re: #396 CuriousLurker

Riiiiiiight—this guy assaults a Muslim woman, then claims he can’t remember any of it and starts blubbering about what a nice person he actually is.

What a steaming crock of shit.

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He’s responsible for his actions but he’s also a product of the midwest, a place long steeped in virulent racism. I was in Bloomington in ‘99 when Ben Smith shot a Korean graduate student to death. He was influenced by an Illinois white supremacist. Even after the shooting I found KKK flyers around the campus. After 9/11 there were persistent cases of local “good ol’ boys” (and probably students, too) driving around and yelling at women in hijab, sometimes throwing pennies at them.

What’s sickening is that Bloomington is, in many ways, an island of acceptance and sanity. But it can’t keep all the hatred out.

BTW, there used to be a couple of really good Turkish restaurants and an outstanding Afghan restaurant….