The well-to-do ski community of Vail, CO, has announced that in May it will honor World War II paratroopers, who trained in the surrounding several-hundred-square-mile mountain region, by formally dedicating a heroic bronze statue in the center of town. We encourage this patriotism-by-proxy, and can easily envision similar actions that could be taken by other wealthy enclaves across America who wish to cash in on their own tenuous links to World War II home front heroism.

• The resort of Martha's Vineyard, MA, for example, could commission a series of cabanas in the shapes of giant fiberglass fish to honor the many submariners who might as well have been right in the center of town if they hadn't been several miles offshore and under several hundred feet of water, training to possibly give their lives to protect our beach front resorts.
• The affluent suburb of Grosse Point, MI, home to many of the industrialists who control America's automobile corporations, could redesign their town hall to approximate a giant Sherman tank, emblematic of the auto industry's shift to wartime military production.
• The water tower in luxurious Palm Springs, CA, could be painted to resemble a mighty oxygen tank, symbolizing the gift of clean air that was not polluted by the nonexistent factories, garbage dumps, and rendering plants in this affluent community, and that later drifted east to provide "clear targets" for the many military bombing ranges in lower rent sections of the Southwest.

[03/22/1998]