The Book Burner’s 14th Minute, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #187

September 13, 2010 Mike Gold 0 Comments

How did you celebrate International Let’s Burn The Quran Day last Saturday? If you’re like me (cue Craig Ferguson joke), you spent the day confused.  Do I burn the Quran? Do I not burn the Quran? Terry Jones, make up your mind!

The pastor of the oddly named Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville Florida called for burning the Quran all over the world. Good luck with that “International” part, Terry.  The burning would take place to mark the September 11 terror attacks and would send a message to Muslims.

“Why don’t we send a warning to radical Islam and say, don’t do it. If you attack us, we will attack you,” Jones said.

Listen, you idiot. That’s exactly what they’re counting on. Remember the bit about 72 virgins? Do you understand that those suicide bombers – the ones who piloted the planes that went down in New York, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia nine years ago – were not people who were even the least bit afraid of dying for their faith? They do not fear our attack, not even a nuclear attack. They welcome it. 72 virgins for highly sexually repressed holy warriors!

Jones held his ground even after General David Petraeus said his actions would jeopardize the lives and the mission of his troops still in the Middle East.  After that, the President, the Secretary of State, and everybody north of the director of the ASPCA nailed him. Everybody except Republicans, whose silence was deafening.

So he hooked up with his local Imam, who called the New York City Imam and discussed a meeting in New York – on September 11th. Then Jones held a press conference an said “the New York Imam said he wouldn’t build his mosque, so I’m calling off the burning!” (I paraphrase.)

And the New York Imam responded with “Say what? All we talked about was a meeting! I’m not caving in to un-American bigotry!” (Again, I paraphrase.) Then the Florida Imam said “We never even discussed the idea of not building the mosque.” (Yep, I’m still paraphrasing.)

So then Jones told his followers to polish up their Bics once again.

The next morning, Friday, Jones changed his mind still again. He said the burning was off, and he’d be in New York and the Imam better meet with him.  He gave the Imam until 3:20 PM Friday to agree. The deadline came and went, but the book burning was still off.

Jesus Christ, asshole. Make up your mind. Your pea-brained followers are easily confused.

To be fair, Jones doesn’t just hate Islamists. According to an interview with CBS, he finds Hindus, Buddhists, and – dare I say it – Jews to be of the devil as well. Which means that Christ was of the devil, his being Jewish and all that. God knows what Jones thinks of Atheists. So when it comes to religion, he’s an equal opportunity book burner.

Here’s an amusing bit of trivia: Jones went to high school with Rush Limbaugh. Cape Girardeau Missouri, 1969.

To compound his massive free-floating religious bigotry, Pastor Jones has postured this as a First Amendment issue. That’s funny because the First Amendment protects freedom of minority religion as well as freedom of minority speech. Being too dimwitted to get the conflation and evidently hard of hearing and unable to read, he’d realize that nobody is saying he didn’t have the right to burn the Quran. He does. Indeed, I have the right to burn the King James book while standing in front of the abandoned Burlington Coat Factory building in Lower Manhattan; fire safety laws notwithstanding.

Jones has the right, but – how is it phrased these days? Oh, yes. It’s perfectly legal, but completely insensitive.

To put insult to injury, we’ve wasted much of the 9-11 news cycle on this powerbroker-wannabe buffoon. We should have been focusing upon the event, the victims and their families, and on EMS workers and firefighters and military personnel who chose to put their lives at risk to support us. That’s what this weekend should have been about.

Pastor, your recent network interviews aside, we should never forget the hatred that has long been in your heart. Your suggestion that Muslims are murderers in hiding waiting for the right moment to kill all the Christians is not only astonishingly bigoted but massively hypocritical… and very, very stupid.

If that’s what your religion is all about, you were burning the wrong book.

“9-11” is a trademark of Rudy Giuliani. Fellow-traveler, anarcho-syndicalist and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants pop up each and every day at the same venue.