-By Warner Todd Huston
The on again, off again, on again Koran burning in Florida is off again, this time for good says infamous pastor Terry Jones. It seems that Pastor Jones finally decided that the burning would not have been the best course of action.
“We will definitely not burn the Quran, no,” he said. “Not today, not ever.”
Jones said that his goal was achieved without the burning. He said that he wanted “to expose that there is an element of Islam that is very dangerous and very radical.” He felt it was a success. “We have definitely accomplished that mission,” he said.
Jones was in New York to appear on the Today Show and said that he hoped he could arrange a meeting with Ground Zero Mosque pusher Imam Faisal Rauf but that no meeting had been arranged at this time.
This story is all puffery, of course. Without the willing assistance of the Old Media it never would have gotten any notice at all. Yet, Pastor Jones has about worn out his welcome with the Old Media, too. Several recent stories in the media have lamented that they bothered to give Jones any coverage at all… which is easy to say now that they’ve done so and the story has run its course.
At least one newser didn’t go hog wild on the story, though. As Howard Kurtz reports, with an editorial decision Fox News did not make a big deal about the Pastor Jones story.
Fox Senior Vice President Michael Clemente says he decided earlier in the week that “here’s a guy with 50 people in his parish and he’s just off a little bit. … Let’s just not go crazy with something that seems like a very narrow bit of information about a very narrow guy. It just doesn’t deserve more than the little bit of airtime we tried to give it.”
Sadly, the rest of the Old Media didn’t take the Fox approach. (And for the record this is the first time I, myself, have bothered to write about Pastor Jones.)
The truth is, though, that this Koran burning non-event fit the Old Media’s beloved false stereotype of the hate-filled America that they so love to promulgate. Even as the truth is not as cut and dried a case of simple race hate or discrimination.
The fact is, even with all that has happened, Americans don’t hate Muslims. More Americans are coming to hate Islam and its un-American, radical, oppressive practices, yes. But that distrust of Islam does not necessarily translate into hating individual Muslim people that the average American might meet on the street, in a store, or at their schools, etc.
As a for instance, CNN likely thought they’d have a story of America’s rank discrimination by following a pair of young Muslim men who took a road trip across America. Instead these two men found that America still has open arms for strangers in need.
One of the young men enthused that the America that welcomes immigrants still exists. “It was also remarkable to have people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, ‘just bend over backwards and be friendly to us,’” said Ali, one of the cross-country traveling pair.
After all, when people act like reasonable folks — as these two young men obviously were — Americans are always willing to welcome them as a neighbor and friend. That is how America works!
The fact is America doesn’t hate “Muslims” per se. America hates radical Islam a political/religious ideology that oppresses people, justifies hate and violence, and seeks to destroy all those ideals that America holds dear.
On this ninth anniversary of the criminal actions of radical Islam on 9/11 America has not lost any of its most closely held principles. But we are not going to just sleep walk through the attempt by radical Islamists to destroy us either.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
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