Alex Seitz-Wald is a writer for Salon who has long made it clear where he stands with regard to Rep. Michele Bachmann’s concerns about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. Government in general and about Huma Abedin in particular. He’s a Huma defender who has stood with and espoused the views of other Huma defenders like James Zogby and Faiz Shakir respectively.
Now, Seitz-Wald has decided to psychoanalyze Islamophobes and concludes that they have “hacked the media”.
Via Salon:
In the months following 9/11, Republican President George W. Bush spoke passionately about the need to respect Muslim-Americans and “the vibrant faith of Islam, which inspires countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality.” This year, every Republican presidential candidate united in seeing Islamic Shariah law as a threat to the United States, despite a total lack of evidence.
Anti-Muslim attitudes are now much higher than they were immediately following 9/11. Islamophobic rhetoric once unacceptable in public discourse is now commonplace. And there are now over 50 controversies raging across the country about whether Muslims should be allowed to construct houses of worship. How did we get from there to here?
Part of it is that anti-Muslim fringe groups have learned how to essentially hack the media by taking advantage of the fact that reporters are drawn to highly visible displays of emotion and fear, argues Christopher Bail, a sociologist who studies the media at the University of North Carolina and University of Michigan.
Lost on Seitz-Wald (perhaps intentionally) is the large number of red flags raised by his own writing. If George W. Bush went out of his way to defend Muslim-Americans, how does Seitz-Wald excuse Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf for not having a similar level of sensitivity when it came to constructing the Ground Zero mosque? It was quite intolerant of Rauf to push for that despite so many objections, was it not?
You see how this works? When one side goes out of its way to bridge the divide and the other side doesn’t, it’s the former’s fault when it doesn’t work. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.
Right?
Oh, and assuming that Seitz-Wald’s premise is correct, that anti-Muslim attitudes have become worse, what has caused that? Could it be the more than 20,000 Jihadist attacks (and climbing) since 9/11?
As Seitz-Wald grasps for answers as to why the Islamophobes have been able to ‘hack’ the media, he cites the work of a sociologist who reaches a conclusion that is beyond laughable:
Part of it is that anti-Muslim fringe groups have learned how to essentially hack the media by taking advantage of the fact that reporters are drawn to highly visible displays of emotion and fear, argues Christopher Bail, a sociologist who studies the media at the University of North Carolina and University of Michigan.
Uh, in citing Bail’s research, Seitz-Wald actually describes the essence of Pallywood perfectly. If melodrama can be found anywhere, it’s in western news reports that feature the staged scenes and false narratives that come from Palestinian stringers. CNN recently had to retract two stories along such lines.
Read the entire column if you’d like an exercise in projection.