The Worst Kind Of Bigotry Is Anti-Bigot Bigotry

Resident Post nag Andrea Peyser is upset with the mayor for his stand on the GROUND ZERO TERROR MOSQUE.

Mayor Bloomberg, who championed a mosque near Ground Zero as a prime example of religious freedom, said the structure’s many opponents “ought to be ashamed of themselves” for complaining.

He also trashed those who worry that the mosque and Islamic cultural center’s $100 million construction costs will be raised overseas, where American hatred runs rampant. “Do you really want every time they pass the basket in your church and you throw a buck in, they run over and say, ‘OK, now, you know, where do you come from? Who are your parents? Where’d you get this money?’ “ said the mayor.

And I thought the right to protest was guaranteed by the Constitution. Silly me.

Well, I’m pretty sure Andrea’s not being silly here. This is, in fact, the News Corp editorial line on the matter (see also Peyser’s colleague Michael Goodwin and various Post editorials, if you can bear it): Pointing out that objections to a Muslim cultural center a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero are based in bigotry is itself bigotry. And also they are denials of the Constitutional right to protest (which, as we recall from the Dixie Chicks incident, is incredibly sacred to those on the right).

It’s not just the Post that does this; this is now the standard Republican response to any suggestion that, say, someone holding up a picture of Barack Obama with a bone through his head while screaming about “taking our country back,” might have something of a racist aspect to it. “You’re the real racist for bringing that up,” goes the argument. Except it’s not an argument: It is a strategy. There is no reasonable way to deny that objections to the GROUND ZERO TERROR MOSQUE are based on fear and ignorance and bigotry. You can’t look at the racially-charged responses to Obama’s policies (or personage, or even FACT OF BIRTH) without noting the racial aspect to them. And you know what? They don’t care. This is not about anything but fomenting fear, and whatever angle these people can take to distract from the fact that they’re shamelessly demagoguing to advance their own position, they’ll take. Should the reverse-bigotry argument fail (which it should, but good lord, who knows these days), they will happily switch to some other equally meaningless argument, so long as it helps to obfuscate their real goals. But it’s nice to see the reverence for the Constitution, I guess. Or, at least, certain parts of it.