"To hear PBS tell it, Muslims are just Methodists with hats and beards."

I wish I had thought to write that.

Robert Spencer (in a very well-written article) and David Klinghoffer (in an article marred considerably by lack of citations) weigh in at NRO today.

(Thanks Charles.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/19/02 02:55:19 PM
Categorized as Media.

And Happy Solstice, Too!

From a (quick) reader:

You know what I realized yesterday? It struck me with sudden, satori-like illumination.

To be truly consistent, these "happy holidays" blighters should never, ever wish anyone a Happy New Year. At least not in late December or early January.

Reason being? IT'S THE CHRISTIAN CALENDAR!! We can't have people proselytizing for Christocentric belief-systems and theistic Weltanschauungen by imposing the calendar of the Religious Right on innocent progressives!

The Wiccans need a calendar. I know a Wiccan, & she's very sweet. I'm going to suggest it.

Happy Solstice to you and may Goddess and God bless you as we come to the end of what the Christians call 2002 (the Common Era). Really, day 28 of the month Nakedtree (two days before the 1st of Snowyknife) in the year of Lady Earth 5,678,924,220.

The Christian calendar? It's worse than that! It's the Gregorian calendar. And "Gregorian" refers to... Pope Gregory XIII. :)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/19/02 12:57:43 PM
Categorized as Media.

Happy Holidays!

I almost forgot to tell you about this.

The final slap in the face irony about the broadcast of Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet shouldn't be overlooked.

I watched it on the local PBS station, WQED in Pittsburgh. Immediately after subjecting their audience to two hours of the Muslim catechism, they showed a little vignette of a snowy winter scene — over which was superimposed the vapid, vacuous, wishy-washy, non-religious, politically correct text "Happy Holidays".

Yep. After broadcasting, partly at taxpayers' expense, Muslim propaganda that, I'm sure, will be used by some America-hating, scheming, violent Islamist extremists to help them to keep the lid from blowing off for as long as they can continue to fool people, WQED was oh so brave enough to wish everybody "Happy Holidays" — seven days before CHRISTMAS.

Happy Freakin' Holidays to you, too, WQED.

P.S. If you are wondering why I call it "Muslim propaganda", take a look at the list of sponsors (last page) some time; more are listed at the conclusion of the broadcast. You never saw a longer list of Arabic names — except maybe the roll of 9-11 hijackers.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/19/02 12:26:43 PM
Categorized as Media.

"Your Tax Dollars at Work, Spreading Islam"

At the JunkYardBlog.

From Bryan Preston last night:

.... Had so uncritical documentary been proposed to treat the life of Moses or Jesus, PBS would never have funded it. Not a cent. I know, because I once pitched a documentary idea I'd been carrying around for a while to a room full of producers. One is a freelance producer who has done a great deal of work with PBS, producing episodes of Nova as well as full documentaries, and the others were all producers in some stage of getting their own work funded. My idea was (is, actually, since I haven't given up on it) to produce a documentary on Christian missionaries throughout history, treating their good deeds as well as their bad ones, and show what a huge effect Christian missions have had and continue to have throughout the world. With one exception (not the PBS producer, but a fellow Christian sympathetic to my point of view), the entire group wanted me to skew the documentary more negatively, play up the bad things while playing down the good. They wanted me to water down the message components of the piece, even at the expense of the meaning of the story. I had included a quote from William Blake in the proposal — "The glory of Christianity is in conquering by forgiveness" — and all but one found that benign quote highly offensive. The plain meaning of the quote, that Christianity isn't a faith of the sword but of the heart, was lost. And I was told that this documentary would never get PBS funding of any kind, because it won't be interested in the subject matter....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/19/02 08:08:44 AM
Categorized as Media.