Wake me up before you go woke
How an iconic photograph and the decision to ban it - then unban it - went sideways for one U.S. government department
Imagery have helped tell stories since humans dragged their knuckles across cave floors and makeshift tools across their walls.
In the United States this week, an iconic image has been the source of considerable consternation. The famous 1945 photograph “V-J Day in Times Square,” shows a sailor embracing and kissing a woman – strangers to one another – in New York City’s Times Square, celebrating Japan’s surrender to mark the end of the Second World War.
The controversy stems from a Feb. 29 memo issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Assistant Under Secretary for Health for Operations, RimaAnn O. Nelson. (Who comes up with these titles?) In the memo, Nelson “requests the removal of the ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ photograph from all Veterans Health Administration facilities in alignment with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ commitment to maintaining a safe, respectful, and trauma-informed environment.
“This action is promoted,” the memo goes on to say, “by the recognition that the photograph, which depicts a non-consensual act, is inconsistent with he VA’s no-tolerance policy towards sexual harassment and assault.”
For years, the woman in the photo, who turns out to have been a dental assistant on her lunch break, was never identified. It wasn’t until the 1960s that Greta Zimmer Friedman saw the Life Magazine picture for the first time and said it was her. The sailor was identified as George Mendonsa.
The initial interpretation of the picture was that of a loving kiss. In an interview in 1980, however, Friedman tells it differently: “I felt that he was very strong. He was just holding me tight. I'm not sure about the kiss... it was just somebody celebrating. It wasn’t a romantic event. It was just an event of ‘thank god the war is over.’”
It’s unclear what prompted last week’s directive to remove the 79-year-old photo from VA facilities. As rationale for the decision, the memo cites a Department of Justice’s “current definition of sexual assault (that) includes any non-consensual sexual act or any act where the victim cannot consent.”
As you might imagine, the ideological and political right that resides on Twitter lost its collective mind when Nelson’s memo was leaked to the account “End Wokeness.” (Of course there’s a Twitter account called End Wokeness.) The account’s March 5 tweet of the memo has garnered 5.3 million views.
Within just a few hours, the Secretary of Veteran Affairs, Denis McDonough, tweeted that the photo was “not banned” and will remain up wherever it currently hangs.
The White House weighed in, too: “The VA is not going to be banning this photo," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “I can definitely say that the memo was not sanctioned, and so it’s not something that we were even aware of.”
Oh boy.
By now, I have little doubt that Assistant Under Secretary Nelson’s life - personal and professional - is in the midst of being turned upside down. Sadly, civilized discourse is as ancient as the art of iconic cave drawings, with Twitter rage all the rage these days.
I am mildly stunned, however, that Nelson and her staff, especially her communications staff, didn’t anticipate the backlash. It stretches credulity that her bosses, including the Secretary himself, was not made aware of the decision. In an election year where the rhetoric is always an 11/10, I’m also skeptical that the White House was not informed.
I will accept that senior White House officials were unaware of the decision and memo that affirmed it, including the press secretary, but surely more junior staff were briefed. The potential for this becoming news and the certainty of the memo being leaked must have been discussed. How could it not?
I can confirm that the VA did not seek my counsel. If they had, I would have urged them to find some other way of dealing with the photograph, because directing an iconic photo’s removal from facilities across the land via a memo that’s language was ripe for the right to render, was a recipe for a very bad day.
I’m loath to blame the comms staff for this. Every issues manager I know would have recognized the bomb that was being built before their very eyes. I have to believe someone with communications in their title did their best to defuse it.
I don’t know whether Nelson will lose her job over this. There’s surely a backstory none of us is privy to. What’s clear, though, is that Nelson’s political masters thought nothing of quickly introducing her to the undercarriage of a passing bus.
It shouldn’t take crisis communications experts to flag the enormous landmine that awaited this memo’s circulation. The whole fiasco could have been avoided. But maybe comms pros were missing from that all-important table.
Leaders, take note.