Do you REALLY need a lesson on how talking points emerge — talking points that may be fatuous, inaccurate and so patently politically packed that it seems as if no one would take them seriously..but they do? If you do, then look no further than this one:
As news reports now suggest and Media Matters documents, some conservative members of the talk radio political culture are now trying to suggest that burning the Koran is the same thing as building that mosque at Ground Zero.
You know: that mosque that really isn’t at Ground Zero and really won’t be an actual mosque so much as a more extensive community center that will also contain a mosque.
How could anyone seriously compare two? And how could anyone seriously believe it? Well they have and mark my words they will.
Comparing the burning of the Koran, a holy book that is to Muslims what the Bible is to Christians and what the Torah is to Jews, to the building of a mosque-community center two blocks away from Ground Zero is like comparing this..
to this..
Or, perhaps more accurately…
..comparing this..
or this…
to this…
or this…
or these…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.