Livin' It Up at the Hotel Pennsylvania

Me outside the Empire State Building
(on the right!) on the trip in question.

The first time I stayed at the Hotel Pennsylvania was in the fall of 2004. I had turned 30 a year previously, and had recently concluded it was time for me to be done waiting. I had spent the bulk of my adult life waiting for a mate -- somebody to make me complete, an actual grownup. It was only then, I thought, that I could embark on grownup adventures like trips to New York. Who would ever do such a thing on their own?

There was an obstacle, however: Money. I wasn’t poor, exactly, but I was a journalist, and of course had little money saved. But the idea of a New York trip -- centered around the annual New Yorker Festival -- had taken hold of me.

So I resolved to be profligate -- I would use a credit card -- but not too profligate. I would stay at the cheapest non-scary hotel I could find in Manhattan. A search at Hotels.com gave me just one plausible answer. For less than $200 a night, I could stay at the Hotel Pennsylvania.

What the website didn’t tell me, I would glean soon enough: That once upon a time, the Hotel Pennsylvania had been a thriving New York City hotspot; that Glenn Miller and his band had played there; that Miller’s famous song, “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” took its name from the hotel’s phone number. All I really knew was that in photographs on the Internet, pictures of the rooms looked clean. That was all I needed.

And when I arrived at the hotel, fresh off a plane from Kansas, I was initially dazzled. The lobby was beautiful! You had to show your key to a doorman to get on the elevator! The elevator had a TV! What kind of luxury was this?

My perspective changed when the elevator doors opened on the 14th floor. The hallway was ominous: Threadbare carpeting and dim light, lined by a row of room doors that -- in their size and bulk -- looked like they belonged on meat lockers, or in a morgue.

This is my main memory of the room: A huge, blotchy stain on the carpet that very much appeared to be the result of somebody bleeding to death about 30 years prior. The furnishings, with the exception of the television, seemed to have gone unchanged since the 1970s.

I kind of loved it. No Disneyfied Giuliani New York for me! I was staying in an honest-to-goodness fleabag hotel! This, I felt, revealed something important and flattering about my character.

The Hotel Pennsylvania thus became my New York City lodestar. I spent the next few days walking as far as my legs could carry me around Manhattan. Down the Avenue of the Americas, eventually to Greenwich Village and Washington Square Park, where I was challenged to a chess game. Up through Times Square, to Central Park. One night, I stumbled back to my room -- tipsy on free wine -- up a darkened section of Broadway, returning from a New Yorker event. Another late night, I found myself with a handful of fishnetted thigh -- I’m still not certain how -- as a Greek hooker offered me her services not far from the Ed Sullivan Theater. By the end of my stay, my feet were covered with blisters. Every night, though, they carried me back to the Hotel Pennsylvania.

So I was a little sad to find out the hotel is not long for this world. Sometime in the next few years, it will be demolished to make way for a giant new skyscraper they say will rival the nearby Empire State Building on the New York skyline.

That makes me wistful, because the Hotel Pennsylvania is still where I start my New York experience. The BoltBus from Philadelphia -- where I live now -- drops its passengers at nearby Penn Station. When I visit, I always walk to the hotel to get my bearings, then stroll down 33rd Street for breakfast and the New York Post at Times Square Bagel and Deli, which is nowhere near Times Square. After that, I can begin my business in the city.

It is likely, however, that I have contributed in a small way to the hotel’s demise. Two years after that first stay, I returned to New York -- on a honeymoon. I’d finally grown up. It seemed unwise and unromantic, however, to subject my new wife to bloodstains and a rickety bed. We stayed at a Holiday Inn.

Sarah Palin, the Ground Zero mosque and the American presidency

More than most American leaders who might run for president someday, Sarah Palin has made a career of dividing "us" and "them." Most famously, she spent parts of the 2008 dismissing her opponents and their allies as residing somewhere outside the "real America" -- and while she apologized for it, her constant grievance-mongering suggests she sees the world, and this country, mostly in terms of its divisions.

Don't get me wrong: Other leaders can be "divisive." Palin is different: The divisions animate her.

I mention all of this because of a recent posting to her Facebook page, which features this title: "An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground." She is, of course, talking about the proposed mosque to be located 600 feet or so from Ground Zero in New York.

I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: “This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened.”

Palin cites a specific person associated with the proposed mosque whose statements about 9/11, she judges, are insufficiently sympathetic to the victims. But her concerns aren't quite so nuanced or specific -- witness this Tweet which asked all "peace-seeking Muslims" to avoid the provocation.

But it wasn't "peace-seeking Muslims" who flew the planes into the World Trade Center. It was 19 extremists -- people whose ideology unfortunately has broader support than we'd like, but whose views do not represent the vast majority of American Muslims. The truth is that more Muslims died on 9/11 as victims of the attack than as the aggressors. By implicitly lumping them in with criminals and vile murderers, Sarah Palin is suggesting that American Muslims cannot be full citizens of this country -- that they should have the "decency" to accept a "lesser-than" status that denies them the right to practice their religion as fully as their Christian neighbors.

American Muslims, in this view, aren't part of the community of Americans who mourned 9/11 -- they are more closely related to and allied with the transgressors. Not to put too fine a point on it: This isn't dissimilar from the "blood libel" that anti-Semites use to smear all Jews as killers of Jesus Christ. All bear a measure of guilt, regardless of their actions.

This is why Sarah Palin should never be our president. She simply cannot be the president of all Americans. Maybe few presidents ever are -- but they at least have the good sense to attempt it. Even George W. Bush recognized his duty in this regard.

Palin's statements on the mosque issue also point to another reason she should never be president: She cannot distinguish America's friends from its enemies. Her divisiveness would make her a poor president; her inability to make the right kinds of distinctions would make her a dangerous one.

UPDATE: Via Conor Friedersdorf's Twitter feed, this is simply ugly and evil.