You could waste a lifetime doing nothing but debunking Roger Cohen’s inanities, so I don’t usually bother. But this time, the star New York Times columnist ostensibly poses a reasonable question: why aren’t the official America and the media raising an outcry over the death of an American citizen in Israel’s May raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla?
Cohen’s answer is that Americans don’t care because Furkan Dogan was a Muslim. And to prove it, Cohen does his best to paint the 19-year-old as a secular saint whom Americans ought to care deeply about: Dogan “was proud of his American passport and dreamt of coming back [to America] after completing medical school. … [He] had just completed high school with excellent grades. … [He was] little interested in politics, but with an aspiring doctor’s concern for Palestinian suffering.”
Yet anyone who knows anything about the flotilla knows that Dogan was almost certainly nothing of the sort. The video footage of Turkish “humanitarians” aboard the Mavi Marmara – who carefully prepared their weapons and then brutally beat the commandos who rappelled from a chopper from the moment they landed — makes it clear that: a) the Turks attacked first with malice aforethought; and b) pretty much everyone on deck participated in the attack. Indeed, passengers and crew members later testified that the thugs had ordered all noncombatants below deck before the Israeli forces approached.
Moreover, photos of the battered, bloody Israeli commandos make it clear they had good reason to think their lives in danger and to open fire in self-defense.
And there’s another pesky fact Cohen should certainly know, as his own paper reported it: Dogan’s brother Mustafa was quoted by the Turkish daily Zaman afterward as saying that “we were not sorry to hear that he fell like a martyr.”
Americans have become all too familiar over the last decade with the kind of Muslims who laud “martyrdom.” They’re the ones who committed the 9/11 attacks and the Fort Hood Massacre; the ones who tried and failed to blow up an airliner last Christmas and to explode a bomb in Times Square this spring. And therefore, most Americans don’t have much use for the type.
In short, anyone who knows anything about the flotilla lacks sympathy for Dogan because of his behavior, not his religion.
But what about that vast majority of Americans who don’t know any of the above? Why don’t they care?
It’s very simple: they don’t care because Dogan moved back to Turkey with his family 17 years ago at the age of two. In other words, he’s primarily a Turk, not an American. It’s the same reason official America and the media have never shown any interest in the many American-Israelis killed by Palestinian suicide bombers: Americans tend to conclude that someone who has chosen to live outside America is primarily the responsibility of the country he (or, in this case, his parents) adopted, not the one he left.
It’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Only Roger Cohen could make it into evidence of anti-Muslim bias.
Well, that was the expected snide hatchet job from start to finish. Can’t imagine that going over well with a lot of women voters.
It’s inconceivable that Obama would have gotten that treatment.
MSM bias is the fall back for everything?
She wasn’t that great. But not terrible either.
She lost a little luster tonight, no chance that could be avoided, people literally have never seen her candid ever… but I’m sure she will have a new speech soon and she delivers them well.
She still could win this thing for McCain.
The “walmart moms” love her.
There is a clear double standard, sweetie (to borrow from Barry), and it was clear from the opening “set-up.” The whole approach is adversarial. When Gibson questioned Obama, it was about such tough matters as his “dashing young Kenyan” father (and the “dashing” bit was quite a stretch–perhaps there’s something about Gibson we don’t know?). But with Palin Gibson had to worry about his professional standing among his co-workers if he was not perceived as being tough enough.
Of course, GOP candidates have to be able to deal with the double standard. It’s not a forum for shrinking violets. Quayle never recovered from the initial media “kill.” It’s not going to happen again.
We need to do a better job of explaining what happens when Roe v. Wade is reversed–which will happen.
We need to explain it thus: We are returning it to the states and taking it out of our national politics, where it is toxic and divisive. The reversal of Roe v. Wade will make no abortions illegal.
That’s true. I’m pro-choice, and I think Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Let the states deal with it, it’s what the framework calls for. If Roe were overturned, where would abortion then be banned completely? Utah, maybe?
I hate abortion as a national issue… can’t stand it. It is so absurd.. that and gay marrage… what a waste of time. I would prolly vote republican more often If i didn’t have to deal with the evangelical pandering. I like that McCain doesn’t do that (only lately.. but he has to do it to win, I don’t believe he will make Bush like gaffes “crusade” and what not).
Leaving those issues to the states would be fantastic.
Moby,
you losers are still sacred $hitless of Palin. After her performance with that clown Gibson, I can see why.
Do you hear that sound? It’s the landslide picking up power.
Polarizin’ bob/Rininger
You sound like a fun guy to be around.
Keep making your own narrative if it makes you feel better.
Maybe Obama wins, maybe McCain, I don’t know.. but I don’t put any stock in what your polarized opinion is.
I agree with the stupidity of these “social” issues at the national level. Roe has been used as a club to beat people into one herd or another for over 30 years.
That was the most partisan interview I’ve witnessed in a while. Charlie Gibson might as well have been reading from the Obama campaign’s talking points, particularly in the portion where he kept hammering how she’d be different from Bush. It wasn’t that it was tough, it was that it seemed to aim to reinforce the opposition themes. Charlie Gibson always seemed like the lesser of three evils to me, well now that I’ve seen this act, I’m done with him.
The intro piece was an unbelievable hit job, and I don’t remember seeing anything like it air prior to any interview. The incredibly critical and biased “analysis” that followed the interview was just more of the Democratic talking points and I bet that most viewers did what I did and changed the channel.
It is just enraging that the media expects us to accept that this level of scrutiny on a VP candidate is acceptable when the Presidential candidate hasn’t been vetted in this fashion by that same media. We now know more about what Palin thinks on substantive policy and moral issues in under three weeks of national scrutiny than we know about Obama after two years of fauning adoration by our “nuetral” media.
Shameful. Dishonest. Disgraceful.
People who wish for an end to abortion “as a national issue” should, of course, seek to overturn Roe v Wade, which turned abortion into a national issue in the first place.
As long as the Supreme Court and lower federal courts claim the authority to dictate outcome of “social issues” then “social issues” will be — as night follows day — a huge part of the national debate.
Poor Gibson… Liberal Hitman if he is too rough… Spineless fake newsman if he is too light…
The Palin situation has got people up in arms on both sides.
The only part of Gibson’s interview that crossed the line was when he edited Palin’s comment about the war in Iraq and God’s will. Whether the editing was done from carelessness/incompetence or malice/partisanship, or some mixture of the two, it was a very shabby episode.
To be fair though…
Obama had just done an interview on Fox news.
And ABC is the news organization that took 45 minutes of asking Obama about Hillary talking points before asking him anything about the “real issues”.
That said…
I think Gibson and ABC clearly wanted to put Palin in a tough spot, I agree.
But if they didn’t appear to be tough… the Palin being completely unknown issue would still dominate. Now at least people can feel like they know her a tad more.
And McCain and co. can do the next 2 interviews on Fox.
Absolutely true about the introduction for tonight’s Palin “The Interview” (Gibson, or his producers’ pomposity is amazing)–a classic hit piece. The only difference between doing a Palin hit and one on say, Biden or Obama is that contrasting the latter two’s inconsistencies would eat up the interview time.
However, in “after action report” by Clark and Myers, I have to hand it to the latter. She gets Palin as few Democrats do; understands her virtues as few of her fellow-traveling “feminist” battle axes do, and thus, Myers represents one of the few “public” Democrats who seem able to correctly assess Palin.
OTR–
Oh, I agree with you completely. If the courts had left Roe alone, at least there would be the ability for the electorate to let off some steam at the state level, one way or the other. But they short-circuited that process, the satisfaction of citizens in a democracy to actually vote on issues that matter to them. Whenever this is done, it creates tension in the electorate. Too much tension and you create a revolutionary situation. I shudder to think what would happen if we had nine activist judges on the Supreme Court. It could lead to something terrible. That’s why I’m always fine with laws changing from administration to administration, from Congress to Congress. But when stare decisis is running the show, all bets are off. I never understood why liberals can’t understand this issue well enough to know that in the end, they could be the victims just as easily as conservatives.
“I shudder to think what would happen if we had nine activist judges on the Supreme Court. It could lead to something terrible.”
Sadly, it only takes five, not the full nine. The present USSC has four full-time activists to begin with (Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens). And when Anthony Kennedy is in one of his moods, one might say — you did say — “all bets are off.”
…
“I never understood why liberals can’t understand this issue well enough to know that in the end, they could be the victims just as easily as conservatives.”
Ah, those are deep waters, but my quick, bottom-line answer is that liberals don’t really give a sh*t about federalism, separation of powers, constitutional legitimacy, or anything of that sort. They basically just want to get their way. Taking allies where they found them, the liberals saw for many years that “their way” could be most readily obtained through the involvement of the USSC. As far back as the Nixon years, I think some of the more perceptive liberals could see the potential danger of relying on the courts too much. But momentum and good fortune (Blackmun, Stevens, Souter, etc) carried them along for a while. Even today, they still have a better chance in that forum than in any other part of the federal government, as the first part of this comment tried to explain.
Yeah, the intro piece is what got me, more than the Gibson interview (I was expecting Gibson to be like that). The intro piece admitted Palin’s 80% popularity, then proceeded to trash her on everything. Why on earth, one might ask, does she have an 80% approval rating? Was it really necessary to trash her record completely (and misleadingly)? It was like a fifteen minute Obama commercial.
“It was like a fifteen minute Obama commercial.”
Well, of course. That’s the basic point of the exercise.
I liked the point too that not everyone in Alaska was going to vote for her. Well, of course. But in the latest Alaska poll McCain has a 31% lead, in a state that the media was telling in the summer was a tossup. Could any of that bounce in Alaska had somethign to do with….Palin?
But it’s not just the liberals. On the American Spectator site (where Jennifer Rubin once was to be found, apparently the only woman ever there), she’s getting trashed as well by the bloggers, for such things as poor posture, accent and of course knowledge. I’m suprised the boys over there didn’t add fashion criticism while they were at it. A voice coach, among other things, has been recommended for the poor rubette, however. One of them even compared her to the infamous Miss Teen America contestant last year who recommended, on a foreign knowledge questions, that Americans needed more maps so they could learn about places like Africa and “the Iraq.” So, basically, she’s being dismissed by some there as an utter moron. With friends like these….
I’m a social moderate with a law degree from a top twenty law school so I guess I’m not supposed to be Palin’s Wal-Mart demo (though I’ve certainly been there), but I’m so disguested with the elitist (yes!) snideness emanating from pundits of both persuasions, I can’t tell you. I think a great part of Palin’s appeal is that she is a genuine outsider. There are a lot of disaffected independents who HATE Washington, D. C., and for good reason. Palin speaks to them, I know that. They call it false populism, but Obama’s populism is the false one, being simply more centralization of power in the hands of an unaccountable judiciary and administrative bureacracy.
I confess her voice does get somewhat on my nerves. But I would never expect anyone else to care about that.
As for American Spectator, it is difficult to believe they are anti-Palin. Are you sure those comments were posted by their regular contributors?
Who are “the regulars”? I’m not familiar enough with TAS to know who those would be. I used to read the blog back when Rubin posted last year, because she was always high on Giuliani. Rubin was the only one I cared about, frankly. It seems like a generally dismissive tone over there now (sometimes contemptuously so), on the blog, at least. I get the impression there’s basically a feeling that she’s a hick in over her head who is headed for a hard fall, or, more charitably, another GWB, who doesn’t really have any comprehensive, systematic view of the world (this latter charge may or may not be true, but you have to get elected first). I think comparisons to Thatcher are rather overheated at this point, but the dismissiveness seems off base to me too.
It’s interesting that National Review, with a few exceptions (Brookhiser), has been much less snotty about Palin, though they had a fit a few years ago about Harriet Miers, another “rube.” Of course Miers really was an awful choice, not that smart, not dynamic and probably not even conservative. Palin seems smart to me, very dynamic and conservative. So I’m disgusted with the sniping. Who did these critics want? Mitt Romney? I never found Mitt Romney very reassuring on anything, because I never felt he had core convictions; and he certainly would not have ignited the base. So what was their solution? All they do is carp.
I don’t recall a similar style interview regarding Obama or Biden from the legacy media, although Obama did go on Fox News. It is the disparity of the treatment and attitude that has fueled a backlash. Can you imagine a Gibson style interview for Biden? Can you imagine a similar tone? Biden has been a train wreck when it comes to judgment his entire career, yet the media has felt no need to “vet” Biden at all.
Finally, the one Woodward book I liked was The Agenda. It showed that having pat campaign style answers and actual leadership are two different things, a simple lesson people never seem to figure out. Sometimes the constant score keeping and spin misses the point.
I’m glad she got this out of the way now. No one can deny that it was a tough interview and, though she was a bit shaky in spots, she didn’t fall on her face or loose her poise. I suspect the McCain team is more than satisfied. For the rest of the campaign they can be very selective about which media get access to her. The MSM will whine, of course. But their stock has fallen so far with the public that the political cost to McCain will be nil.
Stephen Lins;
Exactly. Palin had to do her first interview on a hyper-partisan network in order to establish her bona fides. Now that that’s out of the way, team McCain will hopefully be more discerning about which “news” outlets are given access.
The public saw what Gibson/ABC did, and it turned off all but Obama’s true believers. Now that people know what Obama is and who supports him, these MsM hatchet jobs against McCain/Palin invariably backfire. These media clowns just aren’t talented enough to snow the public. Not when alternative news sources are so readily available.