Monday, September 18, 2006
"The Path to Hysteria"
Cyrus Nowrasteh, who wrote the screenplay for "The Path to 9/11", has a must-read article in today's Wall Street Journal describing his treatment at the hands of the mainstream media, particularly the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.
In July a reporter asked if I had ever been ethnically profiled. I happily replied, "No." I can no longer say that. The L.A. Times, for one, characterized me by race, religion, ethnicity, country-of-origin and political leanings--wrongly on four of five counts. To them I was an Iranian-American politically conservative Muslim. It is perhaps irrelevant in our brave new world of journalism that I was born in Boulder, Colo. I am not a Muslim or practitioner of any religion, nor am I a political conservative. What am I? I am, most devoutly, an American. I asked the reporter if this kind of labeling was a new policy for the paper. He had no response.
And don't miss Nowrasteh's account of the attacks on director David Cunningham, who was tarred because his father "had founded a Christian youth outreach mission."
In the era of McCarthyism, the merest hint of a connection to communism sufficed to inspire dark accusations, the certainty that the accused was part of a malign conspiracy. Today, apparently, you can get something of that effect by charging a connection with a Christian mission.
When conservatives try to discredit somebody by reference to race, religion or other suspect affiliation, the world justifiably howls in outrage. Manifestly liberal newspapers seem to live by a different set of rules. Why?
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