The Riots of the Faithful

[Larry]

I do agree with some of his points.

As far as I'm concerned, Muslim terrorism will end, when the Muslim-on-the-street wakes up and realises that, to the rest of the world, Muslin ==> Terrorist.

It will end when the Muslim-in-the-street becomes ashamed of the terrorists.

OTOH,

I'm really admiring the (double) standards of integrety people apply to information.

• George Bush uses intelligence to justify a war, after two sources have refuted it.
  
• Newsweek prints a story, after two sources have confirmed it, but one of the sources changes his mind after it's published.
  

This obviously proves: Newsweek lied. For political purposes. Bush didn't.

And I really love the way he's claiming that Bush and Co. are protecting the country from a religous theocracy who will ignore any law, any fact, that stands in the way of their theology.

[Ghost of]

Orson Scott Card is a Democrat.

Just like Victor Davis Hanson.

Next.

-------------

Larry, thank you for *gasp* taking the time to actually consider the article unlike some of our fellow posters.

I don't agree with a lot of it myself, at least on specifics and while I think the Newsweek thing reveals something about many in the media, I do not place the blame squarely on them (those who commit evil are responsible.)

But I can't believe any reasonable person can read that article and come away with "KKK" or "complete garbage."

[Ghost of]

Originally posted by E-Dog Night

Yes. I had no idea who Orson Scott Card was until today. And unless you are part of a group with the word "militia" in the title or enjoy wearing white robes & pillowcases in the summer time and people call you "grand wizard", then you probably hadn't heard of him either.

He's a Democrat. But as a believer and 'old-school Dem', he has certain opinions that you do not share. And anyone who doesn't toe your line is a racist or in a militia. This is the second time you've basically gone way over the line in attacking a poster or piece with no evidence. Seriously, what in this piece is SOOO off as to be linked with the KKK? And you basically implied that Golgo was a KKK member.

Btw, He's also regarded as one of the finest fantasy authors out there.

Is what he said about Muslims being able to dish it out but not take it and engaging in ridiculously absurd double standards NOT true?

Did Mormons actually riot over the South Park episode(or any other show or person that made fun of them?

Seriously, where are the riots over Sudan? Where were they when people were being decapitated in Kashmir or blown up in the Philippines? Gunned down in Pakistan?

Women tortured and murdered in..well, everywhere?

[Joe Sick]

Geez, even the press secretary is backing off the "Newsweek caused riots" story now. Where has this guy been?

Get over it. Find a new boogeyman to boycott or label as the liberal media.

He should definitely stick to writing kids fantasy stories.

[Henry]

Originally posted by Kilmer17

Straw man anyone?

Please. The writer invented a slur with which to attack anyone he disagrees with politically. I'm supposed to take him seriously?

I'll tell you what. When people learn to accept differing opinions as something other than insanity, accessory to murder, communism, a nazi plot to disrupt the American Way of Life or all of the above, I'll stop talking about bagels.

And I might even stop closing threads.

Sheesh.

[Kilmer17]

Originally posted by Henry

Please. The writer invented a slur with which to attack anyone he disagrees with politically. I'm supposed to take him seriously?

I'll tell you what. When people learn to accept differing opinions as something other than insanity, accessory to murder, communism, a nazi plot to disrupt the American Way of Life or all of the above, I'll stop talking about bagels.

And I might even stop closing threads.

Sheesh.

Henry, not sure what you're referring to? I was responding to Des' creation of an opinion from the writer (and those supporting his position) that didnt exist.

[Prosperity]

I stopped reading after "2. Too many people in the “American” media have lost any concept of loyalty to their country – if they even consider it their country, rather than just their residence.

"

We don't need a media that is loyal to the country, we don't need some state sponsored propaganda center. F that.

[Tarhog]

Orson Scott Card lives on my Dad's street in Greensboro, NC. He's a well-respected and award-winning science fiction writer, and if memory serves, a moderate DEMOCRAT.

He writes occasional editorials.

He's certainly no whack-job - and to be blunt, one shouldn't call him one without doing a little research on the subject.

If I thought SOME of you could act like adults, I'd invite him here for a little chat about his article. So you'll understand I won't be inviting him

[Ghost of]

Originally posted by Liberty

I stopped reading after "2. Too many people in the “American” media have lost any concept of loyalty to their country – if they even consider it their country, rather than just their residence.

"

We don't need a media that is loyal to the country, we don't need some state sponsored propaganda center. F that.

Well, you CAN have a balance.

For instance, the vast majority of the media answered a question about D-Day that ran like this:

If you knew of D-Day would you report it in advance?

Like 80 percent answered yes. So, lose a huge battle and tens of thousands of lives to Hitler for.....?

It used to be that they you were an American first(it's not just about the American State, but about the security and future of the people, duh) and a reporter second(or French or whatever first)

Now they answer scenarios like this:

Say you are travelling with an NVA regiment and you have knowledge that an American platoon is going to be ambushed and sustain heavy casualties. You can alert the Americans or you can let them die and cover the event. At first Dan Rather said he'd alert the Americans, but then after getting rebuked by fellow 'journalists' said he wouldn't. Sad...

Journalists like to pretend they are above 'making' the news, but many of them are crusading journalists and try to break stories that "change the world." Even media coverage about Star Wars and the people in line has changed cultural perception of Star Wars from cool to "geeked out."

So the Fourth Estate can NEVER be above the fray, and as an American, I would hope you'd alert the American platoon about to be ambushed.

[Ghost of]

Originally posted by Tarhog

Orson Scott Card lives on my Dad's street in Greensboro, NC. He's a well-respected and award-winning science fiction writer, and if memory serves, a moderate DEMOCRAT.

He writes occasional editorials.

He's certainly no whack-job - and to be blunt, one shouldn't call him one without doing a little research on the subject.

If I thought SOME of you could act like adults, I'd invite him here for a little chat about his article. So you'll understand I won't be inviting him

Basically, people read into the article what they chose and decided to label fellow posters and Orson Scott Card a KKK member.

I used to post VDHanson articles. Geez, I guess E-Dog would call me Daniel Carver, the KKK guy.

More and more on this board, I'm starting to notice that the left is so defensive anything that makes a strong statement that is too far from their ideology is a hate-filled KKK screed.

Ridiculous.

[Larry]

Originally posted by Ghost of Nibbs McPimpin

More and more on this board, I'm starting to notice that the left is so defensive anything that makes a strong statement that is too far from their ideology is a hate-filled KKK screed.

Ridiculous.

Um, think you might be a bit less liberal (sorry if the word offends you) with that flamethrower?

Or would you like to run a contest? You count how many KKK references you can find on this board in some period, say, a month, and I'll count all the "anti-american" labels?

This isn't exactly a one-way label fest going on.

Edit: Please say "no" to my question. The only thing worse that all the flaming going on would have to be starting an argument about the flaming.

[Guest Gichin13]

I have a mixed reaction to Card's piece here.

First, I am a big fan of his books. The Ender's Game series and its progeny are very enjoyable books. His more fantasy as opposed to sci-fi books are even better to my mind. Enchantment and The Songbird are both wonderful books.

I agree to some extent with his characterization of the press. Inhabitants of "Smartland" has some validity. I also agree that my first thought on the story running when it turned out "false" was that running it without solid validation was a bad and unpatriotic move. This is coming from someone who seriously questions a lot of the express premises that we were fed on the way in to this war (but also someone who recognizes Hussein was a brutal dictator that ultimately needed to go).

The premise in large part is based on the story being a "lie" to discredit the current administration. The Post ran an article today indicating there were widespread allegations by released inmates of desecration of the Quran by guards. Here is the link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/25/AR2005052501395.html

Could obviously be damage control as I believe the Post owns Newsweek ...

I think some of his points are stretched pretty far and while I might agree with the starting point, the extent he takes it to I disagree with. That being said, the man is not a KKK member and suggesting the same is a pretty silly position.

[Ghost of]

Actually, I think I was pretty narrow. For one, I qualified it by saying this board. OK, perhaps I should say, "A few members of ___" are growing more agitated and making more absurd statements by the day when confronted with RATIONAL opinions.

And while I don't want individuals on this board being called anti-American just because they disagree with someone else, I think that, for instance, a group proposing to strip Americans of firearms(whatever their ostensible allegiance) IS anti-AMerican. there IS a place for the word.

Calling someone a grand wizard because they talked about people who in MANY(but not all cases) are swarthy or non-European Caucausian is absurd.

[Ignatius J.]

How bout someone actualy points out a reporter who said they would report D-day before it happened?

[Ghost of]

Originally posted by Ignatius J.

How bout someone actualy points out a reporter who said they would report D-day before it happened?

Or maybe I can do the googling for you and show you the survey or the reference to it. This is a very old thing, so you'll have to bear with me.

But forget that for a minute. The exchange between Rather (it might have been Jennings) and others on the panel about that Vietnam-related question will function just fine.

And that was very real, my friend. YOU can do the research on that. I'll do the D-Day survey one.

Then tell me what the point of this request was afterwards.

[Ignatius J.]

If the quote is "I would have gone public before the invasion" then I would be happy to say that those people are unamerican enough that they should not be trusted to accurately report the news.

that's why i am interested. I simply do not believe the statement.

I also don't neccesarily like surveys like this, unless they are done by a reputable organization. What keywords ought I google?

[Ghost of]

Originally posted by Ignatius J.

If the quote is "I would have gone public before the invasion" then I would be happy to say that those people are unamerican enough that they should not be trusted to accurately report the news.

that's why i am interested. I simply do not believe the statement.

I also don't neccesarily like surveys like this, unless they are done by a reputable organization. What keywords ought I google?

I'm lookin' for mine! It's hard. As for yours, such incidents are probably difficult to google, but maybe "Rather"(or Jennings) and "panel" "war reporting" or something like that.

Understand, American journalists at THE TIME knew of D-Day or portions of it.

I'm talking of latter-day journalists.

I will absolutely stand by the exchange at the panel Rather(or Jennings) was a part of...I will not 100 percent stand by the D-Day one until I can at least find some reference to it.

But I am 87 percent behind it.

Let me also add that different journalists have different reasons.

I DID NOT say they were unamerican merely because they had a twisted view of their priorities(or wanted American lives lost, etc) I was merely illustrating that the values had changed in much of the Fourth Estate where I can see there being a conflict that would raise the question.

[Larry]

Originally posted by Gichin13

I also agree that my first thought on the story running when it turned out "false" was that running it without solid validation was a bad and unpatriotic move. . . .

The premise in large part is based on the story being a "lie" to discredit the current administration.

Um, a lot of folks that I've heard, here and elsewhere, seem really gung-ho to push some concept that Newsweek pulled this thing out of thin air, and knew it was a) false, and would kill people, but what the heck, it'll hurt the country, so why not?

At least based on the information I've seen (and the information is un-refuted), Newsweek had:

• A story (Koran in toilet) that had been public, from multiple sources, for over a year. But, the multiple sources weren't really credible sources.
  
• A source who has access to classified material, told them that these up-till-now-rumors had been confirmed by the military, and he'd read the report.
  
• They asked two other sources to verify the story. One said "no comment", the other disputed parts of the story, but didn't dispute the "Koran in the toilet" part.
  

Now granted, this isn't exactly the same as having videotape of the incident. But it's far from the outright fabrication that the Right are pronouncing as a fact.

(Do I think Newsweek might've had a tendancy towards believing something bad about this war effort? Could be. But being a sucker for a story isn't a lie. It's just human.)

And frankly, the story hasn't been "proven false", either. What's happened is that Newsweek's original source has now changed his story, and says he read it somewhere, but it might not have been in the DoD inspector's report. And Newsweek has downgraded their opinion of the story from "probable" to "rumor" again.

(In fact, it's possible that the source was reading from an FBI document, not a DoD one. And the FBI document doesn't confirm the incident, is simple mentions that a lot of detainees are claiming it. Which we'd heard before.)

That's why I really have a problem with his statement

So Newsweek kills people with a false story that is actually a lie (unlike anything President Bush ever said about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction)

Newsweek had a source and a confirmation. They printed it, and then their source changed his mind.

George Bush had a report (Niger uranium), and he asked two sources for confirmation. One said he was unable to confirm it, and thought it was untrue (but couldn't prove it untrue). The other said that they doubted the source of the report was credible, and proved that the supporting document was a forgery. And after being told this, Bush used it anyway.

Sorry, but to me, in order for something to be a lie, you have to know something's false when you say it. Bush fits that criteria. Newsweek doesn't.

[Ignatius J.]

I'm having trouble finding it. I'm watching pistons heat as I type.... priorities and all.

[Ghost of]

Preface: I don't necessarily disagree with the following but I think it reveals the hypocrisy in many journalists who pretend to be 'observers' and not 'news-makers' and their actual motives (or at the very least, results)

One can also wonder at the results of 'crusading journalism' when the issue may not be an actual crisis, or the reporter has little understanding of the subject(such as the commonly atrocious firearms reporting)

http://www.cantonpl.org/specialc/journal.html

The purpose of journalism, said Chicago newspaper columnist Peter Finley Dunne in the early 1900s, is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Although modern journalists have often been the targets of severe criticism, it is also true that throughout the centuries, and even today, journalism has been a force for making America a better place to live. Indeed, journalism was a factor in the country’s creation, with the newsletters of Samuel Adams and others, as well as the essays of Thomas Paine, both informing and inspiring the colonists during the American Revolution. In the 1800s, journalists brought pressure to end slavery, and were instrumental in bringing greater equality to women in America. Journalism helped create Yosemite National Park in California, the Everglades National Park in Florida, and the National Forests system. Journalism helped to end child labor, exposed the dangers of DDT (like saving millions from malaria--Ghost), and has forced corrupt politicians from office. Journalism helped bring about safer automobiles, safer food, and cleaner air and water. It was journalists who raised the alarm about the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. Thus, it is a testament to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers that they gave a free press special protection in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

[Ghost of]

Originally posted by Ignatius J.

I'm having trouble finding it. I'm watching pistons heat as I type.... priorities and all.

:laugh: That's on!??!?

Yeah, no worries. I might have to dig through a book, but I'll give you the relevant information when I can find it.

[Ghost of]

Dwyane Wade is absolutely beastly.

[Ghost of]

Ok, this is a good essay on war reporting.

He provides some good examples in the Patriotism vs. Propaganda section of the conflict journalists face between taking the pictures/getting the story and doing the 'right thing'(whether that be duty to country, morality, saving a person in need, whatever)

I have to read this link to see if it refers to what I'm talking about:

http://www.newseum.org/warstories/essay/secrecy.htm

[Ignatius J.]

It is an interesting essay. It seems to substantiate the idea that most reporters are trying to do the right thing, and that when men's lives are on the line they are willing to sit on the story.

War reporting is a tricky thing, and I think conservatives who simply say that it is better that our press simply toe the line are ignoring a whole region of important subtleties.

[Crazyhorse1]

Overlooked in major media by not by the blogs, Quran desecration, including page flushings, have been reported by Gitmo prisoners for almost three years now. Newsweeks' error doesn't change reality any more than Rather's gaff clears Bush of draft dodging.