How It Works

If anything, Pam Gellar is great at fabrication and fear-mongering.

When 60 Minutes caught up with her and challenged her on the blatantly false narrative she created surrounding Park51, she took the standard line of response.



So what does Gellar do when in the safe confines of the Fox"Business" noise machine?



That's right, 60 Minutes - a well respected news program for decades - is now nothing more than a tool of the "Islamic supremacist agenda".

Make no mistake, this works quite well within the modern conservative movement - especially when their own rhetoric is reasonably questioned by actual news organizations.

And almost on cue, Fox"Nation" highlighted a "study" that shows alleged bias towards Islam and "the Left".

On Sunday, the season premiere of 60 Minutes will include an anticipated Scott Pelley report on the Ground Zero mosque. Will the story be pro-mosque, just like President Obama? The first clips displayed softballs of sympathy, that it should be seen as "a hub of culture, a hub of coexistence, a hub of bringing people together." To underline the overwhelming sympathetic tilt of this program in the Obama era -- especially all the Steve Kroft hope-and-change goo before the 2008 election -- the MRC has a new special report called "Syrupy Minutes." Here's my executive summary:

In the last five years, CBS’s 60 Minutes has become infamous for letting its left-wing ardor get way ahead of its journalistic mission. Dan Rather destroyed his own reputation in 2004 with a 60 Minutes II “expose” of President Bush’s incomplete Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard which relied on falsified documents. A CBS-appointed panel found “myopic zeal” in Rather’s professional demise, but no one would admit a political bias.

It doesn't take long to realize that this "study" isn't exactly non-partisan itself, as it was conducted by the ultra-rightwing group Media Research Center - a group known to have nothing but glowing words of praise for Fox"News" and who continually lambaste any reasonable challenges other news outlets put towards figures the MRC is attempting to shield from criticism.

This is how the modern conservative movement works: when you can't defend your own standpoints, simply claim that it's "liberal media bias" or "Islam" that is to blame.

Proximity Issue

It's not "just" a mosque, it's a 13 story structure that "includes" a mosque. Most people aren't reporting that.

What's happening: The community board in lower Manhattan has endorsed, by a 29-to-1 vote, a plan to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center about two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center. Predictably, outrage has erupted. If you type "mosque" into Google, the first suggestion is "mosque at ground zero," which gives a sense of how quickly this has moved into the popular consciousness.

The imam in charge, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is consciously moderate, and has described combating radicalism as his personal mission. Nor is he jumping on the chance to get in the neighborhood to make some point: The mosque is already just a few blocks away, in Tribeca, but has overgrown its current space. Rauf says that he hopes that having a moderate mosque so near ground zero can send a message of tolerance and peace.

When mouth-agape conservatives hear the word Islam, they are likely to immediately think of the word "terrorist". This isn't surprising, as virtually all media coverage ( particularly from Fox"News" ) paint every single person of Islamic heritage as a terrorist.

The imam in charge, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is consciously moderate, and has described combating radicalism as his personal mission. Nor is he jumping on the chance to get in the neighborhood to make some point: The mosque is already just a few blocks away, in Tribeca, but has overgrown its current space. Rauf says that he hopes that having a moderate mosque so near ground zero can send a message of tolerance and peace.

Unfortunately, for Imam Rauf, there is no such thing as understanding, much less tolerance that comes from the conservative realm in America. The Tea Baggers are the loudest voice of what essentially amounts to a white/christian/gun owning America.

Mark Williams, a Tea Party leader and Fox News commentator, wrote on his blog, "The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god." He added, "In the meantime I have a wonderful idea along the same lines as that mosque at Ground Zero thing… a nice, shiny new U.S. Military Base on the smoldering ruins of Mecca. Works for me!"

Lest you think it’s just anonymous trolls producing this stuff, though, check out Pamela Geller, the head of the group "Stop Islamization of America," talking to Joy Behar on CNN. According to Geller, instead of a mosque, the site should be host to a monument to the "victims of hundreds of millions of years of jihadi wars, land enslavements, cultural annihilations and mass slaughter."

You’d think someone who runs a group with "Islam" right in its name might know that the religion is about 1,400 years old -- not "hundreds of millions." I know that all that desert stuff seems super-ancient -- "sands of time" and and all that -- but honestly. "Hundreds of millions"? That’s way, way older than homo sapiens as a species. (Maybe that explains Williams' "monkey god" reference?)

And while I will offer the caveat that it does present somewhat of a sense of unease at first blush - that is until you actually get the facts about this building and it's intended use - the very fact that conservatives are misinforming the public that this is literally on top of Ground Zero is completely preposterous and without merit. But it's all about proximity when it comes to these issue.

I'm not fool enough to think that conservatives are going to try and understand what the bulk of Islamic people are like, that would be asking far too much for a people that are steeped in reflexive hatred and a wonderful inability for reasoned thought. But I do believe it is the duty of all Americans to do your research and find out about varrying issues rather than relying on media that is there more for the desire of sensationalizing a story than presenting you with hard data.

The Shrieking Masses

It's always good fun when Ron Reagan Jr. is on one of the cable networks to debate whatever reactionary conservative has been tapped to appear. This time, Reagan had to deal with one of the twitchiest, mouth-breathers of all time - Pam Gellar



I always find it amazing that conservatives insist that they know more about Reagan than anyone else - maybe even the man himself. But when you are attempting to tell his own son that he didn't know who his father was, then you are showing you're not only ignorant but severely out of touch. I think Geller jumped headlong into the deep end of fucking crazy.

The deification of Reagan continues.