"We’re not France... Mr. Bloomberg is pretending we’re a secular society, and we are not."

Complaints about Mayor Bloomberg's exclusion of clergy from NYC's 9/11 ceremony.

It's the old controversy of causing controversy through the effort of avoiding controversy. It's important to observe that the controversy you see is the one you got from the effort at controversy avoidance. You have to envision what the avoided controversy would have looked like. Religious people are good at envisioning the unseen, are they not?

Also, the exclusion of clergy is not the exclusion of religion. It is only the exclusion of individuals whose métier is the purveyance of religion. There is good and bad in that, but consider that silences, in which people do pray, are better than a cast of characters whom some will undoubtedly consider hucksters, getting attention, and maybe saying something offputting or incendiary.

And no, I don't think the bogus mystification of doing something Native American is the right solution.