The dispute over the Islamic center has tripped some deep national lunacy. The unbottled anger and suspicion concerning ground zero show that many Americans haven’t flushed the trauma of 9/11 out of their systems — making them easy prey for fearmongers.
Meanwhile, as Stacy McCain writes, guest-hosting at Ricochet this week (he’s OK, but the guy they had this past week was really awesome), “Frank Rich Says ‘Hysteria’ as if He’s Against It:”
The New York Times‘ resident hysteric would have you believe that Pashtun tribesmen spend their leisure hours fuming over American cable TV news:
So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?
(Hat-tip: Memeorandum.) Look, I don’t want to spend all week blogging about The Lower Manhattan Islamic Community Center That the Associated Press Won’t Call the “Ground Zero Mosque” Anymore, but liberals won’t shut up about this story, which bids fair to become the 2010 equivalent of the O.J. trial.
As Ann Coulter said, in reference to Keith Olbermann’s obligatory Martin Niemoller lecture about the mosque controversy, “It’s like we’ve designed a pompous [expletive] trap.” That this trap has attracted Frank Rich is hardly surprising.
Somehow I must have missed reading about the New York Times wondering outloud in 1945 how four years of anti-German propaganda out of Washington and Hollywood was playing in the Fuhrerbunker.
Speaking of which, Rob Long imagines what Downfall: 2010 would look like:
I can see it now: the flickering firelight in a dark cave somewhere on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan; the hum of a gas-powered generator; a static-filled, snowy image on the tiny television. On the rickety table, a letter of surrender addressed to General Petraeus. A Taliban terrorist leader is about to sign the letter. His pen is poised over the paper.
And another Taliban terrorist stops him and points to the TV. “Did you see what they called us on Hannity?”
Another terrorist pulls out his earbuds and puts down his iPod. “Guys,” he says, “You gotta hear what Mark Levin just said. About us!”
“That’s it!” the first terrorist shouts. “I’m tired of being insulted! I’m tired of the hurtful remarks.” And he tears up his letter of surrender and tosses it into the fire.
“Let’s go, fellas!”
And the war, tragically, continues. All thanks to Hannity and Levin and Limbaugh.
As Verum Serum writes, “Park51…Priceless:”
A 13 story Islamic center two blocks from ground zero: $100 million.
Sending Imam Rauf overseas to spread tolerance on the taxpayer’s dime: $16,000.
Refilling the prescription on Frank Rich’s blood pressure medication: $14.
Watching progressives argue that religious freedom should never be questioned…
Priceless.
Maybe not entirely priceless. Expect even worse madness from the left over the next two months: the bill for a decade worth of reflexive contrarianism for its own sake its coming due in November.
How large the receipt will be is entirely up to you.
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