Only $99,981,745 To Go

Thanks to Reader Maxwell James for pointing out this article, which lends a remarkable perspective to a matter which has caused so many people so much anguish recently.

If the Maggie Halberman/Ben Smith article is right, the Park51 project to build a mosque community-center-including-worship-area right on top of two blocks away from Ground Zero has so far raised a grand total of $18,255 towards its fundraising goal of a hundred million dollars.  A hundred million dollars sounds to my admittedly untrained ears like about the right amount of money to build a thirteen-story tower in lower Manhattan (including the land).  Eighteen thousand dollars sounds like it's enough to buy a refrigerator box on the upper West Side.

Opponents of the Park51 project would be better off just staying quiet about it and letting the project die an underfunded and unvetted death, instead of offering it free publicity.  Ah, but what fun would that have been?