Roger Ebert is nothing if he isn’t a knee-jerk leftist, absolutely without a single original political or cultural thought in his head and his latest meandering post on the Sun-Times hosted Roger Ebert’s Journal is a perfect example. His piece is titled “Ten things I know about the mosque” but it doesn’t seem like there really are ten things. One is tempted to believe that the only reason he posted it was to find an excuse to attack Sarah Palin.
The Past
Let’s deal with Ebert’s off-topic attack on Palin first. For a piece that is supposed to be about the Ground Zero Mosque (and by the way, he never once calls it the Ground Zero Mosque, even though the Imam planning the thing has called it that) Palin’s appearance at point six on his list makes no sense. Not only that, but Ebert goes off on a tangent of a tangent by discussing Palin’s interaction with Dr. Laura and her “N” word controversy. What do Palin and Dr. Laura have to do with the mosque?
Even more absurdly, Ebert’s first few points are filled with his ruminations on the First Amendment. Then he attacks Palin for employing her own freedom of speech? It’s a whiplash-inducing tangent, for sure.
Plus, in essence, he calls Palin a liar by assuming that some right-wing “anonymous genius” is writing all her Tweets and Facebook posts. Ebert has to reach into the dim corners of his conspiracy-laden mind for that one because there is no hint anywhere in the rest of the world that Palin isn’t writing her own stuff. It’s just Ebert’s hatred of Palin informing his belief that she’s too stupid to put two words together.
Worse, he seems to be saying that it was Sarah Palin who invented the name “Ground Zero Mosque.” This is an untruth. Then he compares Palin to Hitler by saying she’s using tactics from Mein Kampf.
His off-topic Palin tangent aside, let’s start with Ebert’s first point. He says America is the one “missing” an opportunity with the Ground Zero Mosque. We should bend over backwards for Imam Rauf so we can “showcase” our “Constitutional freedoms,” Ebert insists. We should allow the mosque because it is these Muslim’s right to build it at Ground Zero.
Never mind, Roger, that Imam Rauf is deeply involved in a project to push Sharia laws on the U.S. and if successful his law would eliminate everyone but him from having freedom of religion in America. I guess Roger thinks it is Rauf’s right to take away all our rights.
The Future
Ebert does have a good point on the mistake of planning a mosque near Ground Zero, though. But once again he mars what could be a good point with left-wing talking points.
The choice of location shows flawed judgment on the part of its imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf. He undoubtedly knows that now, and I expect his project to be relocated. The imam would be prudent to chose another location, because the far right wing has seized on the issue as an occasion for fanning hatred against Muslims.
First of all, this Sharia-pushing Imam has made no such admissions. What we have here is Ebert giving him the benefit of the doubt, a benefit he does not extend to 70% of Americans. In his first point, Ebert scolds Americans for not being sensitive to the Muslims needs for their mosque project. But in this third point, does he scold Muslims for not being sensitive to Americans who might be angered that a mosque is being built within striking distance of a place where Muslims killed three thousand people? Nope, Ebert instead scolds right-wing Americans for making this mosque a political issue. But…
…the Muslims are innocent as a lamb as far as Ebert is concerned. Quite despite the fact that the very name of the project, Cordoba House, implicitly invokes an historical Muslim victory over westerners in 8th century Spain when Muslims invaded and took over that country.
Ebert blames Americans, as he always does, even when other Muslims are saying that this GZ Mosque is a bad idea.
Point four is a real gymnast’s twist. Ebert thinks that a “buried motive” for attacking the Ground Zero Mosque is that evil Americans think Obama is a Muslim. Never mind the fact that America had been outraged by the GZ Mosque for at least a week before Obama even opened his mouth — and inserted his foot — about the matter.
Point five is right on. He says that like being pregnant, you can’t be only “a little free.” As it happens, point seven has no point at all. All he does is ramble about how much he hates Fox News.
In point eight Ebert simply makes things up. “A meme is infecting our society that Muslims are terrorists and hate America; they are the enemy.” Really? Who is saying that all Muslims are terrorists who hate America? There is a difference to feeling that almost all terrorists today are Muslim — which is a true statement — and all Muslims are terrorists. No one thinks “all Muslims are terrorists.” But, what do we have here really? What we have is Roger Ebert promulgating the very meme he pretends to decry. It is called the strawman argument. Set up a false premise and then bat it down with righteous indignation.
He wraps up with point ten, a rant claiming Americans are too stupid to know what is really being planned for the Ground Zero Mosque. Ebert puts on the shine to the project claiming that it’s really just a “community center” and that it will have a “retail mall,” as if the fact that shopping might be involved erases the Sharia-pushing ideas behind the thing. He also paradoxically says that the mosque is “not intended for Ground Zero” but at the same time says, “This mall will be deep enough to connect with subway lines — deep enough, that is, to theoretically be embedded in the ashes of some of the 9/11 victims.” If it isn’t “intended for Ground Zero,” then how can it become “embedded in the ashes of some Ground Zero victims”?
Clearly if the thing will somehow become intermingled with remains of 9/11 victims then it IS intended for Ground Zero!
In the end what we have here is Roger Ebert putting on his hate for his fellow Americans, excusing those that would stand against her, and rolling out one left-wing trope after another.
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