A lot of the coverage of the shootings at the Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland TX yesterday is treating Pamela Geller as some kind of free speech hero. The New York Times, for instance, identifies Geller’s Islamophobia but promptly gives her a platform to spew intolerant ideas:
Pamela Geller, an outspoken anti-Islam activist and an organizer of the event, said the group decided to hold the event in the Curtis Culwell Center because members had heard that a Muslim group had a conference in the same room after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office.
Ms. Geller described Sunday’s event as pro-free speech, and said that Muslims had become a “special class” that Americans were no longer allowed to offend.
“The media is self-enforcing a Shariah,” she said, referring to Islamic law. “Under the Shariah you cannot criticize or offend Islam.”
Geller also got to be feisty n fuzzy on CNN today. She was interviewed speaking passionately for the First Amendment’s protection of “offensive” speech and then Jeffrey Toobin described her in almost affectionate terms. She knew just what she was doing, he said.
“Perhaps it was a dumb idea for her to do it,” he ventured. “Is it good judgment? Does it contribute to a better political or religious dialogue? That’s debatable.”
While on MSNBC, Thomas Roberts gave the microphone to Katrina Pierson of the Tea Party, a supporter of the cartoons event, to say, “The whole world knows how intolerant Islam is.”
It is a sad measure of the amount of Islamophobia in our country that all these people are given a podium to hold forth. The media really ought to be more careful about who they’re jumping to defend. Geller is not attacking jihadists. She is attacking a world religion, with more than 1 billion adherents, and saying that that religion is essentially evil. And she’s on US TV! Why aren’t these reporters explaining this?
Imagine the neo-Nazis who marched in Skokie, IL, getting mainstream press microphones to deny the Holocaust. Imagine David Duke getting treated respectfully on national television as he promotes the international Jewish conspiracy theory of how the world works. It would never happen.
We are not speaking here about the First Amendment. Of course, Pamela Geller has the right to put up cartoons. This is about the place given to Islamophobes in the media. “Thank you for your insights,” Thomas Roberts said on MSNBC after Pierson spewed hate. The media would never perform this service for people who hate Christians or Jews. Jeff Toobin wouldn’t ask whether neo-Nazi ideas are “debatable.”
Moreover, they might actually examine Geller’s beliefs, without consulting her about them, to explain who she is. And they might even talk about the pro-Israel agenda. As it is, they are putting her forward as some kind of courageous American eccentric, like Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
On WNYC this morning, Brian Lehrer got a bit deeper, but he went easy on the group’s hate speech:
This activist group that held the Muhammad cartoon contest [is]… a political group with a political agenda. Openly pro-Israel. nothing wrong with being pro-Israel. Very conservative in their views, though. Listed as a hate group by… the Southern Poverty Law Center…. They’re just trying to depict the Prophet in a satirical way in order to be in their face…They call it a freedom of expression event in Texas…
And then, only half-joking:
After this incident, should the PEN American Center consider giving the freedom of expression courage award for next year to maybe Pamela Geller’s group?
We wonder how that joke plays to Muslims.
Some 18,000,000 Americans are Muslims.These are who geller and co are insulting.
Islam is the third-largest faith in the United States, after Christianity and Judaism. It is followed by 0.6% of the population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States
It is not a good idea to piss off that many people.There is bound to be a nutcase or two amongst them.I don,t think the us msm is doing geller any favours giving her a platform to hurl insults and abuse at so many people and I am just talking about US Muslims.
Imagine if a muslim , or anyone else for that matter insulted Judaism in this manner.Not that they are to be given a platform to do so.Abe foxman would be up in arms.Btw , where is he on this episode.
no, it’s not debatable. it’s not intended to ‘contribute to a better political or religious dialogue’. (Toobin is a certifiable moron, btw.)
imagine muslims in Odessa, texas holding a public conference on the topic of ‘Kris Kyle: hero or cold blooded killer?’ imagine all the free speech advocates in texas defending the right to host that debate.
I guess that Pam Geller and Geert Wilders serve the agenda of the 1% and the MIC. Were they doing the equivalent of falsely shouting fire in a theater?
“Schenck was later limited by Brandenburg v. Ohio, which ruled that speech could only be banned when it was directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot), the test which remains until this day. Despite Schenck being limited, the phrase “shouting fire in a crowded theater” has since come to be known as synonymous with an action that the speaker believes goes beyond the rights guaranteed by free speech, reckless or malicious speech, or an action whose outcomes are blatantly obvious.”
http://freespeech.wikia.com/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater
Sad day for America. Sad day for “freedom of speech”.
I feel sorry for the local Muslim community and for the millions more that have reason to be frightened. It should be noted that the local Muslim community stayed away from the “contest”. 2 nutters from AZ descended on this obnoxious event and the rest is history.
It also seems that this stupid “contest” was timed to coincide with awarding the PEN American Center’s Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo in New York on Tuesday.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/05/04/404215444/charlie-hebdo-staffer-pushes-back-against-writers-opposition-to-award
Imagine a cartoon contest to draw the most hideous caricature of a Jew, a la Die Sturmer for example. Would this be characterized as an “exercise in free speech”, as “hate speech”, as “incitement to violence” (but whose violence?), or what?
The deliberate attempt, by full frontal public speech or “art” to attack the sensibilities of any people should be viewed as “hate speech” whether or not made subject to civil or criminal penalties. if someone is hurt in a business like this from the fully (if sadly) predictable violent response that we’ve seen, there should at least be civil damages agasint the organizer (Geller, here).
Little boys, it is sometimes said, like to pull the wings off flies. But it is not nice, not to be encouraged. Fie on the press for not taking this line in the first paragraph and skipping all the other paragraphs.
These constitution defenders have as much trouble reading the 1st Amendment as they have reading the 2nd Amendment. The 1st Amendment has something in there about freedom of religion along with freedom of speech, just like the 2nd Amendment has something in there about a well ordered militia along with the freedom to bear arms.
Insulting a minority religion is absolutely protected by the 1st Amendment, and those people had a right to put up those childish cartoons and chuckle at them, but really, if the whole point was to prove that they have the right to insult whoever they want, then they could have had any other number of contests to see who could be the most insulting to Jesus, Chris Kyle, or any other number of sacred cows in our country. It is really pretty cowardly to gang up on Muslims here, where Christianity is the main religion. But Geller and company have a right to do it. And I have a right to call them bullies and cowards..