A reader writes:
Pete Wehner draws a terrible analogy to the Bill O'Reilly claim about Muslims. The claim "Catholics are child molesters" undeniably implies that all Catholics, or at least most, are child molesters. The people who claim that saying "Muslims killed us on 9/11" implies that all or most Muslims killed us on 9/11 are dishonest. It would not be physically possible for a group of hundreds of millions of people to have killed us on 9/11.
So what, if anything, do you, Pete Wehner, and Joy Behar pretend to think that this statement means, if not the obvious, which is "The people who killed us on 9/11 were Muslim"?
My reader has a logical point on the analogy as such. But by referring to the Park51 project, O'Reilly was clearly saying that American Muslims are part of the same community, faith and mindset of al Qaeda. That is unfair and it is untrue.
A better analogy would be opposing the construction of a Catholic church on the same bloc as an abortion clinic which had been bombed by some pro-life Catholic fanatics. If asked why he opposed the building of a Catholic church in such a place, someone had said, "Because the people who bombed the same block were Catholics!" we'd say he was a bigot, right?