Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 133

NYT v. the world: WikiLeaks coverage

(updated below - Update II)

To supplement my post yesterday about The New York Times' government-subservient coverage of the WikiLeaked documents regarding the war that newspaper played such a vital role in enabling, consider -- beyond the NYT's sleazy, sideshow-smears against Julian Assange -- the vast disparity between how newspapers around the world and The New York Times reported on a key revelation from these documents:  namely, that the U.S. systematically and pursuant to official policy ignored widespread detainee abuse and torture by Iraqi police and military (up to and including murders).  In fact, American conduct goes beyond mere indifference into active complicity, as The Guardian today reports that "fresh evidence that US soldiers handed over detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad has emerged in army logs published by WikiLeaks."

Media outlets around the world prominently highlighted this revelation, but not The New York Times:

BBC:

The Guardian: Al Jazeera:

 Hindustan Times:

Even Politico acknowledged and trumpeted this fact:

By stark and deliberate contrast, here's how The New York Times framed these revelations to its readers (h/t Remi Brulin):

 

Three cheers for the U.S.!  While a handful of American soldiers -- a few bad apples -- may have abused Iraqi detainees in hellholes like Abu Ghraib, those detainees "fared worse in Iraqi hands," so we weren't as bad as the new Iraqi tyrants were.  That's the way The New York Times chose to frame these revelations.  And while that article mentions in passing that "most [abuse cases] noted in the archive seemed to have been ignored, with the equivalent of an institutional shrug," the vast bulk of the article focuses on Iraqi rather than American wrongdoing and even includes substantial efforts to exculpate the American role ("American soldiers, however, often intervened").  

The difference in how (a) the NYT "reported on" -- i.e., whitewashed -- these horrific, incriminating revelations about the U.S. and (b) the rest of the world media reported on it, could not be more vast.  Again, even Politico understood its significance, as this was the first line of its article:  "Newly released Iraq war documents paint a devastating portrait of apparent U.S. indifference to a pattern of murder and torture by the Iraqi army, raising new questions about the Obama administration's plans to transfer the nation's security operations to Iraqi units."  But the NYT in its headline chose to venerate the superiority of American detainee treatment, while barely mentioning one of the most critical revelations from this leak.

Similarly, newspapers around the world heavily covered the fact that the U.N. chief investigator for torture called on the Obama administration to formally investigate this complicity in Iraqi abuse, pointing out that "if leaked US files on the Iraq conflict point to clear violations of the UN convention against torture, Barack Obama's administration has a clear obligation to investigate them," and that "under the conventions on human rights there is an obligation for states to criminalise every form of torture, whether directly or indirectly, and to investigate any allegations of abuse."   Today, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister called on the British Government to fulfill that obligation by formally investigating the role British troops might have played in "the allegations of killings, torture and abuse in Iraq."

But these calls for investigations -- and the U.N.'s explanation of the legal obligation to do so -- are virtually nonexistent in the American media.  The only mention in the NYT of the U.N.'s statement is buried deep down in a laundry list of short items on one of its blogs.  Along with most American media outlets, The Washington Post has no mention of this matter at all (while whitewashing American guilt, the NYT -- in the form of Judy Miller's former partner, Michael Gordon -- prominently trumpeted from the start of its coverage the "interference" in Iraq by Iran in aiding "Iraqi militias," a drum Gordon has been dutifully beating for years).  

The notion that the Obama administration not only should -- but must -- investigate the role its military played in enabling this widespread, stomach-turning torture and abuse in Iraq is simply suppressed in American political discourse, most of all by the newspaper which played the leading role in enabling the attack on that country in the first place.  It's not hard to see why.  The last thing American political and media elites in general want is a discussion of the legal obligations to investigate torture and bring the torturers to legal account, and the last thing which enablers of the Iraq War specifically want is a focus on how we not only allowed but participated in the very human rights abuses which we claimed (and still claim) our invasion would stop.

 

UPDATE:  Note, too, how the NYT in its article on brutal detainee abuse steadfastly avoids using the word "torture" to describe what was done, consistent with its U.S.-Government-serving formal policy of refusing to use that word where U.S. policy is involved.  By stark contrast, virtually every other media account uses that term to describe the heinous abuse of detainees chronicled by this leak, the only term that accurately applies:  see The Guardian ("American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes"); BBC (US "ignored Iraq torture"); Politico ("a devastating portrait of apparent U.S. indifference to a pattern of murder and torture by the Iraqi army").  BoingBoing appropriately mocks the NYT's increasingly humiliating no-"torture" policy by creating a euphemism-generator.

 

UPDATE II:  The Daily Beast has an extraordinary article today by Ellen Knickmeyer, who was The Washington Post's Baghdad Chief during much of the war.  The headline of the article is "WikiLeaks Exposes Rumsfeld's Lies," and she writes:  "Thanks to Wikileaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission exploded."  She documents how WikiLeaked documents prove that Rumsfeld and other top military and political officials outright lied about the state of Iraq in 2006.

This is the type of language which the NYT and Washington Post would never, ever use; it's undoubtedly true that Knickmeyer could not have written this if she were still at the Post.  Our leading establishment news outlets use far more deference and respect and muted language when talking about High Government Officials.  They'll unleash a slew of insults about Julian Assange's mental health and alleged personality faults -- and viciously malign anyone who lacks power in their world -- but they would never dare use language like this when talking about a political or military official who wields power.  Knickmeyer had to leave the Post in order to speak the truth this way.

The Nixonian henchmen of today: at the NYT

(updated below)

After Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, exposing the lies, brutality and inhumanity that drove America's role in the Vietnam War, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger infamously plotted to smear his reputation and destroy his credibility.  As History Commons puts it in its richly documented summary of those events:  

President Nixon authorizes the creation of a "special investigations unit," later nicknamed the "Plumbers," to root out and seal media leaks. The first target is Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press (see June 13, 1971); the team will burglarize the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding, in hopes of securing information that the White House can use to smear Ellsberg's character and undermine his credibility . . . .

Nixon aide John Ehrlichman passes on the president's recommendations to the heads of the "Plumbers," Egil Krogh and David Young (see July 20, 1971), regarding "Pentagon Papers" leaker Daniel Ellsberg (see Late June-July 1971). . . . Within days, Keogh and Young will give Ehrlichman a memo detailing the results of investigations into Ellsberg and a dozen of Ellsberg's friends, family members, and colleagues. . . .

This weekend, WikiLeaks released over 400,000 classified documents of the Iraq War detailing genuinely horrific facts about massive civilian death, U.S. complicity in widespread Iraqi torture, systematic government deceit over body counts, and the slaughter of civilians by American forces about which Daniel Ellsberg himself said, as the New York Times put it: "many of the civilian deaths there could be counted as murder."

Predictably, just as happened with Ellsberg, there is now a major, coordinated effort underway to smear WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, and to malign his mental health -- all as a means of distracting attention away from these highly disturbing revelations and to impede the ability of WikiLeaks to further expose government secrets and wrongdoing with its leaks.  But now, the smear campaign is led not by Executive Branch officials, but by members of the establishment media.  As the intelligence community reporter Tim Shorrock wrote today on Twitter:  "When Dan Ellsberg leaked [the] Pentagon Papers, Nixon's henchmen tried to destroy his reputation. Today w/Wikileaks & Assange, media does the job."

Yesterday, Assange walked out of an interview with CNN, which he thought had been arranged to discuss the significance of the Iraq War revelations, because the CNN "reporter" seemed interested in asking only about petty, vapid rumors about Assange himself, not the substance of the leaks.  The Nation's Greg Mitchell summarized that interview this way:  "Assange to CNN: 'Do you want to talk about deaths of 104,000 people or my personal life?'"  CNN's answer could not have been clearer:  the latter, definitely.

But the low point of this smear campaign was led by The New York Times' John Burns, who authored a sleazy hit piece on Assange -- filled with every tawdry, scurrilous tabloid rumor about him -- that was (and still is) prominently featured in the NYT, competing for attention with the stories about the leaked documents themselves, and often receiving more attention.  Here's the current iteration of the front page of the NYT website, with the Assange story receiving top billing:

It shouldn't be surprising that Burns is filling the role played in 1971 by Henry Kissinger and John Ehrichman.  His courageous and high-quality war reporting from Iraq notwithstanding, it's long been clear from his U.S.-glorifying accounts that Burns was one of the media's most enthusiastic supporters of the occupation of Iraq.  That's why even the NYT-hating necons regularly lavished him (along with Judy Miller's partner, Michael Gordon) with uncharacteristic praise (National Review's Michael Ledeen:  "Rich [Lowry, Editor of National Review] and I share an admiration for Michael Gordon, one of three (along with Burns and Filkens) NYT reporters who really work hard to get the Iraqi story right").  To justify and excuse his and his media colleagues' gullibility about Iraq, Burns wrote two months ago -- falsely -- that "there were few, if any, who foresaw the extent of the violence that would follow or the political convulsion it would cause in Iraq, America and elsewhere" and that "[w]e could not know then, though if we had been wiser we might have guessed, the scale of the toll the invasion would unleash."

The Iraq War is John Burns' war, and for the crime of making that war look bad, Julian Assange must have his character smeared and his psychiatric health maligned.  Burns -- along with his co-writer Ravi Somaiya -- is happy to viciously perform that function:

Julian Assange moves like a hunted man. . . . He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own as other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends. . . .

Now it is not just governments that denounce him: some of his own comrades are abandoning him for what they see as erratic and imperious behavior, and a nearly delusional grandeur unmatched by an awareness that the digital secrets he reveals can have a price in flesh and blood. . . .

Effectively, as Mr. Assange pursues his fugitive's life, his leadership is enforced over the Internet. Even remotely, his style is imperious. . . .

When Herbert Snorrason, a 25-year-old political activist in Iceland, questioned Mr. Assange's judgment over a number of issues in an online exchange last month, Mr. Assange was uncompromising. "I don't like your tone," he said, according to a transcript. "If it continues, you're out." . . . In an interview about the exchange, Mr. Snorrason's conclusion was stark. "He is not in his right mind," he said.

Mr. Assange's detractors also accuse him of pursuing a vendetta against the United States.  In London, Mr. Assange said America was an increasingly militarized society and a threat to democracy. Moreover, he said, "we have been attacked by the United States, so we are forced into a position where we must defend ourselves."

Richard Nixon and his plumbers could have only dreamed about being able to dispatch journalists to dutifully smear whistle-blowers in this manner.  And all of that is totally independent of the lengthy discussion which Burns predictably includes of the unproven rape and harassment allegations against Assange.  Apparently, faced with hundreds of thousands of documents vividly highlighting stomach-turning war crimes and abuses -- death squads and widespread torture and civilian slaughter all as part of a war he admired for years and which his newspaper did more than any other single media outlet to enable -- John Burns and his NYT editors decided that the most pressing question from this leak is this:  what's Julian Assange really like?  

"Erratic and imperious behavior."  "Delusional grandeur. "Imperious." "A vendetta against the United States." "Not in his right mind."   Burns didn't even bother to break into Assange's psychiatrist's office to smear the whistle-blower as a psychologically ill, America-hating subversive and paranoid narcissist.  He just passed on snide rumors and accusations from disgruntled associates and -- presto -- the Nixonian smear job is complete.  Of course, even for a borderline-sociopath, the guilt that one must experience for having enabled and cheered on a War that led to the amount of human suffering evident in these documents must be immense.  The temptation to smear the messenger is undoubtedly a strong one.  But no matter how much distracting sleaze Burns and his newspaper wallow in and spew at Assange, that damn spot won't come out.

What makes Burns' role here all the more ironic is that he was one of the media ring-leaders who attacked and condemned Michael Hastings for revealing, in Rolling Stone, the truth about the mindset of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was running America's war in Afghanistan.  In the wake of the McChrystal article and resignation, Burns went on right-wing talk radio with Hugh Hewitt and blasted Hastings for violating some unspoken code -- that seems to exist only in Burns' head -- that calls for people like Gen. McChrystal to be protected by journalists from truths that may harm them.  Said Burns of Hastings' article:

I think it's very unfortunate that it has impacted, and will impact so adversely, on what had been pretty good military/media relations. I think, you know, well, this will be debated down the years, the whole issue as to how it came about that Rolling Stone had that kind of access. My unease, if I can be completely frank about this, is that from my experience of traveling and talking to generals, McChrystal, Petraeus and many, many others over the past few years, is that the old on-the-record/off-the-record standard doesn't really meet the case, which is to say that by the very nature of the time you spend with the generals, the same could be said to be true of the time that a reporter spends with anybody in the public eye. There are moments which just don't fit that formula. There are long, informal periods traveling on helicopters over hostile territory with the generals chatting over their headset, bunking down for the night side by side on a piece of rough-hewn concrete. You build up a kind of trust. It's not explicit, it's just there. And my feeling is that it's the responsibility of the reporter to judge in those circumstances what is fairly reportable, and what is not, and to go beyond that, what it is necessary to report.

So when it comes to top Generals running a war, it's the duty of reporters to conceal from the public statements made by the General, even when they're not off-the-record and even when they're clearly relevant, based on the so-called "trust" that a reporter and military officials "build up" together.  But when it comes to people like Julian Assange -- who are not prosecuting American wars but exposing the truth about them (which is supposed to be a journalist's job) -- no such discretion is warranted.  There, everything is fair game, including posing as an amateur psychiatrist issuing diagnoses of mental illness and passing on the most scurrilous accusations about personality, character and psyche.

None of this is to say that WikiLeaks and Assange shouldn't be subject to scrutiny.  Anyone playing a significant role in political life should be, including them.  But Julian Assange's personality traits have absolutely nothing to do with the infinitely more significant revelations of this leak.  They shed zero light on these documents, the authenticity of which is not in question.  Focusing on the tabloid aspects of Assange's personal life can have no effect -- and no purpose -- other than to distract public attention away from the heinous revelations about this war and America's role in it, and to cripple WikiLeaks' ability to secure and disseminate future leaks. 

It's not hard to see why The New York Times, CNN and so many other establishment media outlets are eager to do that.  Serving the Government's interests, siding with government and military officials, and attacking government critics is what they do.  That's their role.  That's what makes them the "establishment media."  Beyond that, the last thing they want is renewed recognition of what an evil travesty the attack on Iraq was, given the vital role they know they played in helping to bring it about and sustain it for all those years (that's the same reason establishment journalists, almost by consensus, opposed any investigations into the Bush crimes they ignored, when they weren't cheering them on).  And by serving as the 2010 version of the White House Plumbers -- acting as attack dogs against the Pentagon's enemies -- they undoubtedly buy themselves large amounts of good will with those in power, always their overarching goal.  It is indeed quite significant and revealing that the John Ehrlichmans and Henry Kissingers of today are found at America's largest media outlets.  Thanks to them, the White House doesn't even need to employ its own smear artists.

* * * * *

The week of November 1, I'll be appearing at several colleges for speaking events.  On Monday, November 1, I'll be in Olympia, Washington, speaking at Puget Sound College on civil liberties and Terrorism in the age of Obama.  On Wednesday, November 3, I'll be at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, speaking on the same topic.  And on Friday, November 5, I'll be at New York Univesrity Law School, speaking about Terrorism and the First Amendment.  I'll post details as the events approach, but they're all free and open to the public, so anyone in those areas is encouraged to attend.

 

UPDATE:  Greg Mitchell reports on CNN's Relibale Sources, starring Howard Kurtz, this morning: 

You will never, ever hear people like Kurtz, or John Burns, using these kinds of disparaging insults for any American political or military official with actual power -- not even (especially not) the ones whose "delusions" about Saddam's nuclear clouds and team of mad chemical scientists and alliances with Al Qaeda caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings, the displacement of millions more, and human suffering and misery on an unimaginable scale.  As Burns explained, with those people:  "You build up a kind of trust. It's not explicit, it's just there. And my feeling is that it's the responsibility of the reporter to judge in those circumstances what is fairly reportable, and what is not, and to go beyond that, what it is necessary to report."

The real danger from NPR's firing of Juan Williams

I'm still not quite over the most disgusting part of the Juan Williams spectacle yesterday:  watching the very same people (on the Right and in the media) who remained silent about or vocally cheered on the viewpoint-based firings of Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Eason Jordan, Peter Arnett, Phil Donahue, Ashleigh Banfield, Bill Maher, Ward Churchill, Chas Freeman, Van Jones and so many others, spend all day yesterday wrapping themselves in the flag of "free expression!!!" and screeching about the perils and evils of firing journalists for expressing certain viewpoints. Even for someone who expects huge doses of principle-free hypocrisy -- as I do -- that behavior is really something to behold. And anyone doubting that there is a double standard when it comes to anti-Muslim speech should just compare the wailing backlash from most quarters over Williams' firing to the muted acquiescence or widespread approval of those other firings.

But there's one point from all of this I really want to highlight. The principal reason the Williams firing resonated so much and provoked so much fury is that it threatens the preservation of one of the most important American mythologies:  that Muslims are a Serious Threat to America and Americans. That fact is illustrated by a Washington Post Op-Ed today from Reuel Marc Gerecht, who is as standard and pure a neocon as exists:  an Israel-centric, Iran-threatening, Weekly Standard and TNR writer,  former CIA Middle East analyst, former American Enterprise Institute and current Defense of Democracies "scholar," torture advocate, etc. etc. Gerecht hails Williams as a courageous "dissident" for expressing this "truth":

[W]hile his manner may have been clumsy, Williams was right to suggest that there is a troubling nexus between the modern Islamic identity and the embrace of terrorism as a holy act.

Above all else, this fear-generating "nexus" is what must be protected at all costs. This is the "troubling" connection -- between Muslims and terrorism -- that Williams lent his "liberal," NPR-sanctioned voice to legitimizing. And it is this fear-sustaining, anti-Muslim slander that NPR's firing of Williams threatened to delegitimize. That is why NPR's firing of Williams must be attacked with such force: because if it were allowed to stand, it would be an important step toward stigmatizing anti-Muslim animus in the same way that other forms of bigotry are now off-limits, and that, above all else, is what cannot happen, because anti-Muslim animus is too important to too many factions to allow it to be delegitimized. The Huffington Post's Jason Linkins explained the real significance of NPR's actions, the real reason it had to be attacked:

Yesterday, NPR cashiered correspondent Juan Williams for doing something that had hitherto never been considered an offense in media circles: defaming Muslims. Up until now, you could lose your job for saying intemperate things about Jews and about Christians and about Matt Drudge. You could even lose a job for failing to defame Muslims. But we seem to be in undiscovered country at the moment. 

There are too many interests served by anti-Muslim fear-mongering to allow that to change. To start with, as a general proposition, it's vital that the American citizenry always be frightened of some external (and relatedly internal) threat. Nothing is easier, or more common, or more valuable, than inducing people to believe that one discrete minority group is filled with unique Evil, poses some serious menace to their Safety, and must be stopped at all costs. The more foreign-seeming that group is, the easier it is to sustain the propaganda campaign of fear. Sufficiently bombarded with this messaging, even well-intentioned people will dutifully walk around insisting that the selected group is a Dangerous Menace. 

"The Muslims" are currently the premier, featured threat which serves that purpose, following in the footsteps of the American-Japanese, the Communists, the Welfare-Stealing Racial Minorities, the Gays, and the Illegal Immigrants. Many of those same groups still serve this purpose, but their scariness loses its luster after decades of exploitation and periodically must be replaced by new ones. Muslims serve that role, and to ensure that continues, it is vital that anti-Muslim sentiments of the type Williams legitimized be shielded, protected and venerated -- not punished or stigmatized.

Beyond the general need to ensure that Americans always fear an external Enemy, there are multiple functions which this specific Muslim-based fear-mongering fulfills. The national security state -- both its public and private arms -- needs the "Muslims as Threat" mythology to sustain its massive budget and policies of Endless War. The surveillance state -- both its public and private arms -- needs that myth to justify its limitless growth. Christians who crave religious conflict; evangelicals who await the Rapture; and Jews who were taught from birth to view the political world with Israel at the center, that the U.S. must therefore stay invested in the Middle East, and that the "Arabs" are the Enemy, all benefit from this ongoing demonization.

Beyond that, nationalists and militarists of various stripes who need American war for their identity, purpose and vicarious feelings of strength and courage cling to this mythology as desperately as anyone. Republicans gain substantial political advantage from scaring white and Christian voters to shake with fear and rage over the imminent imposition of sharia law in America. And political officials in the executive branch are empowered by this anti-Muslim fear campaign to operate in total secrecy and without any checks or accountability as they bomb, drone, occupy, imprison, abduct and assassinate at will. Add that all together and there is simply no way that NPR could be permitted to render off-limits the bigoted depiction of Muslims which Juan Williams helped to maintain.

And then there's the more amorphous but arguably more significant self-justifying benefit that comes from condemning "Muslims" for their violent, extremist ways. I'm always amazed when I receive e-mails from people telling me that I fail to understand how Islam is a uniquely violent, supremely expansionist culture that is intrinsically menacing. The United States is a country with a massive military and nuclear stockpile, that invaded and has occupied two Muslim countries for almost a full decade, that regularly bombs and drones several others, that currently is threatening to attack one of the largest Muslim countries in the world, that imposed a sanctions regime that killed hundreds of thousands of Muslim children, that slaughters innocent people on a virtually daily basis, that has interfered in and controlled countries around the world since at least the middle of the last century, that has spent decades arming and protecting every Israeli war with its Muslim neighbors and enabling a four-decade-long brutal occupation, and that erected a worldwide regime of torture, abduction and lawless detention, much of which still endures. Those are just facts.

But if we all agree to sit around and point over there -- hey, can you believe those primitive Muslims and how violent and extremist they are -- the reality of what we do in the world will fade blissfully away. Even better, it will be transformed from violent aggression into justified self-defense, and then we'll not only free ourselves of guilt, but feel proud and noble because of it. As is true with all cultures, there are obviously demented, psychopathic, violent extremists among Muslims. And there's no shortage of such extremists in our own culture either. One would think we'd be more interested in the extremists among us, but by obsessively focusing on Them, we are able to blind ourselves to the pathologies that drive our own actions. And that self-cleansing, self-justifying benefit -- which requires the preservation of the Muslim-as-Threat mythology -- is probably more valuable than all the specific, pragmatic benefits described above. All this over a "menace" (Terrorism) that killed a grand total of 25 noncombatant Americans last year (McClatchy:  "undoubtedly more American citizens died overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses than from terrorism").

The double standard in our political discourse -- which tolerates and even encourages anti-Muslim bigotry while stigmatizing other forms -- has been as beneficial as it has been glaring. NPR's firing of Juan Williams threatened to change that by rendering this bigotry as toxic and stigmatized as other types. That could not be allowed, which is why the backlash against NPR was so rapid, intense and widespread. I'm not referring here to those who object to viewpoint-based firings of journalists in general and who have applied that belief consistently: that's a perfectly reasonable view to hold (and one I share). I'm referring to those who rail against NPR's actions by invoking free expression principles they plainly do not support and which they eagerly violate whenever the viewpoint in question is one they dislike. For most NPR critics, the real danger from Williams' firing is not to free expression, but to the ongoing fear-mongering campaign of defamation and bigotry against Muslims (both foreign and domestic) that is so indispensable to so many agendas.

NPR fires Juan Williams for anti-Muslim bigotry

On Monday, I documented the glaring double standard in our political discourse generally and in the world of journalism specifically, whereby anti-Muslim bigotry is widely tolerated, while those perceived as expressing similar (or even more mild) animus toward other groups are harshly punished (see, for instance, Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez).  That double standard suffered a very welcome blow last night, when NPR announced it was firing its long-time correspondent, Juan Williams, due to blatantly bigoted anti-Muslim remarks Williams made on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program. 

O'Reilly had created controversy last week when he went on The View and blamed 9/11 on "Muslims," and Fox's morning host, Brian Kilmeade, then exacerbated that ugliness when he falsely claimed, as part of his defense of O'Reilly: "not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims."  On Tuesday night, Williams went on O'Reilly's program to perform his standard, long-time function on Fox -- offering himself up as the supposed "liberal" defending Fox News commentators (and other right-wing extremists) from charges of bigotry and otherwise giving cover to incendiary right-wing attacks -- and said this to O'Reilly (the video is below):

Well, actually, I hate to say this to you because I don't want to get your ego going.  But I think you're right.  I think, look, political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don't address reality.

I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot.  You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country.  But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

Now, I remember also when the Times Square bomber was at court -- this was just last week -- he said: "the war with Muslims, America's war is just beginning, first drop of blood." I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts.

As Andrew Sullivan wrote about Williams' attempts to preface his bigoted remarks by declaring himself not to be a bigot:  "No, Juan, what you just described is the working definition of bigotry . . .What percentage of traditionally garbed Muslims -- I assume wearing a covered veil or some other indicator and being of darker skin -- have committed acts of terror? . . . The literal defense of anti-Muslim bigotry on Fox is becoming endemic. It's disgusting." 

Williams' trite attempt to glorify his bigotry as anti-P.C. Speaking of the Truth is inane, as his remarks were suffused with falsehoods, not facts:  as Sullivan points out, the minute percentage of Muslims who have committed acts of terror against the U.S. -- including those on 9/11 -- were not wearing "Muslim garb."  Moreover, the very idea that those who wear "Muslim garb" are necessarily "identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims" is itself noxious:  does anyone who wears religious attire (a yarmulke or crucifix or Sikh turban) identify themselves "first and foremost" by their religion as opposed to, say, their nationality or individuality or any number of other attributes?  The bottom line here is that equating Muslims with Terrorism -- which is exactly what Williams did -- is definitively bigoted (not to mention demonstrably false).

NPR announced its firing of Williams last night in a statement, saying his remarks "were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."  NPR has been seemingly uncomfortable for some time with Williams' role on Fox, as they instructed him last year to stop using NPR's name when he is identified during his Fox News appearances.  Whether these latest comments were merely the opportunity they were looking for to terminate their relationship with him, or whether it was caused solely by these disgusting comments, is unclear.  But what is clear is that the anti-Muslim bigotry he spewed is both the proximate and cited cause.

I'm not someone who believes that journalists should lose their jobs over controversial remarks, especially isolated, one-time comments.  But if that's going to be the prevailing standard, then I want to see it applied equally.  Those who cheered on the firing of Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas and Rick Sanchez -- and that will include many, probably most, of the right-wing polemicists predictably rushing to transform Juan Williams into some sort of free speech martyr sacrificed on the altar of sharia censorship -- have no ground for complaining here.  Those who endorse speech-based punishments invariably end up watching as the list of Prohibited Ideas expands far beyond the initial or desired scope, often subsuming their own beliefs.   That's a good reason to oppose all forms of speech-based punishment in the first place.  There's obviously a fundamental difference between (a) being punished by the state for expressing Prohibited Ideas (which is isn't what happened here) and (b) losing a job for doing so, but the dynamic is similar:  those who endorse this framework almost always lose control over how it is applied.  And that's how it should be.

The Nasr/Thomas/Sanchez incidents -- and countless others -- demonstrate how unequal and imbalanced our standards have become in determining which group-based comments are acceptable and which ones are not.  If we're going to fire or otherwise punish people for expressing Prohibited Ideas against various groups, it's long overdue that those standards be applied equally to anti-Muslim animus, now easily one of the most -- if not the single most -- pervasive, tolerated and dangerous forms of blatant bigotry in America.

George Soros' "foreign" money

George Soros announced today that he was making his first-ever contribution to Media Matters, in the amount of $1 million.  Rush Limbaugh denounced this as "foreign money in American politics" and called Soros "a foreigner."  Right-wing bloggers echoed this claim ("Foreign Money in Politics: Soros Donates $1 Million to Media Matters"), and the comment section of right-wing blogs discussing this donation are filled with accusations that this constitutes "foreign money in politics."

George Soros, however, is an American citizen, with the full panoply of rights citizenship bestows (including the right to vote or run for office).  He's been an American citizen for almost 50 years, since the age of 31 (Business Week:  "George Soros became a naturalized American citizen in New York on Dec. 18, 1961, according to the Immigration & Naturalization Service").  He was born in Hungary in 1930, survived German occupation even as numerous Jews died, fled to London after the war to escape Communism, and then began working in New York in 1956.  He lived and worked in the U.S. for many years and has given away many millions of dollars in philanthropy to American organizations.

What is it about Soros exactly that leads right-wing commentators -- including their long-time leader, Rush Limbaugh -- to falsely brand this American citizen a "foreigner"?  The answer to that question provides substantial insight into the American Right and how they think about many things. 

Iran needs stern lessons in freedom

Here is the latest Outrage of Evil from the Persian Hitlers:

Iran's intelligence minister confirmed on Wednesday that two U.S. citizens detained for more than a year will face trial, news reports said.

"The two Americans will be tried," Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency. "We will hand any evidence we have to the judiciary."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on Tuesday that she had heard Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal would be tried on November 6 but she still hoped they would be released.

It's high time that we teach those Iranians about democracy and freedom.  All civilized people know that this is how a Free and Democratic Nation treats foreign detainees:

The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.

It's hard to put into words how paranoid and conspiratorial those Iranians must be, thinking that Americans who covertly entered their country without authorization were there for purposes other than accidental tourism.  What ever could have put such a bizarre idea into their heads?

U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. . . .

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not."

Just because we're covertly infiltrating and interfering in virtually every Muslim country on the planet -- and just because we're actively aiding rebel groups inside their specific country -- is no reason to suspect Americans who illegally enter their country of espionage.  That just goes without saying, and Americans would never harbor such untoward suspicions about Iranians caught illegally entering the United States.

Of course, none of this is new.  We previously witnessed the vast disparity in Freedom Values between the U.S. and Iran when the Persian Tyrants sparked a worldwide orgy of condemnation by holding an American journalist for a couple of months (after she was convicted in court of espionage) before an Iranian appellate tribunal ordered her release, in contrast to the way that the Leaders of the Free World imprisoned an Al Jazeera cameraman in Guantanamo without charges of any kind before swiftly releasing him after a mere seven years (along with numerous other incidents of due-process-free, years-long imprisonments of journalists in Iraq).  It goes without saying that the Iranian justice system is a travesty and a farce, but at least they go through the pretense of due process before putting people in cages.

* * * * *

Speaking of our need to teach Iran and other tyrannical nations about the values of Freedom and Democracy, note the following items:

(1) Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Last Friday, in a brief filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Obama Administration continued the government's half-decade-long battle to ensure that no judge ever rules on the legality of the National Security Agency's warrantless dragnet surveillance program, a program first revealed in 2005 by the New York Times and detailed by technical documents provided by former AT&T technician Mark Klein. . . . The government dedicates most of its brief to arguing the same thing it has been arguing for the past five years in every other warrantless wiretapping case: that any attempt by the courts to judge the legality of the alleged surveillance would violate the state secrets privilege and harm national security.

I spent this morning reviewing what Democrats and progressives said and wrote back in the day each time the Bush DOJ invoked the "state secrets" privilege in order to shield their illegal NSA surveillance program from judicial review.  I'll probably write about this in the near future, but the condemnation was quite vehement, without very many rhetorical limits.  It seemed to be a consensus that such behavior was the nadir of lawlessness and removal of political leaders from any semblance of the rule of law.

(2) Harper's Scott Horton examines the evidence of the secret prison the Obama administration is apparently maintaining in Afghanistan and the serious abuse that takes place there.

(3) Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Turley had quite a good discussion on Monday night of the Obama DOJ's efforts to shield all Bush officials from liability for their War on Terror abuses, their success in persuading the Supreme Court to review their immunity arguments, and what this likely means for democratic accountability and the rule of law.  It's well worth watching:

Anyway, about Iran . . . .

Iran needs stern lessons in Freedom

Here is the latest Outrage of Evil from the Persian Hitlers:

Iran's intelligence minister confirmed on Wednesday that two U.S. citizens detained for more than a year will face trial, news reports said.

"The two Americans will be tried," Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency. "We will hand any evidence we have to the judiciary."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on Tuesday that she had heard Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal would be tried on November 6 but she still hoped they would be released.

It's high time that we teach those Iranians about democracy and freedom.  All civilized people that this is how a Free and Democratic Nation treats foreign detainees:

The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.

It's hard to put into words how paranoid and conspiratorial those Iranians must be, thinking that Americans who covertly entered their country without authorization were there for purposes other than accidental tourism.  What ever could have put such a bizarre idea into their heads?

U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. . . .

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not."

Just because we're covertly infiltrating and interfering in virtually every Muslim country on the planet -- and just because we're actively aiding rebel groups inside their specific country -- is no reason to suspect Americans who illegally enter their country of espionage.  That just goes without saying, and Americans would never harbor such untoward suspicions about Iranians caught illegally entering the United States.

Of course, none of this is new.  We previously witnessed the vast disparity in Freedom Values between the U.S. and Iran when the Persian Tyrants sparked a worldwide orgy of condemnation by holding an American journalist for a couple of months (after she was convicted in court of espionage) before an Iranian appellate tribunal ordered her release, in contrast to the way that the Leaders of the Free World imprisoned an Al Jazeera cameraman in Guantanamo without charges of any kind before swiftly releasing him after a mere seven years (along with numerous other incidents of due-process-free, years-long imprisonments of journalists in Iraq).  It goes without saying that the Iranian justice system is a travesty and a farce, but at least they go through the pretense of due process before putting people in cages.

* * * * *

Speaking of our need to teach Iran and other tyrannical nations about the values of Freedom and Democracy, note the following items:

(1) Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Last Friday, in a brief filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Obama Administration continued the government's half-decade-long battle to ensure that no judge ever rules on the legality of the National Security Agency's warrantless dragnet surveillance program, a program first revealed in 2005 by the New York Times and detailed by technical documents provided by former AT&T technician Mark Klein. . . . The government dedicates most of its brief to arguing the same thing it has been arguing for the past five years in every other warrantless wiretapping case: that any attempt by the courts to judge the legality of the alleged surveillance would violate the state secrets privilege and harm national security.

I spent this morning reviewing what Democrats and progressives said and wrote back in the day each time the Bush DOJ invoked the "state secrets" privilege in order to shield their illegal NSA surveillance program from judicial review.  I'll probably write about this in the near future, but the condemnation was quite vehement, without very many rhetorical limits.  It seemed to be a consensus that such behavior was the nadir of lawlessness and removal of political leaders from any semblance of the rule of law.

(2) Harper's Scott Horton examines the evidence of the secret prison the Obama administration is apparently maintaining in Afghanistan and the serious abuse that takes place there.

(3) Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Turley had quite a good discussion on Monday night of the Obama DOJ's efforts to shield all Bush officials from liability for their War on Terror abuses, their success in persuading the Supreme Court to review their immunity arguments, and what this likely means for democratic accountability and the rule of law.  It's well worth watching:

Anyway, about Iran . . . .

Joe Miller's private "guards" were active-duty military

(updated below)

One of the more disturbing election incidents took place in Alaska on Sunday night, when private "guards" working for GOP Senate nominee Joe Miller forcibly detained and handcuffed a journalist as he tried to ask the candidate questions which he did not want to answer.  This photograph shows the journalist, Alaska Dispatch's Tony Hopfinger, handcuffed in a chair, surrounded by Miller's guards.  This story became much worse yesterday when video was released that was taken by a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News showing that these guards thuggishly threatened at least two other reporters, from ADN, with physical detention as they tried to find out what happened, demanded that they leave or else "be handcuffed," and physically blocked them from filming the incident all while threatening to physically remove them from the event, which was advertised to the public (see video below).

But revelations today have made the story much, much worse still.  ADN now reports that not only was Joe Miller's excuse for why he had hired private guards a lie, but two of the guards who handcuffed the journalist and threatened others are active-duty soldiers in the U.S. military:

Was Joe Miller required to bring a security detail to his town hall meeting Sunday at Central Middle School?

That's what Miller, the Republican Senate candidate, told two national cable news networks Monday in the wake of the arrest by his security squad of an online journalist at his public event.

But the school district said there was no such requirement made of Miller . . . "We do not require users to hire security," she said. . . .

Meanwhile, the Army says that two of the guards who assisted in the arrest of the journalist and who tried to prevent two other reporters from filming the detention were active-duty soldiers moonlighting for Miller's security contractor, the Drop Zone, a Spenard surplus store and protection service.

The soldiers, Spc. Tyler Ellingboe, 22, and Sgt. Alexander Valdez, 31, are assigned to the 3rd Maneuver Enhancement Brigade at Fort Richardson. Maj. Bill Coppernoll, the public affairs officer for the Army in Alaska, said the two soldiers did not have permission from their current chain of command to work for the Drop Zone, but the Army was still researching whether previous company or brigade commanders authorized their employment.

If it's not completely intolerable to have active-duty soldiers handcuffing American journalists on U.S. soil while acting as private "guards" for Senate candidates, what would be?  This is the sort of thing that the U.S. State Department would readily condemn if it happened in Egypt or Iran or Venezuela or Cuba:  active-duty soldiers detaining journalists while they're paid by politician candidates?  The fact that Joe Miller has been defending the conduct of his private guards in handcuffing a journalist and threatening others with handcuffs should be disqualifying by itself.  That reveals a deeply disturbed authoritarian mind.  But the fact that these guards are active-duty U.S. soldiers makes this entire incident far more disturbing.  Shouldn't American journalists of every stripe be vehemently protesting this incident?

 

UPDATE:  DoD Directive 1344.10 -- governing "Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces on Active Duty" -- provides: "A member on AD [active duty] shall not: ... [p]articipate in partisan political management, campaigns, or conventions."  The legality is the least of the concerns here.  That directive exists because it's dangerous and undemocratic to have active-duty soldiers taking an active role in partisan campaigns; having them handcuff journalists on behalf of candidates is so far over that line that it's hard to believe it happened.  The real issue, though, is Joe Miller: the fact that he did this and then emphatically defended it reveals the deep authoritarianism of many of these "small-government, pro-Constitution" right-wing candidates.  Any American of minimal decency should be repelled by this incident.

David Brooks' campaign finance "facts"

(updated below - Update II)

In his New York Times column today dismissing concerns over the massive amounts of anonymous money being poured into the 2010 election, David Brooks contends that "money is almost never the difference between victory and defeat" and that the evidence is "slight" that "campaign spending has an important influence on elections."  To mock as baseless and alarmist concerns over out-of-control spending on this election, Brooks focuses on two principal sources of anonymous right-wing funding:  the Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove.  When doing so, Brooks makes what appears to me to be some rather misleading claims.

About the Chamber of Commerce, Brooks writes:

This year, for example, the United States Chamber of Commerce is spending $22 million for Republicans, while the Service Employees International Union is spending about $14 million for Democrats.

Every news report provides a vastly higher amount for the Chamber's intended 2010 election spending.  As the NYT reported on October 12:  "The Chamber will most likely meet its fund-raising goal of $75 million, more than double what it spent on the 2008 campaign, Republican operatives say."  It's long been reported by numerous establishment media outlets that the Chamber "has pledged to spend $75 million in this year's elections."  What is the source of Brooks' claim that "the United States Chamber of Commerce is spending $22 million for Republicans," which seems to be off by a factor of at least 3?  

Perhaps Brooks intended to convey only what the Chamber has spent so far, not what it will spend once the election is over.  The language he uses is very vague in that regard ("the United States Chamber of Commerce is spending $22 million for Republicans").  But if that's what he intended, that formulation is inherently misleading.  Why tell your readers that the Chamber "is spending" only $22 million when they themselves say they will spend at least 3 1/2 times that amount, and when the Chamber is proudly announcing that it "will ramp up its political activity in the three weeks remaining before the November 2 Congressional elections"?  Moreover, the claim that Brooks, with these amounts, was merely referring to amounts spent already (rather than amounts that will ultimately be spent) cannot be reconciled with the fact that SEIU has spent only $8 million thus far, not the $14 million Brooks attributed to them.

Brooks' claim about Rove is even more difficult to understand:

Democrats have a healthy fear of Karl Rove, born out of experience, but there is no way the $13 million he influences through the group American Crossroads is going to reshape an election in which the two parties are spending something like $1.4 billion collectively.

Here again, the most basic news reports are wildly inconsistent with Brooks' assertion.  The Washington Post reports that American Crossroads -- through October 17 -- has already spent roughly $20.7 million (100% on GOP candidates):  50% more than what Brooks told his NYT readers today Rove "influences."

But the misleading nature of Brooks' assertion is worse than that.  While Brooks confined his assertions to American Crossroads, Rove himself acknowledges that there are two groups in which he is involved:  American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS.  Rove's partner, Ed Gillespie, wrote in The Washington Post about American Crossroads GPS that while they did not formally "run" it:  "[Rove and I] support it, raise money for it and voluntarily offer advice to its board members and employees."  Obviously, Rove "influences" how the money is spent for both American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS.

On October 14, Bloomberg reported:  "two groups advised by strategist Karl Rove, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, [] said yesterday they have raised $56 million for races nationwide, exceeding their $50 million goal."  On October 13, Bloomberg reported:

Two Republican-leaning political groups affiliated with Karl Rove said they have raised $56 million, more than their initial goal of $50 million.

American Crossroads, which discloses its donors, and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, which doesn't, have been among the biggest outside spenders for the 2010 elections. . . . The two groups now plan to raise $65 million, spokesman Jonathan Collegio said today.

How can Brooks tell his readers that Rove "influences" only $13 million when he himself is boasting that he will spend at least $56 million, and probably $65 million, on the election -- the vast bulk of which is anonymously funded and devoted to electing GOP candidates?

Several days after Obama attacked Rove's spending, Rove boasted in The Wall Street Journal:  "Crossroads and GPS have raised more than $14 million since [Obama] began his assault last week, enabling them to become active in House races they weren't targeting before."  In other words, in less than one week, Rove's two groups raised more than the total amount which Brooks today told NYT readers Rove "influences."  As of 10 days ago, Rove's two groups already spent $3.6 million in Colorado alone to defeat Democrat James Michael Bennet, another $3 million in Missouri's Senate race, and another $3 million in Nevada to defeat Harry Reid.  The most recent totals just for American Crossroads shows almost $4 million spent already on the Colorado Senate race, over $3 million on the Illinois race, and more than $2 million each in Florida and Missouri; American Crossroads' spending on those four Senate races alone already exceeds $11 million.

Brooks' bottom line is that the spending by these right-wing groups is trivial compared to the fact that "the two parties are spending something like $1.4 billion collectively."  But if one uses the real amounts just these two entities (Chamber of Commerce and Rove) themselves say they will spend -- $75 million and $65 million -- that total, $140 million, will be a substantial chunk of the total amount being spent in all races.  That's just from two entities; that's to say nothing of the numerous other right-wing groups spending millions of dollars in unaccountable, anonymous funds. 

Given that all of this funding can be (and is being) directed to close races, and given that the vast bulk of this funding is completely unknown and anonymous (a five-fold increase in anonymous spending since 2006), it requires misleading formulations to depict these amounts as insignificant and trivial in the scheme of things.  With his column today, Brooks seems to have relied on exactly that approach to make his point.  Brooks purposely concealed from his readers that just these two entities alone were spending $140 million to shape election outcomes -- most of which are from unknown sources -- because that fact renders Brooks' dismissal absurd on its face.

The reason this matters so much is obvious.  As Robert Reich explains today:  

An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that's raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work.  We're losing our democracy to a different system. It's called plutocracy.  

It's completely unsurprising to watch the elite-revering David Brooks dismissing concerns over these dangers, but he ought to at least be required to maintain some minimal factual accuracy when doing so.

 

UPDATE:  There's another equally misleading aspect of Brooks' column which I overlooked.  As Emory Professor David Cutler explains in an email to me -- see here -- Brooks' claim that "the two parties are spending something like $1.4 billion collectively," made to depict independent expenditures as insignificant, is quite convoluted and deceitful.

 

UPDATE II:  Brooks was apparently using the opensecrets.org site, which lists current spending by SEIU as $14 million, rather than the $8 million listed by the Post.  That site, however, also lists the combined totals for Rove's two groups (American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS) as more than $21 million, not the $13 million which Brooks attributed to Rove.  Most important, by concealing from his readers the actual, massive totals these groups acknowledge they will spend -- with the majority to be spent in the final weeks before the election -- Brooks deliberately makes the amounts seem far smaller than they will be.  

Had Brooks disclosed the truth to his readers about the actual, planned spending of the Chamber and Rove -- as well as, as Time's Michael Crowley notes, the $90 million expected to be spent by Haley Barbour's Republican Governors' Association on governors' races alone -- Brooks simply could not maintain with a straight face that the issue of outside spending makes little difference.  So he simply hid those facts from his readers by choosing to present these facts in the most misleading light possible.

Glaring double standard in tolerance for anti-Muslim bigotry

In theory, it could be a fun game to try to detect the double standard in this pattern of facts, except that it's so obvious and glaring that no effort is required to see it:

The Washington Post, July 8, 2010:

Octavia Nasr has been fired.  CNN fired the editor responsible for Middle Eastern coverage after she posted a note on Twitter expressing admiration for a late Lebanese cleric considered an inspiration for the Hezbollah militant movement.  Octavia Nasr later apologized for her tweet, but CNN's senior vice president for international newsgathering, Parisa Khosravi, said Wednesday that Nasr's credibility had been compromised.

Politico, June 7, 2010:

In the world of political journalism, it's the end of an era: Helen Thomas has retired just months shy of her 90th birthday ... [Thomas] stepped down from her latest role -- a columnist for Hearst Newspapers -- in the wake of controversial remarks made in late May about the need for Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine" and return to Poland and Germany. "Helen Thomas announced Monday that she is retiring, effective immediately," read a statement from Hearst Newspapers on Monday. "Her decision came after her controversial comments about Israel and the Palestinians were captured on videotape and widely disseminated on the Internet."

USA Today, Oct. 1, 2010:

CNN has fired Rick Sanchez following his controversial comments on the radio show "Stand Up With Pete Dominick" ... On Thursday, Sanchez called Jon Stewart a "bigot," arguing that "The Daily Show" host is against "everybody else who's not like him." He also suggested that CNN is run by Jewish people. Stewart is also Jewish."

Nafees A. Syed, CNN, Sept. 23, 2010:

At a time when our nation's top university is more diverse than ever before, Harvard's recent decision to honor its former professor Marty Peretz on Friday for setting up an undergraduate research fund in his name comes as a big, disappointing surprise ... Here is the latest blog-post calumny: "Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims" and "I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse" ... Despite the voices raised against it, the university just reaffirmed its decision to recognize him ...

all terrorists are Muslims." Kilmeade even defended that statement a few hours later on his radio show, saying it's a fact "you can't avoid." But today, after having the weekend to think it over, the "Fox and Friends" host offered a half-hearted apology:

KILMEADE: "On the show on Friday, I was talking about Bill O'Reilly appearance on "The View" and I said this: "Not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims."  Well, I misspoke. I don't believe all terrorists are Muslims. I'm sorry about that if I offended or hurt anybody's feelings.  But that's it."

In contrast to the loud backlash of anger from journalists over the remarks of Thomas and Sanchez, few have condemned the remarks from Peretz or Kilmeade (for instance, when asked about Peretz, the Washington Post's media critic Howard Kurtz -- who devoted substantial attention to the remarks of Thomas and Sanchez -- was steadfastly silent, telling the Guardian: "I'm afraid I just haven't focused on the subject." And Kilmeade, of course, will suffer no repercussions (or even widespread criticisms) either for his initial bigoted and patently false statement, nor for his proudly begrudging non-apology, with more emphasis on defiance than regret ("I'm sorry about that if I offended or hurt anybody's feelings. But that's it").  Could the double standards in our discourse be any more glaring?