Palin Will Not Be Refudiated on Ground Zero Mosque

Photo: Kukiko Mitani

Yesterday’s Kevin Drum post at Mojo is thoroughly reasonable, asking — before the next wave of hysteria really gets rolling —  exactly when and how “the ‘Ground Zero mosque’ became a sudden cause célèbre” among the conservative’s tea party wing.

One of the links in the piece cites a 12/09 NYT story detailing how one Imam Feisal — deemed a “bridge builder” and a Sufi Muslim who has helped heal wounds since 9/11 — came to purchase the old Burlington Coat Factory two blocks north of Ground Zero to build a spiritual center.  But now that Sarah Palin, the great moral leader,  has called on “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate” that peaceful Muslim who bought the sight, it’s hard to know what to do — except to marvel at the wingnut effort to work as much of the public into a fear frenzy over this as they possibly can.

In the meantime (absorbing the slideshow that accompanied that half-a-year-old NYT story), I can only imagine what kind of tantrums this photo might elicit from the Michelle Malkins of the world.  It wouldn’t surprise me, in fact, if the rightwing fanatics demanded that those pieces of landing gear that busted through the roof and two floors of the coat factory on 9/11 (if the owners happened to have kept it) be “safely returned” to some “pure American” hands.