My day

Yesterday I went to the city of my birth, New York, to see my mother. My mother's dad, my grandpa, came from Russia which later became the Soviet Union our deepest enemy for decades. My grandfather was a tailor, lived and worked in the city, raised three daughters and was accepted in the fabric of our immigrant society. He wasn't associated with Soviet Communism and treated with extreme prejudice. My mother lives in Queens with my dad. In their neighborhood, many Chinese people and Korean people live and work. They have businesses, send their kids to public schools and when I walked the streets yesterday, no one was humiliating them because North Korea is a dangerous and dysfunctional enemy and China remains a nation without freedom. While in NYC yesterday, I ate a falafel, food from the Middle East. Delicious. I went to the store, run by Arabs, paid my money, was treated well, thanked for my business and enjoyed the food. This business is always packed with lines into the street with people waiting for the delicious food they serve. This type of food comes from an area of the world that continues to be unstable and filled with Anti Western rhetoric, but I didn't think of this at all. I enjoyed the fact that I could get a wonderful lunch from wonderful people without even thinking about their religion or nation of birth, or immigrant status. I can give dozens of examples of this kind of diversity and experiences from yesterday or any other day living in America. Our greatness comes from our principles and our acceptance. Yet, for weeks, I am seeing polls about Obama's religion, and hearing discussion about where the Mosque should be, or listening to the most extraordinarily bigoted and prejudiced comments from an extremist segment of our population. Their association of this Mosque with terrorism and bigotry toward a religion is the most outrageous and despicable ignorance that reminds me of the days of internment camps and racial hatred toward blacks. Most sad, is the fact that our media establishment has piled on and is quite responsible for giving these people a louder voice than is necessary while setting the news priorities of each day. My day, is more representative of reality. A reality based on acceptance, respect and tolerance on the part of the vast majority of Americans. Don't get sucked up by the maelstrom of ratings and hate. Where are you Americans for reason and truth?