Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Born In The USA

How is this for irony? A Gawker article on the anti-"Ground Zero Mosque" demonstration last Sunday includes this observation:

They even played "Born in the USA," Bruce Springsteen's famous anthem about how awesome the United States is!

Anti-'Ground Zero Mosque' Rally Freaks Out at Black Guy

The Gawker article is a study in sarcasm, and is perhaps best read to be understood. Nonetheless, if they are telling the truth about this, then this is yet more evidence that people who think this thing is worth protesting are mouth-breathing imbeciles. That is, it's more evidence besides this:

Reading comprehension is one of those skills we seem to have largely lost in America, so I'll try to make this simple by using "bullet points":

  • It's not a mosque

  • It's not at Ground Zero


...
It's a community center run by people of a particular religion, like a Jewish community center or a YMCA. It's two blocks from the World Trade Center, which given how built-up Manhattan is, might as well be in another city.

Obama On Religious Tolerance

Here's what "Born In The USA" has to say about American attitudes towards people who aren't like us:

I got in a little hometown jam
And so they put a rifle in my hands
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man.

Bruce Springsteen: Born In The U.S.A. Lyrics

Now doesn't that just sound so enlightened? Some kid screws up, so send him off to someplace he probably hasn't heard of to kill foreigners. Of course, as people who have actually listened to the lyrics know, it just goes downhill from there. No wonder people want to play it at a place where they tell us all how offended they are by people who are different from them.

So, we have people protesting a "Ground Zero Mosque" that isn't a mosque and isn't at Ground Zero, who love to play a song that demonstrates how pathetic their bigotry is.

It's like they never pay attention to anything.

There are days it's tough to remember that we're the country that went to the Moon. Oh, wait. That was our parents, wasn't it?


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