Why The Muslims

Mark Silk has the goods:

In recent years, the wise guys in the Republican Party have cottoned to the fact that the U.S. of A. has become a good deal more Latino than it used to be, and that it might not be such a good idea for the future of the GOP if it embraced (at least publicly) such anti-Latino-immigrant laws as Arizona passed a few months ago. Why not find a less politically potent body of Americans on which to vent one's nativist animosity? 

I give you: The Muslims. Unlike the Latinos, who are pushing toward 20 percent of the American population, they constitute less than one percent. And the largest portion of them are African-Americans who would never vote Republican anyway. But how to change the nativist narrative in time for November's mid-term elections?

The Ground Zero Mosque, of course. Talk about godsends. In May, when the story emerged, the ratio of newspaper, broadcast, and blog coverage of the Arizona law to the proposed Islamic Center in Manhattan was 20:1. Last month, it was 10:1. So far this month, it's been running at 1.3:1. That's according to Lexis-Nexis Academic word searches of Arizona+law+immigration+Brewer and Ground Zero+mosque+protest. Add coverage of other anti-Muslim protests around the country and the ratio turns the other way.

Plus this will help convince Americans that we need to bomb Iran, because it wasn't enough for the Iranians to fly airplanes into Pearl Harbor on 9/11, now they want to build a giant monument to Osama bin Laden on the very site of the old World Trade Center!

The right-wing will continue to demonize Hispanics just like it does every non-white-male part of society.  The "Ground Zero Mosque" - which is not at Ground Zero and isn't a mosque, of course - allows Very Serious Conservatives to continue pandering to the right-wing's hate and fear while distancing themselves, at least personally, from Latino-bashing.

Comments

[Sir Charles]

Stephen,

The picture of the mosque and statue is awesome.

I wouldn not sell short the GOP's ability to hate multiple groups at the same time. I see no evidence that they are backing off the Latino bashing and I still think there are signficant prospects for more gay bashing too. And let's face it, Black is always in style when it comes to bashing.

(Are a majority of Muslims in the U.S. African American? That would surprise me.)

[oddjob]

It wouldn't surprise me. How many metro areas are you aware of with sufficiently large non-black Muslim neighborhoods that you hear about them in mainstream national news, outside of those in the Detroit area?

[oddjob]

Freakin' priceless