If only the Los Angeles Times and its always-angry, always-noisy, always-victimized Amen chorus on the left were as tolerant of Republicans as they are of terrorists.
Like wondering if your 6-year-old ever will stop wetting the bed.
He will. The Times won’t.
For close to 20 years, the wannabe Times has contorted its perverse editorial expression, bent it left as far as it will go without shattering, in a desperate attempt to match its East Coast big, far superior brother who is infinitely more prestigious, The New York Times.
In Los Angeles, the Times’s throat is parched, like that of a raggedy, starving man crossing the torrid desert on bloodied knees from an obscene desire to be regarded as the twin of the Times of New York. Since 1990, they have not closed the gap one inch.
Alas, the L.A. Times is still seen countrywide, and especially on the East Coast, as the journalistic rube, the bucolic bumpkin, the low-brow, barefoot hayseed.
Which brings us to last Friday’s Times’ editorial, “Ground zero for tolerance.”
The subject was whether it is acceptable for Muslims to erect a mosque, a 13-story celebratory community center, two blocks from Ground Zero where 19 Islamic terrorists murdered almost 2,800 Americans on Sept. 11.
Without disclosing one more syllable, you know on which side the predictable Times came down because — do I hear an echo? — The New York Times also vigorously endorses the deviously conceived mosque.
Do we need to write on the blackboard:
W-h-e-r-e
i-s
y-o-u-r
s-e-n-s-i-t-i-v-i-t-y?
A 5-year-old of average or less intelligence knows enough to say “no” to the mosque location without any coaching.
He would tell you this is the quintessential way of Muslims sticking a slippery thumb in America’s eye and saying “I dare you, you miserable freedom-shleppers, to stop me. Ha, ha.”
They can, but they won’t. Only the American people are against it. Their leaders, on the left that is, love the scam. It is so global warmish. Dennis Prager likes to say that the wildly intolerant left emphasizes the notion of inclusiveness — in all categories except ideas.
In sentence 2 of its me-too editorial, the Times declares that Sarah Palin is opposed to putting a mosque there on the blatantly obvious grounds that it is insensitive to the victims and survivors of the worst attack on American soil since the Civil War.
How rad, Ms. Palin.
The Times supports spitting on the victims of Sept. 11 and their families for four reasons:
1. The New York Times supports the plan.
2. Sarah Palin strongly opposes it.
3. The Times fears blowback both from Muslim terrorists and from quiescent Muslims, which is why they have not taken one significant stand against Muslim terrorists since Sept. 11.
4. The sly, market-savvy imam who bought the building 13 months ago and denied his plans publicly until last December, intends a worldwide gala opening of the Ground Zero mosque on Sept. 11, 2011, not coincidentally the 10th anniversary of the greatest American tragedy.
Even if you are only a casual political observer, you may know this month marks the second-year anniversary of the obsession that the cackling voices on the left have carefully nurtured over the effervescent but hardly perfect Ms. Palin.
She is so pretty, so plain-talking as to inspire widespread but incurable envy on the left. Secretly but unadmittedly, they are dazzled by her clarity and charisma mainly because no one on the left comes close to equaling either quality.
In the tradition of the well-remembered financial commercial of a few years ago:
“When Ms. Palin speaks, everybody on the left listens, raptly, and writes it down, too.”
As you know, it takes little provocation to plunge the left into a mocking mood.
A few days ago, the magnetic Ms. Palin tweeted:
“Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing.”
How bankrupt is the left?
How precise is Mr. Prager’s charge of a paucity of ideas??
The L.A. Times declared that objections by Ms. Palin and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another favorite left target, were “un-American” and besides, America needs to prove to Muslims worldwide that our country not engaged in a war against Islam.
This, of course, is the journalistic equivalent of a lifetime commitment to bed-wetting.
Unable to generate any snappy rhetorical flourishes from its own staff, incapable of producing either a serious or a witty rejoinder to Ms. Palin’s airtight reasoning, the Times turned to New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg to be its designated human shield. “You answer for us,” the Times said to the mental marvel.
Being a little man, formerly a ventriloquist’s dummy, Mr. Bloomberg was thrilled to oblige.
“Sarah Palin has a right to her opinions,” he said, “but I could not disagree more. Everything the United States stands for and New York stands for is tolerance and openness.”
I wonder what the Little Man and the Lesser Times would say if Republicans were building a mosque next door.
I am waiting.