Our Mosque Madness
By Maureen Dowd
NY Time Op-Ed: August 17, 2010
Washington
Maybe, for Barack Obama, it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.
When the president skittered back from his grandiose declaration at an iftar
celebration at the White House Friday that Muslims enjoy freedom of religion
in America and have the right to build a mosque and community center in
Lower Manhattan, he offered a Clintonesque parsing.
"I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the
decision to put a mosque there," he said the morning after he commented on
the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. "I was commenting
very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding.
That's what our country is about."
Let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Perfectly Unclear President: You cannot take
such a stand on a matter of first principle and then take it back the next
morning when, lo and behold, Harry Reid goes craven and the Republicans
attack. What is so frightening about Fox News?
Some critics have said the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers
would be to allow a mosque to be built near ground zero.
Actually, the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers is the moral
timidity that would ban a mosque from that neighborhood.
Our enemies struck at our heart, but did they also warp our identity?
The war against the terrorists is not a war against Islam. In fact, you
can't have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam.
George W. Bush understood this. And it is odd to see Barack Obama less clear
about this matter than his predecessor. It's time for W. to weigh in.
This - along with immigration reform and AIDS in Africa - was one of his
points of light. As the man who twice went to war in the Muslim world, he
has something of an obligation to add his anti-Islamophobia to this mosque
madness. W. needs to get his bullhorn back out.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are both hyper-articulate former law
professors. But Clinton never presented himself as a moral guide to the
country. So when he weaseled around, or triangulated on some issues, it was
part of his ultra-fallible persona - and consistent with his identity as a
New Democrat looking for a Third Way.
But Obama presents himself as a paragon of high principle. So when he flops
around on things like "don't ask, don't tell" or shrinks back from one of
his deepest beliefs about the freedom of religion anywhere and everywhere in
America, it's not pretty. Even worse, this is the man who staked his
historical reputation on a new and friendlier engagement with the Muslim
world. The man who extended his hand to Tehran has withdrawn his hand from
Park Place.
Paranoid about looking weak, Obama allowed himself to be weakened by
perfectly predictable Republican hysteria. Which brings us to Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich fancies himself an intellectual, a historian, a deep thinker - the
opposite number, you might say, of Sarah Palin.
Yet here is Gingrich attempting to out-Palin Palin on Fox News: "Nazis don't
have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington."
There is no more demagogic analogy than that.
Have any of the screaming critics noticed that there already are two mosques
in the same neighborhood - one four blocks away and one 12 blocks away.
Should they be dismantled? And what about the louche liquor stores and strip
clubs in the periphery of the sacred ground?
By now you have to be willfully blind not to know that the imam in charge of
the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is the moderate Muslim we have allegedly
been yearning for.
So look where we are. The progressive Democrat in the White House, the first
president of the United States with Muslim roots, has been morally trumped
by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, two
moderate Republicans who have spoken bravely and lucidly about not
demonizing and defaming an entire religion in the name of fighting its
radicals.
Criticizing his fellow Republicans, Governor Christie said that while he
understood the pain and sorrow of family members who lost loved ones on
9/11, "we cannot paint all of Islam with that brush."
He charged the president with trying to turn the issue into a political
football. But that is not quite right. It already was a political football
and the president fumbled it.
***
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-rosenberg/what-did-they-mean-by-tha_b_687187.html
What DID They Mean by That?
A Week of Truthiness and Media
By Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director, Media Alliance
HuffingtonPost: August 19, 2010 01:57 AM
Ever had one of those weeks where the distance between what was said and
what was done stretches way out into the blue yonder? In my job as director
of
Media Alliance, many things pass my desk that generate moments of disbelief,
but the 1st week of August was truly remarkable.
On Monday, I got a tip about Bloomberg News, the business-oriented polling,
news and analysis outfit. Their website at Bloomberg.com states "In 1981
Bloomberg started out with one core belief: that bringing transparency to
capital markets through access to information could increase capital flows,
produce economic growth and jobs, and significantly reduce the cost of doing
business."
So far, so good. I share their core belief that bringing transparency to
capital markets can only be a good thing. So what market is Bloomberg News
bringing transparency to this week? You guessed it: oil-drilling.
Specifically, the temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed by the
Obama administration after the Deepwater Horizon spill. Bloomberg reported,
somewhat stunningly to those of us who think we know the pulse of current
opinion, "Americans in 73% Majority Oppose Deepwater Drilling Ban." The
first line of the story read "Most Americans oppose President Barack Obama's
ban on deepwater oil drilling in response to BP's Gulf of Mexico spill."
That's quite a headline. 73% of Americans rarely agree on anything, much
less trivializing environmental catastrophe. What was the original poll data
that generated this startling fact?
Here it is: Do you think this spill proves offshore drilling is just too
dangerous and should be banned in U.S waters or was this a freak accident
and offshore drilling can be made safer and should not be banned?
So the only choice for any poll respondent who thought the Gulf disaster was
more than a "freak accident" was to advocate banning all offshore drilling
forever in US waters. Talk about a limited set of options.
The stated subject of the poll; a temporary ban on only deepwater drilling
until industry demonstrates improved safety procedures. What does the poll
question have to do with the subject of the poll?
Absolutely nothing.
Then along came Wednesday. On Wednesday, word leaked out that Google, the
glorious leader of the Open Internet Coalition, had inked a secret deal with
Verizon Corporation to exempt wireless internet from any pending net
neutrality regulations and while they were at it, prioritize Google-owned
content on Verizon's wireless and wire line networks.
What this means is the foremost corporate champion of an open Internet did a
180 degree about-face about where we're headed in the future. Regulations
are apparently okay for people still plugged into walls, but mobile users
will play by corporate rules or more to the point, by no rules at all.
Public interest groups had been chafing for over a month at the FCC decision
to open private negotiations with industry on the contentious net neutrality
issue. Who was at the table to represent consumers in these talks? Just
Google?
More sanguine elements of the public interest community took heart at
Google's stalwart history of not being evil (at least outside of China) and
their vociferous leadership of the pro-net neutrality industry cohort group,
The Open Internet Coalition.
Yet somehow, despite the seeming clarity of the English words - "open" and
"Internet"- the Googlezon deal was announced. Shortly afterwards, the
industry-only talks collapsed due to the upsetness of AT&T and Skype at
being left out of the big corporate sell-out deal.
Less sanguine elements of the public interest community sang a sad refrain
of "remember, corporations are not your friends." Again.
Finally it was Friday, On Friday, I came across a local "Save KPFA" benefit
that evening in my hometown. I was interested because I am on the board of
the Berkeley community radio station (the first of its kind in the country).
How wonderful someone was having a benefit for KPFA in this horrible
economy. Reading further, the event turned out not to be a benefit for KPFA
the radio station, but a benefit for a group called Save KPFA.
Now I have some experience with groups called Save KPFA, Take Back KPFA,
Save Pacifica and so on. I have police records (3 of them) from the
widely-publicized Pacifica democratization struggle of a decade ago.
What was this new Save KPFA? Must we save it again?
It is the nature of aging that first, we fight the power, and then we become
the power. I could accept that some raging firebrand twenty-somethings were
picking up a call-to-arms and demanding something better from progressive
media than they were getting.
But much to my surprise, Save KPFA turned out to be a bunch of folks in
their sixties and seventies (and maybe eighties, too). Their call to arms?
The cause to donate my money? More professionalism and more hierarchical
structure. Run the famously radical radio station like a proper corporation
and get rid of all this community empowerment mumbo-jumbo.
Fight the power, indeed.
I guess if you can't beat the Googlezon, the only thing left is to
impersonate the Googlezon.
Here's hoping for a week to come that is a bit less reminiscent of Comedy
Central.
Follow Tracy Rosenberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/twrling
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