Nashville News Blog

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My esteemed colleague Jack Silverman--affectionately referred to by some of his detractors as "Silverdouche"--wrote last week about the decision at Nashville's Loews Vanderbilt to cancel a conference entitled "Understanding the Jihad in Israel, Europe and America."

The hotel's managing director, Tom Negri, made a decision based on sound business and public safety to cancel the Islamophobic symposium sponsored by the New English Review. The event's proponents and organizers then began carping about free speech (despite the fact that the Loews is a private business and can, as such, do pretty much whatever it wants).

I broach the subject again because the Knoxville News Sentinel ran a wire story with a hilarious and unfortunately oblique headline on its website today about the clusterfluff: 'Hotel cancels jihad conference, citing safety.' Reading only the headline, I might reasonably assume terrorists were holding a trade conference in Music City.

Perhaps bin Laden's deputy, Al-Zawahiri, will deliver the keynote speech. Afterward, conferees can peruse the vendor stands: The latest in improvised explosive device detonators. Disposable cell phones. Shiny new AKs. New, sheer suicide bomber vests with demonstrations by Islamic Fundamentalism's scarier, angrier and turbaned version of Billy Mays.

This evening's entertainment: Chai boys and a public execution by the Taliban.