Pat Robertson Issues Fatwah
=v= When a fundamentalist cleric calls for the head of a rival, it tends to be front-page news. When a follower of the fundamentalist's dogma is sentenced for terrorist acts, that also tends to be front-page news, and of course the connections are pointed out.
Yet somehow, when fundamentalist cleric Pat Robertson calls for assassination, it's bumped from the front page by a staged photo-op in Utah; and when fundamentalist follower Eric Rudolph is sentenced for his terrorist acts, that's buried somewhere as well, and no connections are mentioned.
It's up to the meme-o-sphere. Repeat after me: Pat Robertson Issues Fatwah. Spread the word. Let the meme be fruitful and multiply.
Here in the Republican suburbs of north Jersey, I don't know anyone who isn't aware of this. And I don't know anyone who doesn't think that Robertson is nuts, or at the very least way out of bounds.
Posted by Jimcat on August 24 2005 05:20
Um, the Robertson story has been of the most widely covered in the US and around the world of the past couple of days. Really.
Posted by Gary Farber on August 24 2005 19:42
=v= Yes, it's on front pages now. It wasn't when I wrote that, though. In N.Y.C., the tabloids were more interested in devoting their front covers to some mafia wife/teevee star's breast cancer hoax, though one did finally have a front page story, featuring a rare avuncular-looking photo of the smiling Robertson and the alleged word "TELEVANGINATOR".
All glory to the meme. Remember, Pat Robertson Issues Fatwah. Spread it far and wide.
In more recent news he told lies, claiming that he didn't use the word "assassinate" (though tapes show that he did). He claims he used the words "take out" and that they could mean many things. It sure could! He wants marines to take him out for dinner and a movie? New meme: Pat Robertson encourages all-male dating.
Posted by Jym on August 25 2005 07:14
If you depend on the NYC tabloid papers for news, you deserve to be ignorant.
Posted by Jimcat on August 25 2005 07:34
=v= Well, "you" can't be me, since the astute reader will note that I was kvetching about this two days before it broke in the tabloids. :^) There is a minor problem in NYC that the Grey Lady doesn't do a lot of local coverage, so you usually have to resort to a tabloid-shaped paper to keep up on things. The best of these has editorial offices out on long island, but that's not the one that most people read. Alas.
I am perhaps overly-tabloided in my daily life because my cohort and I have been in the news for a solid year and have been tracking the media just to see what they're babbling about.
As for the topic at hand, Billmon has a thing or two to say about it:
http://billmon.org/archives/002111.html
Posted by Jym on August 29 2005 17:45
The "you" was intended to be generic. As in "Anyone who gets their news solely from the NYC tabloids has no right to complain about poor coverage of substantial issues."
Not that I don't enjoy the tabloids for what they are. They're a refreshing break from responsible journalism. The Post seems to have looked up the concepts of integrity and objectivity and said, "Nah, we don't need none'a that." The staff of the Daliy News couldn't even spell the words, much less comprehend the concepts.
Posted by Jimcat on August 30 2005 05:26