In a long, desperate post, New York reporter Tim Murphy clues us into the intellectual crisis that’s halting conversations all across Manhattan and large parts of Brooklyn:
In New York, folks don’t think twice about cheering gay marriage or abortion rights, but never know what buttons they’ll push among friends, family, or colleagues if they so much as murmur sympathy for either, or even both, sides of the Gaza imbroglio.* Will we ever be able to talk about this with the un-self-consciousness we bring to other serious issues that surge in the news cycle—especially those in which America has such a clear stake?
It’s almost as if conversation in the Big Apple consists of saying the opposite of what the knuckle-walking anthropoids west of the Hudson are presumed to be saying. And now, if we don’t know what they think, how the Hell are we supposed to know what we think?
- “Imbroglio” defined as “a bitter conflict that has cost almost 2,000 lives.” Oh, and how about coming out in favor of gay marriage and abortion rights in New York! “Ballsy” isn’t the word for it!
