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Meet the Man Who Manufactured the Masses' Mosque Madness
By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 19, 2011
Modified Jan 19, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 19, 2011
Modified Jan 19, 2011
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Some New Yorkers are still working hard to halt a mosque and community center planned for lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center site. Obviously, this is a sensitive issue for 9/11 survivors and family members who lost loved ones that day, and perhaps no one has invested more money in fighting the mosque than one Robert Mercer, who spent $1 million on an ad campaign touting gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio's anti-mosque cred. Having spent so lavishly to spotlight this issue, we can assume Mercer is personally tortured by the very thought of Muslims praying near the place where other men who also happened to be Muslim killed thousands of people (including Muslims).
Mercer probably lives downtown himself and has every right to get involved in local zoning issues. Oh wait, Politico finds that he's a multi-millionaire hedge fund big shot who lives on Long Island and was probably just irrationally worried Cuomo would regulate Wall Street. So he paid for this prevaricating TV ad (below) to rally the far-right rubes who, deliciously, want the government to tell a man what he can and cannot do on his own private property.
The Awl also notes that Mercer and his wife gave more than $100,000 in the 2010 election cycle candidates like Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann. As Churchill said, democracy is indeed the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Like plutocracy—that one really sucks.
Tagged
demagogues
ground zero mosque
mosque
Robert Mercer
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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