Jerk of the Week - Michael Shulan

RightWingPatriot.com ^ | August 2, 2013 | RightWingPatriot

[rightwingerpatriot]

There was no shortage of candidates this week for our dubious Jerk of the Week honors. From Obama to Charlie Rangel to others, a lot of people vied to win the top honor. While many of those are individuals who could easily win every week, it is our solemn duty to highlight those whose conduct is most egregious. For that reason, our winner this week is Michael Shulan, creative director of the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

Shulan started out the week strong, and nobody else managed to catch him in terms of sheer jerkitude. (Yes, I made that word up.) Shulan made headlines, if you read Fox or conservative blogs, for not wanting to highlight the image of New York firefighters for raising the American flag in the midst of Ground Zero. The reason why? He, and other anti-American staffers at the museum, thought that the image was too kitschy and too "rah-rah America."

As I mentioned earlier this week, this shows the twisted mindset of the progressive liberal. An image celebrating the strength, endurance, and nobility of America is wrong and taboo. Shulan said of his decision not to highlight the photo, “I really believe that the way America will look best, the way we can really do best, is to not be Americans so vigilantly and so vehemently." That right there is the clarion call of the progressive mentality - America is wrong, evil, and a bully. Progressive liberals believe this with every thought of their Noam Chomsky-quoting brains despite all the evidence contrary.

The fact that an image of firefighters raising an American flag in the middle of the rubble of the World Trade Center could be offensive to others is astounding to me. Yes, those who hate us will not like the image. Who cares? The Muslim terrorists that attacked us hate us with every fiber in their being and their ilk in the Middle East and around the world continue to hate us. So why does it matter if they don't like the photo?

For Shulan and his brethren, the world is simple good and evil. In their mind, America's sins were visited back upon us and there were nuanced reasons why we were attacked. This is utter poppycock, of course, but the fact is that these people believe it. Facts, reason, and logic do not register with them. Someone who purposely kills thousands of civilians is morally equivalent to our military inflicting collateral damage during wartime in their eyes. It doesn't matter that our military goes way beyond the call of duty to minimize civilian causalities or that the terrorists we're fighting purposely launch their attacks from civilian centers. To Michael Shulan and other progressives, loving America and having faith in its goodness and nobility is beyond reason. For that, I both loathe and pity them.

Runner-Up
Another candidate for Jerk of the Week is Reza Aslan. It was a close call between him and Shulan, but Shulan's decision making will have an impact upon how 9/11 is remembered, which made him the better choice this week. As for Reza Aslan, I chose him for his actions around his authorship of the book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.

I did not choose Reza Aslan for writing the book. As a conservative, I believe in freedom and he, or anybody else, is free to write about anything they want in any manner they wish. Where I take exception with him is his outright lies and the resulting media whitewash of him.

Earlier this week, Fox News did an online interview with Reza Aslan in which the interviewer asked him why he wrote the book as he was a Muslim. Reza Aslan got extremely agitated and went on to snottily tout his (now realized as fake) credentials. He claimed that he's a doctor of the history of religion, which is false. In fact, he has no history degree whatsoever. He has a B.A. in religion, masters in world religion, masters in fine arts in fiction, and a PhD in sociology. Currently, he teaches creative writing at UC Riverside and public diplomacy at USC. He also teaches Middle Eastern revolution at Drew University. Hmmm....must have missed all those history degrees and teaching somewhere.

Another interesting aspect is that very few people are reporting his progressive ties. Glenn Beck and the Blaze have done a good job on this (read here). It seems that Reza Aslan has ties to the Tides Center through his corporation, Aslan Media, and through Narrative 4, a progressive group dedicated to social change. He's also connected to George Soros through the National Iranian American Council and the Ploughshares Fund.

Personally, I don't care about Reza Alsan's work in the context of my faith as that my faith is not threatened by his lies. What I do care about is how his lies are being used to rewrite history (a progressive goal) and change our culture for the worst. The fact that he's not honest with his background and his credentials is also disquieting. Throw in the media running in to proclaim him a great scholar and how dare Fox News question his motivation at all just goes to show how much in bed the media is with the progressive movement. Pathetic.

[Standing Wolf]

Shulan made headlines, if you read Fox or conservative blogs, for not wanting to highlight the image of New York firefighters for raising the American flag in the midst of Ground Zero. The reason why? He, and other anti-American staffers at the museum, thought that the image was too kitschy and too "rah-rah America."

The award went to the right creepy crawly creature.