Debbie Schlussel: Anti-Muslim Cartoons?: Detroit News Already Cowered to Islam; It's NO Jyllands-Posten
Judith Apter Klinghoffer and Michelle Malkin have written about the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, which published Mohammed cartoons that have led to riots throughout the Muslim world. Michelle is rightly up in arms about American media kowtowing on this story. But neither of these things--Muslims and Arabs going nuts over the expression of free speech and trying to silence it, and the American media acquiescing to it--are new.
Take The Detroit News. It is the anti-Jyllands-Posten, except for when it runs Michelle's column (and we doubt it will run her column on the Mohammed cartoons, lest it upset the Muslim audience to which the Detroit paper panders).
The Detroit News editorial page ran the cartoon, above, on December 15, 2005--a cartoon which is arguably more tame and less offensive than the anti-Muhammad cartoon.
But the paper and its editorial page removed the cartoon immediately and issued an apology (also posted below), when "former" Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist and FBI award revokee, Imad Hamad (who now heads the Muslim-dominated Midwest American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which is also whining about the Mohammed cartoons) bitched and moaned.
We note that while The Detroit News dumped the cartoon and immediately apologized, its hypocritical editorial page editor, Nolan Finley and op-ed page editor, Richard Burr, continue--without apology--to run on Detroit News editorial pages the rantings of anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-American Hezbollah agent Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi in a monthly column. Again, they run this column despite complaints by the Jewish and Christian communities. But don't hold your breath to see Michelle's column on Jyllands-Posten on the paper's pages.
Another example is Detroit's television affiliates, like NBC's local affiliate, WDIV-TV, and ABC's WXYZ-TV. Both censored out showings of movies like "Delta Force" and "True Lies" when their respective networks ran them on national TV, lest they offend local Muslims and Arabs. We got to see old reruns of "Columbo" movies. Ditto for WXYZ's coverage of Arab and Muslim issues: it was the "Official Network of the 2003 U.S. Arab Economic Conference" and, therefore, its reporters, and even then-news director, told me they could not cover mid-east, Islamic, or terrorism issues in a way that would be "negative" to Arabs and Muslims.
Muslim fundamentalist suppression of free speech and exercise of anti-Semitic, anti-Christian free speech is alive and well because it has willing human tools like The Detroit News' Nolan Finley and op-ed editor Richard Burr (and editor and publisher Dave Butler, who issued a personal letter of apology to Hamad and ADC) and TV stations like we have, here in the Detroit area, the heart of Islamic America.
But, unfortunately, there are a ton more cowering, spineless parties like them in media outlets all over the country.
Posted by Debbie on February 3, 2006 09:18 AM to Debbie Schlussel