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MUST READ: When ignorance and demagoguery meet: The not-mosque at not-Ground Zero (updated with TDS goodness)
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
MUST READ: When ignorance and demagoguery meet: The not-mosque at not-Ground Zero (updated with TDS goodness)
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| Courtesy of the Village Voice |
For a country (ostensibly) built upon religious tolerance and freedom, the hullabaloo surrounding the construction of a community center with an Islamic prayer space in a long-vacant building that once housed a Burlington Coat Factory several blocks from where the World Trade Center towers stood — which, in lower Manhattan, is basically is a world away — one of those things that makes you want to just throw your hands in the air and say — as my late, wonderfully curmudgeonly grandfather would — âPeople are no damn good.â
Goddammit, aren't we better than this? Don't we understand that the politicians championing this non-issue are, in fact, preying on our fears, ignorances and bigotries?
That this thing has gained currency, that race-baiting (yet supposedly mainstream) politicians like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin have been allowed to beat their chest and rile up the reasonless passions of their bases with lies and fact-less insinuations, that a president's intonation that the First Amendment is a cherished American tradition became a political liability (at least among the pundit class), that the fact that the blatant religious bigotry plays right into our enemy's hands and undermines what the values that make us better than them has been all but ignored — I'm beginning to wonder, is this the sacking of our Rome?
Probably not. In all likelihood, this thing will get built and the rabble will refocus its attention on American Idol or whatever until the next Fox News trumpeted faux-scandal emerges. But still: aren't we better than this?
Anyway. I would like to direct your attention to The Village Voice's post on why, really, you shouldn't give a shit about the so-called Cordoba House.
What's more offensive: Having a....
- "Ground Zero Burger King."
- Memorial that's never happened because of hyper-capitalist conflicts.
- Bunch of tacky souvenir tables.
- Bunch of tacky souvenir tables that profit off of cheap, China-made 9-11 memorabilia.
- Bunch of tacky souvenir tables that profit off of cheap, China-made 9-11 memorabilia when they're not selling fake Rolexes to the same Americans coming to New York, buying from them, going home, and telling New Yorkers where to put our Mosques.
or an Islamic Cultural Center with a 9/11 Memorial (more than what's actually been put to paper for an official 9/11 Memorial) two and a half blocks away?
Reminder: Muslims were victims of 9/11, too. Sorry, but it's true. And one was an NYPD cadet.
Maybe we'll care what you have to say when you stop bothering us for directions in the subway on how to get to Ground Zero so you can go there and buy some dumb, tacky knickknack you can take home and give to friends to let them know that you spent money on a shake-a-snow where a few thousand people died. Maybe then. But probably not. Shut up, go away, and also, stop lying, or at least tell your politicians to stop lying. It might help you recognize the truth, which is that you're wrong, and you're attacking vital American freedoms by going against this Mosque. The truth is that you're terrorists in you're own right. You are striking against America by going against this mosque. You are, in effect, almost as bad as the ones who killed people on 9/11. Okay, not quite, not really, but kind of, because you're fighting against what 9/11 victims died for: religious freedom, which terrorists don't have and don't want anyone else to have.
But now you have a map to see how wrong you are, okay? Now: Fuck you. Fuck you and shut up, you assholes. Shut up and leave New York alone.
Also, this clip is worth 12 minutes of your life. (For the record, I'm not the biggest fan of Olbermann or cable news in general — I don't have cable, actually — but it's worth a viewing because, well, he's right.)
It's not sad to watch right-wingers try to score points off this thing: that's what they do, it's expected. It's sad that hate and fear have become so ingrained our our politics.
Aren't we better than this?
UPDATED: Daily Show goodness:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Mosque-Erade | ||||
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When Harry Reid and most New York liberals oppose the GROUND ZERO MOSQUE, you know it's more unpopular than universal health care and death panels. If the ground zero mosque gets built by the Imam that thinks Osama was made in the USA and 9/11 was America's fault, with the secret muslim money, I hope that guy from Fox News Red Eye gets investors to build that gay bar for gay muslim men next door! http://www.mediaite.com/tv/greg-gutfeld-outlines-his-islamic-gay-bar-plans-on-last-nights-red-eye/
"...because you're fighting against what 9/11 victims died for: religious freedom, which terrorists don't have and don't want anyone else to have." No one is arguing that we should take away the freedom of religion, and no one is arguing that they don't have the right to build the mosque there...therefore the thesis of the Village Voice article is completely flawed. Should a sex offender rehab center be built next to or even near a day care or preschool? Are we being insensitive, intolerant and bigoted by saying we don't sex offenders in the vicinity of preschoolers? Are we fighting against the personal freedoms of the sex offenders by not allowing them to be near children?
I would like to know where Code Pink and the National Organization for Women are on the mosque. After all, the Imam that will be running the mosque wants America to be sharia compliant --- which means women get stoned for adultery, they can't drive cars, and they get to be beaten senseless and abused by their husbands.
"Ground Zero Mosque". "Death Panels". You ask "aren't we better than this?" In this era of sound byte politics and cable news analogies that make absolutely no sense at all (sex offenders and preschools??? Really???) sadly, we are not.
Rush Limbaugh, the leader of the Republican Party, who is now calling the Ground Zero Mosque the "Hamasque" (as in a mosque sponsored by Hamas), brings up a great point about the Dubai Ports deal a few years back. Rush claims he supported the Dubai Ports deal while Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton were against it. If it is OK to build the mosque at ground zero, why not re-open the ports deal and allow Dubai to buy some ports? It makes a lot of sense.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Anna Fogel, Philly News Now. Philly News Now said: MUST READ: When ignorance and demagoguery meet: The not-mosque at not-Ground Zero: VILLAGE VOICE For a country... http://bit.ly/cv14KD [...]
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