So, some extremist Florida pastor has now had his “15 minutes of fame“. Pastor Terry Jones who had been planning to burn a “Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks said [today] he would not go forward with the event, adding he would meet with the imam planning to build an Islamic center near ground zero.”
You know, I wonder if fringe figure had gone forward with his publicity stunt if it would have attracted more media than the miniscule membership of his congregation.
Would anyone even know who this guy was if, as Mike Thomas asks in the Orlando Sentinel, the “media had ignored” him?
James Taranto contends that the media helped make this crazy pastor’s stunt successful:
. . . a fringe Florida pastor’s announcement that he would observe 9/11 by burning the Islamic holy book was not, in itself, news. It was a mere publicity stunt–which the media, by treating it as news, made into a successful publicity stunt.
It is a publicity stunt that fits a pernicious media narrative, exemplified by a New York Times story we quoted yesterday titled “American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong,” which cited the Koran burning as evidence of widespread anti-Muslim bigotry.
Anti-Muslim bigotry is a problem, but it is only exacerbated by the media’s tendency to exaggerate and sensationalize it–and by the adversarial and snobbish attitude many journalists and some politicians have adopted toward the vast majority of Americans, who are not bigoted and who see the Ground Zero mosque as an affront.
While the media sensationalize this story, Sarah Palin takes notes of a story that media are ignoring “Book burning is bad. But the Muslim cleric who is running for parliament in Afghanistan is calling for the murder of American children in response to scorched Korans, which is worse. Where is the media’s focus?”
And it’s helped unite all decent Americans:
“Glenn Beck’s against it too, of course. The grand irony of this crank pastor’s publicity stunt is that he’s trying to force the public to confront a difficult issue — when, if ever, is it appropriate to offend Muslims? — but doing it in such a grotesque, notoriously fascist manner that he’s guaranteed a united front against him among pols and pundits. Denouncing a book-burning is as easy a litmus test for decency as it gets in American politics.
The last via CampaignSpot.
UPDATE: As if on cue, Harry Smith (subbing for Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News) lead devoted roughly one-third of that network’s newscast to this controversy, telling us how Islamic radicals were “capitalizing” on the Koran-burning. Well, Harry, they wouldn’t have been able to capitalize on it had you not publicized it.
(For a change, they had CBS on instead of CNN at my gym.)
UP-UPDATE: The New York Times reports that Coverage of Koran Case Stirs Questions on Media Role:
Mr. Jones was able to put himself at the center of those issues by using the news lull of summer and the demands of a 24-hour news cycle to promote his anti-Islam cause. He said he consented to more than 150 interview requests in July and August, each time expressing his extremist views about Islam and Sharia law.
By the middle of this week, the planned Koran burning was the lead story on some network newscasts, and topic No. 1 on cable news — an extraordinary amount of attention for a marginal figure with a very small following.
Alas, the absence of any introspection or criticism of the media’s success in sensationalizing the story of a publicity-hungry pastor.
Look, the media in this country is responsible for creating so many of these stories when if ignored, they’d go away in less than 24 hours. How does anyone with a group of 30 people, cause such a mess in our country and countries across the globe? I mean come on. The media would give the excuse,,,,, hey it’s our job…..baloney. They;re ambulance chasers. You gather 300,000 people to celebrate the military and the constitution and you are basically ignored. You run a church with 30 congregants and do something provocative and you get hours of tv coverage. Any blood is on the medias hands.
I suppose I’m glad the preacher backed down (and that’s what he did… the intimidation worked). Now we’re left with Fred Phelps and his
merrydemented band of a-holes who’ve promised to burn a Koran.The Pakis are burning US flags and you don’t see us rioting in the streets over it. Christians and Jews are insulted all the time and you don’t see them rioting.
The fact remains that this sort of nonsense is an issue only when Islam is involved. That’s telling us something (whether we want to hear it or not).
Indeed, Gene. Rush Limbaugh doesn’t call them “the drive-by media” for nothing.
Sarah Palin is wrong.
The actions of the Christian cleric in Florida and those of the Muslim cleric in Afghanistan have no business being compared by anyone. (This means you too, Bruce.)
We aren’t talking about two wrongs here. Only the Muslim cleric has proposed an evil: murder. The supposedly great sin proposed by the Christian pastor, book burning isn’t wrong at all.
In spite of ILC’s little dig at my classical liberalism in the earlier thread, I recognize — and hope others here would also — that devotion to freedom of speech requires accepting that giving offense is not a harm. And offense is the only supposed harm that can come from someone displaying displeasure with a text by burning it.
It hasn’t united me with Beck, Palin, Romney, Bruce, or you, Dan.
But then I am evil incarnate.
This “book burning” stunt confuses me. I know about the Nazi youth business in 1933 to mold the culture by burning “un-German” works in a dramatic demonstration of cleansing the culture. I am familiar with Fahrenheit 451 as well.
When powerful forces in the state or by the state engage in mass censorship by book burning, we have something quite different from this Florida nut case.
Is there any idea that Koran burning will catch on and become a nationwide phenomenon?
This guy and his cult could burn a stack of Playboy magazines and no one would make a peep. I suspect they could burn the Book of Mormon and not make more than local news.
They could burn the Constitution or pictures of GW Bush or American flags. But if they burned a picture of Obama or the Koran, it becomes a major political incident that causes talking tongues to wag and self anointed sages to pontificate.
The Islamo-fanatics are in control here. Suppose a black church in the 1870’s in Alabama decided to burn a cross in the yard of the local KKK leader and they went about it with their bare faces hanging out in plain view. Naturally, the church would intimidate no one and by the next day there would be glowing embers where the church stood and the trees would be full hanging black corpses.
That is the historic parallel as I see it. I would only add that I think running around screaming about book burning reminds me of Chicken Little. I do not advise ticking off the Islamo-fanatics, but I clearly do not see this guy as intimidating. He apparently wants to be martyred. Mark Twain noted that a man who sets out to carry a cat by the tail is getting useful information.
I put him in the category of the internet people who promoted creating comic images of Mohammed. I don’t give him the credit for being a reincarnation of Goebbels.
1: Yes…see how they’ve propped up a nutbag like Mrs Iselin….er….Palin for so long.
Classical Liberal Dave,
I have to say that I am with you on this one.
Burning the Quran is unnecessary and yes, antithetical to religious tolerance, but I am astounded that more people are focusing on the act of burning the Quran, rather than the response it has elicited from the Muslim community and Muslim nations. We literally had the FBI and the entire Obama administration begging this Pastor not to burn the Quran or Muslims will rise up and kill people. Again, if someone invokes his or her Constitutional right, people will die. I am not for burning any book because it does not create a debate and I find it useless rhetorical provocation, but my goodness, what cowards we have become if the entire administration has to swoop in because one man burning a book puts our entire country at risk. The Pastor proved the inherent violent nature of Islam with its response, but our response also proved Islam is more powerful than we are.
I tend to agree with you, Holly. Everybody is myopically focused on Pastor Jones’ “anti-Muslim” plan to burn Korans but are ignoring that Muslims’ response to Pastor Jones’ planned Koran barbecue just proves how violent Islam really is. How come we keep failing to notice that?
I think the media had a scheme that they would use this to validate their “America is Islamophobic” meme, but it couldn’t have backfired worse on them. First of all, the pastor was roundly condemned by everybody on the right. Second, even liberals were forced to admit that Muslims would respond violently to this, thus promoting the image of Islam as a religion of violence and intolerance.
The pastor may be crazy, but he manipulated the media into making his point for him. Well played, you crazy protestant.
The husband of a classmate actually said that if there are people killed in ‘retaliation’ for the book burning, the Pastor should be charged for murder.
Strangely enough, when I asked him if this meant that Planned Parenthood was culpable for the murder for Dr. Tiller, or if Janet Reno was culpable for the OKC Bombing, he tapdanced in an amazing spin of moral relativism.
I’m curious how the New York Times can say with a straight face that someone’s views on Sharia Law, as an Infidel, can be extreme. Sharia Law is extreme! Sharia Law is abhorrent.
Just one small correction @ #2: Christians and Jews are insulted and MURDERED all the time.
I saw this pointed out elsewhere and I think it goes to the heart of do we have to worry are Muslims going to murder Of course they’re going to murder It’s what they do. It doesn’t matter if they’re insulted by cartoons and Koran burning or if 10 medical personnel go into the hinterlands of Afghanistan to treat people. The Muslims are going to murder whether they are helped or hindered. They even tell us so. I don’t understand why we don’t believe them.
Well Louise, you’ve hit the nail on the head. The extreme Muslims are bent on the destruction of ALL we so called infidels. They don’t require any excuses to kill, they just do it. There is no reason attached or allowance to freedom of choice, the Koran spells it out and woe betide it if anyone takes a different view. Like you Louise, I’m amazed at the refusal of the West to face up to reality. We are being bullied by Islam!
V the K @ 9:
That proves that the pastor is only crazy like a fox.
I’m fed up with the great number of Muslims who, at the drop of a hat, condem and threaten me, a westerner, on a regular basis. You don’t see their media calling them Westernphobes or condeming their acts like our media condems us and calls us Islamobphes. What is worse than the Koran burning and the NY Mosque contraversy, is the Islamists who commit violent acts, and American Islamists who don’t protest against the acts and the American non Islamists (ABC, CBS) who bow down to the agressors just like Obama.