Apparently, Abe Foxman is redefining the ADL’s mission right before our very eyes:
But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain—unnecessarily—and that is not right.
Apparently they are making the move from defending civil rights to taking on the awesome responsibility of guarding everyone’s feelings.
AhabTRuler
Um…third verse, same as the first?!
General Stuck
The bigotry out there is piling up like a GOP lap dance tab.
beltane
These stupid bigots make me sad. Who will avenge me and put the smile on my face again?
Kryptik
Shocking. See, I have my shocked face on, don’t you see my shocked face?
Seriously, is this a surprise at all? I thought it was agreed upon that Foxman is a hypocritical hack that has basically destroyed ADL’s mission and turned it into a functional arm of the GOP.
General Stuck
@beltane:
I sometimes rescue damsels in distress, long as it ain’t dangerous.
slag
Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah!
Violet
Oh noes! Someone’s fee-fees might get hurt!
Redshirt
Not everyone’s feelings, of course…
Toast
Arrogant Douchenozzle League.
sven
Someone finally answered the immortal question:
What if Halo had been released on the Atari 2600?
http://members.shaw.ca/jeffv/halo2600.html
The world is a better place!
Mark S.
Fixed for accuracy, since that seems to be the people who are protesting this the most.
General Stuck
Nothing says Anti Defamation like a good anti Muslim rant.
David in NY
This is a particular piece of nonsense — the portrayal of groups as victims to squelch the rights of others.
There was opposition, for example, to the building of a New York City garbage incinerator in Williamsburg, which is the home of many orthodox Jews. One of the points of opposition was that having an incinerator in the neighborhood would remind the Jewish residents of the holocaust and cause emotional distress.
[I do not mean that the incinerator was necessarily environmentally appropriate. Just that this particular argument has little validity, and is trotted out more than it should be.]
jrg
Oh, you must think that Foxman works for the “Anti Defamation League”. That’s a common misconception. He works for the “Anti Defecation League”, an organization devoted to keeping conservatives from shitting their pants.
Roger Moore
Fixt that for you. After all, if they wanted to consider people’s feelings, they might think about the massive insult to peaceful Muslims who just want to practice their religion without interference. But I guess that scary mooslims just don’t count as people anymore.
shortstop
Except for the “everyone’s” part. They’re being kind of mean to everyone who isn’t totally insane with enraged ignorance, if you ask me. Gosh, that’s the problem with subjectively choosing whose freedoms and liberties to protect.
Annie
I checked the Constitution. It never mentions “feelings.” It mentions rights. ADL of all groups should be sensitive to the difference between feelings and rights — in our not to distance past, many people had “feelings” against Jews…
MattF
It’s hard to exaggerate how pathetic Foxman is here, how miserably and how dismally he’s failed. I understand that Limbaugh, Palin, Gingrich, Beck, etc. either can’t or won’t parse the phrase “civil rights.” OK, bigotry is their business, it’s an ugly job, but it’s what they do. But… should we now conclude that “anti-defamation” only applies to slurs against Jews?
kansi
Yeah, and if the Constitution gives me a right to the pursuit of happiness, that means you cannot make me feel bad.
daveX99
@sven: OMG, sven. I can’t play the real Halo (I recently spent 20 pathetic, ultimately futile minutes trying to get up from the bottom of a pond while playing with my 12yr old), but I think I can handle the 2600 version.
And the sounds – perfect.
Thx.
jeff
It saddens me to see Foxman go out like this. (I wish him the best of health, of course, but people–so far, at least–don’t live a lot longer than he has.) The reason this saddens me, apart from the obvious, is that I would like to think that age makes wise. Alas, it does not.
kommrade reproductive vigor
You see, Muslims don’t have feelings. They’re evil, soulless creatures bent on tearing down this country.
And even if there are some Muslims who do have feelings they should understand that their feelings are less feelingy than those of non-Muslims.
And really, it’s their fault for not stopping those guys when they got together during their giant Muslim World Domination meeting in 2000.
Spaghetti Lee
I’m waiting for a wingnut to use the “even the liberal ADL” defense (because any organziation that bills itself as anti-defamation is obv. liberal). In fact, the Unified Theory of Stoopid suggests it’s already happened somewhere on the tubes.
daveX99
The idea of a Jewish organization (even the ADL) talking about where folks are allowed to be & worship is just so cognitively dissonant, my head spun round and fell off.
Yeesh. I’m no Bloomberg fan ordinarily, but he said the right things. I hope the bigots explode, exposing them all the more.
Cat Lady
Everytime these poutrage whores thrust themselves into the spotlight, it greatly diminishes them. The Foxmans and Breitbarts and Jeffrey Lords of the world just can’t stop themselves from overreaching, and we’re all better off if they insist on keeping digging. Hatred is ugly, and the more they stand in the spotlight spewing it, the uglier they appear.
S. cerevisiae
I am a couple of thousand miles away but I swear I can hear the outrage of the Shrieking Harpy from here.
scav
Not to mention the feelings of those victims who object to being used as cover for bigotry and hatred — apparently, they don’t count either.
The Other Chuck
That’s fine Abe, because I’ve redefined the ADL as just another bigoted identity politics group. Pretty sure a lot of liberal New York Jews are going to be voting with their feet and their wallets.
mikey
The hypocrisy is obvious. The contribution to the al-Quaeda narrative is obvious. The pandering to tribal hatred is obvious. But as easy as it is to mock and challenge the wingnuts for their unAmerican actions, I still find it hard to put myself in the position of trying to referee a fight between jesus and allah.
The superpowered sky faeries should work it out amongst themselves.
I’m guestblogging for Spencer Ackerman at FDL the next couple weeks, so I filed my complaint there:
http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2010/08/03/cafeteria-constitutionalists-ancient-mythology-and-cordoba-house/
mikey
JAHILL10
It’s not a fight between Jesus and Allah, okay? It’s about constitutionally protected rights to practice your religion whatever it may be without the interference of the government. Where are all the glibertarians saying Hands off my religious freedom? This should be right up their alley.
Martin
Some people say rabbis don’t have feelings
We have feelings
We have feelings
Animals of the Fo'c'sle
The ADL isn’t guarding everyone’s feelings, just the bigots who want to abridge the rights of religious minorities.
First they came for the Muslims… and it was good for Zionism.
But then again Zionism made a deal with Naziism back in the day too, didn’t it?
ellaesther
As basketball great John Wooden was apparently given to saying: “Consider the rights of other before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.”
When I lived in Tel Aviv, I knew my fair share of Holocaust survivors. In private conversation, I never argued with anything that was informed by their experience as a survivor.
The minute it moved out of a living room and onto the national stage, where it would have an impact on the entire country and the lived reality of millions of people? You can sure bet I’d argue. I’d argue hard.
Because at that moment, it’s not about them anymore.
August J. Pollak
I wonder how he feels about building synagogues in people’s backyards.
After they’re kicked out of them and bulldozed over.
Yep.
BombIranForChrist
Who would have thunk that all this high falutin’ democracy protectin’ was mere tribalism.
Mark S.
@Spaghetti Lee:
While you waiting, how about an appetizer of “even the liberal Juan Williams“?
michelle
OT. Evidence of my good deeds as opposed to the blog owner here.
When he has three dogs — one who want to kill the other three AND hosts a pregnant cat and finds a home for all of them, then I will praise him for his devotion to pets.
Carry on.
Mnemosyne
@mikey:
That’s kind of the point — the reason we have free exercise of religion is (in theory) to prevent these kind of fights from needing a referee because the government says, “Pipe down, you’re all equal.”
You can argue that they’re equally stupid, but you can’t argue that the government should refuse civil rights to one or another because they’re somehow more stupider.
Delia
I was listening to this argument on the BBC radio news hour as I was driving this afternoon. My conclusion was that 9/11 really has changed everything. It’s changed this country into a bunch of whiny babies who don’t think about anything except their own feelings.
Moses2317
This is not surprising, given Mr. Foxman’s willingness to accuse anyone who takes less than a hard-right position on the Israel-Palestine conflict of anti-Semitism. It is sad, however, to see a once-great civil rights organization stoop to such petty bigotry.
I’d recommend in response that all progressives join J Street, an organization dedicated to civil rights, equality, and ensuring a safe and secure Israel through a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians.
Jon H
He’s the Jewish Bill Donahue, the Catholic dude who’s always getting his fee-fees badly hurt.
Cat Lady
@michelle:
lolwut?
Well, I’m not sure now how Cole will be able to continue blog hosting without your praise. He was having a nice run there.
Mnemosyne
@Jon H:
Or, as my man G likes to call Donohue and his type, “Some guy with a fax machine,” since apparently all you need to make yourself a spokesman for a large, diverse group is a nice-looking letterhead and a fax machine.
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
I see you’ve read my book of more badder spelling.
Mnemosyne
@General Stuck:
I actually wanted to say “more stupiderer” to really get the point across.
kdaug
Ya know, sometimes it feels like we’re treading over the same ground over and over again.
Do we have to play with the Neanderthals? They never say anything new…
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
Foxman has pretty much destroyed the credibility of the ADL, through this and many other indefensible positions. So sad. He really should reread their tag line and take it to heart– “Fighting Anti-Semitism, Bigotry and Extremism.” As a Jew I really hate that he attempts to represent “us” in a way that is deeply troublesome and blatantly, shamelessly hypocritcal.
fasteddie9318
@Mark S.:
That phrase is in serious need of retirement. As a replacement, I suggest “even the insufferable douchebag who regularly talks out of both sides of his mouth Juan Williams.”
Dan
Would just note that while the ADL disgraced themselves on this, other jewish groups were supportive of the construction of the mosque and were present at the Bloomberg speech today.
Rabbi Bob Kaplan from the Jewish Community Council, Rabbi Irwin Kula from the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and Cara Berkowitz from the UJA Federation — were present with Bloomberg during the speech.
Nick
@Delia:
We were like that before 9/11, it just wasn’t as noticeable
SLKRR
@mikey:
What fight? Didn’t you hear the news? http://www.theonion.com/articles/christ-converts-to-islam,754/
Nellcote
Had to finally give up on Foxman and the ADL when they weren’t out there freaking out about the Obama/Hitler and especially the Dachau posters at teabagger events. It’s just downhill from there.
Grace Nearing
Just want to point out that there is no “shadow of the World Trade Center” in which to build anything.
I have always felt that the WTC site should just be left as green space. But as this is NYC, which hates green space, things — very commercial things — will be built at this Most Holy Sacred Site, and nobody seems to think that the The Shrineless Shrine is being desecrated.
scav
But, then again, life does go on — that in itself is valuable and something not to be discounted or trivialized.
Roger Moore
@zoe kentucky in pittsburgh:
I think he must have misread it to say “Fighting Anti-Semitism with Bigotry and Extremism”. It’s a very understandable mistake- for an extremist bigot.
Batocchio
Well, that is one facet of modern conservatism – bullies in power, whiners when not.
Wile E. Quixote
@Abe Foxman
So just how do you measure this? I mean firstly, as Grace Nearing points out there is no shadow of the WTC in which to build anything. Secondly how long is this shadow? I mean are we talking about the length of the shadow at noon, or at sunset, and on what day of the year, because that will of course affect the direction in which the shadow is cast. Plus, depending upon which side of the former WTC you built the mosque on it might not be in the no longer existent shadow of the WTC at all (I’m not familiar enough with NYC geography to figure this out, which is a pity, because NYC rocks.). Perhaps someone could use Google maps to figure out the acceptable shadow radius of the former WTC so that no mosques are built in it.
Wile E. Quixote
@Batocchio:
Actually when they’re in power they’re just whining bullies. Winston Churchill perfectly described the behavior of modern conservatives when he observed that “The Hun is always at your throat or at your feet.”
Suffern Ace
@Cat Lady: But who says that they are even close to overreaching now? I think that is a problem we are going to encounter. I get the feeling that things will need to get a lot worse before the point is reached where they are perceivd to have overreached. They do the polls, this mosque is a “wedge” issue, one where “liberal” values are the less popular position, and they will run with it until people tire of it.
When groups are unpopular, whatever they do will be easily interpreted as overreaching. On an emotional issue like this, I don’t know how strongly Democrats are committed to losing popularity by not addressing people’s feelings. Most don’t need the Muslim vote and it would be very tempting to throw a bone.
Suffern Ace
@Wile E. Quixote: Actually, from my perspective, they appear to be bullies, con-men and fear mongers whether they are in power or out of power.
Michael G
Abe Foxman? The Sausage King of Chicago?
asiangrrlMN
You know what causes me pain? Listening to the batshitcrazy from the right. Palin. Limbaugh. Beck. W. That’s serious emotional pain, there, my friends. What is Abe Foxman going to do about that? Huh? Huh? Huh?