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I, Geller
(Note: It wasn’t just Geller, it was also Spencer, who gratuitously put down the August rally and didn’t bother defending it from Max Blumenthal’s obvious smear.) What is going on with Pamela Geller? At Jihad Watch Robert Spencer quotes her deriding and dismissing yesterday’s anti-mosque rally:
I have no idea what this rally is. I have no idea who these people are. I have no idea who organized this rally. Clearly, whoever organized this was careless, unprepared, shooting from the hip and harmful to the cause of freedom and compassion. I wasn’t even in the state, nor did I know anything about this half-a**ed effort.Here’s a reader’s comment from the Jihad Watch thread:
I am quite astounded at the Jihad Watch attack on this rally. I noticed no difference in tone from the previous rally held a few months ago at which Mr. Spencer and Ms. Geller spoke. The more rallies the better; if anything it will pump people up to attend the (hopefully) massive rally coming up on 911. Are we dealing with some sort of Clash of the Titanic egos here? Are we doing so well that we can afford this petty bickering? Frank Gaffney gave a very effective impassioned speech at this demonstration. Is he now to join the ranks of Larry Auster and Andrew Bostom as “nonpersons”. Come on guys; you’re better than this.Frank Gaffney was indeed a speaker at the rally. Does Geller now regard a rally featuring an establishment conservative, a figure far more prominent and respected than herself, to be beneath her, if it’s not a Pamela Geller rally? This is too strange. I understand Geller treating me as a non-person, but Frank Gaffney? And does she really “have no idea who these people are”? Well, here is a list of “these people,” i.e., the speakers at the rally, from the website of the rally’s organizers:
Tim Brown, firefighter who was on the scene at 9/11 and lost 93 friends, head of The BravestAnd here is a description of the rally, from Big Peace:
The speakers were pretty universal in the thought that this mosque was not planned as a bridge to anything but insult. Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy and a Big Peace editor explained that there are two types of jihad, the violent kind represented by that giant communal grave behind the stage and the stealth kind represented by the proposal to put a mosque on the site of that horrific terrorist act. He also noted that after they conquered Cordoba, they built a mosque right on top of what had been a Catholic church.Here’s another description, from a blog:
As for the rally, hard to gauge if it was a high turn out. It was a city block long. Lots of good speakers and they didn’t speak just about the mosque and the location. They talked a lot about Sharia law. Hammered it home actually. It seemed to be about educating the people as much as it was about the mosque itself. One speaker said that to promote Sharia law is treason. Two speakers actually talked about the meaning behind Cordoba. Frank Gaffney was there and talked about stealth jihad and told Obama it was a “teachable moment”. One talked about the Barbary pirates, muslim slave traders and asked if any muslims signed the Declaration of Independence. One speaker was a former slave and told Bloomberg to build it in City Hall. Bloomberg wasn’t well liked there and his name was booed a lot. As well as Pelosi and Obama. You can tell people were pissed by more than just the mosque. One called for Pelosi to be investigated. People even chanted “Obama must go”.So, it seems like a normal, respectable, lively demonstration with good speakers. Why then did Geller attack it, distance herself from it, and act as though it was a disreputable, messy affair that shouldn’t even have taken place? One can be forgiven the passing thought that Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have formed their own empire—an empire in which they are the Pharoah and Queen, an empire which recognizes no other sovereignty on this earth but itself. But that explanation is too strange. It must all be a misunderstanding. Maybe she was thinking of some other rally?
LA writes:
Here’s is Frank Gaffney’s statement at his website about yesterday’s demonstration.Unfortunately, he’s still deep in the illusion that the way to defeat the Islamic threat to the West is to empower the Muslim moderates. I’ll have more on that later.LA writes:
Here is another comment at Jihad Watch. The commenter takes it for granted that Geller was talking about the rally with Gaffney, not some other rally:August 24 Dutch blogger “Snouck Hurgronje” writes:
Geller is going on about the rally where a Negro got harrassed by demonstrators who mistook him for a Muslim.LA replies:
I see a black man, wearing a Muslim type stocking headdress, speaking in a hostile manner and using several F bombs, and then various people talking to him and ultimately seeming to resolve the issue. Where’s the harrassment? Where’s the racism? Perhaps talking to black man while not showing extravagant signs of deference to him is a racist act? (That’s not impossible, since, as I argued the other day, under our new racial dispensation “whites are forbidden to make even neutral and factual statements about blacks, because that would be to treat blacks as objects of white consciousness, which would be tantamount to whites exerting power over blacks.”)A reader writes from Denmark:
It should be pretty easy to find out who the organizers were. If there was a deplorable incident during the rally, that particular incident should be condemned. The organizers should be told that it was their responsibility guard against racist behaviour and they should be told that it was up to them to admonish the crowd. However, the fact that there was an ugly incident should not be used—e.g. by Geller—to condemn the entire rally and its organizers. I fear that something else it at play here.LA replies:
Of course you’re right. But so far I haven’t seen any “racist” incident.A reader writes from Canada:
Geller now says the incident was unrelated to the demo but has not apologized to the organizers of the event where gaffney spokeDavid M. writes:
Pamela Geller’s behavior astonishes me. She is behaving as though the cause is her personal property; that the rest of us must use her as a clearing house.A reader writes:
Great catch, Larry. (Empire, pharoah, queen—hilarious.) It’s so bizarre!Jeannette V. writes:
Geller is extremely narcissistic. It wasn’t her rally. That is all that matters.James N. writes:
I haven’t been paying any attention to Pamela Geller. I may have heard her name on your site once or twice, but I don’t keep a scorecard of the anti-Islamist interleague games. You have to be as far out as Charles Johnson to make me remember you. Having seen the bikini in the surf video, maybe I’ve been missing something….LA replies:
For those not familiar with Pamela Geller, here is her website, Atlas Shrugs. LA continues:
Also, a “bad day” wouldn’t explain it. Robert Spencer posted Geller’s statement at his site. If the statement was just an expression of Geller’s bad mood, wouldn’t Spencer have caught it and told her that it wouldn’t be a good idea to post it? Since he posted it, he evidently shared her perceptions of the rally as stated in her comment.LA adds (October 10, 2010):
It was not only Geller who attacked the rally. Spencer, at the beginning of the same entry at Jihad Watch, attacked it in terms similar to, though not as extensive as, Geller’s. Here is the beginning of the entry:Charles T. writes: Given this person’s ego, does this really surprise anyone? The masthead on her website says it all.Mark P. writes:
Maybe Pamela Geller is a Republican feminist?LA replies:
Well of course she is. Along with Michelle Malkin and others, she was one of the stars of the Sixties-style, in-your-face feminist video in September 2008, the theme of which was, how dare anyone question whether a woman can be the mother of an infant with special needs and be president of the United States at the same time? This was one of numerous developments in that month of Sarah Palin that signified the death of social conservatism on the mainstream right.August 25 Ken Hechtman writes:
Randroids can sometimes be like Leninists in mirror-image—just by definition, no event or campaign is any good unless they’re leading it. And anything they can’t lead, they’ll trash in public in the strongest terms they can. You asked me one time why I don’t like Big Ideas. This is part of the reason why. When people believe they’re the sole and authentic vessel of the Big Idea, this is how they act, not just to their enemies but to their supposed friends as well.LA replies:
“When people believe they’re the sole and authentic vessel of the Big Idea … “John Press (who supplied this excellent video of the August 22 anti-mosque rally) writes:
First, let me say that I appreciate the part that Geller has played in getting the mosque issue on the map. I think she is a great personality and I appreciate her work. Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 23, 2010 09:40 PM | Send Email entry |