Terry Jones, whom some may call Reverend but not me, is the gun-toting pastor of a dinky, fifty-member church in Gainesville Florida, who has this week held the country in thrall with his ugly proposal to burn copies of the Koran. I know–if you’re like me, you’re thinking, Do I have a dog in this fight? Well, as it turns out, I reluctantly do. With this stunt, Jones, along with idiot imitators in Topeka and Tennessee and Wyoming, has caused an uproar in the all-too-easily incensed Muslim world (cartoons, anyone?), which inspired General David Petreaus, Defense Secretary Gates, Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama, among others, to all take time out of their busy days to ask the extravagantly mustachioed Jones to spare that Zippo lest American soldiers and tourists become targets of murderous reprisals. Like a streaker gamboling across centerfield in Yankee Stadium, only with insidious intent, Jones is interjecting himself in a world he does not belong, to the dismay of most except pinheaded yahoos who lack the judgment to choose peace over conflict. Two days ago Jones said he had struck a deal to call off the burning in return for an agreement on the part of Iman Rauf not to build his Muslim community center two blocks from Ground Zero. Rauf said he made no such agreement. Today, the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Jones is in Manhattan seeking a meeting with Rauf. If I were Rauf, I wouldn’t be seen in the same state with this yokel, whose provocations are antithetical to the comity and understanding that Rauf is trying to create. Does anyone but me see the evil, manipulative hand of Roger Stone, Floridian and right-wing dirty trickster, behind Jones’s meteoric burst onto the world stage?
