[VIDEO] The First Amendment Protects Blasphemy, Offensive Speech, Cartoons, & You: Megyn Kelly with Guest Eugene Volokh
Posted: May 6, 2015 Filed under: Censorship, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Alisyn Camerota, CNN, Garland, Islam, Islamism, Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Muhammad, Pamela Geller, Stop Islamization of America, Texas 1 CommentIf We Blame Pamela Geller’s Group, ‘The Jihadis Are Winning’
Megyn Kelly has been pretty fired up this week about the Texas shooting outside a “Draw Muhammad” cartoon contest. She clashed with Bill O’Reilly and has stood pretty firm on the free speech issue.
And Kelly opened her show tonight by again scolding the “rush to condemn the event organizers” with “nary a mention of the radical Islamists who sought to murder them over a cartoon.”
She reiterated that free speech is protected, “no matter how abhorrent,” and you don’t have to endorse it to defend it. And with all the focus on scolding Pamela Geller‘s group, Kelly said, “if this is where American sentiment stands on this, then the jihadis are officially winning.”
Kelly accused the media of drawing a “moral equivalence” between people who do offensive things and people who kill over those offensive things. Read the rest of this entry »
EXPOSED: Foreign Policy‘s Pro-Censorship Propaganda: No, it’s Not a Serious Question
Posted: May 5, 2015 Filed under: Censorship, Mediasphere, Religion, The Butcher's Notebook, War Room | Tags: Alisyn Camerota, Charles C. W. Cooke, Family Research Council, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Firearms and Explosives, Garland, Geert Wilders, Islamophobia, Muhammad, Pamela Geller, Southern Poverty Law Center, Stop Islamization of America, Texas Leave a comment
In ‘The Self-Fulfilling Prophet Drawing Competition’, David Francis and Elias Grol join the chorus of elite journalists siding with the the gunmen and blaming the victims.
In describing Geert Wilders and Pamela Geller, David Francis and Elias Groll do get one thing right. They accurately describe the look of Geert Wilders’ hair.
“He’s a silver-haired politician who warns about the threat of what he calls totalitarian Islam to Europe.”
David Francis and Elias Groll have apparently paid little attention to the murderous Christian and Jew-hating supremacist ideology that’s flourishing, quite comfortably, under the flag of official Islam, and yes, spoken in prayers every single day, all over the globe.
More loaded adjectives to describe Pamela Geller. (though they neglected to discuss her hair)
“She’s a preening ideologue who thinks Muslims use their daily prayers to curse Jews and Christians.”
FP Writers David Francis and Elias Groll are really upset and offended by the free speech provocations of figures like Geert Wilders and Pamela Geller. That is a very good thing.
Labeling Geert Wilders and Pamela Geller the “odd couple of the global ‘anti-Islam’ movement“:
“They are provocateurs trading in explosive, often racist anti-Muslim rhetoric, and they are now on the front lines of a roiling debate about whether Western notions of free speech ought to take into consideration Muslim sensitivities about images of the Prophet Mohammed.”
“Ought to take into consideration Muslim sensitivities”? Really?
On the popular habit of using the Southern Poverty Law Center as a ‘credible’ source:
“She is also the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as a ‘hate group.'”
Note: The Southern Poverty Law Center thinks any organization that doesn’t conform to contemporary left-wing orthodoxy is a “hate group”. The Southern Poverty Law Center would label a ham sandwich and a bag of potato chips a “hate group”. Is Foreign Policy magazine a “hate group”? (Sure, why not?)
Geller has the good sense to ignore the smear merchants “journalists” at Foreign Policy, and accurately reveals the magazine’s ideological bias, calling it a “citadel of leftist power and influence”.
“Geller did not answer a list of questions emailed to her by Foreign Policy. In the past she has referred to FP as a ‘citadel of leftist power and influence’.”
Exactly.
Former State Department counterterrorism director Daniel Benjamin weighs in:
“If you wanted to conduct a science experiment to show you could elicit jihadist violence, this was the perfect setup. Extremists have shown they are eager to avenge any perception of blasphemy.”
And western apologists continue to appease them, and endeavor to not offend them.
Why does Foreign Policy have this peculiar, almost erotic obsession with Geert Wilders hair?
“Unmistakable with his mane of silver hair, Wilders has tried to cloak his intense dislike of Islam behind a veil of advocating on behalf of liberal values.”
The authors promote a fiction that there’s a “line” between free speech and “hate speech” that must be observed, and “balanced”. It’s a false distinction, often used by those who misunderstand (or want to “raise questions” about) the first amendment. The constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech recognizes no such distinction. In fact, the only kind of speech that the the first amendment was designed to protect is offensive, hateful speech. What protection does inoffensive speech need?
When somebody tells you there’s a “line” that “must be balanced”, they are lying. They are advocating censorship.
The ‘Social Value’ Argument
“Benjamin, the former State Department official who is now a scholar at Dartmouth, said the United States must now balance the right to free speech with speech like the kind used by Wilders and Geller in their advocacy against Islam.”
If Daniel Benjamin is advocating self-restraint, then this is a legitimate expression of concern, aimed preserving nonviolence in a pluralistic society. If, however, he is advocating limiting free expression in order to achieve that goal, he should drop the ambiguous diplomatic double-talk and say what he means. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] CNN’s Alisyn Camerota Spars with ‘Draw Muhammad’ Host Pamela Geller
Posted: May 4, 2015 Filed under: Mediasphere, Religion, Self Defense, War Room | Tags: Alisyn Camerota, CNN, Depictions of Muhammad, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Garland, Geert Wilders, Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Muhammad, Pamela Geller, Southern Poverty Law Center, Stop Islamization of America, Texas 2 Comments‘Excuse me, I’m anti-jihad!’ Pam Geller tells CNN her critics are the real Islamophobes Pamela Geller Battles CNN Host over Garland Shooting: Why Is Media ‘Targeting’ Us?
“Increasingly, we’re abridging our freedoms so as not to offend savages. The very idea that if something offends me, or I’m insulted by something I’ll kill you and somehow this is okay with members of the elite media, and academia, is outrageous.”
Why is Pamela Geller so obsessed with Islam? It’s all she can think and talk about. Is it the result of some sort of trauma?
— Hala Gorani (@HalaGorani) May 4, 2015
Mediaite: Hours after a shooting at a Muhammed cartoon event Garland, Texas that left three dead, including the gunmen, the event’s sponsor and American Freedom Defense Initiative president Pamela Geller battled CNN’s Alisyn Camerota over whether the incendiary event had provoked violence.
“And then we have to get on these news shows, and somehow we are, those that are targeted, those that were going to be slaughtered, are the ones who get attacked speaks to how morally inverted this conversation is.”
“Increasingly, we’re abridging our freedoms so as not to offend savages,” Geller alleged. “The very idea that if something offends me, or I’m insulted by something I’ll kill you and somehow this is okay with members of the elite media, and academia, is outrageous.”
As @EWErickson, @rcallimachi works for the @nytimes. #DearLord pic.twitter.com/7fs0yhLLwn
— Ericka Andersen (@ErickaAndersen) May 4, 2015
Camerota read from the keynote speech given at the event disparaging Islam. Geller has made a career of warning of the “Islamization” of America; the Southern Poverty Law Center lists her as an extremist.
“He’s entitled to his opinion, end of story. So what? So he said that. And frankly, what he said was true…The fact is that we need to have this discussion, there’s a problem in Islam.”
The conversation devolved into whether Geller had ever called Muslims “savages,” which she said she had done once in her life. She argued she criticized only Muslims who kill over their beliefs. “I am anti-jihad, I am anti-Sharia,” Geller said. “You, by spaying I paint with a broad brush, are saying all Muslims support jihad. Alisyn you sound very Islamaphobic.” It was that type of segment. Read the rest of this entry »
Frank Sinatra’s Son Keeps Woody Allen Out Of MSNBC Debut
Posted: February 24, 2014 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Alex Wagner, Alisyn Camerota, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Farrow, Frank Sinatra, Lean Forward, MSNBC, Ronan Farrow, Twitter, Woody Allen 2 CommentsVariety‘s Brian Steinberg writes: Ronan Farrow took to MSNBC Monday to demonstrate his access to big-name guests, his facility with complex topics of global import and, subtly, to toss cold water on the idea that his family affairs might become part of his program’s daily conversation.
Anyone tuning in to “Ronan Farrow Daily” hoping its nicely pedigreed host would address
his or his sister Dylan’s relationship with their estranged father Woody Allen was likely disappointed. But those who expected the network’s usual dose of progressive finger-wagging may have walked away surprised: The host of MSNBC’s new 1 p.m. program steered the show away from anything salacious or argumentative in favor of something more reasoned and intelligent.
Over the course of an hour, Farrow demonstrated a detached, bemused stance toward the stories he presented. He didn’t appear to be a cheerleader for a particular cause …And he tipped his hand several times to social media, asking his viewers to use Twitter to express their opinions about a story on the show or to send a picture describing their problems with college debt….