Osama and Orientalism

my final word on Park51 – City of Brass. When you combine the emotional impact of 9-11, the undercurrent of prejudice against Islam borne of fear of the unknown/centuries of Orientalism marking it as the quintessential Other, and then layer onto that the background signal of racial intolerance that is America’s original sin and persists to this day, then you are basically confronted with a pretty skewed playing field, against which the idealized rhetoric of universal rights and freedoms has a disadvantage. It’s to the credit of our national character however that we are actually having a debate. That suggests…