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defrogITEM: Yr Kingdom Of Pop Fear headline of the day is:
This may take a little explaining.
Andy Sullivan – one of the most vocal critics of the Not-Exactly-Ground-Zero-But-Close-Enough-Because-Islam-Is-America’s-Enemy Mosque – has been going around backing a Facebook page calling for a boycott of Justin Bieber on the grounds that he expressed support for the mosque in an interview with Tiger Beat magazine.
Only it turns out the interview was a hoax published on the satirical gossip website Celebjihad.com.
So now Sullivan is apologizing to Bieber.
All of which I find a grimly hilarious benchmark for the rest of 2011, for a few reasons:
1. Anti-Park51 people were all too eager to believe the interview was real, even though the post quoted Bieber as saying Muslims are “super cool” and Christians are “lame-o-rama”. Which you would think would be clues of a hoax. To say nothing of the fact that we’re talking about Tiger Beat here, which is to serious political discourse what Justin Bieber is to (say) Fugazi.
2. Whether Bieber actually said those things or not, these people were basically getting up in a righteous lather over the reported political opinions of a kid who hasn’t even graduated from high school yet – albeit one with millions of fans, which brings us to:
3. One reason they were so upset is because they were worried that Bieber’s influence over their own kids would countermand their intentions as parents to program anti-Muslim sentiment in their precious angels.
I’m kind of extrapolating that last one there. As far as I know, Sullivan isn’t actively telling his kids that Islam is America’s enemy. But he is clearly teaching them that Park51 is a bad and horrible thing, based on this quote (which he said back when he thought the Bieber interview was real):
See what just happened there?
And as I’ve said before, opposition to Park51 is essentially fueled by ignorance and fear about Islam because it lays the blame for 9/11 squarely on Islam itself (rather than the 19 demented dingbats who pulled it off). So I have my doubts that the kids of these parents are listening to all this rhetoric and parsing the nuance that anti-Park51 people try to deploy when someone says they’re Islamophobes.
So yes. Welcome to 2011, where people are still afeared of the Islams and will believe any web post that supports their narrow worldview, and where parents are still carrying on the tradition of infusing their own fears and prejudices into their children.
Which should make for an interesting future, don’t you think?
DISCLAIMER: Not an endorsement of Justin Bieber, his music or Tiger Beat. I don’t have any real opinion of him, to be honest. I’ve never heard a single song by him, he’s not marketed at my age demographic, and I have a policy of not picking on minors.
Justin time,
This is dF
This may take a little explaining.
Andy Sullivan – one of the most vocal critics of the Not-Exactly-Ground-Zero-But-Close-Enough-Because-Islam-Is-America’s-Enemy Mosque – has been going around backing a Facebook page calling for a boycott of Justin Bieber on the grounds that he expressed support for the mosque in an interview with Tiger Beat magazine.
Only it turns out the interview was a hoax published on the satirical gossip website Celebjihad.com.
So now Sullivan is apologizing to Bieber.
All of which I find a grimly hilarious benchmark for the rest of 2011, for a few reasons:
1. Anti-Park51 people were all too eager to believe the interview was real, even though the post quoted Bieber as saying Muslims are “super cool” and Christians are “lame-o-rama”. Which you would think would be clues of a hoax. To say nothing of the fact that we’re talking about Tiger Beat here, which is to serious political discourse what Justin Bieber is to (say) Fugazi.
2. Whether Bieber actually said those things or not, these people were basically getting up in a righteous lather over the reported political opinions of a kid who hasn’t even graduated from high school yet – albeit one with millions of fans, which brings us to:
3. One reason they were so upset is because they were worried that Bieber’s influence over their own kids would countermand their intentions as parents to program anti-Muslim sentiment in their precious angels.
I’m kind of extrapolating that last one there. As far as I know, Sullivan isn’t actively telling his kids that Islam is America’s enemy. But he is clearly teaching them that Park51 is a bad and horrible thing, based on this quote (which he said back when he thought the Bieber interview was real):
"I informed them, 'Hey guys, guess what? Justin Bieber spoke out for the ground zero mosque," Sullivan explained to Salon in an interview. "My little girl took down his poster and said she didn't want to have nothing to do with him anymore. These are my kids. They're living this thing."
See what just happened there?
And as I’ve said before, opposition to Park51 is essentially fueled by ignorance and fear about Islam because it lays the blame for 9/11 squarely on Islam itself (rather than the 19 demented dingbats who pulled it off). So I have my doubts that the kids of these parents are listening to all this rhetoric and parsing the nuance that anti-Park51 people try to deploy when someone says they’re Islamophobes.
So yes. Welcome to 2011, where people are still afeared of the Islams and will believe any web post that supports their narrow worldview, and where parents are still carrying on the tradition of infusing their own fears and prejudices into their children.
Which should make for an interesting future, don’t you think?
DISCLAIMER: Not an endorsement of Justin Bieber, his music or Tiger Beat. I don’t have any real opinion of him, to be honest. I’ve never heard a single song by him, he’s not marketed at my age demographic, and I have a policy of not picking on minors.
Justin time,
This is dF
