Rob Asghar: July 2010 Archives

With some new work responsibilities at USC, the time has come for me to say goodbye to Friendly Fire and a good chunk of my outside writing. Huge thanks to Jonathan, Gail and Earl. And special big thanks to Mariel Garza and Chris Weinkopf for the opportunities they've given me here!

Let's call xenophobia what it is.

There is no plan to build a jihadist center on Ground Zero. There is a plan to build a Muslim community center a short distance from Ground Zero.

If radicals were to use it as a plotting place, that would make it all the easier for the FBI and CIA to grab an Americano at a nearby Starbucks and then keep tabs on them. But this center is planned as a place for pluralism and multi-faith dialogue, not jihad.

There's not much more to say about that. There's more to say about how there is growing resistance to mosques far from Ground Zero -- in other parts of New York, in Tennessee, in Wisconsin, even in our own Temecula in Southern California.

Be with the xenophobes if you must be with the xenophobes. But spare me your claims about how you are really a saint.

I get the point of the NAACP resolution, and my knee-jerk response is sympathetic. But I don't believe their efforts will help bring racism to light. For one thing, diehard conservatives will argue that the black community is showing "blind loyalty" to President Obama that is less than color-blind. They will argue that heated opposition to big government wouldn't seem to racist to many blacks if so many blacks weren't already unwaveringly behind a candidate who shares their skin color.

And they will have a point.

This is not to say that the Tea Party is above reproach. They strike me as a nasty bunch, and I'm suspicious about why they didn't bring guns to protests against Bush's big spending or his Wall Street bailouts. Still, until the bigot wing of the Tea Party gets truly violent, you won't see the mass of them bothering to condemn that wing.

Al Gore denies guilt, perhaps giving him a little more sense of what it feels like to be a denier, given the denier movement within the global warming debate. And perhaps his accuser is a climate skeptic who felt that massaging Al and his ego was more than she could take.

But I do feel for the accused here. Forget the quaint, precious notion of "innocent till proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." In everyday practice our society uses a "Where there's a trace of smoke, there's global warming" method to judge and hang people. In most cases, we protect the names of the accuser but never the accused. (In the Gore situation, the accuser did choose to come forward publicly.)

Be certain, the guilty must be punished, as Al Gore must be punished if it can be ascertained that there is truly a case here.

But what about if he is being accused without proper cause? Is it time that we take greater care to keep both accuser and accused's names out of the spotlight, until such time that we can ascertain whether someone is indeed innocent till proven guilty? Didn't the McMartin case teach us anything?

There is too much risk that even an exemplary public figure or community leader can be destroyed forever by even an insinuation of a crime -- but never more so than in our Internet & 24/7 cable era. We need to adjust accordingly.

Do we love America as much as we say we do?

It's been said that many a person loves humanity but can't get along with the human beings next door. Likewise, I believe we often love our image of America far more than the actual motley collection of three-hundred-plus million people who comprise the American experiment in 2010.

I'll admit I've been one of those to suggest that certain parts of America don't represent the "real" America, and that they should perhaps, oh, go about re-seceding.

But I can also appreciate those who serve America and defend America as it is, and who don't wait to serve it or defend it once it meets their lofty standards.

This year, let's love and honor our home not just for what we claim its founding fathers' intent was, but for what it is today, in all its glory and frailty. Happy 4th, everyone.