TPM Reader ML picks up the conversation …
You’re right, it can be both, but it’s important to remember just how much you’re asking of Imam Rauf when you talk about mismanaging the media strategy, because (again) you’re right, he *is* just a guy with a non-profit and an idea, and you’ve got to keep in mind the timeline.
This thing only barely entered the national media consciousness towards late May when it first went up for a vote before Manhattan Community Board No. 1 (this was all the way back when Mark Williams talked about the “terrorists’ monkey god”). It was still barely on the radar a few weeks later when the Right started making a stink about Rauf’s ties to the flotilla, and still hardly an issue come early July when goptrust.com had that awful, terrifyingly jingoistic anti-Park51 commercial rejected by CBS.
But that all changed on July 18th when Sarah Palin tweeted about it and launched Park51 into the stratosphere, and in the span of less than 30 days Rauf–along with his non-profit and his idea–has become (and remains) the center of national attention throughout our long, hot August.
Just a guy with a non-profit and an idea and a local community board, catapulted to the national stage in the blink of an eye.
Now imagine you lived in Western MA and were trying to start a GLBTQ after-school program at your kid’s elementary school. Imagine you’d successfully petitioned almost the entirety of the PTA and received go-ahead for the project. Now imagine that one very high profile demagogue realized the midterm elections were fast approaching and it would make for great base-rallying fodder if she could talk about how the “catastrophic pain” caused by Massachusetts’ gay marriage ruling was still “too raw, too real” for all those “peace-seeking” heterosexuals who’d seen the institution of their marriages so ruthlessly attacked by these “provocative” homosexuals. Now imagine Newt Gingrich went on Fox News to tell you that you could have your after school program as soon as gays and lesbians started marrying people of opposite sexes. And imagine millions of angry people from all across the country now hatefully weighing in on your innocent after school program.
Would you have had a media strategy ready to deal with that?
