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Banksy Hates One World Trade Center, Canada

NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 15: Banksy's latest work depicting the New York City skyline with the former World Trade Center Twin Towers is shown October 15, 2013 in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City. Beginning October 1st the British street artist Banksy announced he would be creating new street art for a month in New York. (Photo by Daniel Pierce Wright/Getty Images)
Banksy’s last WTC-themed work. Photo: Daniel Pierce Wright/2013 Getty Images

If Mayor Bloomberg didn’t already dislike Banksy, this would definitely do it:  On Sunday, the famous street artist revealed that he wanted his latest piece to be a New York Times op-ed, but the paper declined to publish it. Instead, he posted the article on his Better Out Than In website, and it’s easy to see why his thoughts on One World Trade Center gave the editors pause. “That building is a disaster,” he writes. “Well no, disasters are interesting. One World Trade centre is a non-event. It’s vanilla. It looks like something they would build in Canada.”

If his architecture critique stuck to Canada-bashing, the Times might have been willing to risk receiving a handful of angry letters, but the piece also contains the line, “It would be easy to view One World Trade Centre as a betrayal of everyone who lost their lives on September 11th, because it so clearly proclaims the terrorists won.”

The Times confirmed that Banksy submitted something resembling what appeared on his website. “We couldn’t agree on either the piece or the art, so we did reject it,” spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told the Post. “What he has posted on his site is not exactly the same as what he submitted.”

Here’s Banksy’s Times mock-up in full:

Photo: Banksy/Better Out Than In
Banksy Hates One World Trade Center, Canada