Legitimate Questions for Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin’s latest inane statement, “Legitimate Questions for the President,” may be inane, but it demonstrates quite nicely how those on the left lost the rhetorical battle concerning what she calls “this Ground Zero mosque.” As Eric Rauchway pointed out, Manhattan Island is a small place—only about 13 miles long and 2.3 wide—that looms larger in our collective imagination because of its social and cultural importance. If you asked Palin or any of the others who have temporarily abandoned their disdain for all things East Coast and elitist whether it would be acceptable if someone built a mosque within a 1.5 mile radius of where the Twin Towers once stood, they would likely continue protesting because they are utterly ignorant of the fact that that roughly eliminates everything south of NYU.*

To their minds, New York City is less of a teeming than an endless metropolis, one that begins on the southern tip of the island and extends beyond the horizons to the north and east and west. They fail to recognize that there was a reason New Yorkers stopped building out and started building up—there is only so much room on an island 22 square miles in area—and so they assume that renovating a Men’s Wearhouse into a community center must, perforce, be an insult to the memories of the victims of 9/11. Their reaction to learning that the mosque being built on Ground Zero is actually a community center being built two blocks away is a stubborn spectacle couched in deliberately deceptive language.

Palin’s rhetorical transformation of “the mosque being built on Ground Zero” into “this Ground Zero mosque” would be brilliant if intentional. It draws a scar across an infinite island and declares everything to its south to be sacred American soil. The area she calls “Ground Zero” is a fictional place in whose name she and her ideological brethren can express their xenophobia without fear of being called xenophobic. She and they can claim to support the good Muslims—the ones who know that their place, literally, is not in lower Manhattan—safe in the knowledge that, with a wink, their fear of people with strange names from foreign lands can arguably be something other than it is. In her mind and theirs, “this Ground Zero mosque” is less of a building than a psychological representation of the controversy caused by their ignorance of the island’s geography, i.e. they have retooled their own stupidity into a potent rhetorical feint whose truth is undeniable because it refers to the debate about an imaginary building on an infinitely large island. For Palin and those like her, the “Ground Zero” in “this Ground Zero mosque” functions not as a reference to the former site of the Twin Towers, but as a simple adjective that identifies the particular “mosque” in question.

That it happens not to be located on Ground Zero is, at this point in the conversation, irrelevant.

Palin proves this by obfuscation. Her concern about “this Ground Zero mosque” is not that it will be located on Ground Zero, but “steps away from” it. Twice in her short post she uses the phrase “steps away from” to describe the distance of “this Ground Zero mosque” from Ground Zero. Part of me wants to chide her with a simple reminder that, despite being in Southern California, I am “steps away from” her front door in Wasilla, Alaska. Granted, I’m many millions of steps away from it, but steps away nonetheless. Another part, however, wants to ask her to define her terms. How many “steps away from” something she considers “hallowed ground” must American citizens of Islamic faith be required to take before they can enjoy their constitutionally guaranteed right to religious freedom? How many “steps away from” must they be before they can exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to assemble freely?

I have a feeling that waiting for specific answers will be a fruitless waste.

*I write “roughly” because superimposing a circle on a grid and describing the results hurts my head.

Comments

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1658482342]

How those on the left lost the rhetorical battle .....

Losing rhetorical battles is what the left is for.

[Mike]

Scott: I hate to be a spoilsport, but I can't figure out why you're taking Palin (and the "others" of paragraph 1, and "those like her" of paragraph 4) this seriously. If you're just doing rhetorical analysis of Mosque-gate, I get it, but I'd hate to see you expend too much intellectual energy on the incoherence of the conservative mind.

[SEK]

As is typically the case, I'm more interested in the rhetoric than its content; or, put differently, I'm only interested in the content inasmuch as it exposes the rhetorical jabs and feints responsible for it. Watching the concept of "this Ground Zero mosque" evolve over the last whatever has been intriguing precisely because conservatives are inventing an island, planting a flag in it, then claiming it's sacrosanct ... which is, as you well know, insanity.

[Karl Steel]

I complained about this on the FB a few days ago (mere steps from your post, you might say): among from the many reasons this controversy is stupid (at best) is the density of Lower Manhattan. 1.5 miles in Wasilia or even Tacoma or any if these other car-friendly places no one ever visits is indeed right around the corner. But in Lower Manhattan, even in Brooklyn, it's a ways away. Even 3 or 4 blocks is a distance encompassing probably the entire population of Wasilia. 

In other words, duh, Palin's a rube who knows nothing about NYC and who also doesn't understand that distance, particularly in the symbolic sense in which she's deploying it, is anything but quantitative. 

[Fritz]

Dude, Men's Wearhouse.

[SEK]

My typo made more sense, but yes, you're correct.

[KWK]

I suppose that I can understand why, on a gut level, people might be a little twitchy about the prospect of having an Islamic cultural center with space for weekly prayers situated in that particular stretch of lower Manhattan; I'd even be willing to concede that not everyone who feels this way is motivated by rank bigotry. The thing is, nothing in our system of laws precludes people from being offended by the religious expressions of others--in fact, making people offended in this way is Constitutionally protected on many levels (just ask Fred Phelps).

And completely independent of the First Amendment issues, all the talk about "hallowed ground" seems to me to be utterly misguided, as it proves way too much. Slate had an article about this today; the relevant segment is part of the author's punchline:

Get rid of the Islamic center and the alternative will not be a memorial park, but a fitness center, an American Apparel, a Pinkberry. Dignity makes a lousy standard for downtown zoning.

I, for one, would rather have a building in that location which is dedicated to educating or otherwise improving the lives of those nearby, rather than an edifice designed to worship the Almighty Dollar. But in any case, the most important thing is that its use is not up to me, nor to anyone else who doesn't own that space.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"Palin’s rhetorical transformation of “the mosque being built on Ground Zero” into “this Ground Zero mosque” would be brilliant if intentional."

It is intentional. Or really, what makes you think it isn't?

Your post is full of statements like "In her mind and theirs" which elide the obvious: she's a liar and a demagogue, and makes her living from playing up race hatred. I'd guess that everyone in the GOP commentariat knows the obvious facts about the mosque, or at least doesn't care and wouldn't be surprised by them. I'd guess that most of the people repeating the lie really know the facts too. But it's more enjoyable for them to try to gin up a lynching. They're evil.

[Fritz]

They fail to recognize that there was a reason New Yorkers stopped building out and started building up—there is only so much room on an island 22 square miles in area

As a one-time resident of the Bronx, I have to insist that you're going wrong when you equate New York with Manhattan. Those people sweeping up ash in Brooklyn were victims too. That's how terrorism works; the particular killing is a bonus.

Greg Gutfeld, when he tweeted Cordoba House about his plans to open a gay bar targeted at Muslim Men "near the proposed mosque site near Ground Zero", received this response:

You’re free to open whatever you like. If you won’t consider the sensibilities of Muslims, you’re not going to build dialog.

Considering other people's sensibilities. There's something to that. Palin wrote,

We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they?

Would it be sensible?

[Rich Puchalsky]

And here's Fritz. If this were a couple of decades ago, Fritz would be saying that black people have a right to move into white neighborhoods, but that they really should consider the sensibilities of the people living there and not do it.

[Julian]

Fritz, it would be sensible because the objections to the mosque are (to my knowledge) exclusively based on fallaciously conflating the people who attacked the WTC with the people who are proposing to build the Cordoba House. A dilution of that argument (the one I think you're offering, though you're so vague that I cannot be sure) is "Well I don't have a problem with the mosque, but some people do, so don't build it."

You failed to define "considering other people's sensibilities." For example, civil rights protestors considered white people's sensibilities, and then marched and did sit-ins at segregated restaurants anyway. Consideration does not equal obedience.

The burden is on you to prove that the Cordoba House should not be at its proposed location.

[SEK]

I suppose that I can understand why, on a gut level, people might be a little twitchy about the prospect of having an Islamic cultural center with space for weekly prayers situated in that particular stretch of lower Manhattan; I'd even be willing to concede that not everyone who feels this way is motivated by rank bigotry. The thing is, nothing in our system of laws precludes people from being offended by the religious expressions of others--in fact, making people offended in this way is Constitutionally protected on many levels (just ask Fred Phelps).

Yes, but those laws only protect the right of (possibly/potentially radical) Muslims to build their sanctuary of sin there, that doesn't mean they ought to do it. Isn't there some nice land in [insert somewhere rural and preposterous] that they could use instead? After all, the needs of the non-existent Muslim community in [somewhere rural and preposterous] outweigh the needs of the actual, extant Muslim community in lower Manhattan.

In other words, Kyler, I'm with you on this one.

It is intentional. Or really, what makes you think it isn't?

Because the move to create outrage over a fictional building on a fictional section of an unimaginably large island is too rhetorically sophisticated for the likes of her to intentionally create. She accidentally did so while walking away from the claim that a mosque would be built in the Freedom Tower's stead, saw that "this Ground Zero mosque" resonated with people who knew no better, and stuck with it.

As a one-time resident of the Bronx, I have to insist that you're going wrong when you equate New York with Manhattan. Those people sweeping up ash in Brooklyn were victims too. That's how terrorism works; the particular killing is a bonus.

As a one-time resident of Brooklyn, I'm inclined to agree ... but I wasn't talking about the city of New York so much as "New York City" as it exists in the minds of people who've never been there, who know it only through Law & Order and Sex and the City, i.e. for whom Manhattan is New York City. I mean, honestly, you don't think when someone in Iowa thinks of New York City that they picture Queens, do you?

Would it be sensible?

Many things people do with their constitutionally guaranteed rights aren't sensible, and to my mind, purchasing a building and using it to worship a god that doesn't exist strikes me as insensible whether that god be Jesus, Yahweh, or Mohammad. Whether it's politically insensitive is another matter, but in all honesty, I think if FOX hadn't manufactured this outrage, no one would've cared.

[mistergog]

This is the most delightful comment thread ever. Can we at least just agree that Cobra is way better than Casablanca and be done?

[mistergog]

This is not the post for which my trollbait was intended. Apologies, etc.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"Because the move to create outrage over a fictional building on a fictional section of an unimaginably large island is too rhetorically sophisticated for the likes of her to intentionally create."

Throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks is not rhetorically sophisticated, perhaps, but it is intentional, and it leads to the same result.

Although I actually would disagree, possibly, about its sophistication. Which is more efficient -- carefully calculating an elaborate rhetoric to rile up your audience, a rhetoric that may fail? Or saying any old thing and staying with whatever works, knowing that your audience will forget about any of the things that you said that didn't work? It's like the Mars launch of hate vs. the million seeds of hate.

[Karl Steel]

Those people sweeping up ash in Brooklyn were victims too
I guess. I suppose I was a victim too because I missed my Bynum seminar that morning. You see, the subways stopped running. I don't think of myself as a victim though. You want real victims? They're all over the place, including Iraq, which we attacked because PNAC decided that the 9.11 attacks were the perfect catalyst, including Pakistan, 20% of which is underwater right now, no doubt in part bc the Right has wasted billions of dollars on killing people that could have been used to combat climate change. Victims a plenty.

In sum: you want not to build near victims of the WTC/Pentagon attack? Don't build anywhere.

As a CURRENT resident of Brooklyn, and a former resident of both Manhattan and the Bronx, as someone who saw one of the towers come down while standing on his Brooklyn roof (and who, indeed, on the evening of 9.10.2001 declared the WTC an "eyesore," wrecking his view), I say: let them build wherever they like. Why should it bother me? If, as people say, there can be Irish pubs in London, there can (continue) to be Muslim community centers in Lower Manhattan.

[Jon H]

Sarah Palin needs to do something about the Palin Household Meth Labs before meddling with New York.

Well, okay, maybe they aren't exactly on the premises, but mere steps away from it.