Bent Corner

United States citizen and North Carolina resident Gary Khera was told while trying to make a monetary donation to a local mission that he would have to remove his turban. Khera practices the Indian religion of Sikhism. Sikh men do not shave or cut their hair and they always were a turban in public.

Khera was told by the in-take director, “Sir, you have to take your turban off. This is the United States.” Quite understandably, Khera refused to remove his turban. He was then told to leave.

He wasn’t able to even give the planed donation.

There are reasons the South has a certain reputation. This is just one of those reasons. Even if the people at the mission had no clue about one of the world’s most practiced religions, it’s obvious this man is wearing this turban for a reason. It’s not like he was wearing a Dale Earnhardt hat. These people at the mission acted extremely ignorant.

Sounds like to me that the entire staff of the mission needs to sit down and watch Bend it Like Beckham. Not only is it a good movie, they would learn a thing or two about Sikhism. [Channel 5 WRAL]

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I think Sarah the Hockey Mom has been getting jealous of all the attention Joe the Plumber has been getting lately.  What better way of getting attention then to say something stupid?

While speaking Thursday in North Carolina, she explained why she likes some parts of this country more then others:

We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans.

I think it’s important for someone who wants to be Vice President to not play favorites with the country. She’s running to be Vice President of the entire country, not Vice President of small towns.

I can only imagine the uproar that would be caused if Barack Obama or Joe Biden spoke at a rally in a large city and said that the best part of America is in large metropolitan cities. That large cities represented “real America”. That people living in large cities were more hard working or more patriotic them those living in small podunk towns.

Finally there is justice in the world. Jesse Helms, that racist old coot from North Carolina is finally not breathing the same air as the rest of us.

His hometown newspaper, The News & Observer, published a joke of an obituary that failed to truly capture the level of absolute racism this man practiced. They described him as “cantankerous” and wrote that “Helms could be the picture of the courtly Southern gentleman“. As if there is anything cantankerous or gentlemanly about hating folks because of the color of their skin.

Not that they failed to mention the Helms’ racism. They wrote:

Although Helms denied he was a racist, his work in the Senate often seemed at odds with the interests of blacks.

Well now, isn’t that putting it rather nicely. Helms was one of two senators for the state of North Carolina, Helms represented many black people. So when his work in the Senate was “at odds with the interests of blacks”, it was at odds with a good many of his own electorate. The very people he should have been representing.

That’s not democracy.

Nearby Mount St. Mary’s men’s basketball team will play Coppin State — also from Maryland — tonight in a pre-NCAA men’s basketball tournament game in Dayton, Ohio. The two schools are located only about 50 miles from each other. Why go all the way to Dayton to play? If you’ve never been to Dayton, your lucky. It’s a poor man’s Cleveland, only not as fancy or pretentious.

The winning team then goes on this Friday to play the #1 ranked team in the nation, the North Carolina Tar Heels. It gets better; The game will be played in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I wonder who the crowd will be rooting for.

I was listening to the Dan Patrick show yesterday and he was asking callers where some of the so-called “mid-major schools” were located. When he asked about Mount St. Mary, it never even occurred to me that it was the same Mount St. Mary located in nearby Emmitsburg. I wouldn’t even call them a mid-major. It’s a small Catholic school located north of Thurmont where I used to work. I would sometimes listen to games on the radio when I was work.

It was either that or country music.