Monday, August 30, 2010
Hicks From the Sticks My Ignorance About Muslims Beats Your Facts: Once Again, The Onion Imitates Life Imitating The Onion
Posted by Brantley Hargrove on Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 2:47 PM
- Because we shouldn't be any better than the Saudis, right?
But this is The Onion, and Gentries doesn't actually exist. And yet he does. Lately, he appears to be alive and well here in Middle Tennessee. Seriously, this quote sums up the worldview of the community center's mad-dog opponents:
"All Muslims are at war with America, and I will resist any attempt to challenge that assertion with potentially illuminating facts," said Gentries, who threatened to leave the room if presented with the number of Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, serve in the country's armed forces or were victims of the 9/11 attacks themselves. "Period.""If you don't believe me, wait until they put your wife in a burka," Gentries continued in reference to a body covering worn by a small minority of Muslim women and banned in Turkey, Tunisia and Syria. "Or worse, a rape camp. That's right: For reasons I am content being totally unable to articulate, I am choosing to associate Muslims with rape camps."
The willful ignorance this parodies is utterly immutable — and as proven lately, very dangerous. Like Gentries, rather than seeing for themselves that the overwhelming majority of Muslims just want to get along in this country like the rest of us, the easily stampeded listen to Laurie Cardoza-Moore, the opportunistic former lobbyist who has affixed her name to opposition here in Tennessee, and to shrewd pols like Lou Ann Zelenik, who expertly use fear to whip the base. The arson over the weekend comes as no surprise.
Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, essayist, mathematician and historian, once said, "It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."
Comments (5)
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Brantley, you left out the best quote from "The Onion" piece:
"'But then I remembered how much easier it is to live in a world of black-and-white in which I can assign the label of 'other' to someone and use him as a vessel for all my fears and insecurities.'"
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"If you don't believe me, wait until they put your wife in a burka," Gentries continued in reference to a body covering worn by a small minority of Muslim women and banned in Turkey, Tunisia and Syria. "Or worse, a rape camp."
Mock all you want Hargrove! I completely identify with this man! I'm going to write to the editor of The Onion to thank him for putting the spotlight on this brave patriot! But I'll even take it one step further. Wait until one of the sleeper cells get's activated and all the little suicide bombers simultaneously decide to blow themselves up at our shopping malls, churches, and grocery stores! They will have won and taken over! That's why my plan, short of sending them back to Egypt and Iran, is to concentrate them in places like east Nashville where if they decide to blow things up, hey, no big deal!
The cowardice of those who lash out at our Muslim neighbors is surpassed by their total ignorance of American ideals of freedom and inclusion. I say they are cowards for not standing proud and unbowed in American beliefs in the face of a few hateful extremists. Bin Laden and his henchmen win over and over as we argue with each other about whether or not we want to be more like them.
