We are embroiled today in the weirdest of controversies. Muslims want to build a mosque uncomfortably close to Ground Zero, in a building 2 blocks away, but close enough to where a piece of one of the hijacked planes tore through it (which, as far as I'm concerned, makes it Ground Zero). And they do this in the name of tolerance and peace, which it would seem, yet again, must come from the side of non-Muslims. They want to build a 13 story monument to their religion which inspired the murders of 3,000 innocents. For us. To tolerate. No really. It's generous.
The man behind the project did an interview on Larry King and threatened us with the unleashing of more radicals if the mosque was not built. I'm beginning to see how this goes. Muslims will do whatever they goddamn want, and non-Muslims will tolerate it - with their buttocks spread helpfully apart - or Muslim basket cases will start killing people. Again. So there you go. A cup of infidels causing problems for a Muslim investor, a quiet teaspoon of threat, a dash of spittle-flecked Islamic insanity and voila: Instant Tolerance.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... we have a whackjob preacher in Florida who wanted to burn Korans as a symbolic...I don't know. Something. This irritates me to no end. Burning something - anything - in a symbolic gesture is the way of those who lack the ability to argue. They're slow of speech and slow of tongue, so they burn things. It's like monkey sign language instead of human speech - impressive the first time you see it, but in the long run, what? We know monkeys don't like poo in their food without them making hand gestures. And in this case, we know whackjob preacher and his miniscule congregation have problems with Islam. So they want to burn something.
It's not a rational argument. It's not even original pointlessness. It's been done to death. And what is setting the Koran on fire really saying? You burned our towers and killed 3,000 people, so we're going to burn your book? If you're going to compare the two in terms of shock value, the deranged Muslim primitives fucking win. They've flung their poo the farthest.
And if I may digress somewhat, how about reading the Koran? I promise you won't be swayed by the text to become a Muslim. Parts of it are pretty, like the bible, but basically, it's the 10,000 extremely confusing commandments plus bonus war manual and additional revisionist history. I don't think it would be terribly inspiring unless you live in a backward, superstitious culture. Maybe that's harsh, but as a member of the most advanced culture on the planet, and having been forced to observe large bits and small chunks of almost every Western religion, I simply can't see the appeal of Islam. It's cruel. And it's especially cruel (and worse - arbitrary) when it becomes the law. So read the Koran. We live in a free country. It isn't a banned book. If you've gotten some nutty urge to engage Muslims on the subject of their religion, at least know what it says and use that knowledge to your advantage.
But that was a digression. Back to the point. I think.
The whackjob preacher, at the gentle yet insistent request of our Dear Leader (who can expound with eloquent, pointless redundancy on the legality of building of a mosque at Ground Zero by a bunch of foreign investors, but not so easily defend the right of a citizen to be an idiot), eventually decided against burning the Korans, saying his point has been made. The Muslim investors did not decide against building a mosque at Ground Zero and instead, Muslims in Afghanistan, upon hearing the rumor of the Koran burning, went insane for the seventeenth time in an hour and ended up burning American flags in a highly agitated, monkey sign-language protest. So, in the battle of the extremists, what do you know? The whackjob preacher actually made a point by keeping his poo where it belonged. Lesson? Probably not.