No Kidding

It’s a disgrace all right, but don’t count on the New York Post (of the Murdoch/Fox empire) to assume any responsibility for the drunken attack on a random Muslim taxi driver by a white kid from the suburbs. Oh no, it’s just a random incident by a lone nut.

Coincidentally, another lone nut showed up at a mosque in Queens last night:

A drunk barged into a Queens mosque last night and shouted anti-Muslim slurs as he urinated on prayer rugs, cops and witnesses said.

Evening prayers were disrupted at the Iman Mosque on Steinway Street in Astoria when the unhinged man ‘came in with a beer bottle in his hands, clearly very intoxicated’, said Mustapha Sadouki, who was attending services.

‘He fumbled over to our rugs where people were praying’ and then committed the despicable desecration, Sadouki said.

The man, identified by cops as Omar Rivera, also allegedly shouted slurs, calling the worshippers ‘terrorists’.

Can’t wait to hear Beck and Limbaugh react with outrage at anyone who would dare to suggest that their rantings had anything to do with these ‘isolated incidents’. Perhaps they will insist that their whipping up of the crowds is only about raising legitimate doubts about the ‘Ground Zero’ mosque’s funding or some other smokescreen.

These funding issues are clouding the minds of many New Yorkers, including friends of mine, who fail to see that the targeting of houses of worship bears an eerie resemblance to the anti-Semitic campaigns of bad old Europe.

The true culprits are the Republican National Committee and its echo chamber in the reactionary media as they wink at and encourage the crazed Obama-is-a-Muslim meme to energize its base. They think they can turn this stuff off and on at will and ride the winds into office, but history has shown how dangerous it is to play with this sort of fire. As always, they want to milk the political advantage and then wash their hands of the consequences.

Sort of like ex-closet case and RNC chairman Kenneth Mehlman, who helped run one of the nastiest anti-gay campaigns in history and now expects a chance to tell us his inspiring story to a wide-eyed Oprah or the someone similar, something about the inner turmoil of a lost soul finding his way to his true self.

Isn’t that special? as Church Lady would say. Personally, I have no sympathy for this creep and am delighted that he suffered a lot while whipping up reactionary homophobes. Sorry, you don’t get a pass for your crimes because you had personal conflicts and didn’t know your own mind. And by the way, all those people you attacked made it possible for you to get your wig on and still have a career continuing to elect anti-gay Republicans.

It’s kind of like how feminists must feel seeing Sarah Palin exploit the possibilities they created for women and then turn around and trash everything feminists stand for. Well, no one said equality for women or gays would benefit only decent people; the rain falls on both the deserving and the loathsome alike.