After a year of legal wrangling over First Amendment concerns, Pamela Geller’s anti-Jihad ads went live yesterday. Transportation Nation tracked down enough people to draw out a mixed reaction to the ads which have popped up in ten stations throughout the city. “It’s hard for me to look at this poster and actually take it seriously,” one Muslim woman said.
True to New York spirit though, the ads lasted barely a day before someone took to editing them. As Mondoweiss reports in pictures, someone or someones have taken to placing stickers over the ads with their own message. So far, ads in at least seven stations — 57th Street and 5th Ave, 28th Street, 23rd Street, two on 42nd street, 34th street and Grand Central — have been defaced. Take that for what you will. In the meantime, the MTA has yet to announce a new policy for evaluating advertisements that better adhere to the spirit and letter of the Constitution as they cash Geller’s checks nonetheless.
16 comments
That’s my city!
My exact thought.
Fighting free speech with free speech! So appropriate.
I love it
I share the feeling of disdain toward these ads, but there is nothing “racist” about them.
Well, yeah, except painting a racial (or at least national) group as “savage,” nothing at all.
Which group was painted as “savage”?
Palestinians?
Yes my point is that none of the groups at issue in this campaign — Muslims, Jews, Israelis, Palestinians — are racial groups. You can call the message of this ad “hateful” or “bigoted” but it is not “racist.”
At the very least, they are playing one national group off another. It may not be quite racism, but it’s pretty close right there.
That, and I can’t see how it’s playing on some American racial anxieties by conflating Arabs and Palestinians, and then throwing a nebulous concept like Jihad into the mix.
This is the message of the right, the neo-cons. Stoke fear in the people to achieve your own goal. Geller is as extreme as they come.
Just check out her blog if there are any doubts:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/
By the way, I bet she NEVER rides the bus, subway or even the LIRR to her mansion out on LI, so she hasn’t the first freakin’ clue about our system.
…huh, I was expecting some insight from Eric, since LI was mentioned.
I know Ahmadinejad was seen cruising Christopher Street last night. I didn’t realize he took the subway down there and put up some stickers along the way.
Stickers are one thing, but have you seen this video that was captured by the NY Post? A woman was spray-painting over one of the ads as another, an apparent photographer intervened and a third filmed. I’m not sure if the person seen intervening was with the one filming, or who (if either) were with the Post. But still, it’s quite bizarre. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/l.....6KUMFKGseK
Mona Eltahawy tried to do the same thing.
Looks like somebody hates hate speech.