U.N.Diplomatic in New York

September in New York brings many things: cooler weather, the start of the school year, the football season. It’s also the time of the United Nations General Assembly, which brings diplomats and heads of state from all over the world.

The U.N. General Assembly is a useless exercise in pompous self congratulation that brings few results beyond tying up traffic on the East Side of Manhattan and costing New York taxpayers millions. It brings New York incompetent diplomats we don’t need to listen to their leaders give speeches few will listen to and fewer care about.

Having worked at J.F.K. airport for two years, I can tell you first hand that diplomats are some of the most arrogant and obnoxious people you will ever meet if you’re unlucky enough. Many of them have diplomatic immunity, meaning they can not only get away with serious crimes like murder and assault, but they can park wherever they like and never pay a parking ticket or have their cars towed. They are rude and boorish, and they’re getting worse.

There are countries that owe the city millions in unpaid parking tickets and fines. Mayor Giuliani raised a stink about this a few years ago, but got nowhere with this.

And what has the United Nations really accomplished? The U.N. can only do what its most powerful member nations allow it to do. Can you name anything that the U.N. has done that individual countries could not have done on their own?

If these privileged ambassadors and self-important diplomatic staff would leave their bubble and live life like the rest of us, they would see ordinary people of many different nations getting along in ways they could never figure out.

People from many different nationalities manage to get along and get by in New York City, not because we like each other, but because we’ve got shit to do.

The common struggle to survive in a tough environment creates an unspoken understanding among working people. Your average immigrant in New York would make much better use of free parking than any diplomat, and has a much better work ethic and character too.

If the United Nations wants to remain in New York, the U.N. staff should start abiding by the same rules as the rest of us. Let them surrender their diplomatic immunity, pay their parking tickets and accept the rule of law as it applies to anyone else. It would be the diplomatic thing to do.

Save the Korans (Or Not)

We can all rest easy now that the leader of a small Florida church has been dissuaded from burning a copy of the Koran by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. The government had warned that the incident would be a recruiting boom to Al Qaeda and put the lives of our troops in danger.

This sad spectacle is the latest in a ridiculous cultural war that obscures real issues of government policy. It also points out a sad double standard in the new politics of taking offense. If carried out consistently, the Obama administration will have time for little else but begging Americans not to be offensive. Good luck with that.

The President goes out of his way to preach religious pluralism and insists Americans not equate the relatively small numbers of murderous fundamentalists with all Muslims, yet our Secretary of Defense has to go begging because the Islamic world thinks a small-time religious fanatic in Florida is representative of the entire Christian world? Has the Secretary of Defense placed a call to the crazy church in Kansas that sends its small band of followers to picket military funerals, praising each service member’s death as divine retribution for America’s acceptance of gays? That’s pretty offensive too. Luckily, we have the Patriot Guard (lesson: the key to dealing with offensive speech is more free speech).

If one reactionary minister can endanger the lives of our troops with a silly offensive stunt, our problem is not the reactionary minister. The same First Amendment that allows misguided Muslims to build an Islamic center a few blocks from where thousands were murdered in the name of Islam also allows malevolent Christians to burn Korans. If Muslims around the world can’t get that concept through their kufi-clad heads, then they are the problem, not the random leeches sucking publicity from the latest mosque controversy.

Since there’s now a precedent for the Obama administration to personally appeal to people who plan to offend Muslims, I thought I might get in on the act. Not to be outdone, I sent the following message to the White House through its official Web site:

“Since a reactionary pastor in Florida earned a phone call from Secretary Gates with his threat to burn a copy of the Koran, I hereby declare my intention to defecate on a copy of the Koran on Sept. 11, 2011 unless President Obama calls me and kindly asks me not to. Thank you.”

I included my phone number so the President can call me. My email was also a part of the online form. I really hope the President phones me; I only have one copy of the Koran and I’d rather not poop on it.

And while our cabinet members are busy making sure private citizens don’t do anything to offend Muslims, do you think they might get around to wrapping up a nine-year war that has killed thousands more Americans and still hasn’t found Osama Bin Laden?

If everything that happens in this country that offends Muslims required cabinet-level action, our government would have melted down a long time ago. The fundamentalists who would take offense enough to a Koran burning to become violent are already radicalized and nothing our government does will ever appease them. We won’t win the war against Islamic extremists by making ourselves less offensive to Islamic extremists.