Tuesday,
January 16, 2007
Pizza: Threat to
The
ANNOTICO Report
You
may not, But I thought this was very Amusing.
Keep
in mind that our Pilgrim ancestors while escaping intolerance,
were very intolerant.
So
much so, they burned suspected "witches" at the stake.
In
our history, often what we often perceived as
threats to our status quo, became enormously enriching.
Our
Society is not so fragile that it is so easily damaged,.
Actually it evolves.
What
we should be concerned about is the Corporate Oligarchies buying both Parties
to do their bidding.
Oath on a Quran and Stack of Pizzas
John Young: Opinion
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Did you read about that Dallas-based restaurant chain and how it panders to foreigners?
In an effort to appeal to exotic tastes, it serves a dish that Italians tout as a meal in itself - cheese and tomato sauce on doughy crust. Pizza, they call it.
How un-American.
The chain is so brazen as to call itself Pizza Patrsn. Imagine. The next thing you know some joint will be refrying beans on the streets of Anytown, making tacos out in the open. Down at the corner, in broad daylight, theyll be eating raw fish with lumber. Chopsticks, the Orientals call ‘em.
You also may have read about something else this Pizza Patrsn chain is doing. It advertises that it accepts pesos. The fact has drawn hate mail, even death threats, from people whose 100 percent pure American red blood is set on boil.
Surely said means of exchange is unprecedented on our soil. No port-city Chinese eatery ever accepted yuan from a hungry traveler for a bowl of won-ton soup. No Greek diner ever took drachmas.
So, you can imagine why this is such big
news.
Its the same kind of made-for-TV (Fox News) tempest that surrounded Congressman Keith Ellison’s carrying a Quran with him to his swearing-in as a new Democratic congressman from Minnesota.
First stirred up by right-wing foghorn Dennis Prager, the controversy reached its zenith when Congressman Virgil Goode, R-Va., denounced Ellison for his choice of spiritual accompaniment to the ceremony.
If American citizens dont wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran, Goode wrote.
I fear that in the next century we will
have many more Muslims in the
Good point, Rep. Goode except that Ellison was born in
What Rep. Goode, he of the upright nose, is doing is what a lot of Americans do as a pastime seeking out a controversy that shouldn’t be controversial in a nation of immigrants.
American values? One would think that chief among them is pride in and attentiveness to the ingredients that made us us.
Muslims taking over Congress? What a threat. Let’s see: Ellison is the first Muslim congressman in American history. As Jon Stewart points out, that’s one Muslim every 231 years. Let’s all do the math.
Ill say it now: If were talking American values, we are affirming Muslims’ a lot of Americans still embrace the club-wielding intolerance exemplified in Martin Scorcese’s bloody 19th-century epic Gangs of New York.
And a lot of Americans turn on the radio or flip to their favorite cable news outlet trolling for the latest threat to our way of life.
Whats threatened is never, of course, really our way of life but theirs in the most narrow sense the sense that venerates homogeny, recoils at difference, and is known to boil over in hate.
Thats what happens when you allow Italian food on American shores.
John Young’s
column appears Thursday, Sunday and occasionally Tuesday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.
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