A natural gas explosion destroyed two apartment buildings in East Harlem yesterday, killing at least seven people. Rep. Charles Rangel, who represents the neighborhood, described it as “our community’s 9/11.” That offensively separatist bit of hyperbole drew lots of negative reactions on Twitter, and Twitchy collected some of them.
At Breitbart’s Big Government, Frances Martel pointed out that 9/11 was Harlem’s 9/11:
Harlem was among the communities most impacted by the September 11 attacks by virtue of location alone. Harlem artists have contributed significantly to September 11 memorial events and artistic works. Rep. Rangel himself worked on a bill to extend unemployment benefits as a way to stimulate the economy after September 11. The neighborhood is home to its own September 11 memorial in Inwood, which fell prey to vandalism in an incident last December.
Rangel never passes up an opportunity to get in front of the microphones, and it doesn’t matter how stupid or offensive he is. His constituents love him because he brings home the bacon, and the Socialist Democrat Party loves him because he delivers lots of black votes. So it doesn’t matter that he’s a serial tax evader and violator of Congressional ethics. If he were a Republican, he’d have been kicked out of the House and probably gone to jail.