BCF - Never Forget!
Aug. 20th, 2010 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinFolks, this is a little painful for me to write about.
I've never shopped at Burlington Coat Factory. I couldn't say why, exactly... it's not like I wasn't aware of them. It's not like the opportunity wasn't there. There was a great big Burlington Coat Factory right outside of Westroads Mall that I passed by on almost a weekly basis for over a year. I just passed it by. I wasn't intentionally ignoring it or anything... I guess I just always had the idea in the back of my head that I could go into it, some day. I took it for granted that it would always be there.
Folks, that Burlington Coat Factory closed down some years back and today there is a Whole Foods on the site where it stood. I cannot visit that store without feeling a pang in my heart and spending about a hundred dollars on a week's worth of groceries. And so I know exactly where Sarah Palin is coming from when she speaks out against the current plans by a group of private citizens to build a community center on the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory in Manhattan. Sure, this is America and they can do what they want with their private property, but some things are special, some things are sacred, some things are too important to leave up to "rights" and "laws", and the ground of a Burlington Coat Factory is hallowed ground indeed and while I never thought the day would come where I'd be saying this, I am glad to have the voice of Sarah Palin speaking out as a voice of reason on this issue.
...wait, what?
Folks, I have just been informed that Sarah Palin's objection to the community center isn't that it's being built on the site of a Burlington Coat Factory but that she objects to a mosque at Ground Zero of the 9/11 attacks. Evidently there's been some confusion somewhere, because I'm almost positive that the 9/11 attacks didn't happen at a Burlington Coat Factory and the plans I've heard aren't for a mosque. She must be talking about something else entirely, I suppose. I'm going to have to go do some more research on the topic, but in the meantime it looks like I'm going to be a lone voice in the wilderness here on this whole Burlington Coat Factory preservation issue.
I've never shopped at Burlington Coat Factory. I couldn't say why, exactly... it's not like I wasn't aware of them. It's not like the opportunity wasn't there. There was a great big Burlington Coat Factory right outside of Westroads Mall that I passed by on almost a weekly basis for over a year. I just passed it by. I wasn't intentionally ignoring it or anything... I guess I just always had the idea in the back of my head that I could go into it, some day. I took it for granted that it would always be there.
Folks, that Burlington Coat Factory closed down some years back and today there is a Whole Foods on the site where it stood. I cannot visit that store without feeling a pang in my heart and spending about a hundred dollars on a week's worth of groceries. And so I know exactly where Sarah Palin is coming from when she speaks out against the current plans by a group of private citizens to build a community center on the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory in Manhattan. Sure, this is America and they can do what they want with their private property, but some things are special, some things are sacred, some things are too important to leave up to "rights" and "laws", and the ground of a Burlington Coat Factory is hallowed ground indeed and while I never thought the day would come where I'd be saying this, I am glad to have the voice of Sarah Palin speaking out as a voice of reason on this issue.
...wait, what?
Folks, I have just been informed that Sarah Palin's objection to the community center isn't that it's being built on the site of a Burlington Coat Factory but that she objects to a mosque at Ground Zero of the 9/11 attacks. Evidently there's been some confusion somewhere, because I'm almost positive that the 9/11 attacks didn't happen at a Burlington Coat Factory and the plans I've heard aren't for a mosque. She must be talking about something else entirely, I suppose. I'm going to have to go do some more research on the topic, but in the meantime it looks like I'm going to be a lone voice in the wilderness here on this whole Burlington Coat Factory preservation issue.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
My fellow Americans, please, think of the coats.
on 2010-08-21 02:11 am (UTC)A wise and cynical friend of mine once outlined a simple formula for being successful in politics:
1. Divide the population into a large group, and a small group.
2. Convince the large group that the small group is a threat.
3. Tell the large group that you'll protect them from the small group.
At <1% of the population, Muslim Americans must seem a tantalizing political target.
I'd give other examples where this three-step formula to political fortune has been used, but rather than taking the risk of running afoul of Godwin's law, let's just say instead that the Anti-Defamation League's opposition to the community centre is deeply ironic.