File photo: Getty Images

We’ve heard from the president. We’ve heard from the mayor. We’ve heard from countless cable news commentators.

But in the national debate over the possibility of an Islamic center near ground zero, the voices of one minority have been lost in the noise.

What about the strippers?

It turns out, they are pretty much okay with it.

FROM THE WSJ:

[A] stripper who volunteered in the Ground Zero recovery, sat on a barstool in a tiny, shiny red dress and defended Park51. “They’re not building a mosque in the World Trade Center,” she pointed out. “It’s all good. You have your synagogues and your churches. And you have a mosque.” (Read more)

[Another] worried that calls to prayer from the mosque at Park51 might wake up neighbors. But when she was told that the organizers aren’t planning loudspeakers, she said she didn’t have a problem with the project.

New York Dolls, a strip club on Murray St., is just three blocks north of the WTC site and around the corner from the proposed mosque, a project called Park51. Even closer, the Pussycat Lounge is something of an institution, having survived decades of Wall Street boom and bust.

The clubs are a reminder of the diversity of urban life, lower Manhattan being no exception.

Though deemed “hallowed ground” by many Americans, the area around the former site of the World Trade Center towers appears – in more ways than not – just like the rest of Manhattan.

You’ve got street vendors, a Brooks Brothers and pizza by-the-slice. If it weren’t for the hordes of tourists, you’d be hard pressed to tell any difference.

Emotionally though, the difference is palpable. Even the casual observer is keenly aware of what happened here.

For some, the controversy over the possibility of an Islamic center blocks away from ground zero is much ado about nothing. For many others (including a majority of New Yorkers), it is an alarming and in-your-face affront to the memory of an extraordinary tragedy.

For the strippers though, it’s not that big of a deal.