Monday, November 30, 2009

On Fort Hood: Beware of Pundits

Diversity is going to kill America. Or so say conservative pundits in the weeks following the shootings at Fort Hood. I think weak liberal pundits are going to be the death of democracy if they don't stop pussyfooting around issues of national security - in the case of the Fort Hood shootings the mainstream media has given conservative pundits plenty of ammunition (sorry for the gross pun) to voice all sorts of scandalous, racist opinions. To my friends at MSNBC and CNN: call a spade a spade - we are at war with Islam. And the shootings at Fort Hood were an act of terrorism. Neither statement is racist nor a call to violence - it's the fact of our times. While you're not talking about this, the Fox News Channel is having a field day playing upon Americans' worst fears. And guess what? This time around, I'm more inclined to believe their coverage of this incident over yours.

A summary of the attack on Fort Hood: The shooter is an army psychiatrist, but also a Muslim who had been exchanging e-mails with a radical cleric in Yemen for the past year and had made some shocking statements about non-Muslims, specifically calling them "infidels [who] should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats."

I shudder to think that I have gotten more information about this attack, and the link between the shooter and Al Qaeda, from the likes of Ann Coulter than, say, the New York Times. This time around Coulter has found a terrific platform to voice her idea that minorities (aka "victims") have their run of this country, and that it's possible to plan a terrorist attack here under the gaze of the law because the feds will be too scared of coming off as racist and insensitive. Here's her interview with Bill O'Reilly. If you can't watch, here are the three bits of information that are worth taking away:

1-The US media dropped the ball on reporting on the shooter's ties to Al Qaeda (:57)
2- The shooter had never been to sent to war (3:58)
3- The shooter wasn't treating soldiers coming back from war, he treated them before they went on their assignments (4:20)



But you know what else crazy said during her interview? When asked why government officials and the mainstream media have been slow to call the shooter a terrorist Coulter replied:

"We have a caste system in America with different levels of victimhood. You have the feminists, gays, blacks, Jews, but the number one victims, but only starting on 9-11 when they killed 3,000 Americans, became Muslims."

Crazy say what?

See, friends, when those of us on the right side of reason allow political correctness to get the better of us and we don't call things what they are, we lend credibility to the most far-right and un-American ideas. We are, in spite of what us urban elites think, a nation at war. Not just overseas, but here at home. If we can't question the place of Islam in our country, without fear of sounding racist or alarmist, then we stand to lose all of the gains made for minorities in this country. Step up your game, guys - now is not the time for Ps and Qs in journalism.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A major in the military can scream "Death to infidels" and spout anti-American rhetoric. This can be overlooked. But if he admits to liking other boys..now we have a problem.