Opinion Pages Wake Up to 'Ugly Innuendo' on Islam
10/25/2008 by Gabriel VoilesDeclaring (10/22/08) that "it's hard not to read all the editorial plaudits for [Colin] Powell as something of an indictment of the opinion writers complimenting his courage," Lester Feder also chides his own CJR.org for relative silence until,
in his Sunday appearance on Meet the Press, Powell cited the persistent right-wing "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim" rumors as one of the reasons that he is withholding support for Senator John McCain. "Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" Powell asked indignantly, "The answer’s no, that’s not America."
Maureen Dowd amplified Powell's comments in her New York Times column today. "It was a tonic to hear someone push back so clearly on ugly innuendo," she writes. But her praise raises the question--couldn’t someone with a New York Times op-ed column have provided that tonic without Colin Powell's prodding?
Feder's disdain is apparent when noting that, "while 'secret Muslim' rumors have been circulating for two years, it's only after Colin Powell goes on television that the opinion pages wake up."
See FAIR's new report Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation
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October 26th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Who is this courageous person named Colin Powell?
I know someone with that name. He shares responsibility for the murders of untold numbers of Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere.
He got his big break trying to cover up My Lai (see Robert Parry's work on that aspect of his career).
Must be someone else.
Of course, this Colin Powell waited quite a while before taking his courageous stand against religious bigotry, didn't he?
I'm sure he had more important matters to attend to.
Just like the corpress columnists and editors who've followed his lead.
November 8th, 2008 at 7:09 am
[...] electoral choice, given that this "was an election year in which the word 'Muslim' was used as shorthand to connote anti-American leanings and a hidden love of terrorism": A recent study by Fairness [...]
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:23 am
[...] I think it's really playing out noticeably in this election in which we have this campaign to portray Obama as a Muslim, and we know it's not true–these are false rumors. [...]