Islamophobia and Islamophilia: If It Bleeds, It Leads

And now, for my own "if it bleeds, it leads" story:

"I have no problem cursing out an unpatriotic treasonous piece of garbage." -- pro-Mosque man to an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor, at an anti-mosque rally.

Yes, shockingly, there is more to report on the smoldering (err, raging? throbbing?) mosque debate and the media's resultant, unquestioning Islamophilia.

The other day, the oh-so enlightened, clearly not Islamophobic Huffington Post picked up and posted YouTube footage of an anti-mosque rally in NYC.

HuffPo's headline? "Anti-Islamic Center Protesters Harass Random African-American Man."

The title of the video posted on YouTube was "Anti-Muslim rally" (lest there be any doubt about the poster's politics).

The video clip shows a black man wearing a skull cap (and an unusual medallion) slowly making his way through a crowd of mosque protesters. All is well until one of the protesters approaches the skull cap man for about oh, two blinks of an eye.

Whatever she says to him, and whatever he says back, we can't hear. But immediately afterward, the background noise is instantly, serendipitously(?) filtered out. We can see and hear the skull-cap man get really angry as he shouts out provocative expletives. (video length: about 4.5 minutes)



At least one of the protesters politely intervenes and talks another one down (if you listen hard, you'll hear a woman trying to calm Mr. Hard Hat, as she says, "don't give him your power").

It's hard to believe the protesters got so upset with a random, strolling "African American man" without any provocation whatsoever. But who knows? Maybe these folks were nonviolently demonstrating and became just a bit more vocal when Mr. skull-cap appeared.

Still, despite any meaningful or accurate context (remember Breitbart's Sherrod crucifixion?), the mainstream media reported on this exchange extensively and its coverage was way overblown.

It was widely reported in an attempt to show that anyone who is against the Ground Zero mosque is a sheer, should-be-committed, intolerant racist lunatic.

It wasn't a particularly effective strategy, but whatever. They tried.

Now then.

Compare that tape to this one, where a mosque supporter goes after an 82-year old holocaust survivor who objects to the Ground Zero mosque, at an anti-mosque rally. (And no, I'm not being melodramatic. Watch the clip.)

(Content warning: extreme profanity. Before you hit "play" get your kids out of the kitchen. Seriously.)



Granted, we have the same problem we did with skullcap-harassed-man: context. We don't know what came before, what was edited, what was spliced.

But we do know the conduct of the profanity-spouting mosque supporter was newsworthy. Undeniably so, given the wide coverage of random-strolling skullcap-man.

And we do know that this "curse-the-old-Jew-man" video wasn't covered by the mainstream media, widely or at all.

On a brighter note: our national IQ (as expressed by the percentage of the U.S. population that has little, if any, confidence in "mainstream" media)? 75 percent.