1.05.2007

bigotry and irony

Here's something both disgusting and hilarious. It's not a new story, but I was unaware of it, so perhaps you were, too.

Keith Ellison, Democrat from Minnesota, was elected to the House of Representatives in the 2006 midterm election. Ellison, as it happens, is the first Muslim member of Congress. I was surprised by that; I would have thought someone from New Jersey or perhaps Michigan would have reached that milestone sooner.

True to form, the wingnuts are going, well, wingnutty over this. (No links: I will not link to such filth.) That certainly brings their bigotry into sharp focus, doesn't it? They're always claiming that "TWOT" is not a war against Islam, that they don't hate ordinary Muslims, that they know Muslim does not equal terrorist. Then what's the problem??

Ellison, being Muslim, requested to be sworn into office on a Koran. Of course this logical request was gasoline on the wingnut fire. They went completely insane. Gibson and Malkin should be able to milk this clear to summer.

But wait, this gets better. Way better.

The Koran that Keith Ellison used for yesterday's swearing-in ceremony? It belonged to Thomas Jefferson.

That, my friends, is the best punchline I have heard in a long, long time. As someone said in this DU discussion thread, I dare them to call Thomas Jefferson a terrorist!

If you know anything about Jefferson, you know that as a deist, he would have been appalled by the current Christianized US.

The symbolic swearing-in on a religious book should itself be considered un-American, mixing church and state as it does. Elected officials should place their hand on a copy of the US Constitution, as that's what they are promising to uphold. But that America doesn't exist. In the real USofA, is not one religious book as good as the next? Apparently not. The wingnuts' "logic"? The Koran is a book of lies. The Christian Bible is a book of truth. Forget reading on the bus, a brief Technorati search on this topic completely turned my stomach.

But this Jefferson twist, this is friggin hilarious. Even Fox News couldn't make this one up.

Many thanks to Redsock for sharing the laugh with me.

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