Why was that sign in English?

Friday's TIA Daily made an excellent point and linked to a column that are both pertinent to a story I saw on a quick scan of this morning's paper. Robert Tracinski drew the following parallel between media coverage of the Cold War and its coverage of the current one.

[T]his is the pattern I have been noticing. Succumbing to an intellectual inertia too strong to deny, left-leaning institutions are falling back into their decades-long habit of deference to any enemy of America, giving the same softball coverage to Islam that they once gave to Communism.

Tracinski then directs the reader to a piece by Diana West, and quotes the following.

Way back when I was a cub reporter at this newspaper, I got hold of a book about the 'art' of interviewing. It was a thin book. There was no use spending thousands of words to tell a reporter, cub or old Grizzly, to bone up on a subject and let natural curiosity take its course. That thin book came to mind on reading a three-part series in the New York Times about an imam named Reda Shata who presides over the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, NY. As far as the art of interviewing goes, the reporter got it exactly backward: Thousands of words; negligible expertise; and no curiosity. 'What I may see as terrorism, you may not see that way,' Mr. Shata says. What does he mean by that? The reporter doesn't tell us. Hamas is a powerful symbol of resistance, he says; the assassinated Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin was the 'martyred' 'lion of Palestine,' he sermonizes; and yet the imam says he condemns all violence. How does he square that? She doesn't tell us.

If this doesn't sound bad enough, it will when you consider that this lackadaisical attitude permeates every aspect of news coverage of the current war and is so pervasive that it even distorts coverage of local events.

Take as an example this short news story about an anti-cartoon "rally" that occurred in Houston yesterday, "Muslims rally in Houston to decry cartoons." I will quote it in its entirety here, supplying a just a few things (bracketed and in bold) the reporter, Barbara Karkabi, ought to have at least thought about, but which she leaves as an exercise for the reader instead.

More than 100 Muslim men, women and children rallied Friday at City Hall to praise the Prophet Muhammad as a peaceful man and to criticize Danish cartoons portraying him as violent. [Would any one of them please explain how their "prophet" conducted caravan raids and started wars "peacefully". We can then discuss a few other matters, like the "prophet's" mental health, if they ever do. And then we can compare the Danish cartoons to a few "peaceful" Islamic ones. And then we can ask why the Houston Chronicle STILL hasn't printed even the mildest one of these cartoons, so we all at least know what this tizzy is all about. ]

Organizers said they wanted Houstonians to understand who Muhammad was and what he means to Muslims. [Indeed. That is what they said. A reporter ought to determine whether that is what they did. Or was this a propaganda effort? I have some further thoughts on such matters here.]

"On the one hand (the cartoons) are an insult, like a punch in the stomach," said Hyder Ali Syed, a pharmacist and one of the organizers of Houston's Muslims for Peace and Justice, a newly formed coalition. [And why should anyone be so worked up about a mere "punch in the stomach" -- if even that is true -- with the matter of a "plane in the tower" or two still unresolved? And are said punch and plane even phenomena of the same kind as Hyder Ali implies? And who are the "Muslims for Peace and Justice"? Are they a cell -- er branch -- of the Canadian group of the same name touted in The Marxist-Leninist Daily? Have they ties to CAIR, which even some Moslem commentators have said is a tool of the Wahabi sect?]

"On the other hand, the reverence we have for him stems from the fact that he taught us a way of life and all the positives that you can imagine," Syed said. "He reformed society and brought in so many changes for the good." [I need not "imagine" the changes to the New York Skyline that some of Mohammed's (just desserts be upon his followers) acolytes wrought. Would Mr. Syed regard these as "positives" or is he saving that term for the more thorough devastation being "imagined" by the Islamic regime feverishly building nuclear weapons in Iran?]

The coalition includes the Islamic Education Center, the Al-Ghadeer Education Foundation and Al-Murtaza. [links added] Participants, who included both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, chanted and marched around City Hall with signs bearing such slogans as "Islam Frees the Soul," "Please Draw Carefully -- We (heart) Our Prophet" and "Abraham, Noah, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad -- peace be upon them." [Donations to Islamic charities have been funelled to terrorists in the past. These web sites, to be such champions of outreach, are useless to non-Moslems, but they all do ask for donations in English. Why? And "Please Draw Carefully"??!?! What would the holder of that sign have said to an American telling some of the more violent cartoon protesters from around the world to "Please draw your scimitar carefully"? Why do we have to watch what we in the West say while Moslems can pretty much do as they please? We'll get to the subject of the sudden love-fest between the two main sects of Islam in a moment. (But it is at least newsworthy, if grossly underreported.)]

Protests over the cartoons swept the Islamic world in January and early February. Syed said they had discussed a local protest earlier, but were spurred into action by the Feb. 22 bombing of the Al-Askariya Mosque in Samarra, Iraq. [Were they afraid that something like burning the Danish Consulate here in Houston would cause them problems? On a more serious note, why was the mosque bombing, of all things, a reason to protest over the Danish cartoons again? Shouldn't that be a spur for Moslems to ask themselves why it is so easy to provoke them to start killing each other? (And my God, was the lame joke I made in that link comically prescient!)]

"We had one insult to our holy personality the prophet and now the mosque, where the descendants of the prophet are buried is destroyed," he explained. [Earth to "Mister" Syed: Your Moslem "brothers" bombed that mosque. Consider whether the "prophet's" own teachings might have led to that. If so, why do you complain? If not, why not board a plane to Iraq and educate them?]

But he told the gathering that it was not the time for animosity. Muslims need to encourage understanding between religions and be calm and open-minded, he said. [The Sunnis and Shiites could start by trying to understand each other for longer than it takes to band together against the Great Satan for an afternoon. Why are they clearly evading this issue?]

The peaceful, educational event ended with prayer after five speakers. Fliers about Islam were distributed, as well as translations of the Quran. [Why was this event so much more "peaceful" than so many others in so many Moslem countries? And again, given how safe all the participants of this rally were, how many of them thought to show their own open-mindedness by reading up on the writings of Thomas Jefferson, et al.?]

"We respect freedom of speech, but there has to be guidelines followed that respect other religions, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish," said Fatima Ali, a woman who attended the rally. "There is so much conflict and distrust, the world is not a friendly place. We all need to take care not to push people to the limit and to try not to do things that might hurt others." [Is this last a symptom of a very strange definition of "hurt others", or a threat, or both? And I set aside how, exactly, there can be such a thing as freedom of speech when every time you open your mouth someone can decide he is offended enough to start killing people. But to make this point, the Chronicle would have to actually, say, print a cartoon alongside some of the carnage it was used to excuse.]

And if I sound bit like I'm venting, I am. But how can any sentient being in the crosshairs of Islam read an article like that and not be incensed?

I think it was the picture that appeared in the print edition that really got my goat. The picture shows two women covered from head to toe in black, medieval garb with only their faces showing, holding a placard that read -- in English of course -- "BOMBING SHRINE IS A CRIME" [sic]. The caption was "EDUCATING THE PUBLIC: Sara Jafri and Mahjaben Naqvi participate in the Friday rally at Hermann Square." [Why is that sign in English? Why is it informing Americans that bombing a building they never touched is a crime? What does this have to do with the cartoons? At all? Why is that sign being waved about? At all?]

Educating? Educating! Pul-leeze! First off, military attacks on buildings are not criminal acts. They are acts of war. But since the damage done to the "shrine" in question is mere vandalism compared to what was done in New York in 2001 to two actual shrines, let's assume they were telling Americans that vandalism is not a nice thing. Do Americans not know that? Did Americans even touch that "shrine"?

The only "public" that needs "educating" is in Iraq and I wish these busybodies would get over there post haste and begin "educating" them, preferably with Ms. Karkabi in tow as an embedded reporter. If they survive the trip into that "peaceful" Islamic country, I would at least be able to feel some shred of respect for them.

I have hardly scratched the surface here. Reporting like this is aid and comfort to a clear enemy of America.

With "news" media like these, we must make damn sure that alternative media remain available or we will lose this war. The mainstream media is perhaps beyond saving.

-- CAV