Mags Yes, Mosque No?

Larry Levin

So today in the New York Times online, there were two articles stacked one atop the other on the homepage, presenting a delicious irony:

*One was about the construction of the proposed Muslim facility a couple blocks from Ground Zero. The story, while focusing on the city’s landmarks commission’s approval for the project, rehashed the objections uttered by, among others, Sarah Palin, Rick Lazio and the Anti Defamation League.

*The other was about magazine giant Conde Nast –publisher of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and many other mags, agreeing to locate in a skyscraper AT Ground Zero.

The irony? That it doesn’t seem to pain anyone that a for-profit company in the business of exercising its First Amendment rights of Free Speech is perfectly legit at Ground Zero, but that a nonprofit organization exercising its First Amendment rights of Free Religion is suspect two blocks away.

My personal belief? Absent evidence of wrongdoing, both are perfectly acceptable uses. But the juxtaposition does illustrate what a strange, strange world in which we live…..