{"id":58,"date":"2010-08-16T11:37:27","date_gmt":"2010-08-16T11:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html"},"modified":"2010-08-16T11:37:27","modified_gmt":"2010-08-16T11:37:27","slug":"the-ground-zero-moque-spammed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html","title":{"rendered":"The Ground Zero Moque, spammed"},"content":{"rendered":"

I get a lot of spam over on Spiritual Politics<\/a> (still waiting for that
\ncaptcha program), and mostly it has to do with product
\npromotions–replica rolodexes, male sex products–and fulsome but sadly
\nunspecific tributes to the blog’s high quality. Over the past couple of
\ndays, however, there has been a slew of messages relating to the “Ground
\nZero mosque”–for the most part a spume of hostility the worst example
\nof which (so far) is the following:<\/p>\n

It’s an aberration that the President of the United States
\nendorses a mosque so close to the biggest and most atrocious terrorist
\nact in the history of the World! It’s a spit in the face of the people
\nthat died there in horror; their families, and the rest of us Americans.
\nIt is unacceptable! We should wait until the mosque is finished, and
\nthen it up while all the Muslims are in there praying!!! See how they
\nfeel about that.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have, of course, no idea where this is coming from, or whether it
\nrepresents someone’s actual opinion or just the usual spamming
\nimperative to get noticed by the blogger and maybe even make it into the
\nblog’s comment section. I’d guess the latter. The spammer has, for the
\nmoment, simply decided to piggyback on the road rage du jour that has
\nbecome the new norm of self-expression in the electronic public square.<\/p>\n

But its<\/i> significance is not so easy to determine either. On an
\nactual road, you’re likely to be in close proximity to hundreds or
\nthousands of other vehicles before you encounter one lunatic bent on
\ninflicting whatever ails him on the rest of the driving community. You
\ndon’t conclude that all drivers have gone nuts. In the journalistic
\nblogosphere, however, you can’t see all those other drivers who take a
\npeek at what you’ve written and go on with the rest of their lives
\nwithout leaving more than the record of another page view or site visit.
\nSo it seems as though the entire world’s gone mad. <\/p>\n

But maybe it hasn’t. Maybe the amount of real outrage at the proposed
\nIslamic community center in Lower Manhattan is small–compared to the
\nspam and the politically motivated pseudo-outrage and the, dare I say
\nit, actual support for religious liberty and its right to prevail over
\nthe ill will, suspicions, and sense of injury of some other Americans.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I get a lot of spam over on Spiritual Politics (still waiting for that captcha program), and mostly it has to do with product promotions–replica rolodexes, male sex products–and fulsome but sadly unspecific tributes to the blog’s high quality. Over the past couple of days, however, there has been a slew of messages relating to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Ground Zero Moque, spammed - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Ground Zero Moque, spammed - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I get a lot of spam over on Spiritual Politics (still waiting for that captcha program), and mostly it has to do with product promotions–replica rolodexes, male sex products–and fulsome but sadly unspecific tributes to the blog’s high quality. Over the past couple of days, however, there has been a slew of messages relating to…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-16T11:37:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Ground Zero Moque, spammed - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Ground Zero Moque, spammed - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"I get a lot of spam over on Spiritual Politics (still waiting for that captcha program), and mostly it has to do with product promotions–replica rolodexes, male sex products–and fulsome but sadly unspecific tributes to the blog’s high quality. Over the past couple of days, however, there has been a slew of messages relating to…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html","og_site_name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2010-08-16T11:37:27+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html","name":"The Ground Zero Moque, spammed - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-08-16T11:37:27+00:00","dateModified":"2010-08-16T11:37:27+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/the-ground-zero-moque-spammed.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Ground Zero Moque, spammed"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}