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Sunday, September 12, 2010

With oceans of war blood on their hands, Political Class and its court media in no position to point fingers at clownish, Koran-burning pastor

From:
The pastor and cheap, selective concern for "blood-spilling"

(Salon.com) -- by Glenn Greenwald --

After WikiLeaks published the Afghanistan war logs, political and media figures fell all over themselves to publicly condemn the group for having "blood on its hands," despite the fact that (1) there is, as Wired noted just yesterday, "no evidence to date . . . that anyone has suffered actual harm due to the documents" and (2) many of the people most vocally condemning WikiLeaks have enormous amounts of blood on their own hands from the endless wars, bombing campaigns, occupations, and detention regime they supported and still support. But condemning WikiLeaks offers an opportunity for cheap, self-glorifying moralizing; the group has very little power or prestige in Washington and is thus an easy target for royal court journalists. Media figures who treat actual blood-spillers with great reverence thus suddenly found within themselves oh-so-profound concern over "blood-spilling." Along those lines, contrast the well-deserved contempt Tony Blair is facing as he tries to peddle his self-justifying book with the media red carpet rolled out for every pro-war Washington official and the treatment George Bush -- who spilled gigantic amounts of blood in Iraq and other places in the Muslim world -- will receive from the U.S. media when he releases his book.

The media circus surrounding the Koran-burning pastor illustrates this cowardly dynamic even more extremely. Media figures who would never dream of treating with hostility Respected Political Officials who start wars of aggression are competing with one another over who can most flamboyantly express contempt for this inconsequential, powerless joke of a figure on the ground that he risks "spilling blood." Just watch this 4-minute segment from Morning Joe this morning, one of the most cringe-inducing displays of cheap, cost-free self-righteousness you'll ever see, as a panel that includes Jon Meacham, Mika Brzezinski, and Dan Senor parade the Pastor in front of everyone -- without letting him speak -- so they can voice their profound contempt for him, while Meacham urges him, in the name of Jesus, to refrain from burning the Korans so as to avoid spilling blood...MORE...LINK

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