Save Burlington Coat Factory

Join the demonstration today. NYC can't afford to lose this landmark.



Later update:

NYEducator picked up on this post, calling it ironic but cryptic. That was intentional, but it occurs to me that someone else (an idiot, demagogue or asshole, perhaps) might miss the sarcasm and consider me a fellow opponent of the Muslim community center and mosque.

Let me be more clear. Being cryptic is fun but this is a more serious issue.

"Ground zero", "two blocks away," "Mosque," "radical Islamists," "Islam is terrorists," are all misleading in their political spin of this thing. I honestly don't get why this is an issue. Let someone take an old run-down, empty, decrepit building and rebuild it - the Amish food center and the Roadhouse won't mind the extra traffic and God knows the area needs development. The University of Phoenix isn't expanding into another brick and mortar building any time soon.

Let the Muslim leader who's been on peace missions with Secretary Rice and others build a Muslim version of the nearby Y or the church just over on Church street. If he wants to compete with St. John's University a few blocks away, more the merrier.

Just because Pataki et.al. massively screwed up at Ground Zero doesn't mean that everything and everyone in the whole bloody city needs to stop and wait before building anything. I feel tremendous sorrow and have much empathy for the survivors and relatives of the victims, but they should not have veto power in this or any other issue.

Secondly, we must remember that those who did this were Muslims -- Sunni Muslims, not Shi'ites (the difference is huge, bigger than the difference between Protestants and Catholics) -- originating from and funded by members of the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia. Where's the outrage about that? Are we demanding that the Saudis stop selling us oil and that the Saudi Mission to the UN be closed (It's only a block away from Ground Zero ! OMFG!)?

Come on, people. Islam is a religion practiced by millions of Americans, covered under the Constitution of the United States of America. It is not, and never has been, shorthand for "a group of killers and terrorists." If you want crazy religions, try Scientology.

Just because a soldier goes crazy at Fort Hood and happened to be a Muslim doesn't make my neighbors bloodthirsty killers. Just because the guy who got fired from the CT beer distributor and shot his coworkers was Baptist? ... was ... well, hell I don't know. I do know he wasn't Muslim or it would have been trumpeted from the minarets of Fox News at least eight times a day.

I'm sorry for your losses, people, but it's time to stop the retributions against people who were not responsible. Rebuild your lives and rebuild your city.

Even later update:

an anonymous guest wrote:

Nobody has called them 'evil doers'. I believe the argument is that the proposed construction of an Islamic center 200 meters from the edge of the crater where 3,000 innnocents were killed by self identified Islamic jihadists is, just a tad, insensitive. Considering that libs routinely lecture on real and invented cultural sensitivity from a self-proclaimed position of great moral authority, Curmudgeon's post was even more ironic than he/she intended.

Well nobody but Newton Gringrich, Catholic (newly made because he's running for President) and family man (he's had three, so far), FOX News and the entire GOP:

Gingrich showed up on a Fox morning show and talked about why the "radical Islamists" who want to build the cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, who want to show they can "build a mosque next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by Islamists," must be stopped.

Oooooh, talking point. How is this desire to build insensitive?

Is it the distance? Would 300 meters be okay? Or are we nitpicking here?
Is it that the crater still exists? - certainly not their fault. Take it up with Pataki.
Is it that they are Muslim and thus are identical in body, mind, spirit and attitude to the whackjobs from Saudi Arabia? Can't be that because they're not.
Is it that the time is too close and the wounds still raw? If so, when will the relatives get over it? Or will we hear from them until they die that office space and retail space within a mile of the sometime to be built tower can't be sold to Muslims, rented to Muslims, used by Muslims, viewed by Muslims -- all because of "sensitive" New Yorkers? Can there be a Muslim center in Manhattan anywhere, at any time in the future? Should we put up segregated signs, perhaps?

If so, when and how far away will those undesirables need to be?

Wed. Update:

The Daily Show points out that the Head of the group that will provide funding for this project, the one demonized on Fox News (but not by name) as being Radical Islamist, is none other than the largest shareholder of FOX News Corp, besides Murdoch. "Fox News is either evil or stupid for not mentioning that Alwaleed bin Talal is News Corp.'s largest shareholder."

Ain't that a twist?