It’s rather shocking that this is really happening, here, in the United States, in 2010. Park51/The Cordoba House, an Islamic community center that, mark my words and those of the mayor, will be built in Lower Manhattan, is being hysterically opposed by all manner of dingbat in the land, though it is likely to have more square feet of basketball court than prayer space. Which doesn’t quite make it a mosque. And yes, peeling back further layers of this stupid onion, who does care even if it were a mosque? In fact, there already are two mosques in the “Ground Zero” area! I could go peeling more, but this onion is boring. The fun one is Newt Gingrich.
Newt Gingrich, impossibly to my mind looking toward the presidency in 2012, is demagoguing his way into a Twilight Zone of logic that makes me want to just sit in front of him and stare at his face as if he were talking in tongues, because that’s about as much sense as he’s making. The most scintillating bit of Gingrich logic goes something like this: Why should “we” allow a mosque to be built near Ground Zero when one can’t build a church or synagogue in Mecca? You see, now the West is using the likes of Saudi Arabia as a moral barometer. Not that Gingrich is the type to be shy about the idea of theocracy. If they start building Park51, I say Newt should go stone those infidels.
Speaking of Bush allies, don’t you almost long for the days when Bush would just declare Islam a religion of peace and blithely continue his war on Muslims? It was insane in its own way but it kept the rest of Insane America quiet. Indeed, many are calling for the former president to weigh in on the issue, because of Obama’s typical waffling.
I’ve been to this area several times — “several,” as opposed to “often,” because the Financial District, and especially that part of it, is not a place to hang out. In fact it was a “Ground Zero” decades ago when a real neighborhood was evaporated through the power of eminent domain to build a complex of monstrous, needlessly tall office towers in a public-private Corbusian nightmare of setbacks and concrete. And what is replacing this is hardly an improvement. But I digress, as usual. I have really only ever been there to go digging through cheap designer clothing at Century 21 department store, across the street from that big hole in the ground.
This all brings me to the point — is “Ground Zero” particularly hallowed? Across the street, you can dig through bargain bins. All around the site are ugly, tacky, trashy, vulgar, base things for sale. In this vein, New Yorker Daryl Lang set out to photodocument the vicinity. Titty bars, gambling dens, Irish pubs, fast food, schmata hovels, and even, yes, tables on the street selling little jingoistic lucite Twin Towers emblazoned with The Flag. And people are upset about an Islamic YMCA?
But even if it were a mosque, and even if this were “hallowed ground,” one can’t help but notice the hypocritical heights to which the Stupid American will soar to keep something scary and alien at bay. In the course of a Facebook conversation, someone mentioned a comment she heard from a high school student, unknown to me (such is the nature of Facebook):
“Well, to be fair, we’ve built a lot of ‘Ground Zeros’ near mosques in the Middle East since 2003.”
At least someone is thinking in our schools.