Preaching About a Mosque
AUGUST 13, 2010, 8:10 PM By TOBIN HARSHAW For many, the issue of the Islamic cultural center near ground zero has become personal. This hasn’t helped with the “dialogue” the project was supposed to start. The personal is still political. “Michael R. Bloomberg is a former Wall Street mogul with a passion for the rights of a private property owner,” reports The Times’s Michael Barbaro. “He is a Jew whose parents asked their Christian lawyer to buy a house and then sell it back to them to hide their identity in an unwelcoming Massachusetts suburb. And he is a politician who regards his independence as his greatest virtue.” Where is this taking us? To ground zero, of course: That potent combination of beliefs and history, those closest to Mayor Bloomberg say, has fueled his defense of the proposed Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan — a defense he has mounted with emotion, with strikingly strong language and in the face of polls suggesting that most New Yorkers...