Manhattan is a place where millions of people live.  They work there, they date there, they eat there, they get married there, they raise children there - and they worship there.  This is not the function of meat-eaters trying to stick it to vegetarians (and vice versa), or fertile people flaunting their properly functioning reproductive systems to the infertile.  It is the function of people living in a place and participating in the things that people do as functional human beings.

And that’s what makes this piece so heart wrenching to read.  The Washington Post found the Muslim daughter of a 9/11 victim, and gave her space in the paper to oppose the Cordoba House…by declaring that some ill-defined space around Ground Zero should be free from religion altogether.

From the first memorial ceremonies I attended at Ground Zero, I have always been moved by the site; it means something to be close to where my mother may be buried, it brings some peace. That is why the prospect of a mosque near Ground Zero—or a church or a synagogue or any religious or nationalistic monument or symbol—troubles me.

[...]

But a mosque nearby—even a proposed one—is already transforming the site from a sacred ground for reflection, so desperately needed by the families who lost loved ones, to a battleground for religious and political ideologies. So many people from different nationalities and religions were killed that day. This site should be a neutral place for all to come in peace and remember. I believe my mother would have thought so as well.

With all due respect, Ground Zero was a battleground for religious and political ideologies before 9/11, on 9/11, and most certainly after 9/11.  The idea that pretending Islam (or, in fact, the conflicts and ideologies that define and guide our world) doesn’t exist for some undisclosed number of blocks around Ground Zero is not just naive beyond belief.  If applied consistently, it would require a fundamental remaking of one of the most densely populated areas in America for blocks, perhaps miles. 

There are dozens of churches within blocks of Ground Zero.  There are a handful of synagogues, and a single mosque.  Before Cordoba House was announced, there was no controversy over any of these places.  The normal tapestry of American life weaves houses of worship in next to McDonald’s and CVS and Starbucks.  There were no religious wars, no claim that St. Peter’s Catholic Church was an attempt to consecrate Ground Zero as a place in the Catholic faith, or that Beth Din Zidek was a Zionist base to raise ire against Muslims in America.  It was only when Muslims, Muslims who have made it a clear and consistent point to preach tolerance and opposition to terrorism, attempted to build something new that Ground Zero because a sacred space from which all mention of controversy should be excised. 

Whatever this woman’s pain, it doesn’t justify turning some broad area around Ground Zero into a place where Americans can no longer participate in the fundamental freedoms that make this country what it is, no matter the discomfort it might cause.  If a Methodist church wants to hold a prayer vigil at Ground Zero, they should.  If a Jewish congregation wants to remember September 11th at Shabbat, they should.  And if a group of Muslims wants to take open real estate a few blocks away and build a center for people of their faith - and all faiths - to come and be together, then every single fiber of this country’s philosophical underpinnings should support them in that.

Otherwise, it’s time to start bulldozing some churches.

Rudy Giuliani on Muslims’ attempt to take over his favorite day by building a sharia Pilates room on the very ground where someone was standing on September 11th, 2001:

“It sends a particularly bad message, particularly (because) of the background of the imam who is supporting this. This is an Imam who has supported radical causes, who has not been forthright in condemning Islamic (terrorism) and the worst instincts that that brings about.

“So it not only is exactly the wrong place, right at ground zero, but it’s a mosque supported by an imam who has a record of support for causes that were sympathetic with terrorism. Come on! We’re gonna allow that at ground zero?

“This is a desecration,” he added. “Nobody would allow something like that at Pearl Harbor. Let’s have some respect for who died there and why they died there. Let’s not put this off on some kind of politically correct theory.

“I mean, they died there because of Islamic extremist terrorism. They are our enemy, we can say that, the world will not end when we say that. And the reality is, it will not and should not insult any decent Muslim because decent Muslims should be as opposed to Islamic extremism as you and I are.”

Everyone knows that after 9/11, true patriots sit back and let Rudy get his rage buffet on.

Here’s the main question: after Mullah Giuliani (Mulliani?) calls out his faithful to oppose the Muslim Community Center alongside the other elders of the conservative movement, who bears responsibility when some aggrieved person who has to be around Muslims throws a rock through a window?  Or when little Muslim kids (and, let’s be honest, non-Muslim kids) are heckled and harassed and called terrorists when they’re just going in to play rec basketball?  Or when they keep having to shut down programs because of “patriotic” bomb-threats?

Oh, that’s right - it’ll be Muslims’ responsibility. As Sarah Palin has said, it’s an ‘unnecessary provocation’.  Which, of course, it is, because this is America and the people who deserve the most protection are the ones who are the most crazily xenophobic and prone to say and do insane shit because of a brutal lack of understanding of history or the proper functioning of civilization.

And no, I’m not talking about jihadists.  They’re not decent! 

“Huffington Post has created a computer that generates stories based on click-happy tags.”  That was my first thought upon reading this alarmist article about how teenage kids are getting high off the internet.  No, I’m not kidding.  The headline actually reads: “DIGITAL DRUGS: How Teens Are Using The Internet To Get High”.  Clearly, this is a computer-generated headline, I thought.  They don’t even care anymore; whatever it takes to get clicks.

But I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and actually dig in and read a little more of the story.  Unfortunately, I have to report that what I learned wasn’t enough to relieve my concerns.  Indeed, the article seemed to be reporting on something that’s actually happening, but their take on it is some of the saddest shit I’ve seen from adults since I saw that evangelical program on an access channel back in college about how Satan reaches kids through not just heavy metal, but backmasking records and even through Whitney Houston. 

The trend, called i-Dosing, is a supposedly “legal” and “safe” way to alter one’s consciousness.

According to Kansas News 9, these “digital drugs” use “binaural, or two-toned, technology to alter your brain waves and mental state,” producing a “state of ecstasy” for the user. i-Dosers listen to these atonal tracks while sitting motionless with headphones on.

It may sound benign, but parents, educators and law officials are worried that i-Dosing could be addictive, harmful, and a gateway “drug” to other illegal substances. The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs has taken an interest in the phenomenon. “Kids are going to flock to these sites just to see what it is about,” the Bureau’s spokesperson Mark Woodward told Kansas News 9, “and it can lead them to other places.”

As someone who spent her teen years in a boring ass small town, I had a strong suspicion that whatever the specifics, that this was almost surely a parlor trick that, because it’s in the hands of teenagers, is being blown up as something it’s not for maximum effect.  There wasn’t a parlor trick that we didn’t indulge as kids, and many of them, such as “light as a feather, stiff as a board”, had a pseudo-occult feel to them that gave us all a good scare before we forgot about it a couple hours later.  Hey, you got to get your thrills where you can.  Eventually most of us discovered sex and left the world of adolescent parlor tricks behind.  That this is framed by kids who pass it along as being like drugs should be a relief to parents, because it means said kids have no experience with actual drugs. 

Read All...

I don’t know what part of Rep. Sue Myrick’s paranoid ramblings about terrorism and immigration I think is more amazing—-that she thinks Iranian terrorists are flooding our country pretending to be Mexican nationals or that she thinks she’s heard about some alarming rise in Farsi tattoos in our prisons.  While she appears to think this is all one continuous, flowing argument, in reality her entirely separate claims seem to have no relationship to each other, much less reality. 

Right wingers really do think life is a bad action movie, don’t they?

If there was some vast Iranian terrorist conspiracy to sneak in to the U.S., I fail exactly to see how or why they’d say, “Hey, some dumb cops will think we’re Mexicans, let’s go with that!”  There are many problems with this strategy that anyone brighter than a right winger who thinks they live in a made-for-cable action movie would see:

1) It assumes that it’s really so easy to pass, an assumption that is based in Myrick’s belief that everyone else—-especially the cops—-is as stupid and racism-poisoned as she is.
2) It assumes that Iranians are somehow not allowed to come into the U.S. and move about freely, and therefore need some kind of disguise.
3) It assumes that Mexican immigrants, documentation status aside, don’t get hassled by the cops.

All of these assumptions are roughly the stupidest things I’ve ever heard, and here they are bundled into one argument!  I think #2 might be my favorite assumption, because while all the other assumptions indicate that someone lives in a cave where their only contact with the outside world is Fox News, even Fox News doesn’t go to great pains to hide that we allow people to immigrate here from all over the world, including Iran.  At the risk of drawing racist hatred towards an innocent group of people that many right winger apparently were unaware existed, I have to say that I think that if there were Iranian nationalists coming here with the intent on causing trouble, the best disguise for them would probably be “Iranian immigrant”.  I’m no expert in espionage, but I really do think that a no-frills approach is the best way not to draw attention to yourself.

Of course, in Myrick’s world, not only is there supposedly a huge group of Iranian “terrorists” sneaking in to the country, but they abhor keeping a low profile in their disguises as immigrants from Mexico.  (God, I just laugh typing it.)  Instead, they commit a bunch of unrelated-to-terrorism crimes, get treated like ordinary criminals, get thrown in jail, and, as part of their brilliant disguises, get tattoos in Farsi.  Which we’re made to assume that the cops are the ones reporting that they’re seeing way more Farsi tattoos than Arabic ones, and this is somehow evidence of this.  Even though these are supposedly the same cops who can’t tell that the Iranian guy passing himself off as a Mexican immigrant may not be who he’s claiming. 

The punchline to this joke is that people actually voted this woman into office.

This time David Vitter:

He basically encourages conservatives to keep suing the President to see a “valid birth certificate”, thereby allowing the guy who asks the question to have his incorrect premise—-that Obama hasn’t produced a real birth certificate—-go unquestioned.  Since the President has produced his birth certificate, allowing the wingnuts to continue to chew on this is basically signing off on their delusions.  He does try to salvage the situation by saying they shouldn’t dwell on it, but that’s not enough when you’ve fed conspiracy theory delusions to your base.  All they’re going to hear is, “A real life Senator agrees that the President is lying about his citizenship status.” 

Here’s what’s interesting to me: Vitter basically might as well just up and tell his supporters, “Y’all are a bunch of morons that we Republicans find easy to exploit.”  I mean, he’s encouraging them to flush god only knows how much money down the toilet of suing the President.  And for a supposed “conservative”, he certainly seems to have no problem encouraging his supporters to waste taxpayer money on frivolous lawsuits.  It’s just a nifty reminder of how much Republicans really do see their base supporters as marks.

Good news, though it’s sorry that it’s come to this—-the Justice Department is now officially moving to sue the state of Arizona over the “papers please” law.  The argument is that the law usurps the federal government’s authority over issues such as immigration law enforcement.  I’m sure the lawyers out there could explain why the Justice Department thought this was the best angle, instead of doing something like arguing that the law is fundamentally discriminatory.  Maybe the disingenuous attempts to forbid racial profiling in the text of the law while encouraging it in practice make that a harder case to build than you’d think?  That’d be my guess.

The most important thing is that Arizona faces resistance to this move to make blatant anti-Hispanic racism official government policy.  Beyond just sucking on its face, laws that encourage racism directly also help foster an atmosphere where racism is more generally seen as acceptable.  For instance, check out this story about the Apache Junction American Legion in Arizona.  Just out of spiteful racism, they banned Cinco de Mayo celebrations at the post, on the scurrilous grounds that it’s not a real Mexican holiday.  Which is funny, because I suspect they’d ban it for being a real Mexican holiday if that’s what it was.  No matter; in the U.S., Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican-American equivalent of what St. Patrick’s Day used to be, or what gay pride parades currently are.  It’s a way of being positive and proud in the face of bigotry, a celebration of diversity, and a reason to have a good time.  The only people who can really be against that sort of thing are those that are eaten up by hate. 

You can really see, in this instance, how an official act of racism from the government created more hatred and animosity all around.  It’s a vicious cycle.  The government passed the law, and people, for good reason, protested it.  The protesters are perceived by cranky white people as uppity, and probably as illegal, and so they strike back against them by taking racist potshots aimed at celebrations the encourage diversity.  This sows even more anger and distrust between neighbors, and for no good reason.

Unfortunately, this means the initial reaction the Justice Department lawsuit will probably be more cycles of racism/protest/increased racism.  But it has to be done, because the only other alternative is allowing the state government to continue to stoke hatred against its Hispanic citizens.  Official government intervention against racism creates backlashes, but it eventually works to tone down racism—-look at the results of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  It created an upswing in some hostilities, and it didn’t actually bring an end to racism, but eventually it helped usher in an era where racists at least had to hold their cards a little closer to their chests.  Which is far from perfect, but better than the available alternatives.

Since the 4th was a Sunday, it looks like everyone’s basically taking today off, so I thought I’d skip anything news-driven and instead whip out a little skeptical posting.  Sadly, I’ve been avoiding this somewhat out of cowardice, but frankly, that’s no excuse.  Most people are in the “ignore them and they’ll go away camp” when it comes to conspiracy theorists, but I’m not, so I’m a perfect person to try to push back against them.  And I want to push back against the zombie conspiracy theory about Sarah Palin’s 5th child, Trig. Andrew Sullivan just won’t let this one go, and the conspiracy theory mania is spreading amongst people I otherwise respect.  The theory, in case you haven’t heard it (but I’ll bet you have, which is why simply ignoring conspiracy theories doesn’t work), is that Sarah Palin only pretended to have her son Trig, but was actually covering up for Bristol’s pregnancy.

The “evidence” for these claims:

1) That Bristol took some time off school in 2008. This is the least interesting evidence to the theorists, from what I can tell.  The reason is that focusing on Bristol is rhetorically unwise of them, because if you believe the theory, you have to accept Bristol conceived a second time while still pregnant.  So they shy away from this one. 

2) That Bristol cuddles Trig a lot. You rarely see this stated so bluntly, but theorists enjoy putting up pictures of Trig being cuddled in public by Bristol, implying that she, as the mother, cannot resist this.

I’m forced to point out that an alternative theory is that people in general like to cuddle babies.  And that families that have much-older daughters and infants at the same time are known to employ the daughters in baby care.  The pictures of Bristol cuddling Trig invariably are taken when Sarah is doing something like, oh, speaking at a convention, and therefore can’t be holding a baby right that second.  The natural person to shove the baby off on is Bristol. 

Read All...