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I mean, if you're not a major league closer or a 40-year-old softball player, you have no business having that 'stache. Seriously, you're an insult to the ghost of Rod Beck.
And you're an even bigger insult to one of my heroes who has the misfortune to share the same name as you:.jpg)
But of course besides those two individuals, there's also the minor matter of the roughly 1.5 billion Muslims you've managed to insult in the last week. And that fact alone would actually be mightily impressive if it wasn't for something so despicable. I mean, I'm lucky if I get around to insulting 9 or 10 people per month.
So if you happen to be one of the few people who haven't yet made up your mind about whether or not this guy's crazy, you can read an interview with him here. Here's one of my favorite passages, which does a good job of summing things up. He was asked about the comparison between him and the Nazis, who were also quite fond of books as an alternative energy source:
"Well I think it is very easy to see a difference. We have tried to make it very clear that even though this is a very radical message, a radical way of doing something we are not against Muslims. We do not hate them. And plus the Nazis, what the Nazis did was the Nazis gathered up all the books that were against their ideology and burned them. That's not what we are doing. We are not by any means promoting the burning of books."
So let's play a quick game of "Spot the Hypocrisy"; it's like "Where's Waldo" only waaaaaay easier. OK you're not against Muslims, you just want to burn their sacred text. You're not like the Nazis because they burned books that were against their ideology whereas you are just, um, burning a book because it doesn't agree with your ideology. And finally, you are certainly not by means promoting the burning of books, you're just hosting "International Burn a Koran Day."
This is my 2nd favorite passage:
"But we have also made it very clear that here in the United States we have a constitution, we have freedom of religion they are more than welcome to be here and worship and build mosques."
This one is particularly good because now he has apparently decided to call off the burning because he's supposedly gotten an agreement that the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" (which is neither a mosque or at ground zero) will be moved. Prior to calling it off, he had never made any connection whatsoever that his burning had anything to do with the GZM.
One of my favorite expressions (which to my knowledge I made up) is "don't act surprised when crazy people say or do crazy things." That would appear to be obvious but apparently it isn't. When Ahmadinejad, or Dick Cheney, or Sarah Palin, or Glen Beck, or Carl Everett, or Pat Robertson say offensive and inflammatory things it shouldn't be news. They're crazy, and that's what crazy people do (quick aside, for the sake of this discussion I am not differentiating between actual insanity and politically calculated insanity). So really I'm arguing (yet again) that this should not be being covered to the extent that it is. If some group of wackos wants to burn a Koran, it's pretty clear that in this country they are within their rights to do so. So let them, and don't give them the thing that they desperately want: attention. And at this point, from a damage standpoint he might as well go ahead and do it. The Muslim world is already pissed off enough about it that most of them are not going to bother following up to see if he actually did it or not.
But what I think is probably most striking is that we need to step back and ask the question of why exactly is this happening now. Why specifically the 9th anniversary of 9/11/01? Why didn't this happen a year ago, or five? And I'll just cut through the suspense and say, yes, I'm going to blame the Republicans for this one (technically the Republicans and Tea Partiers if you consider them different). George W, for all his numerous faults, always made it very clear that we were not at war with Islam and that it was paramount to respect peaceful Muslims of all nations. And when a Republican leader says that, the right doesn't jump on him for it and the left certainly doesn't (of course they generally don't give him credit for it either). But let a Democratic leader say the same thing and now the right not only doesn't agree with him - they accuse him of being a Muslim! And of course it doesn't do any good to make that accusation unless you whip up an anti-Muslim frenzy. The "Ground Zero Mosque" and this latest incidents are perfect manifestations of that. In the last few decades Republicans have been the "freedom of religion" banner-carriers. I think it's now been exposed once and for all as only a "freedom of Christianity" banner.
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5 comments:
Huh, it is funny timing that this stuff happens during the build up of the election cycle. It is almost like whipping up people's hate and fear and violent tendencies favors one side.
Also, Obama repeatedly praised G.W.B. yesterday for the whole "not at war with Islam" campaign 9 years ago.
Also, the burning this also makes me mad because you KNOW that the people behind the Koran are the same people that want to outlaw flag burning.
Great blog ... funny and made great points. The man never should have made it in the news. He got exactly what he wanted. Personally, I never want to hear about the guy again. Yet, I would be okay seeing the mustache on Adam. I did like the mustache.
OK- clearly the burning of another religion's sacred text is... biased. It's inflammatory. It's radical.
I really don't know about crazy though.
Crazy? Actually crazy. A totally irrational act? Here is a man, informed only of the radical Muslim's hate and destructive nature toward America and everything he loves as a Christian. How do I know that's all he hears? Because that's all I hear in mainstream American news. As he knows (believes to be true), Christianity is the one true religion and this counter text seems to be what is uniting these radicals.
As a show of unity against this which he believes to be his mortal enemy he wants to make a Christianity v Radical Islam stance and burn their text.
I get it. I wouldn't do it, but I get it. He's taking his principals to the extreme and following what I would believe to be a logical conclusion given those radical ingredients.
But here's what I don't get: Who cares? How are we comparing this guy starting a small paper fire in his backyard to the people out there LITERALLY KILLING PEOPLE FOR THEIR RELIGION. Where are those protests?
I like one thing he said: 'we're burning books, not killing people'
When the general of the us troops calls him up and says 'you're endangering people'... WHAT? You are a general- using bombs, tanks, and guns to kill Muslim men and women, and the guy thousands of miles away is the problem? Who's putting lives in danger? If our mainstream US message was one of tolerance of all religions, this guy wouldn't be a blip. But because our congressmen and mayors and newscasters and people on the street are using Muslim as a swear and fighting their holy buildings, let alone their books, you can't exactly be surprised at the result on the ground floor. Islam Hatred.
I'll take anyone burning a copy of what I deem important in protest any day over them coming to my homeland and killing my family. What total nonsense.
1st amendment: he can make any statement he wants. I was yelled at and told I was going to hell all the time in school. Awesome. 1st amendment. Why are his rights less important?
We get two easy 1st amendment stories in one month: how do they even make the news? Someone wants to build a church? they can. Next? Some guy wants to protest Islam by burning their book. He can, next?Flag burning? What is this, 1990? YOU CAN. over.
In an unrelated/related update though, Gainsville is trying to get him to pay for all the police they ratcheted up for his protection. So... police protection is now privatized. You pay for what you use. That's new to me.
I didn't say he was crazy for wanting to burn a Koran. I said he was crazy for (among other things) saying that he wanted to burn a Koran while simultaneously saying "we're not against Muslims; we don't hate them." That is the very definition of irrational and, yes, crazy.
As for the rest, I heartily agree with you. If I may make an analogy here (it's gonna seem obscure so please bear with me) it reminds me of when the Bears were in the Super Bowl. The whole two-week run-up to the game there were countless stories about how it was the first time two black coaches have faced each other in the Super Bowl and making references to how far we've come in terms of civil rights. And I thought "we really haven't gotten to where we're supposed to be until this isn't a news story." If we've achieved anything resembling equality, then it's completely irrelevant when there's a minority involved.
Similarly, we won't really have achieved tolerance of Islam until, ironically, we can allow people to say and do some despicable things against it without going bat-shit crazy about it. You know, like we treat every other religion. Because at the end of the day, whether you're burning the Koran because you think that Muslims are all extremists or you're saying whatever you do DON'T burn a Koran you're basically saying that Muslims are crazy and they can't take it.
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