The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    David Seaton's picture

    Burning a Koran in a crowded theater

    By David Seaton on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 2:40pm |

    Terry Jones

    "America - the most contradictory, the most depressing, the most stirring, of any land in the world today."
    Sinclair Lewis's Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1930
    Sinclair Lewis should rise from his grave, have a stiff drink and write up the following story:
    A small US church says it will defy international condemnation and go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Koran on the 9/11 anniversary. The top US commander in Afghanistan warned troops' lives would be in danger if the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida went ahead. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the church's plan was "disrespectful and disgraceful". Muslim countries and Nato have also hit out at the move. And the US Attorney General, Eric Holder, called the idea "idiotic and dangerous". But organiser, Pastor Terry Jones said: "We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam." News Item - BBC News

    (...) Terry Jones, the pastor of a tiny Florida church with just three or four dozen members, whose every stray thought on the subject of Koran burning is now reported each day by thousands of news organizations worldwide, has proved himself to be a master of public relations. On Wednesday, Mr. Jones — currently the subject of 4,102 news stories linked to by Google News — told the world that he would press ahead with the publicity stunt he announced in July - New York Times

    The White House says an American church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book could endanger U.S. troops serving overseas, and the State Department denounced the plan as "un-American." Associated Press

    (New York) Mayor Bloomberg said Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who plans on a Koran-burning rally on Saturday's 9/11 anniversary, has every right to burn the sacred books – even though he finds it distasteful. New York Daily News

    The story of the Koran burning, Florida pastor, Terry Jones, is having a massive, worldwide, media repercussion. There are riots in diverse places in Muslim countries and American public figures from the White House to Hillary Clinton, to the American commander in Afghanistan, General Petraeus, even Angelina Jolie, all have had their say in the matter.

    However, when you come right down to it, the name of the church in question, "The Dove World Outreach Center" is almost longer than a list of its members... There are little more than fifty parishioners involved in this! For me, that is the story: how the media has taken up this malignant goofiness  and given this pitiful rustic the worldwide "fifteen minutes of fame" that the late Andy Warhol said finally awaits us all.

    Sociologically speaking, I find it passing strange that a church made up of poor, white, southerners, America's traditional military caste, would do anything that the American army says could put the lives of American soldiers in jeopardy. I could just as easily imagine President Obama's former pastor, the Right Reverend Jeremiah Wright, burning a cross in front of Chicago's, Trinity United Church of Christ. None of this makes any sense.

    In short: the story is the story is the story is the story... that all over the world we are talking about this clown and his tiny band of imbeciles is the real story.

    This is cross posted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

    Comments

    Wow, David, we must have been riding the same wave length today!  I posted something similar here (my first post!) a little while ago.  it's pretty baffling how this really, really slight story got pumped up to world-wide proportions.  What a bunch we are here in the US, huh?


    by Ramona on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 2:44pm

    I think most of us are perfectly OK, but I get the feeling that we are some of most mentally fucked over humans in the world. The infotainment and marketing industries combined with the corrupt political system are positively hellish. I'm amazed at how nice and how sane Americans are after the way they are treated.


    by David Seaton on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 3:05pm

    Well, as I see it, everyone is avoiding the real point of the entire situation. This church is pushing hard against the separation of church and state by making a political statement in the name of religion.

    I have no problem with a person practicing their faith in whatever manner they believe in the privacy of their homes or with other of their fatih in a place of worship. However, when they step outside the doorstep of their legal scantuary and directly assult the very foundation that allows them to worship in their own way without the fear of the government interfering, their 1st Amendment right protection is null and void.

    This is that message and myth I've beentalking about recently. Take a myth everyone believes is true...whch isn't...wrap a message within it and both message and myth become one. And any attempt to deny either one brings up the government repressing individual freedoms.

    As I see it, the religious right, having not gotten the gains they've been expecting for so long from the GOP are moving forward with their agenda and daring anyone to stand up against them. If you do, you're against God and Country because the myth has each tightly woven together.

    I have to get to work so I can't dribble on any further, but there's something more to this than just burns a few books to piss off the arabs.


    by Beetlejuice on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 3:36pm

    Beetlejuice said:  I have no problem with a person practicing their faith in whatever manner they believe in the privacy of their homes or with other of their fatih in a place of worship. However, when they step outside the doorstep of their legal scantuary and directly assult the very foundation that allows them to worship in their own way without the fear of the government interfering, their 1st Amendment right protection is null and void.

    You might want to rethink what you said there.  Here is the 1st Amendment:
    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
    You don't really get it, do you?  You cannot make it conditionally null and void.  You either have freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly or you don't.  There are no in betweens even if enforcement is spotty.
    Yikes!  Your comment really scared me. 

    by EmmaZahn on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 12:58pm

    That's why I titled my post "Burning a Koran in a crowded theatre". Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the First Amendment didn't include shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater. Besides, is burning a book really "speech" and is an provocation designed to cause the death of dozen, maybe hundreds, perhaps thousands of human beings, really "peacefully assembling"?


    by David Seaton on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 1:09pm

    Sorry, I wasn't replying to your post but to Beetlejuice.  His willingness to strip rights away from someone because he personally doesn't like what is being said. 

    I have heard the 'fire in a crowded theatre' argument most of my life.  I had no reason to think much about it.  I thought all these arguments had been sorted out long ago.  Then I read Beetlejuice.  Yikes! again.  I will be giving it more thought -- after some research.

    This story has gotten way out of hand.  Terry Jones has no legal authority, no public standing.  He does not speak for the USA or Florida or Gainesville.  Why are the State Department and military weighing in on this?  because some Afghani equivalent of Terry Jones inflamed the story there?  Any comments they make should be directed toward soothing Afghani sentiments not inflaming domestic ones.  I have no problem with someone in authority privately taking Terry aside and explaining emphatically why he should not do what he is doing.  I do have a problem with the willingness of some to alter our fundmental rights to shut up one crackpot.

     


    by EmmaZahn on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 2:13pm

    People are going to get killed for this, maybe a lot of people. The police or the FBI should find some way of arresting these people and getting them off the street this weekend and let the judges -- all the way up to the Supremes -- sort it out later.


    by David Seaton on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 2:23pm

    More likely someone either will or will not issue an injunction.


    by Donal on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 2:30pm

    I don't believe that people will be killed over this.  Not even a little bit.  Anyone who would commit murder over this was going to commit murder anyway.


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 3:28pm

    Do you have freedom of hate speech? Do you have the freedom to polygamy under Mormonism? Do you have the freedom to practice yellow journalism? Do you have the freedom to assemble anywhere? Do you have the unrestricted freedom to bear arms at all times, no matter what your age or criminal record?

    AFAICT, all the constitutional rights are regulated to some extent.


    by Donal on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 1:10pm

    What is hate speech anyway?  Calling people from Terry's culture neo-fascist, Bible beating, po'white trash?   How about lumpenproletariat?


    by EmmaZahn on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 2:24pm

    Hate speech is a communication that carries no meaning other than the expression of hatred for some group, especially in circumstances in which the communication is likely to provoke violence. It is an incitement to hatred primarily against a group of persons defined in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and the like. Hate speech can be any form of expression regarded as offensive to racial, ethnic and religious groups and other discrete minorities or to women.

    http://definitions.uslegal.com/h/hate-speech/

     


    by Donal on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 2:28pm

    Please Emma, easy on the PC. Terry is all of those things and worse... by Monday, God knows how much blood he will have on his evil, frivolous hands


    by David Seaton on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 2:30pm

    I guess I'd have to say that no matter what happens he has no blood on his hands.  This is easy for me to say because my guess is that the repercussions of this will be zilch but let's say I'm wrong and that a major, major attack happens and it's dmeonstrably because of this.

    Well then the attackers have blood on their hands for responding irrationally and immorally to the provocation.  I hold the provacateur innocent.  We're all responsible for our own actions and reactions.


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 3:30pm

    For real though.  Are we really going to let this goober become an excuse for violence?  I'm certainly not willing to accept that.

    And Boehner already teed up the argument over the weekend:

    "To Pastor Jones and those who want to build the mosque: Just because you have a right to do something in America doesn't mean it is the right thing to do," Boehner said.

    Look at how quick people are taking the bait!  Sure, scrap the First Amendment here because you think that this lunatic's plans are "just wrong" or go "just too far."  This is literally the slippery slope and the nutbars are begging the sane world to zip on down.


    by DF on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 4:44pm

    I don't say we scrap the First Amendment,  I would just suggest that Jones and his followers be arrested for public urination or double parking or tax evasion and that they spend this week end in jail.


    by David Seaton on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 1:42am

    David, I find it odd that someone so liberal would recommend this course of action so blithely.  I know you're smart enough to consider the unintended consequences of such actions, which, if they were to become commonplace, could easily be employed against anyone for simply expressing something or doing something that the government doesn't like.  Personally, I don't support the government hauling in anyone in on trumped up charges, especially to skirt First Amendment protections.  That would set a horrible precedent.

    Additionally, what's to stop him from re-scheduling?


    by DF on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 1:26pm

    Who knows?  But when the dust eventually settles I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Jones was being funded by some group of right-wing wannabe holy warriors unrelated to his bathtub-sized group of "congregants" (maybe some of them have been "incented" to play that role)?  Or some rich far right-wing ideologues wanting to try to force Obama to take a stance that would further fuel the tabloid crap that he's really a Muslim or Muslim-lover or Muslim sympathizer, or at least someone who thinks it would be a really, really bad idea for some American citizens to have a Koran-burning party (but hey, what's the difference?  He's on their side, isn't he?)


    by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 5:18pm

    There is sure to be something in what you say... Our friend the Kochs? The Mossad?


    by David Seaton on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 1:39am

    On one hand there's Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

    On the other hand, if we were to assume an ulterior motive here, it seems to me it's all about the Ground Zero mosque (of course one can also assume ulterior motives there, as well).


    by Atheist (not verified) on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 10:36am

    I might quibble with Hanlon: it could be both.  I once worked for a Congressional committee.  We had just held an oversight hearing on a federal agency.  Our principle mole shared with me after the hearing--which was explosive and led to the resignation or firings of two senior officials--that another senior staff person in his agency said to him afterwards (referring to the testimony of the star witness, who publicly posed the question of whether the problems in the agency were due to malice or incompetence):

    "So, (name withheld), was it malice or incompetence?"

    His answer: "A bit of both, I suspect."


    by AmericanDreamer on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 12:32pm

    Hanlon's razor also happens to be the favorite excuse of the truly malicious.


    by DF on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 1:31pm

    What really bugs me is the linking of this with the "(two blocks from)Ground Zero Mosque"....It's just so nauseating to see Palin, Boehner, etc. link this crank Terry Jones with the good people who want to build the Islamic Ctr. in Manhattan, and to see the lapdog media take the bait.

     

     


    by Dorn76 on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 12:20pm

    I have to admit that when I heard about the proposed mosque my first thought was that, although it is perfectly legal, it seemed insensitive. I find the Quo'ran burning to be the same...perfectly legal, but insensitive.

    Sometimes being an American means that we have hard choices to make. This is one of them. Was it Voltaire who said something to the effect that I disagree with what you're saying, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it?

    What he is saying/doing is repulsive and grossly ignorant, but he has the right to say/do it, and I say that even as I fear the repercussions. That said, we also have the right to attempt to get him to stop, as we also have the freedom to say what we think.


    by stillidealistic on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 1:58pm

    I am probably beating a dead hearse here, but why do these Christians wish to burn all these Karens anyway. I mean I can think of a Sarah or Michele that probably should be burned at the stake; but why on earth would you single out Karens?

    And isn't this against the law? I mean I thought you needed some sort of licence from the country or city or park ranger to burn such things.

    the end


    by Richard Day on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 3:16pm

    Not in Florida.  Events of this nature also feature compulsory attendance and concealed carry.


    by DF on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 3:24pm