Zach LarkinsYOU DECIDE
Following is an article by Michael Coren of the Toronto Sun. While I might disagree with him on a number of issues, I think he hit this on on the head. My friend, SL Bradish has railed against the liberal press for some time and her readers insist she switch from Fox News to the 'accepted' media, ABC, CBS, NBC and the like to get the true version of politics and history. SL is a big C conservative and I don't always agree with her either although I have to admire her ability to back up what she writes on these blogs. If more people would get their heads out of their a-holes and actually read what she writes, they might become better writers themselves.
Regardless, the article is printed in its entirety and it is here for your viewing pleasure. Beforehand though, I must say that I've had idiots who don't read my entire columns and see where the information comes from. Perhaps I am on a different astral plane than these folks and they can't see a simple report for what it is. Don't come back to me over this. I didn't write it. I am just reporting it verbatim. Simple enough for you?
Michael Coren
Double standard
It's OK for media to dump on Christians, but not Muslims
The past week witnessed two more suicide attempts from the Western world. The first was when CNN ran three shows on religious fundamentalism, making the appallingly relativistic and fatuous argument that the Christian, Jewish and Islamic varieties were not only similar but equally hazardous. At almost the same time The Washington Post and several other newspapers in North America refused to run an instalment of the highly popular Opus cartoon because they feared it might offend Muslims. The strip showed the eccentric faddist character Lola Granola in a headscarf, telling her boyfriend that she wants to be a radical Islamist. First CNN, and their hilarious attempt to make us feel better with the knowledge that all religions are the same and sanity will prevail if we manage to expunge faith from the world. The same Christian faith, one supposes, that forms the infrastructure of social welfare, community care and education in most of the Third World and large chunks of North America and Europe. Christian and Jewish fundamentalism can indeed be annoying and if we speak out against the excesses of either we're likely to receive a severe letter and have people praying for us. If we speak out against the Islamic variety we're more likely to have our heads cut off. That, comrades at CNN, is a fairly important distinction.
ESCAPES THEM
What seemed to escape the breathless host of these silly shows was that it was only in a nation built on Judeo-Christian ideals, the United States, that religion could be criticized. Even, as in this case, unfairly criticized. If you doubt this, ask journalists in the Middle East how much freedom of expression they enjoy. Within the Islamic world itself, the less Muslim the country the more free are its people. Which is why Turkey, Jordan and Indonesia are far more open and tolerant than Iran, Saudi Arabia or Sudan. From a cartoon of a television program to a, well, cartoon. It's significant that the same newspapers that censored the cartoon strip that mentioned Islam had all carried Opus a week earlier when it made fun of Jerry Falwell. No surprises there. The Washington Post justified its decision to be more sensitive to Muslims because, it said, the cartoon was shown to Islamic employees and they had become "emotional." Well, that's OK then. Christians, of course, had no opportunity to be emotional or indifferent to the Falwell stuff as they were never shown it. Because, after all, they're just Christians. Frankly, we shouldn't care how bloody emotional someone becomes about a cartoon. It's a cartoon; it's supposed to provoke a reaction. So it's just another example of liberals messing their pants. Just as when The New York Times refused to print the now infamous and largely innocuous Mohammad cartoons because, it explained, they could describe them in words and had no need to show readers the actual drawings that had led to Muslim fanatics killing people across the world.
CRAPPY DECISION
The newspaper staff's literary abilities, however, apparently disappeared just a few days later when they ran a large picture of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ, covered in excrement. This was part of a local art exhibit and could not possibly be described in words. Really? I smell something far worse than excrement. The stink of cowardice, hypocrisy and bigotry. An awful stink that fouls the air in newsrooms across this country as well. Suicide with a bad smell.
Sources: Michael Coren Double Standard Toronto Sun
Regardless, the article is printed in its entirety and it is here for your viewing pleasure. Beforehand though, I must say that I've had idiots who don't read my entire columns and see where the information comes from. Perhaps I am on a different astral plane than these folks and they can't see a simple report for what it is. Don't come back to me over this. I didn't write it. I am just reporting it verbatim. Simple enough for you?
Michael Coren
Double standard
It's OK for media to dump on Christians, but not Muslims
The past week witnessed two more suicide attempts from the Western world. The first was when CNN ran three shows on religious fundamentalism, making the appallingly relativistic and fatuous argument that the Christian, Jewish and Islamic varieties were not only similar but equally hazardous. At almost the same time The Washington Post and several other newspapers in North America refused to run an instalment of the highly popular Opus cartoon because they feared it might offend Muslims. The strip showed the eccentric faddist character Lola Granola in a headscarf, telling her boyfriend that she wants to be a radical Islamist. First CNN, and their hilarious attempt to make us feel better with the knowledge that all religions are the same and sanity will prevail if we manage to expunge faith from the world. The same Christian faith, one supposes, that forms the infrastructure of social welfare, community care and education in most of the Third World and large chunks of North America and Europe. Christian and Jewish fundamentalism can indeed be annoying and if we speak out against the excesses of either we're likely to receive a severe letter and have people praying for us. If we speak out against the Islamic variety we're more likely to have our heads cut off. That, comrades at CNN, is a fairly important distinction.
ESCAPES THEM
What seemed to escape the breathless host of these silly shows was that it was only in a nation built on Judeo-Christian ideals, the United States, that religion could be criticized. Even, as in this case, unfairly criticized. If you doubt this, ask journalists in the Middle East how much freedom of expression they enjoy. Within the Islamic world itself, the less Muslim the country the more free are its people. Which is why Turkey, Jordan and Indonesia are far more open and tolerant than Iran, Saudi Arabia or Sudan. From a cartoon of a television program to a, well, cartoon. It's significant that the same newspapers that censored the cartoon strip that mentioned Islam had all carried Opus a week earlier when it made fun of Jerry Falwell. No surprises there. The Washington Post justified its decision to be more sensitive to Muslims because, it said, the cartoon was shown to Islamic employees and they had become "emotional." Well, that's OK then. Christians, of course, had no opportunity to be emotional or indifferent to the Falwell stuff as they were never shown it. Because, after all, they're just Christians. Frankly, we shouldn't care how bloody emotional someone becomes about a cartoon. It's a cartoon; it's supposed to provoke a reaction. So it's just another example of liberals messing their pants. Just as when The New York Times refused to print the now infamous and largely innocuous Mohammad cartoons because, it explained, they could describe them in words and had no need to show readers the actual drawings that had led to Muslim fanatics killing people across the world.
CRAPPY DECISION
The newspaper staff's literary abilities, however, apparently disappeared just a few days later when they ran a large picture of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ, covered in excrement. This was part of a local art exhibit and could not possibly be described in words. Really? I smell something far worse than excrement. The stink of cowardice, hypocrisy and bigotry. An awful stink that fouls the air in newsrooms across this country as well. Suicide with a bad smell.
Sources: Michael Coren Double Standard Toronto Sun
youranter
Opinions
opinionatedranter
Tales From The Green Lantern
Opinions of a curmudgeon
Political Certainty
My disagreement is that too much is being drawn from the incidents reported. The CNN series on religious fundamentalism was shoddy journalism, poorly researched and even more poorly presented. I do not accept those programs as signifying anything other than trash. As to the media’s censorship of Opus, the first thing I check out on Sundays is the page with Opus and Doonesbury. I consider this censorship as nutty, absurd and a reason to ridicule, but a serious attack on Christianity and an affirmation of Islam? I think Mr. Coren may be reading too much into these stupid acts of people who should know better. Stupid does not always equate with venal.
youranter
Opinions
opinionatedranter
Tales From The Green Lantern
As for watching Fox news, I don't get that here. But from what I've heard of it, it gives another point of view that our liberal media wants to ignore. It is up to the viewer, I believe, to take the true points from either side and make up their own minds, right or wrong. That's part of what makes blogging fun.
To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, " You can piss off some of the people all of the time, you can piss off all of the people some of the time, but you can't piss off all of the people all of the time." LOL.
Thanks for the comment. I always look forward to them.