eff off

I like to point to school allegiance, rabid sports fandom, and regional chauvinism as example of why race-based identity never holds much water with me: explaining my behavior because there are inherent qualities of my character due to my skin being brown is as arbitrary and silly as attributing it to my wholly irrational love for the Brooklyn Cyclones.

But I'm as hypocritical as they come, and one area in which I've always been fully tribal in my thinking is my bias toward all native New Yorkers. Dwellers of this city are a superior breed of humanity -- a master race, if you will -- which is what makes this news item so very galling:

A failed plot to bomb three New York City subway lines during the morning rush last September was spawned in 2008 by two senior Qaeda leaders in Pakistan who sent three New Yorkers back home to carry out a suicide strike, federal officials said Friday.

The failed plot to bomb three New York City subway lines during the morning rush last September was hatched in 2008 by two senior Qaeda leaders in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where they met personally with three would-be suicide attackers from Queens to urge them to carry out a strike.

It's outrageously stupid for me to be more horrified by the plot simply because it was three guys from Queens -- although, as a Brooklyn native, I'm not surprised they were from Queens -- but I am.

Jon Stewart's reaction to Revolution Muslim, the New York-based group that threatened the creators of South Park last week, also holds at its core the horror that they dispatched their threat from "the former shadow of the World Trade Center."

American Muslims -- New York Muslims -- are better than this.

(Because New Yorkers are better than everyone.)