It hasn’t been a good week for Ground Zero mosque Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife. She stuck her foot in her mouth on Sunday’s This Week, and some tapes have just been discovered that are going to make him regret some things he said back in 2005.
It hasn’t been a good week for Ground Zero mosque Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife. She stuck her foot in her mouth on Sunday’s This Week, and some tapes have just been discovered that are going to make him regret some things he said back in 2005.
Such as, “We tend to forget, in the West, that it has blood on its hands of innocent non-Muslims. You may remember that the US lead sanction against Iraq lead to the death of over half a million Iraqi children.”
Then he tossed in a random n-word just to polish up his message of tolerance.
One can’t watch this TED lecture from Yale psychology Professor Laurie Santos without coming to the conclusion that a monkey’s understanding of the free market is just as irrational as President Obama’s.
Uh-oh. We tread on very thin ice when we compare President Obama to a monkey. As we recall from the New York Post cartoon controversy, that quickly gets you labeled as a racist.
And yet one can’t watch this TED lecture from Yale psychology Professor Laurie Santos without coming to the conclusion that a monkey’s understanding of the free market is just as irrational as President Obama’s.
She taught our primate relatives to use currency and discovered that “monkeynomics” is very similar to Obamanomics because the primates also continue to repeat the same irrational mistakes over and over again.
By the way, if you’ve never visited VirtualProfessors.com, do it. It’s a great site that offers fascinating free lectures on a variety of fascinating subjects.
Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Ground Zero mosque’s imam, has a wife. Her name is Daisy Khan and she’s just as friggin’ whacked out as he is.
Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Ground Zero mosque’s imam, has a wife. Her name is Daisy Khan and she’s just as friggin’ whacked out as he is.
FOX Nation reports Daisy’s delusions:
(ABC’s “This Week” host Christiane) Amanpour asked Khan if America was Islamophobic.
“This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism, that’s what we feel right now,” Khan said. “It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia; it’s hate of Muslims. And we are deeply concerned.”
Translation: “Hey, pal, we’re not Jews. You can’t treat us like we treat them.”
Über liberal movie director Ron Howard isn’t going to be very happy with his brother Clint Howard’s new role as a liberal congressman desperately searching for reasons not to hold a town hall meeting this year.
It’s civil war in the Howard family. Über liberal movie director Ron Howard isn’t going to be very happy with his brother Clint’s new role as a liberal congressman desperately searching for reasons not to hold a town hall meeting this year.
Like all great satire, it holds a mirror up to truth.
A growing number of New York construction workers are vowing not to work on the mosque planned near Ground Zero.
Remember the Reagan Democrats? That’s what they called groups of traditional Democrat voters who voted for Ronald Reagan. Union workers, for example, voted for Reagan and against Democrats en masse.
That may be what we’re seeing the beginnings of as a result of the Ground Zero mosque controversy.
The New York Daily News has the details:
Hard hats are going to make it hard to build the Ground Zero mosque
A growing number of New York construction workers are vowing not to work on the mosque planned near Ground Zero.
“It’s a very touchy thing because they want to do this on sacred ground,” said Dave Kaiser, 38, a blaster who is working to rebuild the World Trade Center site.
“I wouldn’t work there, especially after I found out about what the imam said about U.S. policy being responsible for 9/11,” Kaiser said.
The grass-roots movement is gaining momentum on the Internet. One construction worker created the “Hard Hat Pledge” on his blog and asked others to vow not to work on the project if it stays on Park Place.
“Thousands of people are signing up from all over the country,” said creator Andy Sullivan, a construction worker from Brooklyn. “People who sell glass, steel, lumber, insurance. They are all refusing to do work if they build there.”
“Hopefully, this will be a tool to get them to move it,” he said. “I got a problem with this ostentatious building looming over Ground Zero.”
Can’t wait to hear Democrats say that those damn construction workers are nothing but racists. Or maybe Nazis. Or maybe both.
Johnny Rotten: “Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won’t understand how anyone can have a problem with how they’re treated.”
Johnny Rotten, one of the greatest stage names ever
John Lydon, lead singer of the seminal British punk rock band The Sex Pistols while using the stage name Johnny Rotten, isn’t happy with critics of his upcoming show in Tel Aviv:
“I really resent the presumption that I’m going there to play to right-wing Nazi Jews. If Elvis-f-ing-Costello wants to pull out of a gig in Israel because he’s suddenly got this compassion for Palestinians, then good on him. But I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won’t understand how anyone can have a problem with how they’re treated.”
As Tim Blair said, “Hot-for-Palestine British leftists are furious, of course. Lydon began his career by offending fussy old monarchists, and now he’s found an even more hidebound and traditionalist bunch to upset.”
Once a quitter, always a quitter. Once a hypocrite, always a hypocrite. Once a putz, always a putz.
"Lurch, reporting for duty."
“They have personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscint of Genghis Kahn, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside….”
That’s how John Kerry described American troops in testimony before Congress after he returned from Vietnam, but it he could just as easily use the same words today to describe the Taliban, the cruel, vicious enemy with whom he now wants to negotiate.
The Hill has the story of Kerry’s hypocrisy:
Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Friday that there is a “very active” effort under way to reach a negotiated political settlement with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Kerry (D-Mass.) acknowledged that “efforts” have begun after visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan this week, meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials.
“I can report without being specific that there are efforts under way. They are serious and I completely agree with that fundamental premise — and so does General [David] Petraeus and so does President Obama — there is no military solution,” he told NPR. “And there are very active efforts now to seek an appropriate kind of political settlement.”
…Kerry said that any “appropriate” settlement would have to include “a renunciation of al-Qaeda,” a “reduction of violence,” a “recognition of the constitutional rights of both Pakistan and Afghanistan and greater efforts to reduce sanctuaries for insurgency.”
Once a quitter, always a quitter. Once a hypocrite, always a hypocrite. Once a putz, always a putz.
It really is amateur hour at the White House these days. President Obama made a campaign appearance Presidential address in Ohio and made one mistake after another.
It really is amateur hour at the White House these days. President Obama made a campaign appearance Presidential address in Ohio and made one mistake after another.
The Columbus Dispatch has the correct info on the President’s incorrect info:
Obama doubles down: It wasn't a police station and it wasn't built with stimulus money. But other than that...
A local project that President Barack Obama cited during a visit Wednesday to Columbus as an example of how the federal stimulus package has worked isn’t actually being funded with stimulus dollars.
The president spoke at the North Side home of architect Joe Weithman, and both Obama’s comments and information from the White House touted Weithman’s work on a project that the president said was being at least partially funded by the $787 billion stimulus bill passed last year.
“What we’ve been trying to do is to build infrastructure that puts people back to work but also improves the quality of life in communities like Columbus,” Obama said in his remarks. “So Joe is an architect, and he’s now working on a new police station that was funded in part with Recovery Act funds.”
But although federal money is being used for the project in question, there are no stimulus dollars involved, said Columbus Finance Director Paul Rakosky, a Democrat.
Rakosky said the project is not a police station but rather the renovation of an abandoned warehouse that the city purchased on the South Side in 2007 to house the city’s police crime lab and property room.
Oopsie! Double oopsie! (And that’s what passes as in-depth political commentary here at IHateTheMedia.com.)
Star Parker is running for Congress in California, which is several steps up from her former role on The View. She’s a conservative and the district is liberal, so she probably won’t win. But if that’s the case, California will be the real loser.
Star Parker, probably too conservative for California
Star Parker is running for Congress in California. She’s a conservative and the district is liberal, so she probably won’t win. But if that’s the case, California will be the real loser.
Speaking recently of the planned Ground Zero mosque, Parker laid it on the line.
“Americans don’t need any lessons about freedom and tolerance. Millions of Muslim Americans live, prosper and practice their faith freely in our country. According to a Google search, there are about 2,000 mosques in the United States. We have one Muslim American member of Congress who took his oath of office with his hand on the Koran. Many American universities have programs where students can learn about Islam, including Columbia in New York City.”
Speaking of President Obama’s belief that Americans “somehow bore some responsibility for the antipathy toward us in the Islamic world and that outreach would help”, Parker said, “As Johns Hopkins University Middle East Scholar Fouad Ajami pointed out in The Wall Street Journal, Obama’s outreach program has accomplished only diminished respect for us in the Islamic world. Antipathy continues to run high and unchanged and it’s not because there something wrong with us. It’s because, as Ajami writes, the U.S. is a convenient scapegoat for nations and rulers that refuse to address their own problems.”
And finally Parker tells Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the $100 million dollar effort to build the Ground Zero mosque, “Of the 17 nations that Freedom House rates the ‘worst of the worst’ regarding their state of freedom, six are Islamic nations. Feisal Abdul Rauf should spend his $100 million – wherever it’s coming from – to advance the cause of freedom in Islamic countries. That is where the problem is, not here.”
We’re just guessing, but we think that the average American could really appreciate someone in Congress with the … uhhh … political will to give a speech like that.
We originally published this story with a reference to Star Parker being on the The View. Our mistake, that was Star Jones.
Nancy Pelosi said, “We have to pass the bill so we can find out what’s in it.” Now Democrats finding out that what’s in it is a whole lot of bad juju.
Blanche and Barack back in happier times
Nancy Pelosi said, “We have to pass the bill so we can find out what’s in it.” Now Democrats finding out that what’s in it is a whole lot of bad juju.
Rasmussen reveals what Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, who was supposedly the swing vote, has found:
Support for incumbent Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln has now fallen to its lowest level yet as Republican John Boozman remains on track to shift Arkansas’ Senate seat to the GOP column.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Arkansas shows Boozman capturing 65% of the vote, while Lincoln earns 27% support. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate in the race, and three percent (3%) are not sure.
Boozman has been ahead in this race for months. In July, he posted a 60% to 35% lead. In surveys since he won the Republican Primary in May, Boozman has earned 60% to 66% of the vote in matchups with Lincoln, who in turn has picked up 28% to 35% support.
Our first thought when we read that the Justice Department wants to hire ebonics translators? It’s gotta be another one of Eric Holder’s wacky social justice schemes. But we were wrong.
Our first thought when we read that the Justice Department wants to hire ebonics translators? It’s gotta be another one of Eric Holder’s wacky social justice schemes. But we were wrong.
The Smoking Gun has the story:
The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.
A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media”.
The DEA’s need for full-time linguists specializing in Ebonics is detailed in bid documents related to the agency’s mid-May issuance of a request for proposal (RFP) covering the provision of as many as 2100 linguists for the drug agency’s various field offices. Answers to the proposal were due from contractors on July 29.
Is the Justice Department trying to imply that blacks are drug dealers? Sounds like Eric Holder is a self-loathing black racist to us.
Nevertheless, polish up your resume and send it in, homeboy. (Damn it. Is there anything sadder than an old white guy using a term like “homeboy”?)
Glenn Beck. Love him or hate him, it’s tough to disagree with him when he describes CNN anchor Rick Sanchez as “quite possibly the dumbest man on television. And that’s saying something because there are some dumb people in television.”
Glenn Beck. Love him or hate him, it’s tough to disagree with him when he describes CNN anchor Rick Sanchez as “quite possibly the dumbest man on television. And that’s saying something because there are some dumb people in television.”
Here’s Beck hilariously riffing on some of Sanchez’ more famous inanities.
Dr. Laura wasn’t the only radio talk show host to lose a gig this week. Just the only rational one. The Los Angeles Times has the sad news about a fatwa-issuing Saudi Arabian talk show host who’s now out of work:
Dr. Laura wasn’t the only radio talk show host to lose a gig this week. Just the only rational one.
The Los Angeles Times has the sad news about a fatwa-issuing Saudi Arabian talk show host who’s now out of work:
Fatwa-issuing Sheik Abdel Mohsen Obeikan has a face made for radio
No more fatwas for Sheikh Abdel Mohsen Obeikan, the Saudi cleric and royal court adviser who earlier this year earned notoriety for rolling out an eyebrow-raising religious decree that called on women to give men breast milk to avoid illicit mixing.
Saudi authorities on Wednesday reportedly pulled the plug on Obeikan’s radio program “Fatwas on Air,” a daily morning show in which Obeikan would go on air and issue fatwas – religious rulings — to the public on various matters.
Taking the sheikh off air appears to come as part of Saudi king Abdullah’s recent clampdown on the nation’s fatwa bazaar.
In a bid to stop unauthorized clerics issuing odd religious decrees, the king has reportedly put out a royal decree authorizing only members of the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars to issue fatwas from now on.
With a resume like this, we don’t expect Obeiken to be out of work very long. According to what we hear, CNN’s search for Larry King’s replacement has been narrowed down to Obeiken and Ryan Seacrest.
Poor Nancy Pelosi. Not only is she burdened with a congress full of swamp monsters, but some of them are swamp monsters who just won’t die – like Chris “Countrywide” Dodd.
Poor Nancy Pelosi. Not only is she burdened with a congress full of swamp monsters, but some of them are swamp monsters who just won’t die – like Chris “Countrywide” Dodd.
According to TheHill.com, “The Senate Ethics Committee is re-examining the participation of senators and staffers in a controversial VIP mortgage-lending program at Countrywide Financial Corp, according to a source familiar with the panel’s activities.”
"Oh, man," Christopher Dodd said, "I am so screwed."
Apparently new information concerning the corrupt (cross out corrupt) alleged sweetheart loans was recently obtained “from Bank of America, which now owns former Countrywide”
So what about Chris Dodd? According to the article “Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) benefited from the Countrywide VIP program. The panel cleared the senators of any wrongdoing but warned them that they should have exercised better judgment and should have questioned why they were being put in the “Friends of Angelo” VIP program.
If new information is discovered about Dodd’s and Conrad’s loans, any potential ethics committee investigation would encompass the new material and also could ensnare other senators’ offices.”
One astute blogger on the Hill’s website summed up the situation with extreme accuracy:
“This is going to leave a mark in Dodd’s Shorts!” By nuffsaid
Looks the Obama Administration has now given up on the much-derided term “jobs created or saved” and moved on to the even sillier “lives touched.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnPTx7lM1ngIf the Obama administration was half as creative about creating jobs as it is about creating new doublespeak, unemployment would be a thing of the past.
Looks like they’ve now given up on the much-derided term “jobs created or saved” and moved on to the even sillier “lives touched.”
Oregon’s KVTZ has Obama’s latest nonsense:
While DOE reports that it created 10,018 jobs through May of this year, the department has also used a more unorthodox methodology to inflate job creation in some of its reports, a methodology the GAO says may mislead the public. For example, using the method GAO was critical of, the agency reports roughly 20,000 jobs created through May of this year, counting the number of “lives touched” in some documents.
We’re pretty sure most Americans would agree with the Tubes and say, “Don’t touch me there.”
The Gusher in the Gulf may have pumped out a lot of oil, but it paled in comparison to the amount of bull pumped out by the environmentalists.
The Associated Press put it all in perspective:
It's all a matter of perspective.
The Gusher in the Gulf may have pumped out a lot of oil, but it paled in comparison to the amount of bullshit pumped out by the environmentalists.
While BP’s well dumped 172 million gallons into the Gulf over three months, the muddy Mississippi brings in 198 million gallons of water — replete with urban and farm runoff — every minute. The National Research Council estimates that 41 million gallons a year of oil naturally seep into the Gulf from below.
As Rush said, it was equivalent to spilling a beer in the SuperDome.
The first Muslim Arab Miss USA, Rima Fakih, but she’s against the Ground Zero mosque. Yet she has somehow convinced herself that those two positions aren’t contradictory.
Miss USA Rima Fakih. The number one reason to ban the burka.
The first Muslim Arab Miss USA, Rima Fakih, is conflicted. Very conflicted.
She loves President Obama, but she’s against the Ground Zero mosque. Yet she has somehow convinced herself that those two positions aren’t contradictory.
The bikini-clad hottie took time out of her busy Miss Universe pageant schedule to wax philosophically:
“I totally agree with President Obama with the statement on the constitutional rights of freedom of religion,” said Fakih. But the 24-year-old says while she supports freedom of religion in America, the people behind the mosque should consider the feelings of the families who lost loved ones on 9/11. ”It shouldn’t be so close to the World Trade Center. We should be more concerned with the tragedy than religion,” said Fakih.
Ladies and gentlemen, Miss USA 2010 Rima Fakih. No fat, no fatwa.
New York Times writer Jeff Zeleney guested on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” to discuss the issue and he exposed the president as a part time holy roller, with more of his Sunday mornings spent tending to putting than praying.
A new Pew Research poll shows that an increasing number of Americans (one in five) now believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. (NOTE: A Time poll also released Thursday says 24% of voters believe the President is a Muslim.)
New York Times writer Jeff Zeleney guested on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” to discuss the issue and he exposed the president as a part time holy roller, with more of his Sunday mornings spent tending to putting than praying.
No surprise to the American public there, but it was astounding to hear what the White House’s solution to the poll will be. Zeleney advised host Chuck Todd that Obama will now switch to campaign mode (at the 4:09 mark of the video).
“What does the president do almost every Sunday?” Zeleney asked. “He plays golf. I think now you’ll be seeing Obama go to church more, white churches, black churches, you name it churches, to show he is Christian.”
So Obama will limit his golf outings to attend Sunday services, not to pray and worship, but to make political hay. The president’s handicap isn’t nineteen, it’s his pandering.
Co-host Savannah Guthrie attempted to end the segment by reminding viewers that the poll was taken before the President’s remarks on the Ground Zero mosque, implying that the numbers might even be worse now. But cohost and White House water boy Todd couldn’t let the segment close on a negative note so he interrupted to tell viewers “The President gets a daily Bible verse sent to his Blackberry. Every. Single. Day.”
But tell us, Chuck, does he also get passages from the Koran? And which does he delete, which does he read?
The news that legendary major league baseball pitcher Roger Clemens has been indicted for lying to Congress struck us as rather odd, because we would have expected Congress to embrace a liar as one of their own.
Being indicted for lying to congress is like being indicted for having sex in a whore house
There’s an old joke that says, “George Washington never told a lie, Bill Clinton never told the truth, and most members of Congress can’t tell the difference.”
So the news that legendary major league baseball pitcher Roger Clemens has been indicted for lying to Congress struck us as rather odd, because we would have expected Congress to embrace a liar as one of their own. But in Clemens’ case, they didn’t.
ESPN reports on this historic development:
Roger Clemens was vehement: “Let me be clear. I have never taken steroids or HGH,” he told a House committee in 2008. Now, instead of the Hall of Fame, baseball’s seven-time Cy Young winner could go to prison after being indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday for allegedly lying to Congress.
The case writes a new chapter in one of baseball’s worst scandals, the rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs in the 1990s and early 2000s, and leaves Clemens’ legacy in jeopardy.
The six-count indictment alleges that Clemens obstructed a congressional inquiry with 15 different statements made under oath, including denials that he had ever used steroids or human growth hormone. The New York Times first reported the indictment.
If life were fair, Clemens would be judged by a jury of his peers – the lying, sanctimonious sacks of excrement in congress – and they’d give him a trophy instead of a jail term.
Here’s a clip of Florida’s flipflopping U.S. sentate candidate Charlie Crist telling a crowd of supporters, “I used to be a Republican….Thank God, used to be”.
Here’s a clip of Florida’s flipflopping U.S. sentate candidate Charlie Crist telling a crowd of supporters, “I used to be a Republican….Thank God, used to be.”
Of course, the only reason Crist “used to be” a Republican is that he’s getting his ass kicked in the polls by conservative Republican Marco Rubio.
The Democrat in the race, Kendrick Meeks, is running a very distant third in the polls and Crist was hoping to get unofficial support from the Democrats.
Better go to Plan C, Charlie, because “Today White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said that the White House ‘has fully embraced Kendrick Meek.’ Fitting that this comes on the day the President visited the city of Miami, where Meek represents the 17th district.”
In the words of the old StarKist commercials, “Sorry, Charlie.”
America honors its greatest leaders by putting their likenesses on its currency. We believe it’s high time that Barack Obama, The Greatest President In History, receives this same honor. Unfortunately, most of the bills are taken.
America honors its greatest leaders by putting their likenesses on its US currency. We believe it’s high time that Barack Obama, The Greatest President In History, receives this same honor. Unfortunately, most of the denominations are taken.
For example, a likeness of George Washington, our nation’s first president and leader of the American Revolution, graces the one dollar bill.
“Honest” Abe Lincoln, the revered leader who lead our nation through its darkest hour, appears on the five dollar bill.
Sheriffs in Arizona seem to grow cojones the size of Yuma watermelons. Paul Babeu, the Sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, has a message for President Obama:
Sheriffs in Arizona seem to grow cojones the size of Yuma watermelons. Paul Babeu, the Sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, has a message for President Obama:
“If the president gave me a half hour,” Babeu said, “I am confident that I could convince him and to show him the way that he can personally secure the border, and he would be the hero of everybody that truly transcends bipartisan politics and secures that border. I believe that if a leader truly wanted to do that we have the means and the resources necessary to secure our border and to protect America once and for all, and then we can get to the point in the future, only after the border is secure, that there is some type of discussion about what do we do with the approximate 13 million people who are here illegally.”
Pinal County, located in Southern Arizona is a major route for smugglers bringing narcotics and illegal aliens across the Mexican border.
C’mon, President Obama, you visited Afghanistan in an effort to pretend you care about that war. Don’t you owe it to the people of Arizona to at least fake it for them, too?
The jaded among you may consider this nothing but a cheap, sleazy effort by IHateTheMedia.com to increase our page views with a cheap, sleazy photo of Cameron Diaz. But watch how we allay your fears by cleverly tying it into the media.
The jaded among you may consider this nothing but a cheap, sleazy effort by IHateTheMedia.com to increase our page views with a cheap, sleazy photo of Cameron Diaz. But watch how we allay your fears by cleverly tying it into the media.
The Associated Press has the details:
Cameron Diaz tops list of riskiest celeb searches
If you’re looking for Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts or Jessica Biel online, look out!
The movie stars top the latest list of the most dangerous celebrities to search for online, according to new research by computer-security software maker McAfee Inc.
It’s far from an Oscar, but landing atop McAfee’s annual list carries a distinction all its own: It means that criminals believe those celebs are the perfect lures to sucker people into visiting malicious websites.
Clicking onto strange sites is sketchy to begin with. But many people do, and their computers get infected. Once a computer is infected, criminals can steal victims’ online banking passwords, e-mail passwords, and do other kinds of nasty deeds.
This has been an IHTM public service announcement.
Leave it to Andrew Bolt, a damn foreigner, to come up with a way to describe America’s current economic situation in a mere four words.
Hoist a beer and salute the clarity of Aussie Andrew Bolt
Leave it to Andrew Bolt, a damn foreigner, to come up with a way to describe America’s current economic situation in a mere four words.
Can’t work:
“New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed to a nine-month high last week, yet another setback to the frail economic recovery. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 500,000…”
Won’t work:
“The Obama family will begin their sixth holiday of the year today, an 11-day sojourn in Martha’s Vineyard, the island destination of the wealthy and well-connected American elite.”
The Associated Press is kind of like the old major league baseball umpire who said, “I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.” The name “Ground Zero mosque” might be good enough for the American public, but it’s not good enough for AP.
The Associated Press is kind of like the old major league baseball umpire who said, “I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.” The name “Ground Zero mosque” might be good enough for the American public, but it’s not good enough for AP.
Tom Kent, the Associated Press’ Deputy Managing Editor for Standards and Production, laid down the law about what to call what everyone else calls the Ground Zero mosque. Or at least what not to call it.
Let's not call it the Ground Zero mosque because it's sooooo far away from Ground Zero
Aug. 19, 2010
Colleagues,
Here is some guidance on covering the NYC mosque story, with assists from Chad Roedemeier in the NYC bureau and Terry Hunt in Washington:
1. We should continue to avoid the phrase “ground zero mosque” or “mosque at ground zero” on all platforms. (We’ve very rarely used this wording, except in slugs, though we sometimes see other news sources using the term.) The site of the proposed Islamic center and mosque is not at ground zero, but two blocks away in a busy commercial area. We should continue to say it’s “near” ground zero, or two blocks away.
WE WILL CHANGE OUR SLUG ON THIS STORY LATER TODAY from “BC-Ground Zero Mosque” to “BC-NYC Mosque.”
In short headlines, some ways to refer to the project include:
• mosque 2 blocks from WTC site
• Muslim (or Islamic) center near WTC site
• mosque near ground zero
• mosque near WTC site
We can refer to the project as a mosque, or as a proposed Islamic center that includes a mosque.
Call it what you want, Tom, but the American people are going to call it the Ground Zero mosque.
