As we've noted, NewsBusters is currently celebrating their 5th anniversary, and they are doing their best to start year six the way they spent the previous five: by embarrassing themselves and proving they are uniquely awful media critics.
Today, “Senior Contributor” Mark Finkelstein is upset with MSNBC's Willie Geist (which Finkelstein explains is “a first” for him) for taking issue with an ad an anti-mosque group is running on NYC buses that includes an image of one of the planes flying into the WorldTrade Center on 9-11. Finkelstein's complaint is that Geist said using the image of the plane is “always in bad taste.”
Finkelstein then announced that the “ad was illuminating for another, chilling, reason,” which I'll let him explain. Take it away, Mark:
Have a look at the screencap below showing the mosque's proposed design [note that the anti-mosque group wasn't misrepresenting the design. See mosque architect's rendering here]. Sure looks a lot like the WTC towers themselves, doesn't it? Hard to imagine that's a coincidence. A certain implicit triumphalism involved?
To save you the click, here's the artist's rendering that Finkelstein links to:
Shocking, right? Look at it just standing there, mocking us with its four sides and rectangular shape - almost like a building.
As a side note, the ad in question, aside from being “in bad taste,” is extremely misleading. It repeats the falsehood that the mosque is scheduled to open 9/11/11. Also, Finkelstein's claim that the “anti-mosque group wasn't misrepresenting the design” is false, as the organization clearly added an imaginary star and crescent to the top of the building that isn't on the original artist's rendering.
These are all superfluous details to Finkelstein, though -- he's busy uncovering the “certain implicit triumphalism” in shaping the mosque like a building.