(Not the subject of the column below, true, but just wanted to mention it all the same. Also relevant: On the morning of 9/11, I was working directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the Dept. of Justice, the FBI and The National Archives. I was working on a litigation project for the law firm Crowell & Moring, a project involving DOD that was supposed to send me and my team to Dayton for a few weeks that Fall, but that was cancelled for obvious reasons.
From the firm's large windows facing Pennsylvania Avenue -and even more so from the large balcony that overlooked the street that were clearly perfect viewing for Inauguration Day festivities- I and the dozens of us on my flooor could clearly see the dark smoke arising in the SW from The Pentagon, just past our view looking towards the Old Post Office.
More about my 9/11 experiences in Washington, D.C. here, from a Sept. 2011 post,
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-george-f-will-on-american-landscape.html)
Well, I've been sitting on them for a while now.
Wondering, wondering, wondering just when to run them in this space, but this excellent common sense perspective by liberal columnist Ruth Marcus in today's Washington Post about voluble Rep. Peter King of Long Island, and his resolve to finally have some long overdue congressional hearings on radical Islam in the U.S., despite protests from the usual suspects and however an imperfect a vehicle for that overdue development she thinks he might be, just might be the sign I've been waiting for.
So what's the them?
My sign to let you know that coming soon to the blog will be some delicious articles, columns and video about Islamic radicalism and not-so-democratic Muslim immigrants (not at all interested in assimilation) that I guarantee you you haven't seen or heard about elsewhere in the American Mainstream Media.
At least, as represented by the Miami Heralds and NPRs of the world, where news stories and real-life actualities that don't fit their political or social template never see the light of day in print or make the airwaves.
That's largely because even some liberals can see the lie of the fiction long articulated by the MSM, in the U.S. as well as in Europe, that EVERY Muslim -esp. immigrants- are just like Jane & John Q. Public, whether they live in Northern Virginia, Queens, London, Paris or Malmö.
Nope.
Some are but more than you think are NOT.
Just because the press wants it to be so doesn't change reality -or human behavior.
I know something of this first-hand because my first roommate at IU was a great guy named Salim who just also happened to be a Kenyan-born Muslim from Oman, who was at school on a World Health Organization (WHO) scholarship.
Salim was very appreciative of the opportunity he had to live and study in the United States and loved IU and the beauty and friendliness of Bloomington more than many of my other friends, who were blase about it, and because of his personality and willingness to talk about what he knew about growing-up in a life different than ours, Salim made friends easily.
A later roommate in the Washington area was a completely different story. I had known many Iranian-born friends as a kid growing-up in North Miami Beach, even seeing Grease at a drive-in with two -count 'em two- ridiculously cute and vibrant Iranian sisters in our family's convertible when I was in high school.
Their brother was a soccer teammate of mine and as I've related here previously, I sometimes went with him and his family to anti-Shah rallies at the JFK Torch of Freedom on Biscayne Blvd. in downtown Miami because members of his own family had been tortured or killed by the Savak. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912364,00.html
The Iranian-born medical student I was somewhat forced to live with in Arlington once another roommate moved-out just weeks before the lease was up -a know-it-all with with a real superiority complex- told me plenty of amazing stories about ways that Iranian students he knew played the State Dept. reps in Europe at the embassy or consulates for fools, in order to get visas.
They accomplished this by telling them the appropriate narrative that would allow them to be admitted into the country.
He said there even was a list of which State Dept. consular offices were more easy to fool than others, and since it was important to get to the U.S., they didn't mind the additional costs of flying out of whatever European country they might be living in in order to get to a consular office with a reputation for letting people in. Fly from Germany to Copenhagen or Portugal or... He knew that for a fact because it worked for HIM.
If college students knew how to game the system, do you honestly think that well-trained people with nefarious intentions and unlimited resources can't do even more?
Some people can never let go of their internal anger, never really want to fit in and are keenly disposed to wreck havoc on civil society wherever they can, even if that means corrupting freedoms or denying other people's guaranteed rights.
And when they're caught on film, they... yes, often celebrate their anti-social behavior.
That is, until they realize that it will make them look bad once it is shown on TV or the Internet. That moment of clarity is always a sight to see!
As you will soon see here for yourself, there's almost nothing better on TV then when the often-dubious world of Reality TV slams head-first into the behavior of the 'Real World' that the Left and its apologists in the media has been making excuses for for years.
That it happened in Sweden is not so surprising, sorry to say, but I can't help but think that if it had happened on a British TV show, where the conversation would've been in engelska, we'd all have long since seen the video by now and that it would be sure-fire water cooler conversation once 20/20 or Nightline or Sixty Minutes highlighted the behavior for Americans.
That is, if people still really have water cooler conversation as shown on The Office, instead of sipping their dopey Five-Hour drinks and $4 fruity organic drinks from their desk when there's a perfectly good cold Dr. Pepper in the soda machine looking to add drinking satisfaction.
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The Washington Post
Islamic radicalism: The questions that Rep. Peter King is right to ask
By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
One of the odder exchanges I've ever seen during a congressional hearing involved Attorney General Eric Holder, Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith and the phrase "radical Islam."
Smith, at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee last May, cited three recent terrorist incidents: the Fort Hood shooting rampage, the underwear bomber and the Times Square bomber. "Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?" he asked Holder.
The attorney general did his best not to go there.
"There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions," he said.
"I think you have to look at each individual case."
Smith tried again - and again.
Holder repeatedly resisted, before grudgingly acknowledging the obvious. "I certainly think that it's possible that people who espouse a radical version of Islam have had an ability to have an impact on people like" the accused Times Square bomber, he said.
Read the rest of the excellent column at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/08/AR2011030804487.html
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Dr. Pepper TV commercial, 1960's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpByXzdMQfk
When I first got to Bloomington in August of 1979 and told people I met at my dorm, Briscoe Quad, or people I met on and off the IU campus that I was from North Miami Beach, it was very quickly obvious that they imagined that my life down here in high school on weekends was probably not unlike the end of this commercial, albeit many years later, with grill parties at the beach, throwing frisbees and footballs around and cute girls prancing around everywhere...
Believe me, it was very disappointing to have to tell them the truth about how boring and mundane late 1970's life in NMB was, or how many great opportunities or locales were wasted.
Haulover Beach on the Intercoastal side could get crazy on weekends, but it was never fun like life depicted in films or TV about teen life in SoCal, whom I envied.
You know, where people describe every other thing they go to as "epic"?
If only we had had cell phones and digital cameras and the Internet then...
