Sarah Palin set the blogosphere on fire when she made up the word “refudiate” in a tweet she put out. The sad part is, that has distracted everyone else from the truly horrendous substance of what she was trying to say. Palin butchering the English language really isn’t a news story. She promotes herself as “folksy” which is just another word for being an uneducated moron. So her butchering the English language then trying to excuse it away by saying other people like Shakespeare also made up their own words isn’t really surprising. But it is a good distraction from the meat of what she said.
“Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate”
If you still can’t get past the word “refudiate” let me show you what she replaced that tweet with:
“Peace-seeking Muslims pls understand. Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing”
Okay, let me break this down.
The first issue is Palin’s plea to “Peace-seeking Muslims” as if being a peaceful Muslim is a rarity. It’s actually ironic. Sarah Palin just got finished responding to the NAACP for stereotyping all Tea Party members as racist…and here she is implying that most Muslims are violent. I know someone is out there saying “But Kriss, you’re reading too much into that.” Am I really? It would be one thing if this was the first time Palin or members of the Right implied that Muslims are some kind of war-mongering people, but it’s not. This has been systematic and frequent. Let’s forget the Bush-led War on Islam and just pick it up from the nomination of Barack Obama. There was a concerted effort to label Barack Obama a Muslim to gin up fear of terrorists. Then there has been a call during his presidency to profile Muslim men between the ages of 18 – 28. And now this “uproar” over a mosque being built near ground zero (which by the way is more rec center than mosque…but we’ll just call that a terrorist training facility). This has been a clear attempt to associate Muslims & Islam with terror and Sarah Palin is just pouring gas on that idiotic fire.
Palin says it’s an “unnecessary provocation”. Why? There is no evidence or even suggestion that those behind building this mosque have terrorist ties. So that means they are the “peace-loving Muslims” that Palin first mentioned. So if they are about peace, then who are they provoking? Christian New Yorkers? And if they are about peace, then why is that a provocation? Why can’t “peace-loving Muslims” and “peace-loving Christians” come together and take a stand and say that here in the United States we are all equal and we have a freedom of religion that means just because a few idiots from a religion commit an egregious act, we as Americans won’t give in?
And that leads me to the last part of Palin’s Tweet where she says “Pls reject tin the interest of healing.” As I stated above, this is in fact the OPPOSITE of what needs to be done to heal. A mosque at ground zero actually shows that we Americans won’t let the terrorist win. It shows that we reject the claims of the terrorists that Americans are at war with Islam and hate all of them. Instead, Palin and those like her on the Right are in essence ensuring the terrorists have won by allowing a terrorist attack to terrorize us into giving into our fears. Neither Palin nor her supporters can give a legitimate reason as to why the mosque at ground zero is a bad idea. Just backhanded fear based inferences that it is a jab at “everyday Americans”. And this is why I point out Sarah Palin’s idiocy. This is why I can’t just ignore her. Because Sarah Palin represents a significant portion of our society that is completely idiotic. And these idiots vote and influence policy. They have little understanding of history and therefore lack the ability to learn from it. They don’t understand that when we hold a group of people responsible for the actions of a few like we did with the Japanese with internment camps during World War II or communists under McCarthyism we are uncovering ugly blemishes on the history of this country. And here we are again, punishing all Muslims for the actions of 19 idiots with box cutters by in essence labeling all Muslims or Islamic as suspicious. Palin wouldn’t bat an eye if a Catholic Church was erected near a daycare. Yet a mosque at ground zero is cause for a alarm. Shows just how far we’ve come as a nation since that fateful day almost 9 years ago. And the answer is: Not far at all.
I often wonder “is Sarah that stupid and just happens to have a soapbox” or “is Sarah pretty stupid, but knows how to play to the bigotry and pettiness of others”. It’s probably both.
What Sarah and those like her fail to understand and accept is that their very concept of America is false. We are not a uniquely exceptional, white (western European descent), Christian (protestant denominations), divinely protected country. It is a country of immigrants and minorities, built upon slave labor and maintained by structural inequalities with poor people and undeveloped nations.
Latinos are Americans, Blacks are Americans, Muslims are Americans…It is when we target and discriminate against these groups that we become exactly what our enemies claim us to be. Terrorists say there is a war on Islam. Palin’s response, ban a mosque…
Worse still, her talk and the media’s acceptance of her brand of crazy emboldens others to act on their most bigoted impulses. For example, the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL will be having “International Burn A Koran Day” on 9/11 in “in remembrance of the fallen victims of 9/11 and to stand against the evil of Islam”.
This is why it is important to speak out against the Palins, Limbaughs and Becks of the world. If we don’t, then people feel validated to act on their prejudices. Just like the guy that killed George Tiller. People have to accept that America is diverse. All kinds of people have all kinds of ideas and you can’t change that. All any of us can do is live our lives while not fucking up our neighbor’s life. That’s the real American Dream.
I would like to point out that Sarah Palin and other such people are, in fact, educated idiots. How so many in this country can go to college and still be so stupid is beyond me.
She spent six years at five different schools. I doubt that idiot has much education.