Green Book Author Black Listed

So the screenwriter of the film Green Book has been unpersoned becuase he Tweeted that he saw Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks in Jersey City-four years ago.

Now this is interesting.

Muslims celebrating after 9/11 has grown into a yuuuuge urban legend or un-legend.

Before going further, one should understand that things were little weird around here for a while. 

God the crater must have smoldered for months afterwards. Ground Zero was a great physical, emotional and spiritual wound for the region.

People were jumpy.

One night in December we woke up to the sound of helicopter blades low overhead and thought that Al Qaida must have nuked NYC. Turns out the cops were chasing a car thief.

One saw helicopters in the canyons of Manhattan too, and armed National Guard troops at Penn and Grand Central.

Mosques got observed and infiltrated by cops.

That November a small plane crashed in Queens and well, everyone wondered for a while.

We all kept our eyes open. and had a few encounters ourselves.

About 3 weeks after 9/11 we saw a squad of NYC flatfoots stop a dark man driving a U-Haul toward the Lincoln Tunnel. 'Right here, sir. Over here!'

In early 2003 we saw a couple of obviously Muslim men videotaping our local Walmart. We told the manager.

People generally gave Muslims the bug-eye.**

The first 9/11 anniversary was cathartic, we guess. Bush spoke at Ground Zero on a wet, cloudy day and then went to the UN to talk about war.

The second 9/11 anniversary was weird. That day had the same clear skies and sunshine. We recall it vividly, we were listening to Mike and the Mad Dog on the way to work. Because it was 9/11 Dog cooled his usual ebullient opening.

We were driving to our teaching gig at a Yeshiva in Passaic, a town from where one could see the towers. Passaic is a real melting pot.

That autumn a Yeshiva employee told us about the local Dunkin Donuts on 9/11. She said on that day the Muslim employees were jumping up and down and shouting for joy. The cops showed up and made arrests. The Dunkin Donuts closed and never reopened.

That employee was the Yeshiva principal.

Here's a report on Jersey City Muslim celebrations from the New York Daily News:

Here's the NJ.com report with this intriguing paragraph:

* [Witness, Ron} Knight was one of two Tonnele Avenue residents who said they witnessed a crowd celebrating on John F. Kennedy Boulevard not far from Masjid Al-Salam, the mosque where Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the "blind sheikh," preached before the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Our own thinking on the matter is that most of the Muslims seen 'celebrating' 9/11 were either jumping up and down in the over-excited fashion typical of Mediterranean types or kneeling in prayer. Most, not all.

*We wouldn't dare see something, say something today. Who needs the trouble?
**Pucker up buttercup. It was 9/11.