Take your thumb off the scales
We are fighting a lopsided war. I’m not talking about the gigantic and well-oiled (so to speak) machinery of the United States military overwhelming the vastly inferior forces of the Iraqi “insurgency”. That’s just one battlefield.
The real, and very unbalanced war, is within the press, and it is tilted heavily against civilization. Of course, they won’t tell you this. In fact, they won’t even admit it to themselves. But the media have stacked the deck against those who would promote prosperity and freedom. The mainstream media have done so consistently for as long as I can recall. Think I’m exaggerating? How about the Tet offensive? Who won it? We did. Whom did Cronkite say won it? Uh... not us. Let me toss two more words at you, for free association: Abu Ghraib. This was called a media coup, even though the Pentagon had already begun investigation and prosecution efforts, with information released to the media, months before the first report came to the presses.
Now let’s try a few other words: Pfc. Thomas Tucker. Pfc. Kristian Menchaca. Daniel Pearl. Beslan schoolchildren terrorized and murdered. Women and children used as human shields in Afghanistan. Catholic schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia. Basra senior citizens attacked by a suicide bomber. Newly noseless, tongueless men in Kashmir. Worshippers who met a shoe-bomber at the Buratha Mosque in Basra. Children attacked on their schoolbus near Jerusalem. The list goes on and on.
Each act by the [expletives deleted] men who disfigure, behead, murder in cold blood makes the news, perhaps for a day, or, in the unusual case of the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, an entire week, before it is dropped for the next presumed scandal on the side of civilization. Seldom does it make the front page. Seldom is it even perceived as newsworthy. It’s “dog bites man.” After all, this sort of thing happens every day. But catch a whiff of a story of a Koran having been accidentally dropped, or an even bigger fiction of one having been flushed, and it becomes a headliner for weeks, with accompanying riots. Still, the riots, the murders, the savage disfigurement, the kidnappings, the rapes, the shoe-bombs and car-bombs and airplanes flown into civilian structures... those are all understandable elements of an alien culture caused by -- you guessed it -- our oppressive military policies. Never before in the history of the world did Muslims behead infidels simply for being infidels. It is all our fault (or, to be more precise, it’s all the current administration’s fault).
At least, that’s the message the media keeps sending us. The liberal mindset of the majority of this world’s so-called journalists does not allow for responsibility to rest upon the shoulders of those who commit heinous acts. Why is that? We can not expect the savage Muslims to live up to our civilization’s very high standards of conduct, so we give them a pass when they simply prove themselves to be animals? Since when? How is it that they have fallen to the status of wolves and polar bears -- which supposedly only kill their young because of man-made global warming -- not responsible for their own monstrous acts? Can it be, as the President of the United States has said, “the soft bigotry of low expectations”?
Precisely when can we start seeing the media act as though they think human beings should be judged as human beings? How long will it be before Katie Couric looks at a murderer and doesn’t ask “What’s the root cause of his distress?” but asks “How dare he kill innocents?” When will we see David Gregory question an imam or two about the shaping of Islam into a cult of murder? Failure to show disapproval of crimes is not “dispassionate reporting”. It is dysfunctional enabling.
It is quite possible for media to tilt so far that they all fall down. They are very nearly at that point. Should they continue to thus erode their own trustworthiness, it would cause every one of our free societies great harm, too. It is time the editors, producers, directors, reporters, anchors, and all the rest of the mainstream media reevaluate their own core values. Are they here simply to get a headline, or are they going to participate in the greater thing which is civilization?
HT: Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin and nasty old bat.
Recommended reading:
Torturer's Hope by John Podhoretz
Hue again (and again) by James S. Robbins
The real, and very unbalanced war, is within the press, and it is tilted heavily against civilization. Of course, they won’t tell you this. In fact, they won’t even admit it to themselves. But the media have stacked the deck against those who would promote prosperity and freedom. The mainstream media have done so consistently for as long as I can recall. Think I’m exaggerating? How about the Tet offensive? Who won it? We did. Whom did Cronkite say won it? Uh... not us. Let me toss two more words at you, for free association: Abu Ghraib. This was called a media coup, even though the Pentagon had already begun investigation and prosecution efforts, with information released to the media, months before the first report came to the presses.
Now let’s try a few other words: Pfc. Thomas Tucker. Pfc. Kristian Menchaca. Daniel Pearl. Beslan schoolchildren terrorized and murdered. Women and children used as human shields in Afghanistan. Catholic schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia. Basra senior citizens attacked by a suicide bomber. Newly noseless, tongueless men in Kashmir. Worshippers who met a shoe-bomber at the Buratha Mosque in Basra. Children attacked on their schoolbus near Jerusalem. The list goes on and on.
Each act by the [expletives deleted] men who disfigure, behead, murder in cold blood makes the news, perhaps for a day, or, in the unusual case of the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, an entire week, before it is dropped for the next presumed scandal on the side of civilization. Seldom does it make the front page. Seldom is it even perceived as newsworthy. It’s “dog bites man.” After all, this sort of thing happens every day. But catch a whiff of a story of a Koran having been accidentally dropped, or an even bigger fiction of one having been flushed, and it becomes a headliner for weeks, with accompanying riots. Still, the riots, the murders, the savage disfigurement, the kidnappings, the rapes, the shoe-bombs and car-bombs and airplanes flown into civilian structures... those are all understandable elements of an alien culture caused by -- you guessed it -- our oppressive military policies. Never before in the history of the world did Muslims behead infidels simply for being infidels. It is all our fault (or, to be more precise, it’s all the current administration’s fault).
At least, that’s the message the media keeps sending us. The liberal mindset of the majority of this world’s so-called journalists does not allow for responsibility to rest upon the shoulders of those who commit heinous acts. Why is that? We can not expect the savage Muslims to live up to our civilization’s very high standards of conduct, so we give them a pass when they simply prove themselves to be animals? Since when? How is it that they have fallen to the status of wolves and polar bears -- which supposedly only kill their young because of man-made global warming -- not responsible for their own monstrous acts? Can it be, as the President of the United States has said, “the soft bigotry of low expectations”?
Precisely when can we start seeing the media act as though they think human beings should be judged as human beings? How long will it be before Katie Couric looks at a murderer and doesn’t ask “What’s the root cause of his distress?” but asks “How dare he kill innocents?” When will we see David Gregory question an imam or two about the shaping of Islam into a cult of murder? Failure to show disapproval of crimes is not “dispassionate reporting”. It is dysfunctional enabling.
It is quite possible for media to tilt so far that they all fall down. They are very nearly at that point. Should they continue to thus erode their own trustworthiness, it would cause every one of our free societies great harm, too. It is time the editors, producers, directors, reporters, anchors, and all the rest of the mainstream media reevaluate their own core values. Are they here simply to get a headline, or are they going to participate in the greater thing which is civilization?
HT: Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin and nasty old bat.
Recommended reading:
Torturer's Hope by John Podhoretz
Hue again (and again) by James S. Robbins
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