Stupidity is lame

Here is evidence that the new, finger-to-the-wind Bay Guardian will be just like the old Bay Guardian. 

The Guardian's blog has a story (below in italics) on the billboard at 10th and Howard: "Hate Has No Place in Our City: San Francisco Embraces Diversity and Acceptance, Not Hate and Bigotry."

The head on the story: "Hate is lame." No shit! Moral and intellectual sloth are also lame.

Christie George, one of the billboard's organizers:

“When I read about the ads in other cities, I was horrified by how hateful they were. But when I learned that they were coming to San Francisco, I felt like I couldn’t be silent, and was compelled to do something to celebrate how much this city embraces diversity.”

George seems to think she and the others---their pictures are even on the billboard!---who paid for that innocuous billboard statement are taking a bold stance against "hate," but they're only putting their shortcomings on public display.

They're going to have a party on Thursday to congratulate themselves for their inability to question their own smug beliefs. 

The ads on Muni buses last year only opposed violent jihad. The question is, Why does anyone find that "hateful"? And why didn't any newspaper or blog in SF publish a single one of the Danish Mohammed cartoons when Islamic jihadists were rioting around the world against free speech? Only the SF Chronicle even editorialized about the issue. 

Norman Geras tries to answer that question. Somehow "progressives" and all right-thinking liberals see criticizing Islam as out of bounds, even if that criticism is directed at violent jihad, suicide bombers and homicidal anti-Semites.

Hate is lame
In response to a series of anti-Muslim ads that appeared on San Francisco transit vehicles, a group of online activists seeks to drown out the hate speech by taking things to a whole new level. Yes, they’re posting their anti-hate message onto a billboard.

From Aug. 5 until Sept. 1, a billboard at 10th and Howard streets will proclaim: “Hate Has No Place in Our City: San Francisco Embraces Diversity and Acceptance, Not Hate and Bigotry.”

The effort was crowd-funded through Louder, a platform for crowd promotion, through about $3,000 in donations from 100 individuals from throughout the country. It was spearheaded by San Francisco resident Christie George, who teamed up with New Yorker Ateqah Khaki to get the project off the ground.

“When I read about the ads in other cities, I was horrified by how hateful they were. But when I learned that they were coming to San Francisco, I felt like I couldn’t be silent, and was compelled to do something to celebrate how much this city embraces diversity,” George said.

Next Thursday, Aug. 15, the “No Place For Hate” team will host a meet-up for contributors and supporters, featuring talks from the campaign organizers and some comments by Louder founder Colin Mutchler.

Big Lie campaign on Polk Street continues

The bike lobby and City Hall continue their big lie campaign on Polk Street. Now it's going to be "improved" to qualify as "a Parisian boulevard," because of course American streets are so vulgar and unsophisticated. (Recall how the city turned Octavia Blvd. into a "Parisian thoroughfare" back in 2005.)

One wonders about how cool Paris is after their bike-share program led to a lot of vandalism and theft.

Paris is so cool it named one of its streets after American cop-killer Mumi Abu-Jamal, because, you understand, he's just another victim of US racism.

The MTA is deploying the safety lie about Polk Street just like it did to justify the Fell/Oak and the Masonic Avenue bike projects:

Polk Street ranks among the streets with the highest number of pedestrian injuries in San Francisco. We studied each collision and found that the majority of pedestrian collisions occurred at intersections, involved turning vehicles, and were not the fault of the people walking.

We have a right to be suspicious that this claim---like the same claim about Fell/Oak and Masonic---is not supported by any documents released to the public, like the city's annual Collision Report, where no Polk Street intersections make the city's "Highest Injury Vehicle-Pedestrian Collision Intersections" on page 21.