At first glance, Dove World Outreach Center's plan to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11 seems like an easy target.
Chalk it up to the all-too-familiar notions of bigotry and accessible blasphemy, dressed up with local flair by a bunch of apple-cheeked simpletons eager to flaunt their newfound infamy.
Dig a little deeper, though, and you find yourself scratching the surface of a global furniture-trafficking ring cloaked in quasi-religious secrecy and abetted by a misplaced tax status and a small cadre of mouth-breathing white slaves.
Islam isn’t the real target of the Dove center’s misplaced hate.
The real enemy of our disgraceful Gainesville brethren is low-priced furniture manufactured in Asia and sold across this great land.
If they stayed true to their ideological roots, Dove World members would don T-shirts bearing the slogan, “Particle board is of the devil.”
“Pastor” Terry Jones and his wife Sylvia aren’t too keen on letting this little secret out of the bag, but their entire spread is completely financed by selling vintage furniture — the good stuff, mid-century pieces bought in Europe and shipped over here where it can be sold for a princely sum.
On eBay, Craigslist and other web outlets under the business name “TS & Company,” Dove World’s outreach pretty much consists of securing a good price for its used furniture and shipping it across the country using the free labor provided by its pitiful army of duped dopes.
Dove World disciples, for their undying and unpaid devotion to a cause as noble as freight shipping, get to live rent-free in the Jones’ crumbling duplexes in the Phoenix and Pine Ridge subdivisions and eat whatever food scraps Terry Jones and his wife drop off on their dinner table.
That the Internet can both support a clandestine furniture business cloaked in depressingly popular hate mongering and also expose its inner workings is a testament to, and indictment of, our information superhighway.
Sept. 11 will never be a day that any American can ever consider “normal,” and each of us will remember the day in a way that brings us a small amount of personal tranquility birthed from the dust of a cowardly act of terrorism.
Instead of wrapping yourself up in the fanaticism and discrimination of the Dove World dimwits, perhaps a quiet day spent shopping for furniture at one of our many reputable and honest furniture stores would be time better spent.
I’m sure the hardworking salespeople could use the extra commissions.
Far be it from me to impugn the purity of an act as brave as book burning, but it seems the controversy surrounding the actions of Dove World Outreach Center is little more than a sophisticated viral marketing campaign spearheaded by a used furniture salesman with a flair for prejudice.
Tommy Maple is an international communications graduate student. His column appears every Tuesday.
