Friday Fish Wrap: September 10, 2010

Let’s get past the 900 lb gorilla in the room - as George Carlin put it at the beginning of his stage show that debuted just after the 9-11 tragedy.

Tomorrow marks the ninth anniversary of the attack on the twin towers, and as much as I don’t tolerate religion in the larger sense (well, and more specifically when it comes to mormons and evangelicals), I’m really tired of those who would pin the events of 9-11 on everybody who happens to practice Islam. That would be like blaming every white American for the terrorist lynchings and other atrocities perpetrated by America’s own homegrown Taliban - AKA the Ku Klux Klan.

Yeah, we’re capable of pretty bad stuff too, and we’re still trying to ‘live it down’ decades later. Every highway I see that has been re-named after the Rev. Martin Luther King, I think of as a ’ white guilt’ highway.

A lame attempt at reconciliation, but an attempt all the same.

In so far as that fringe idiot down in Florida, that was a tempest in a teapot whipped up by some GOP politicos fanned by the mainstream media - and cheered on by the social media machine - into something it should never have been. That lying little trouser stain down there with the muttonchops and 14th century ideas has gotten way more attention than he ever deserved - in part because of larger residual suspicion that every muslim must be a potentially violent muslim.

Nah. Not really. Mostly just when the particularly parochial ones are stoning their misbehaving women to death.

All the ‘Burn the Koran (sic)’ movement did was divert attention - for those easily distracted folk - from serious, substantive issues of the day … i.e. the economy. This was handy for the GOP since the Obama-man made two rocking good appearances that could make the GOP look damn foolish when they try to preserve tax cuts for the upper 2% during a deep, deep recession.

I say build the Islamic Cultural Center across the street from Ground Zero.

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