Posted on 05/17/2005 10:55:48 AM PDT by xsysmgr
We're in the grips of a pathology. And it's not media bias.
No kidding. Really. If you want to throw the off-switch for the cognitive part of your brain — as many conservatives seem only to happy to do this week — then, by all means, that is the story you want to run with in this latest media scandal.
Newsweek, in reckless pursuit of a scoop that might score the daily double of embarrassing the Bush administration while heaping more disrepute on the Left's favorite punching bag, Guantanamo Bay, falsely reported a martial toilet-flushing of the Koran. Oops, I'm sorry, I mean the Holy Koran — after all, I don't want to be left out of the new, vast right-wing "we can be just as nauseatingly pious as they can" conspiracy.
The false report, according to the New York Times, instigated "the most virulent, widespread anti-American protests" in the Muslim world since...well, since the last virulent, widespread anti-American protests in the Muslim world — particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where at least 17 people have been killed.
That's right. The reason for the carnage is said — again and again, by media critics and government officials — to be a false report of Koran desecration. The prime culprit here is irresponsible journalism.
Is that what we really think?
Here's an actual newsflash — and one, yet again, that should be news to no one: The reason for the carnage here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more.
Newsweek merely gave the crazies their excuse du jour. But they didn't need a report of Koran desecration to fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers, to blow up embassies, or to behead hostages taken for the great sin of being Americans or Jews. They didn't need a report of Koran desecration to take to the streets and blame the United States while enthusiastically taking innocent lives. This is what they do.
The outpouring of righteous indignation against Newsweek glides past a far more important point. Yes, we're all sick of media bias. But "Newsweek lied and people died" is about as worthy a slogan as the scurrilous "Bush lied and people died" that it parrots. And when we engage in this kind of mindless demagoguery, we become just another opportunistic plaintiff — no better than the people all too ready to blame the CIA because Mohammed Atta steered a hijacked civilian airliner into a big building, and to sue the Port Authority because the building had the audacity to collapse from the blow.
What are we saying here? That the problem lies in the falsity of Newsweek's reporting? What if the report had been true? And, if you're being honest with yourself, you cannot say — based on common sense and even ignoring what we know happened at Abu Ghraib — that you didn't think it was conceivably possible the report could have been true. Flushing the Koran down a toilet (assuming for argument's sake that our environmentally correct, 3.6-liters-per-flush toilets are capable of such a feat) is a bad thing. But rioting? Seventeen people killed? That's a rational response?
Sorry, but I couldn't care less about Newsweek. I'm more worried about the response and our willful avoidance of its examination. Afghanistan has been an American reconstruction project for nearly four years. Pakistan has been a close American "war on terror" ally for just as long. This is what we're getting from the billions spent, the lives lost, and the grand project of exporting nonjudgmental, sharia-friendly democracy? A killing spree? Over this?
In the affirmative-action context, conservatives have written trenchantly about the "soft bigotry of low expectations" — the promotion of a vile dependency-ethos that says "you don't need to strive for better," as a result of which many people who might, don't. Our cognate sense of the Islamic world has become the smug delusion of base expectations.
Someone alleges a Koran flushing and what do we do? We expect, accept, and silently tolerate militant Muslim savagery — lots of it. We become the hangin' judge for the imbeciles whose negligence "triggered" the violence, but offer no judgment about the societal dysfunction that allows this grade of offense to trigger so cataclysmic a reaction. We hop on our high horses having culled from the Left's playbook the most politically correct palaver about the inviolable sanctity of Holy Islamic scripture (and never you mind those verses about annihilating the infidels — the ones being chanted by the killers). And we suspend disbelief, insisting that things would be just fine in a place like Gaza if we could only set up a democracy — a development which, there, appears poised to empower Hamas, terrorists of the same ilk as those in Afghanistan and Pakistan who see comparatively minor indignities as license to commit murder.
"Minor indignities? How can you say something so callous about a desecration of the Holy Koran?" I say it as a member of the real world, not the world of prissy affectation. I don't know about you, but I inhabit a place where crucifixes immersed in urine and Madonna replicas composed of feces are occasions for government funding, not murderous uprisings. If someone was moved to kill on their account, we'd be targeting the killer, not the exhibiting museum, not the "artists," and surely not Newsweek.
I inhabit a world in which my government seeks accommodation with Saudi Arabia and China and Egypt, places where the practice of Christianity results in imprisonment...or worse; in which Jews have been driven from almost every country in the Middle East, and in which the goal of destroying their country, Israel, is viewed by much of the globe as legitimate foreign policy; and in which being a Christian, an animist, or the wrong kind of Muslim in Sudan is grounds for genocide — something the vaunted United Nations seems to regard as more of a spectator sport than a cause of action.
In my world, militant Muslims, capitalizing on the respectful deference of others, have been known tactically to desecrate the Koran themselves: by rigging it with explosives, by using it to secrete and convey terrorist messages, and, yes, even by toilet-flushing parts of it for the nuisance value of flooding the bathrooms at Guantanamo Bay. Just as they have used mosques as sanctuaries, as weapons depots, and as snipers' nests.
There's a problem here. But it's not insensitivity, and it's not media bias. Those things are condemnable, but manageable. The real problem here is a culture that either cannot or will not rein in a hate ideology that fuels killing. When we go after Newsweek, we're giving it a pass. Again.
Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Need to go after both.
Agreed and we should stop being PC about the word, "Crusade". Afterall, FDR used it when describing D-Day. ;-)
Loaded guns still require someone or something to pull the trigger.
Congressman Billybob
You mean Daniel Pearl wasn't executed because that liar President Bush invaded Iraq?
He makes a good (and corect) point. You gotta hand it to even stupid liberals when they occasionally get it right.
DITTO!
Oh well in that case, forget it. What an awful hate-filled word. When will those Republicans stop the hate? /sarcasm
Yes, yes, yes!! This is the crux--not sloppy, or even fallacious, reporting! Thank you, Mr. McCarthy and xsysmgr! And it might be a good idea, too, Mr. Bozell, NOT to continue to belabor Newsweek's bias. They're just leftist enough to pull out witnesses.
If you have a psychotic murderous lunatic in your attic, it's definitely not your fault if he kills you, but that doesn't mean you should go up there and poke him with a stick.
Hogwash!
The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Terrorists of any nationality, race or creed need physical extermination.
Reporters who lie to the American public and any organization that succors them need to be removed from their positions of "trust".
Sane talk from the National Review.
For the record...
"And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade."
...
Thy will be done, Almighty God.
Amen.
Franklin D. Roosevelt - June 6, 1944
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/fdr-prayer.htm
THAT'S THE FREAKING POINT. Everytime a conservative thinks something or does something, the left caterwauls that it's going to lead to death, destruction, and perpetuate the cycle of (insert travesty here).
In this instance, Newsweek actually DID lie and people actually DID die. George W. Bush has ALWAYS acted in good faith and all he gets is these mindless protests. Well, how does it feel?
There's a problem here.
WRONG!
We have more than ONE problem.
1) Islamofascism
2) Hate-mongering media.
3) #2 giving #1 a pass.
The point of the article, however, was that it may not have been a lie. Personally, I think Newsweek may have jumped the gun on documentation, but the fact is that their inability to distinguish between or among cultures (and systems attempting to pass as cultures) allowed them to print a story (TRUE OR NOT) that inflamed Muslim jihadists. Newsweek MAY be to blame here for any number of evils, but most societies discern a difference between the destruction of one or two copies of words on paper and human beings. Apparently, our noble left and our politically correct leaders do not.
Hogwash!
These are the same people who complain about the "outrageous" amount of money spent investigating Bill Clinton's multiple felonies, yet they have no problem asking some government worker to slog through 25,000 pages of classified documents so they can fill a couple of inches of magazine space.
The guy is dead right to concentrate on the muslims. Isikoff didn't kill anyone. He is guilty of something mind you, but he didn't actually murder anybody.
The muslims aren't trained chimps: they have free will and are ultimately responsible for their own actions.
Newsweek knows better. And they have an agenda that is anti-coinservative and anti-military. The proof is in the history. When was the last time that an MSM outlet did a story based on lies that hurt a liberal or democrat?
There has been a pattern of lying by the MSM that has been consistant and pervasive for the last two years. One has to wonder how many stories where the MSM has lied and not been caught.
Unfortunately one of the pillars of democracy is a reliable and honest press and we simply no longer have one.
Perfect!
Actually I think he and Newsweek are guilty of Manslaughter and if the dead peoples family enter into the us court system Newsweek and WAPO, will no longer exist in 5 years.
Militant Islam or Islamofacists are violent, they need no excuse to attack and kill and indulge savage barbaric tendencies.
Naturally, Newsweek provides a good reason to indulge these tendencies. They saw an opportunity to embarrass the Bush administration and also target a source of left wing hate while getting a scoop. However, they are not the real folks to blame, militant islam is.
Am I correct in this summary so far?
If I am, this akin to someone telling a violent psychopath that someone killed his family.
Then blaming the violent psychopath for killing the people he was told did it, and saying the person who told him, is not the main issue or important and we're losing sight of the point.
I'm sorry but that is unacceptable.
The author misses the point. The MSM has been purposely trying to instigate exactly this kind of reaction from militant Islamists since about a week after 9/11. Now that they've finally succeeded, the chickens are coming home to roost. Militant Islam is the fire, yes, but the MSM has been pouring gasoline all over it for years purposefully to achieve this very result.
I agree with the author.
Salve for the mind-f_ _k they give you... day in and day out.
Dear mr. smug delusion- No one is giving militant islam a pass. To let newsweek off the hook simply because the rabid buffons over there are just going to get mad over something or other anyway is silly. Realize here and now that some people are capable of becoming the hanging judge of both the imbeciles whose negligence trigger the violence AND the societal dysfunction that allows this grade of offense to trigger so cataclysmic a reaction. It is really not that difficult to do. Militant islam is to blame for the riots and the murders. Newsweek is to blame for the false report.
But any pretense to bash the liberal press is a good one!
To be fair, I don't think McCarthy missed that point; he simply emphasized others--otherwise unmentionable others. (Love your tagline!)
Hear, hear! McCarthy has it _exactly_ right.
There are two seperate and unrelated points. One: Newsweek told a lie to embarrass the President and the military. Two: Islamists are so stupid they riot over a rumor. They will never dig themselves out of poverty and ignorance as long as they practice this mindless and stupid form of Islam.
By entitled his pap filled article as he has done, he is clearly missing the point.
No. Not "nothing more." Newsweek cannot pretend ignorance of the consequences for their reckless act. Even the tabloids wouldn't stoop to this.
That was your take on the article.
My take on the article is from this sentence ... "The reason for the carnage here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more." In other words we are wasting our time wailing and gnashing teeth over News weak, when we should be moaning and groaning about terrorists.
Again, the two have absolutely nothing, nil, zip, zero, nada to do with each other.
Thanks.
Similar issues abound with regard to the infamous "racial slur" defense.
According to this theory, a black man who is called an offensive epithet, perhaps during a confrontation such as a traffic accident with no real racial content, is more or less justified in killing the name-caller, anybody standing nearby and perhaps the entire city block. Creating an entire new category of "justificable homicide."
Justificable = justifiable.
Sorry.
I disagree with the author.
News-tweek deliberately published a weak story with a poor source of information. They didn't bother to confirm it. Whether Muslims rioted or not is secondary to the real crime.
Newsweek published this story out of their rabid anti-American viewpoint. The goal wasn't to inflame Muslims - it was to embarrass the United States to its enemies.
Newsweek is guilty of treason. It is guilty of betraying the very same country that protects its right to publish this trash. This is far worse than the deaths of the Muslims. A consequence of this treason will undoubtedly be the death of more Americans.
Are we angry at Jane Fonda, or the North Vietnamese that allowed her to sit behind an anti-aircraft gun? We're angry at Jane Fonda, of course. Likewise, we should be angry at Newsweek.
Their paths intersect when one used the other to further an agenda. newsweek published an article they were unable to back up for whatever ill purpose. Militant islam shown the spotlight on that article when they used it as their newest reason to riot. Both are to blame and both should be dealt with accordingly.
The above article smells of fear, referring to conservatives as smug and pathological in their actions. I know several liberals he can add to his list. mr. smug delusion wants out? Fine the guy is out till we say he can come back in.
My tag's a quote from Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" which I am about to finish for the second time - great reading even the second time around!
Good article. Thanks for posting it.
This is perfect.
I'll go along with that point, however isn't McCarthy saying, when he says ..."There's a problem here. But it's not insensitivity, and it's not media bias. Those things are condemnable, but manageable." ... that "media bias is manageable", therefore no big deal?
Isn't he saying we are wasting our time castigating the wrong people? Is he not saying it's only terrorism we should be concerned with? Don't worry about the press, we can "manage" that?
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