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FEAR AND HATE 451: NO MATCH TO MOHAMMED
Mon, 13 Sep 2010 04:11:56
So, Pastor Terry Jones has upped his "Q" another mega-level by going on the Today Show and telling the world he isn't going to throw his 9/11 Koran Burning Party after all.
A patriotic pie in the face to the show's producers for giving in to this toxic wing-nut's blackmail. All Terry had to do was threaten a mean, senseless, wildly damaging act that barely qualifies within the Bill Of Rights and bingo, he's on the front page on the daily fish wrap, pumped full of Google Juice, Huff And Puffed, blogged within an inch of his life, and on the couch between Lady Gaga and Sharon Osbourne telling David, Jay and Conan why he decided not to put a match to Mohammed.
What puts the extra "Oh!" in this odious scenario is that the Rev did not heed the advice of his President, the General in charge of the AfPak crusade, every other Christian in Gainesville and Mama Bear herself until the very last moment.
Never mind the mobs in Kabul calling for my death (I am an American); never mind the brigade of youth turned to jihad because of this egregious provocation; Pastor pyromaniac has quickened the late summer news cycle and made a thousand column inches bloom.
Permitting him to preen and posture on camera as he prepares to put the torch to someone else's truth is a demonstration loud and clear of the resilience and capacity of our democracy, the very product we're importing abroad to the millions of "someone elses."
And, in a better world-one in which we gathered up our failed policies and spent uranium and returned home to take care of our own-the story of how we let Terry be Terry in the name of free speech and personal freedom would be told in every girls' school we had built from the Kandahar to Karachi.
But, no, this flexing of our muscular system of civil liberties was obscured by the chorus of anti Muslim rhetoric emanating from the nasty crowds at Ground Zero, the troubled mind of Newt Gingrich and the poisonous preachings of Franklin Graham. (Oh, that Billy had not given us his only son.)
What's next? Surely Reverend Terry's public relations triumph has produced a litter of copy cats. They're going to have to belly up and lift the bar of desecration if they expect to get any respect from the jaded pharaohs of journalism.
The resources are there; just browse the slideshow from Abu Ghraib. All it takes is a little imagination and a willing press. See you on the other side.
