For Allah’s Sake, Islam Isn’t Evil
By Jessica Hillyard - Oct 15th, 2008 at 10:21 amMatthew Yglesias salutes CNN’s Campbell Brown for consistently calling out some of the idiocies of this election year. A few weeks ago, Brown challenged the McCain-Palin campaign to stop “protecting” vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin from the press. Then she called on McCain to speak out against the hateful attitudes some of his supporters have adopted toward Barack Obama. Now Brown is confronting the ever-present ignorance of those who use the words “Islam” or “Muslim” to denote all that is wrong with the world:
Normally a rather even-keeled news anchor, Brown has turned her role as one of CNN’s main talking heads–complete with her own prime-time program–into quite the soapbox. However, unlike other cable news nitwits who use their platforms to spew untruths, Brown has been raising her voice against some of the unspoken issues of this campaign.
The sad thing about Brown’s point that Muslims are unjustly characterized as fundamentally un-American is that it is has arrived so late in the campaign season which has been dominated, once again, by mere superficialities. Why has such blatant prejudice gone unaddressed? It simply baffles me that so many people are convinced that 1) Barack Obama is an Arab and/or a Muslim, and that 2) if this were true, it would be not only a bad thing, but something that would automatically disqualify him from being a competent president.
It makes me ashamed to think that people believe such lies, which can be so easily disproved with a little attention to a candidate’s biography.
To think that we may be on the verge of electing the first black president, yet we still regard the world’s most popular religion as a cult of evildoers.
This is not the fifteenth century; the Inquisition isn’t mandating religious reform. It’s the information age, and if I had one wish for my fellow Americans it would be that they get some! Here’s a tip: Start with Campbell Brown.
I don’t buy it. “No Bias, No Bull” is another one of those Lou Dobbs, or Bill O’Reilly segments where the “independent” straight talker sticks it to the bad guys. I watched the segment live and it looked like a pathetic acting job to me and she was clearly reading someone else’s words off the teleprompter. The people who think Obama is a closet Muslim probably weren’t convinced either. When did the media become Orwellian voices of truth, objectivity and straight talk? It’s so over the top it’s hardly believable. If you don’t believe me compare this to genuine coverage in alternative media on the issue.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:17 pm