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Posted on 09/25/2001 6:59:41 PM PDT by quimby

For clarity, here is the full statement which does not appear in the article:

"We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away," he said. "That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

COLUMN: Maher marred by misquote

Updated: Mon, Sep 24 12:00 PM EDT

By Matt Flahive
Cornell Daily Sun
Cornell U.

(U-WIRE) ITHACA, N.Y. -- Like many of you, I don't watch "Politically Incorrect" very often. Heck, it goes up against a rerun of the Peabody Award-winning "Daily Show," not a tough choice in my book. So normally I don't tune in to "Politically Incorrect" and watch Cornell University's own Bill Maher, '78, lead roundtable, no-holds-barred discussions on current events. The show does not have a reputation for actually causing a current event, but last Monday, that changed. Maher might just have shown that our generation is headed for its own McCarthy-esque Red Scare.

On his Sept. 17 show, Maher talked about the recent terrorist attacks with his panel. One panelist said that the terrorist hijackers were warriors, not cowards. Maher agreed, "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly."

For that statement, Politically Incorrect lost commercial sponsors and no longer airs in some parts of the country.

Irate viewers called the show's advertisers on Tuesday morning to say that Maher had called members of the American military cowards. A Houston radio station demanded "Politically Incorrect" be taken off the air. In a matter of days, KSFY in Sioux City, Iowa, KLKN in Lincoln, Neb., and WOI-TV 5 in Des Moines, Iowa, all yanked the show off their schedules. Sears and FedEx distanced themselves from Maher's viewpoints by pulling their commercials from the show. What the stations and advertisers inadvertently did was punish Maher for a misinterpreted statement.

A few days later, Maher clarified his stance. "I never meant to imply nor have I ever thought that our actual servicemen are cowardly... it's our government, it's our politicians, who have been cowardly in not letting the military do their job." Sounds like a reasonable statement that actually compliments the United States military. Yet Sears, FedEx, KSFY, KLKN and WOI-TV 5 are still sitting on the sidelines.

Now I completely disagree with anyone who calls American military personnel "cowards," but I respect the right to hold and share that viewpoint. So even if Maher meant to call members of the American military the c-word, I believe in the First Amendment and will let him speak his mind. And yet Maher is being punished for spreading that belief, a belief he says he does not even hold.

In other words, Maher is the victim of a witch hunt. This brings to mind a famous widespread bullying from just a few generations ago -- Joe McCarthy's character-destroying investigations of "communists" in the 1950s. Will America again shun those with dissenting opinions and jump to conclusions about those it fears?

It is our duty to stand by Maher, to stop people from running his character into the ground. Half a century ago, Americans stood idly by while Joe McCarthy ruined the reputations of countless people. The nation was concerned about communists, with good reason considering the unstable status of the world. McCarthy played on this fear for his own political gain, aggressively pursuing anybody he suspected might be a communist. The communist threat was real, but McCarthy overstepped the bounds of decency in his quest to defend America.

Could Maher's treatment be a warning sign for an impending repeat of the Red Scare? We as Americans must be careful that we do not turn our heightened defensive state into justification for the mistreatment of those different from us, either in background or in beliefs. Across the nation Arab Americans and Indian Americans have been assaulted because of their race. In Minnesota, three men of Middle Eastern descent were kicked off Northwest Airlines Flight 673 because of their ethnicity. Mosques and temples have been torched. Those unwilling to support an all-out assault on Afghanistan are treated like unpatriotic outsiders. How long until we roundup these "undesirables" and toss them into internment camps?

Bill Maher probably will not be thrown into an internment camp for his beliefs, or what others perceive to be his beliefs, but his situation raises questions we need to answer. Will we respect those we disagree with? Will we mistreat those of Arab-American descent? Will we prosecute and persecute those we are scared of?

The terrorists who attacked America hate us because of our freedom. We have the freedom to say what we want, to worship as we please and to disagree with each other without fear of reprisal. Unless we watch our step, history will repeat itself and our nation will rescind those liberties. Make no mistake about it, we are in a fight against terrorism, but more importantly we are in a battle to defend our way of life. And if we choose to revoke people's freedoms when we find it convenient, then we have already lost the war.

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