Evidently the American media's hyper-reflexive dhimmism when it comes to Pamela Geller's "Draw The Prophet" illustration of Islamic Supremacism and the Left's endorsement of it extended to Fox News Channel in the persons of Bill O'Reilly and Greta Van Sustren, who jumped on the "Geller brought that attempted jihadist attack on herself" bandwagon.
Mike Huckabee, to his credit, was having no part of it:
Wednesday on Newsmax TV’s The Steve Malzberg Show, recently declared candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) criticized Fox News hosts Bill O’Reilly and Greta Van Susteren for their criticisms of Pamela Geller and the appropriateness of her “Draw Muhammad” art contest.
“You do not blame the victim of a crime for the crime committed by a murdering criminal,” Huckabee said. “Free speech is a precious right in this country.”
It was, Governor. Obviously not anymore, unless it's politically-approved speech. Which Miss Geller's quite clearly is not.
Otherwise, Huck is right. To demonize Miss Geller and assert that she was at fault for facilitating the expression of ideas that a violently criminal segment of society don't like is to morally legitimize the latter, to assert that Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi were morally and legally justified in their attempt to commit mass-murder in order to punish and silence that speech. Whatever happened to that old saying, "I may disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it?" Just another symptom of the death of the Old American Republic.
That Huckles is publicly swiping at O'Reilly and Van Sustren might be burning bridges behind him that he's going to need when his silly windmill-tilting expedition is done less than a year from now and he needs a billet for his next television gig. Unless he's going to form his own cable network or something. Boy, I can't wait, can you?
But who knows? Maybe Megyn Kelly will join him:
“Over the last seventy-two hours, we have heard the event organizers condemned as being too provocative, too stupid, even for inviting their own attempted murder,” Kelly said.
“If this is where American sentiment stands on this issue, then the jihadis are officially winning.”
They've been winning for the past six and a half years, Megyn. It's just never been more obvious than it is now. And, I think, the other thing that Pamela Geller was seeking to illustrate.
It gets back to what this site's proprietor always says: Unless you fight for the Constitution, it's just squiggles on an old piece of parchment. And that fight will have casualties the further this country careens away from it. Pamela Geller, far from being a "hater" or a "bomb-thrower," embodies this maxim in being willing to die for that "old piece of parchment". Can we say the same?
Exit question: Isn't the very next step in this deterioration of free thought expanding the denunciations hurled at Miss Geller to the very expression of Christian values and beliefs? We're already there vis-a-vie homosexual marriage, after all.
UPDATE: Geert Wilders certainly has a set, doesn't he?:
Dutch anti-Islam[ic Fundamentalism] politician Geert Wilders said on Wednesday he wanted to stage a parliamentary exhibition of the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed that sparked a deadly shooting in Texas that left two dead.
“I am going to request parliament to exhibit the same cartoons as those that were displayed in Garland,” Mr Wilders told AFP on Wednesday, referring to the Dallas suburb where the shooting took place on Sunday.……
Mr Wilders, 51, had left the conference centre, where he made a speech criticising Islam, shortly before the incident.
"I want to send a message that if you use violence to suppress free speech the only effect is that we’ll do it even more,” Mr. Wilders said, adding “we must show we’ll not be intimidated.”
The platinum-haired Mr Wilders, whose Freedom Party (PVV) gained popularity in the Netherlands on an anti-Islam[ic Fundamentalism] ticket, denied that a cartoon exhibition would be provocative.
“I don’t want to provoke, but at the same time we must show that we’re standing for freedom of speech,” Mr. Wilders said.
Yep, he's a dead man. But he'll be a martyr to a worthy, vital cause.
Exit question: Who gets to define what's "provocative"? And isn't that precisely the sort of thing in which the Left used to delight when the targets of provocations where sacred cows they hated, like Christianity and American traditionalism? Why shouldn't "provocation" be a two-way street? Isn't that what the First Amendment was all about?
UPDATE II: In a shocking, stunning, unbelievable, astonishing, gob-smacking, jaw-dropping development, the Obama FBI and Commissariat of Homeland Security not only haven't bothered to contact Miss Geller about the jihadist attempt on her life, but aren't even returning her calls:
Pamela Geller, who was targeted by terrorists over the weekend, has slammed Barack Obama for fostering an environment that has put the United States in danger of increasing terror attacks.
Geller also told Fox News host Sean Hannity that to her surprise she has not been contacted by the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since the attack on her Prophet Muhammad cartoon competition, in which two terrorists were killed....
After Geller informed Hannity that she had reached out to the FBI without reply, he asked whether Homeland Security had tried to speak to her, according to the Weekly Standard.
"This is a serious threat," said Hannity. "Basically a Fatwa, a death threat, has now been issued."
Geller replied: "No, and this is interesting because this is a terrorist threat. And the FBI, President Obama should provide security. There's no question about it. Because he created an environment that raised the stakes on this."
Miss Geller has, of course, been a jihadist target for a long, long time. And certainly, God forbid that the enemy should successfully take her out, as a Muslim imam on this very same program publicly called for, But I have to wonder if that's what it's going to take to gin up a sufficient level of public alarm and outrage to counter and beat back the militant dhimmism of the Left. It would certainly explain why they're going full-court-press to demonize and "otherize" her right now.
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