Are you aware of some of the exhibits that they're talking about?' " He wasn't. "Here's a man who didn't know what was happening, yet he was picking up the phone and trying to effect an outcome."

It wasn't only Liberals who wanted the "Freedom Center". Why would a person connected to the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign advocate for it as well?

Wonder what the money trail looks like....

[martin_fierro]

(Ms. Burlingame insists that the blind include the editorial page of the New York Times, which twice attacked her by name--describing her, even, as "the Governor's Proxy"--yet did not consider it important to print a letter from her in response. The page's editor, Gail Collins, would not, it seems, take her calls. "A very, very snotty assistant said to me, 'Let me take your information.' Ms. Collins was 'busy,' 'unavailable' . . .")

Stories like this explain why Schadenfreude at the downsizing of NYT personnel is justified.

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[Zenith]

Debra Burlingame is my HERO !!

She fought for what is right and she won.

GOD Bless you DEBRA !

[q_an_a]

that it took this women to stop Pataki from letting the IFC on the grounds of the WTC shows why he has no chance of being nominated for anything ever again in the Republican party. A blind man could figure this out - even a Rockefeller republican would be better than Pataki. /negataive rant about a loser off - this woman is greaqt back on.

thanks for the post.

[TheSpottedOwl]

Don't ever dismiss a "hausfrau". Great article!

[Miss Marple]

I imagine that the Bush/Cheney guy was fed a soothing line about the "Freedom Center." I heard some of the early proponents of the museum pontificating on a couple of interview shows, and they went on and on about how it was so important to tell the "Story of Freedom." Intellectually lazy and naive people assumed that this was going to be something like an American history lesson with exhibits similar to the D-Day Museum.

It wasn't until Ms. Burlingame got involved and the web site got started that the public found out what was really going to be in the exhibits. The list of those involved told me all I needed to know.

She is quite right about people losing their anger and clarity that they had right after 9/11. We knew the leftists were not going to stick with the President, but quite a few on the right seem to suddenly have other priorities. We are still at war, and that should be our first concern.

[TheSpottedOwl]

Lol! Tell us what you really feel ;-) The Freedom Center is nothing but another desperate revision of facts. Facts do matter. Boot them out of there!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Yup. They had the NPR crowd sold. Nice that it won't happen.

[trek]

This was a truly uplifting article. The forces of sanity finally won one. It has made my day.

[mcCabesPub]

any word on Mrs. Britwieser ,she was an anti Bush lefty shill who sadly lost a love one on 9/11.she was the media go to gal when they needed an anti bush quote .was she for or against the IFC..just wonderin'

[MizSterious]

How helpful of him to "explain that she'd got it all wrong." I just love people like these who want to tell people what they can, or cannot, think. I run into them every so often, and they are almost always liberals.

[freema]

Refreshing piece of inspiration.
I lift my "This is no ordinary housewife you're dealing with" coffee cup in cheers.

[MizSterious]

Yes, we are still at war--and yet so few seem to be consciously aware of the fact. Ok, I'm "older than dirt" so maybe it's a generation thing, but every time this point is brought up, I always think that if this generation had fought WWII, we would be speaking either Japanese or German.

[Katya]

I would never denigrate the term hausfrau, but the article also states that she was a flight attendant and later went to law school. Could she simply be retired?

[Hetty_Fauxvert]

Tunku Varadarajan always writes excellent opinion articles. Every time I see his byline in the Journal, I know it's a must-read.

[Pessimist]

"Finding interlocutors on the telephone wasn't always this hard for Ms. Burlingame. After her op-ed appeared in the Journal in June, she received calls from political players in Washington, asking her to drop her opposition to Mr. Bernstein's project. She is prepared, only, to name John Bridgeland--a former director of the Domestic Policy Council in President Bush's White House, deputy policy director for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, and, after 9/11, the first director of the USA Freedom Corps Office. He called twice "to discourage me . . ."

Gosh. That W can really pick a staff, huh?

[new yorker 77]

Debra makes me proud to be from Westchester County, New York. She is a star in a sea of dimwits.