Pam Geller Protests; New York Shrugs
The mainstream media should be ashamed of themselves for their significant role in manufacturing last summer’s Park51 outrage (among numerous other things), but I won’t be holding my breath.
As a side note, I turned on my TV last Friday for the first time in about six months. I was appalled that 95% of what I saw was pure tripe. It’s amazing how a relatively short break from the constant spewing of the media & pop culture can restore one’s sanity and improve critical thinking skills.
I realize everyone is probably already aware of how badly Geller’s recent protest flopped, but I enjoy pointing it out nonetheless. Classy group of people she hangs out with, isn’t it? I was reading another article about the same event over that Gothamist. One of the people against the Sheepshead Bay mosque, demonstrating how important it is to “know your history” in order to fight for freedom, proceeded to explain how America has become communist and you have to watch out for Muslims building their victory mosques, followed by some flaming idiocy about women who walk around her neighborhood with “black fingernails” (whatever that means) being “Taliban wives”. Uh-huh, okay. I’m sure the 5th column of Islamic supremacists that are invading America have long coveted Sheepshead Bay as the crown jewel in their soon-to-be Global Caliphate—no doubt they intend to make it their new capital. *eyeroll*
Added emphasis below is mine.
If Pam Geller organizes a protest against the Park51 Islamic community center, but there’s no sustained media hype to accompany it, does it make a sound?
Not really. […]
This year the news cycle was less kind to Geller’s crusade, which hosted its second rally yesterday timed to the tenth anniversary of 9/11. With the nation focused on remembering and mourning the dead, Geller’s protest at its peak drew no more than two hundred people, who barely filled a narrow gated pen on West Broadway, a few blocks from Ground Zero.…Among those at the protest who also experienced considerably less media attention in 2011 was Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who made headlines last year for burning a Koran. […]
Geller’s groups “American Freedom Defense Initiative” and “Stop the Islamification of America” (which the Southern Poverty Law Center has tagged as a hate group) sponsored the event. The speaker’s line-up included radio host Joyce Kaufman, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, and René Stadkewitz, the founder and leader of Germany’s new far-right, Geert Wilders-inspired Freedom Party. Following the event, Geller moved the festivities to the Theater District, where she introduced a special screening of her documentary, Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 911 Attacks. […]
The difference between last year’s event opposing this “beachhead” and this year’s offers a useful split screen. When the issue was in the news, with Geller’s voice high up in the media mix, more people cared enough to come and protest. This year, when the issue has had almost no media profile, not so much. A similar effect can be seen in Staten Island, where in 2010 plans for a new mosque elicited howls of protest from locals. As the media discussion of Park51 died down, opposition dissipated, and this year the mosque opened without incident. […]
“Have you tried burying a pig on the site?” joked one attendee as he took a flyer. “That works every time.”