Mosquerade at Ground Zero

Okay, well I think it's a pretty commonly accepted truism that the guaranteed way to endear oneself to a new crowd of people is to walk into the room and launch immediately and without preamble into a political rant. Right? Right. Okay, so…

I wasn't really planning on hauling out the ol' soapbox this soon, though anyone who knows me could have told you that some political screeds were inevitable. But this load of self-righteous horseshit over the so-called "Mosque at Ground Zero" is snowballing into utter insanity, and I've got a bit of spleen in dire need of venting over the whole thing.

So first, let me see if I've got this straight.

A few subhuman buckets of fuck blow up buildings full of people in the name of their own twisted version of a particular ideology, and we're supposed to tar everyone who believes in the actual ideology as somehow being responsible? And their presence anywhere near the scene of the crime is supposed to be an affront to those who remain emotionally affected by what happened?

By that "logic", the Republican Party should never have any sort of organizational presence in Oklahoma City again, because Timothy McVeigh was a right-wing nutjob.

But okay, so it's an election year and the wingnuts have found another total non-issue to whip up into a massive fundraising bonanza of a crisis. Can't get the Elmers all het up over gay marriage this time? Welp, may as well shift gears and go after them thar Moozlems for awhile!

And boy howdy, are they!

By now, there can't be more than a small handful of Americans (mainly coma victims) who haven't heard about the right-wing brouhaha over the construction of the "Mosque at Ground Zero." The "mosque", of course, is the Cordoba House, a planned Islamic community center to be built two blocks away from the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. It's going to be a 13-story building (which, in Lower Manhattan, qualifies as a ranch-style home) that does contain a prayer room – as well as a performing arts center, a swimming pool, a basketball court, a fitness center, and a culinary school.

In other words, it's not really a mosque, at least any more than a YMCA or a hospital with a chapel is a "church", and furthermore it's not even on "Ground Zero".

But don't lets go lettin' facts get in the way of a perfectly good tantrum, shall we? The "mosque at Ground Zero" has become the flavor of the month for outrage-craving teabaggers from sea to blathering sea, and Republican politicians, desperate for a cheap election-season hotbutton issue, seem more than happy to glom onto the controversy.

They'll all tell you, though, that this isn't about anti-Muslim bigotry and hatemongering. Nooooo… it's merely concern for the feelings of those who lost people when the Trade Center was destroyed nine years ago. It's about protecting the "hallowed ground" of the Trade Center site. It's all about respect, y'see.

And if you buy that one, why then I reckon we oughtta wander on over to Brooklyn and go bridge shopping.

But yeah, they're just "protecting hallowed ground". Horseshit. This is Lower Manhattan, fer cryin' out loud! Vatican City, it ain't. There's a strip club one block south of "Ground Zero", another strip club three blocks northeast (and one block from the proposed Cordoba House site), an off-track betting parlor a block east of that… you get the picture.

So, are the strippers at those clubs required to have images of the Twin Towers embossed on their pasties? Y'know, for the benefit of the horny businessmen who frequent those places when they need a quiet moment to reflect on what "nine-eleven" means to them?

A five-minute video is now making the Internet rounds, shot yesterday during a rally against the building of the Cordoba House, that shows exactly what's fueling these protests.



A rare moment of candid honesty in this whole sorry-ass mess, isn't it?

And, predictably enough, it turns out that the "Muslim" the crowd was hassling wasn't even a Muslim. He was, reportedly, a union carpenter named Kenny who works at the Trade Center site.

One of the most unintentionally hilarious parts of that video is about 1:50 into it, after the crowd has gone completely nuts on ol' Kenny. Some fucking tool can be heard just off camera bellowing, "They can TRY to make it look like we're a buncha racists, but it AIN'T HAPPENING!"

Hey Stosh, that crowd just went after that black fellow like he was made of free bacon, and all because you morons thought he "looked like a Muslim."

And you think that "They" are going to try to make y'all look like a bunch of racists? Nobody needs to "make" you look like anything, pallie - that angry mob of yours just showed with appalling clarity just exactly what it is.

Now, take a deep breath, and walk around the block to New York Dolls for a lap dance (be sure to ask for the Hallowed Ground Special!) and just calm the hell down already, willya?

In the Beginning, There Was Balderdash...

I've heard it said that anticlimax is the warp and woof of the world. Okay, be fair, I've never actually heard anybody uttering that phrase aloud. Truth be told, I shanked it from Dan Simmons' novel "Hyperion". Why I didn't just flat out steal it and then pass it off as my own, shameless thief that I am, is beyond me. Maybe I'm just feeling a nagging little streak of honesty this fine evening. Perhaps it's some sort of subconscious attempt at bargaining with my chronic writer's block, hoping to break through and actually string together a few paragraphs that hold my gnat-like attention long enough to finally get some fucking momentum going.

Could be that, for one brief moment, truth outflanked bullshit of its own accord? Wouldn't THAT be a helluva way to start off an otherwise perfectly good load of malarkey!

But then again, that's kinda the point. Shit begins, and then shit ends, and in the middle we always seem to find ourselves wondering when it's all really going to start. Kurt Vonnegut once said that the reason that people are so unhappy is that most people tend to expect that their lives will follow the rise and fall, the peaks and valleys, and the general rhythm of a novel. And when their lives don't chart that familiar dramatic course, they feel that they've somehow failed. Obviously, the joke is that life is not and never has been structured that way. In fact, other than "shit begins, and then shit ends", life really has no consistent structure in the first place.

And, with that in mind, I'm proud to announce that The Balderdashery is open for business. I hereby welcome one and all! We're still putting some last finishing touches on the place, got a few things on back order and so forth. But y'know, belly up to the ol' bar anyway. Let's see what sorta tomfoolery we can get into.

There are no high-minded aims here, by the way. Hell, I don't even know what this place is going to end up being about, or if it will have any recurring theme running through it at all. It may turn out to be entertaining only to myself and to one or two heavily medicated souls who happen to accidentally stumble across it whilst trying to hunt down, for instance, the latest People Of WalMart photos.

But, what the hell. In this, the Age of Self Amusement, with the Internet having become a limerick-ridden bathroom wall, a peephole into the ladies' shower room, and the pool of Narcissus, all rolled into one, I may as well cast some bunkum of my own upon the waters. So, here we go…