Ironies in Jackson puff piece

"I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man." So said Dr. King on the day before he was murdered in 1968. The quote appears in a photo caption with today's long, largely uncritical piece on Jesse Jackson in the Rocky. Jackson is seen next to King in that picture. M. E. Sprengelmeyer does a pretty good job of recapping Jackson's epic gaffe from this June when his raging jealousy and resentment of Barack Obama burst out in a comment (unknowingly recorded) about wanting to "cut his nuts off." But the article would be better journalism had it given us those four exact words, instead of the delicate euphemism the writer substituted.

Sprengelmeyer also fails to acknowledge the dark side of Jackson's 40-year career as a race-guilt hustler, with all the vast personal enrichment, prestige, and sexual license which are now uncomfortably contrasted with Obama's moral uplift speeches -- and which face extinction if America elects a black President.

That's the real source of Jesse Jackson's hot-mic indiscretion. Unlike MLK, he's worried about plenty, and he fears one man very much. Hence the castration fantasy. CNN's question to viewers a few weeks ago, quoted by Sprengelmeyer, "Has Jesse Jackson become irrelevant?", is in process of coming true with Obama's nomination, and will take hold with cold finality on Nov. 5 if Obama wins.

Another irony in this fawning three-page spread on Jesse the Great cropped up in the sidebar on lessons he allegedly learned from patching up a welfare-reform dispute with Bill Clinton at DNC 1996: "Set aside differences while the television cameras are on, deal with internal squabbles later." Bet he was wishing he'd taken his own advice on the Fox set, after the firestorm broke earlier this summer.

Hey Westword, your PC is showing

So using someone's Arab surname, which she herself often uses, is as bad or worse than that same person interrrupting a US election campaign to pander to a foreign audience with the bogeyman of rich, powerful Jews exerting stealthy influence? And wondering if someone is an ally of Islamists is as bad or worse than that person's long record of acting like an ally of Islamists?

Such is the implication of a scolding directed at me and this blog by Michael Roberts, media critic for Westword, on Tuesday in relation to my weekend posting about the anti-Semitic stance of legislative candidate Rima Barakat Sinclair.

Sinclair lost her Republican primary for HD-6 in Denver last night by a landslide to Joshua Sharf, so she'll soon be no more than a footnote in Colorado political history. Before that happens, though, let's set the record straight about Roberts's accusation of "race- and faith-baiting" by Andrews and Sharf.

Read the rest on my blog at PoliticsWest.com.

Jews slant media, candidate claims

Rima Barakat Sinclair of Denver, born in Jordan, now a US citizen and a Republican candidate for HD6, told a Jordanian newspaper that "wealthy Jewish supporters of Zionism like Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch" are responsible for "the reality of a Western media hostile to Arab and Islamic issues." How exceedingly odd. You'd think Sinclair would be too busy contacting voters here in town to opine on global Zionist influence for the home folks in Amman. What does this inflammatory allegation have to do with her aspiration to be a state legislator in Colorado? What is her evidence for it? And where does it fit in with her claim to be a Republican, a free enterpriser, and a voice of tolerance?

Sinclair's interview with the Jordanian paper, Al Arab Al-Yawm, appears in Arabic here. An English translation, made locally in Denver, is posted here.

The latter link is to the blog of Joshua Sharf, who's running against Sinclair in the GOP primary next Tuesday, Aug. 12. Below is the Sinclair translation in context, from Sharf's website. The boldface emphasis is mine.

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EXCERPT FROM JSHARF.COM... VIEW FROM A HEIGHT BLOG

More from Rima's big adventure, the email chat session with the Jordanian newspaper.

We are aware that the Arab media influence on Western society is limited, and we also know that the Arab issues are not fairly covered in the western media. There are many Arab American organizations that provide activities aimed at the definition of truth and justice the Palestinian cause.

The source of activities in non-Arab countries, which were founded some 20 years ago, has remained limited within the point of view and vision of the founding members of those organizations. Most have focused their efforts in Washington DC, leaving their influence on public opinion and American media deflated.

There are several factors affecting the ability of Arabs to launch publicity campaigns to explain the issue and win the American people to their side. One of them was the lack of interest by Arab tycoons or companies in producing films or television program available for worldwide sale. This is the reverse of the actions taken by a number of wealthy Jewish supporters of Zionism like Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch. So media campaigns advocating for Arabs or Muslims in America are limited to the efforts of individuals or small enterprises that suffer most from financial difficulties and limited distribution.

The reality of a Western media hostile to Arab and Islamic issues will not change as long as Arabs are only waiting for the West to see the "right," one day, without developing an integrated effort to deliver their message. A dialogue of religions is needed, and part of the Divine message is that the powerful should have compassion for the weak.

Ideally, morality starts with tolerance of others and self-understanding. If people applied this principle in their own lives, it would solve many of their problems. What applies to individuals applies to relations between nations. But reality dictates that the strong decide what is "right." It is the duty of the victim to remind the strong that he didn't consider the effects of his unjust abuse. Therefore, it remains important that one talk with a strong knowledge of his thinking and point of view. This does not mean forgetting or abandoning the right.

The Saudi Madrid initiative has received wide and positive media coverage, especially by the one rabbi invited to the conference. And since Saudi Arabia began and will continue this initiative, it is preferable to encourage religious scholars and Islamic institutions to study and support such initiatives, instead of having the positive reaction only or participating in conferences organized to discuss Islam by non-Muslims. [End of Rima Sinclair comments to Jordanian paper]

Slips showing in Correctness Party

"Are bloggers journalists?" asked media critic Jason Salzman on the Rocky's opinion page, Mar. 29. Some are, some aren't, he answered delphically. But on the evidence of his own paper this weekend, Salzman might better have asked: Are journalists reliable? Can MSM writers and editors be counted on for accuracy in citing easy facts, using good English, and shaping up each other's copy when needed? Not always, it seems.

Inches away from the Salzman column was an oped by Jane Urschel, an education lobbyist and Ph.D., who began with the confident assertion that Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech of 1963 occurred "thirty-five years ago." Rocky columnist Mike Rosen made a similar flub the previous day in placing the November 2006 death of Milton Friedman at "several months" ago in November 2007.

The weekend's best pot & kettle moment came when the ultra-assured Garrison Keillor, writing next to Urschel on Saturday, mentioned "the Puritans who I am descended from" -- any 6th grader knows that pronoun should be "whom" -- but then a few lines later lit into someone who used "me and him" as the subject of a sentence.

Keillor summed up smugly, "I belong to the Correctness Party, the party of good spellers, of people who pay attention to details," and couldn't resist adding that this makes him infinitely superior to President Bush, "intellectually... a charity case all his life."

Right you are as usual, Garrison. Ask not for "who" the charity bell tolls; it tolls for "thou." Then again, what business is it of mine, a mere slapdash blogger, to dare correct you and all the other unerring MSM journalists?

Wild swirls, no; wild girls, no problem

On Fox News the other night, Oct. 19, there was a discussion between Greta Van Susteren and Laura Ingraham about "Girls Gone Wild,"the national TV show that features such debauchery as inebriated 18-year-old girls flashing the camera with their bare breasts. Ms. Ingraham expressed the view that such displays are a demeaning exploitation of women (true). Yet Ms. Van Susteren held that such activities could not and should not be stopped owing to 1st Amendment constitutional liberties (which is also true). The question to ask is this: why is not Joe Francis doing a "Saudi Arabian Girls Gone Wild" version of his show? Probably because he knows it would be suicidal. That again is true -- and it's a direct, if extreme, extension of Laura Ingraham's point.

Greta Van Susteren, the apparent secularist, has subconsciously embraced the progressive view that does two things in cases like this.

One, it substitutes legalism for morality. This is the principal reason the ACLU is working diligently to sever the Judeo-Christian roots of our society. It seeks to enhance the idea that activist judges are the ones to determine good and evil. This would pave the way to euthanasia of the aged and handicapped, as well as wholesale abortion; an overall devaluation of life such as we see in Holland today. Though the ACLU paints itself as a "defender of liberty," what they really wish to do is install a progressive, elitist governance of our society by those (themselves) who "know better what's good for us".

Secondly, progressivism assumes there could only be a governmental solution to such an issue and reaches for it.

Laura Ingraham, by contrast, advocates public outrage to shut such programs down. The purveyors of the various degrees of X ratings would never show restraint unless pressured to do so, or when faced with broad moral disapproval such as there still is (we'll see for how long) against pedophilia and bestiality.

The liberal media is manifestly terrified of religious and moral condemnation when its originates from the Islamics. Muslim fury at the slightest perceived insult has even the most ardent liberals running for cover. A recent example was Islamic objection to an ad for ice cream cones because the swirls on top looked something like the Arabic for "Allah." Certainly, then, a "Saudi Arabian Girls Gone Wild" is out of the question.

And if our Western Civilization is to survive, at some point the "Girls Gone Wild" should be out of the question here as well. The corollaries of illegimate births, smashed lives and the poverty of single mom households are not a good thing.