October 31, 2002: Today's recommended reading is another rant by the inimitable Ann Coulter, America's most sexy conservative commentator and anti-liberal provocateur. Today's 750 words of Coulter bombast is entitled Media Muslim Makeovers!. And Ms Coulter takes on the mainstream media's recent proclivity to, ahem, under-report certain biographical details about the beltway snipers.
In Ann Coulter's words, here's the basic problem:
After all the speculation about the sniper terrorizing Maryland and Virginia, at last we have some cold hard facts. He is a Muslim. He converted to Islam 17 years ago. He changed his name to John Muhammad. He belonged to Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. He cheered the terrorist attack of Sept. 11. He registered his getaway vehicle with the DMV on the anniversary of Sept. 11 -- writing down the time of registration as 8:52 a.m.
Naturally, therefore, the mainstream media have decided the crucial, salient fact about sniper John Muhammad is that he is a Gulf War veteran. Thus, the New York Times described the snipers as: "John Allen Muhammad, 41, a Gulf War veteran, and John Lee Malvo, 17, a Jamaican."
Of course, it's always informative to learn when Gulf War veterans and recent visitors to the U.S. from faraway Jamaica take up the unwholesome sport of sniping at humans. However, it is also important to know the key background facts which might at least partially explain the decision of such individuals to choose such a murderous blood sport. In other words, let's have at least a bit of profiling here from the New York Times and Washington Post. Never mind the usual apologist, sob-story biographical details about race, poverty and homelessness. Being there, done that. And we still believe O.J. did it, and murderers like this deserve the death penalty.
No, this time let's have the salient facts about conversions to Islam, about Louis Farrakahn's hate-filled, racist organization, and about bureaucratic blunders by over-tolerant INS toadies. Let's hear about the real "root causes" that are helping turn American society into such a moral sinkhole.
Elsewhere, our own contributing editor Marni Soupcoff has articulated the true problem with liberal-left media organs such as the Times and Post, and in even more salient terms than Ann Coulter. As Marni Soupcoff puts the problem in a searing American Enterprise Magazine Online commentary:
Under normal circumstances, left-wing pundits and media personalities love nothing more than complaining about America's "culture of violence." After the gruesome Oklahoma City Bombings, commentators and reporters worked themselves into a frenzy blaming right-wing "extremists," conservative talk radio, and the National Rifle Association for creating the culture of aggression that allowed Timothy McVeigh to shed so much blood. The idea was that by criticizing the federal government and advocating gun rights, prominent "right wingers" like NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre and radio favorite Rush Limbaugh had produced an environment where a homicidal Tim McVeigh could grow.
Now, whether or not you agree with the media's reasoning -- that environmental factors and influences are so strong they create an atmosphere that causes people to do outrageous things -- is up to you. Personally, I think it's a little like blaming Ralph Nader for Winona Ryder's shoplifting incident. Yes, Ralph is a consumer advocate who criticizes big corporations, but that doesn't mean he's responsible for a spoiled actress lifting a $5,000 hat from Saks.
But I digress. The point is, if you are going to buy into the whole idea of a culture of violence, as most of the liberal media clearly does, then surely the time to talk about such a culture and its impact is in the days after violent sniper attacks have killed ten and wounded three in the DC area.
Yet the media have been strangely silent on the matter of the atmosphere and the culture that led to Mr. Muhammed and Mr. Malvo's deadly attacks.
Iconoclast's caustic contributing editor notes that it wasn't long after the arrest of the sniper duo that we learned that the duo had talked sympathetically about the 9/11 hijackers, that John Allen Muhammed was a strong believer in Islam, and that Muhammed had provided security at the Million Man March -- the much-publicized event organized by Nation of Islam leader and noted anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. And of couse, we have recently learned that Mr. Muhammed and his illegal-immigrant sidekick borrowed the weapons that were used in a shooting in a Washington State synagogue.
So what, you ask? Well, here's how Iconoclast's wry contributing editor Marni Soupcoff puts it:
Now, you don't have to be a member of Mensa to take a look at these facts and extract a suspicion that maybe it was some of the hate and/or anti-Semitism and/or anti-Americanism and/or glorification of violence of Islamic culture that led to the DC murders. But the members of the media are loath to make the connection. They have reported Muhammed's ties to Islam as though such facts were mundane details we might or might not find of interest:
'The sniper is a former military man who leads a quiet life. He likes peanuts, praying to Allah, and playing checkers. He roots for the Mets, The Islanders, and Islamic terrorists who blow up the World Trade Center. In his spare time, he collects stamps and shoots up synagogues. It is still completely unclear why he might have committed the attacks.'
Those same pundits who were so quick to point the finger at right-wing culture when the Oklahoma federal building was bombed do not dare to similarly connect the dots and point out the contributing role that might have been played by the multitude of Islamofascist and/or anti-American statements and sentiments that have been so insistently expressed since last year's September 11 attacks.
If the media thought Wayne LaPierre's badmouthing federal agents was enough to cause Timothy McVeigh to commit his atrocities, then why aren't they blaming Noam Chomsky's badmouthing of America after September 11th for Mr. Muhammed's attacks? Why aren't they targeting Maxine Waters's anti-American rants? Has no member of the media considered the impact that Louis Farrakhan's speeches about "white supremacy" and Judaism ("a gutter religion") may have had in creating an atmosphere in which the hate and violence demonstrated by John Allen Muhammed might thrive?........
