New Yorks archbishop has got the score only half-right. Bigotry is alive and well — and it goes far beyond the Catholic Church.
When Comptroller and failed mayoral candidate Bill Thompson this week heard a slur spat against Jews on a radio show, his reaction rang out loud and clear into the wilderness: He greeted the bigoted caller with total silence.
When actress and social nitwit Janeane Garofalo was asked about tax protesters, she slimed thousands of white Americans as racist “rednecks” — with brain damage. Again, the reaction was plain: Near total silence.
When David Letterman compared Sarah Palin to a stewardess, and trashed her teenage daughter as some kind of slut, I don’t have to tell you what happened.
And when The New York Times shows its biased hand, routinely going after — you name it — American troops or evil Republicans, the paper wins accolades when it should apologize.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan has had enough. Denied a space in the paper to counter what he called “the national pastime” of Catholic-bashing, the archbishop wrote passionately online about anti-religious fervor that reeks off the pages of the Newspaper of Record. Particularly as practiced by fire-breathing columnist Maureen Dowd, whose recent column punked bishops and priests, and even took a shot at Pope Benedict XVI for his natty footwear. Insane.
Dolan compared the practice to “the anti-Semitism of the left.”
How I wish we had more Dolans out there, of all faiths.
I say he got the score only half-right because, as a leader of the much-maligned Catholics, Dolan fails to address the racism and anti-religious fervor that’s aimed like a laser beyond the church. In the halls of Hollywood, as well as on the pages of the Times, and even in the local classroom, libels are produced on an almost daily basis against Jews, women, conservatives. And, most angrily, at white males.
We are expected to laugh.
A Times reporter found alone in a bar might tell you that the reverse racism is justified by the belief that these groups wield disproportionate power. That is why the paper thinks nothing of slamming white males, such as the innocent Duke lacrosse players accused unjustly of raping a black woman.
But decades of anti-male bigotry has yielded some alarming results.
Boys today are 30 percent more likely than girls to flunk or drop out of school. Girls outperform boys in all grades, and young males are more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. That’s according to no less an authority than the National Center for Educational Statistics.
Thompson, when caught engaging in silent bigotry against Jews, attempted to change the subject. His people claimed Mayor Bloomberg was himself a racist by failing to slam Rudy Giuliani for making the demonstrably true claim that crime used to be a lot worse in this city. We’ve grown so afraid of our shadows, we’re not supposed to state the obvious.
The last acceptable form of prejudice goes far beyond the pulpit.
It is unacceptable.
Get over yourself, Dominique
Further proof that the battle cry “Do you know who I am?” is still a favorite weapon of celebrity spawn.
Dominique Sharpton, the 23-year-old daughter of the Rev. Al, last weekend allegedly got testy with cops who stopped her after she swerved her vehicle around an unmarked police cruiser and blew through a red light. Dangerous behavior.
Do you know who I am? Dominique and her mother, Kathy Jordan, were put in cuffs and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after growing belligerent. Still, in a bid for preferential treatment, Dominique threw out her famous dad’s name at the station house.
Al geared up to make a stink about the “unfairness” of the arrests until a chastened Dominique asked him to back off.
It seems cops knew who she was. Does anyone care?
Ivy idiots get ‘wired’
Here’s more proof that I was born too soon.
Harvard University students have the chance to sit in front of the TV and watch HBO’s “The Wire” to earn credit in — holy sheepskin! — a course about nasty urban issues.
” ‘The Wire’ has done more to enhance our understanding of the systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the poor than any published study,” sociology professor William Wilson told the Harvard Crimson.
“Wire” performers wowed students by showing up for a campus panel in which they introduced kids to theoretical poor folks.
So a show scripted in Hollywood and play-acted by well-paid thespians in a safe environment is our new Ivy laboratory for learning about icky big-city reality? I guess you can’t expect today’s soft-skinned students to walk outside and meet actual, foul-smelling poor people, can you? That would be hard.
Don’t ask, don’t look
In this town, gay rights trump religious and aesthetic sensitivities every time.
Taxi driver Medhat Mohamed is in deep trouble with the Taxi and Limousine Commission after a couple of guys got cozy — they said they just hugged — in the back of his cab, and he asked them to leave. He faces a fine. Three offenses, and his hack license is toast.
Next time, pal, don’t look. It’s safer.