Rick Esenberg, the smartest member of the Ron Johnson apologist set, begins a post on the manufactured Park51 controversy promisingly. He asserts the right for it to be built and says he's not comfortable with the push to get the sponsors to back down.
But then he slips into blaming the victim while excusing the real villains of the piece.
Ese writes:
Perhaps the controversy could have been avoided had Mayor Bloomberg and other NYC officials recognized the potential problem earlier and engaged the sponsors on the issue or if the project's sponsors were more attuned to the legitimate concerns that the project raises and more willing to take steps to defuse them.
"Legitimate concerns that the project raises with"...whom, exactly? There was zero controversy around this project for months and when the controversy began it didn't spontaneously arise spontaneously from families of 9/11 victims (who are hardly united on this). It was whipped up by the deranged Pam Geller and picked up by Fox News. And of course Rick's friends Charlie Sykes, Patrick McIlheran, Jeff Wagner and others. And the relative legitimacy of their concerns can be measured by their need to lie about the building (it's not a mosque, it's not "in the shadow of ground zero") and to lie about and distort Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
Suffice it to say there is nothing Rauf, Bloomberg, etc. could have done to "defuse" these demagogues.
Rick's compromise is that the center explicitly condemn violent jihad (which Rauf, who at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, declared "I am a Jew," has done) and call on its participants to repent. His time may be better spent calling on his friends at Journal Communications to repent for their vile attacks and Muslim baiting. Fat chance on either.
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