Islamophobia is the new black.

"We want to push back against the extremists." So said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (near left), lead organizer of the effort to establish a community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan. The response of right-wing blogger Pamela Geller (far left) sums up the hyperbolic deceit passing for modern conservative discourse: "Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction."

A timeline of this most recent example of the dominance of right-wing media bias in US politics shows Geller's almost comic overreaction was the controversy's fault line. Glenn Greenwald posted a remarkable exchange between a CNN anchor and interfaith group director that illustrates the mainstream media's anti-Islamic bias:

Lemon: Don't you think it's a bit different considering what happened on 9/11? And the people have said there's a need for it in Lower Manhattan, so that's why it's being built there. What about 10, 20 blocks ... Midtown Manhattan, considering the circumstances behind this? That's not understandable?
Patel: In America, we don't tell people based on their race or religion or ethnicity that they are free in this place, but not in that place ...
Lemon: [interrupting] I understand that, but there's always context, Mr. Patel ... this is an extraordinary circumstance. You understand that this is very heated. Many people lost their loved ones on 9/11 --
Patel: Including Muslim Americans who lost their loved ones ...
Lemon: Consider the context here. That's what I'm talking about.
Patel: I have to tell you that this seems a little like telling black people 50 years ago: you can sit anywhere on the bus you like -- just not in the front.
Lemon: I think that's apples and oranges -- I don't think that black people were behind a Terrorist plot to kill people and drive planes into a building. That's a completely different circumstance.
Patel: And American Muslims were not behind the terrorist plot either.

The shameless demagogues running Fox News have long equated a few hundred deranged al Qeada thugs with 1.4 billion practicing Muslims. It appears CNN is heading down that same ratings-grabbing road. Fox stooges have, naturally, attempted to slap the one-size-fits-all 'extremist' label on Feisal Abdul Rauf. One of the more educational retorts to this deliberate ignorance is a NY Times opinion column detailing the beliefs and practices of "... Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists", which Feisal Abdul Rauf practices:

(Feisal Abdul Rauf's) videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or 'zikr') and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.

Taking a wit-sharpened scalpel to Fox's attack dogs, Jon Stewart gives toothless poodle Glenn Beck an especially satisfying evisceration:

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In case you missed it, here's a killer line from John Oliver:

Muslims are allowed to put a mosque near Ground Zero, just like Catholics can build a church next to a playground.

Finally, a columnist for the NY Daily News named Michael Daly, who's been profiling the heroism of police and fireman since long before Sept 11, 2001, makes a convincing case that blocking the so-called 'Ground Zero mosque' is just what the terrorists want.

Trickle-down scapegoating.

Glenn Greenwald nails a particularly repugnant Republican tactic that was perfected by ol' Ronnie Reagan and thrives today in the right-wing hullabaloo over ACORN:

If one were to watch Fox News or listen to Rush Limbaugh -- as millions do -- one would believe that the burden of the ordinary American taxpayer, and the unfair plight of America's rich, is that their money is being stolen by the poorest and most powerless sectors of the society. An organization whose constituencies are often-unregistered inner-city minorities, the homeless and the dispossesed is depicted as though it's Goldman Sachs, Blackwater, and Haillburton combined, as though Washington officials are in thrall to those living in poverty rather than those who fund their campaigns. It's not the nice men in the suits doing the stealing but the very people, often minorities or illegal immigrants, with no political or financial power who nonetheless somehow dominate the government and get everything for themselves. The poorer and weaker one is, the more one is demonized in right-wing mythology as all-powerful receipients of ill-gotten gains; conversely, the stronger and more powerful one is, the more one is depicted as an oppressed and put-upon victim (that same dynamic applies to foreign affairs as well).

It's such an obvious falsehood -- so counter-intuitive and irrational -- yet it resonates due to powerful cultural manipulations. Most of all, what's so pernicious about all of this is that the same interests who are stealing, pillaging and wallowing in corruption are scapegoating the poorest and most vulnerable in order to ensure that the victims of their behavior are furious with everyone except for them.

A silent bomb.

While Aussie scribes breathlessly analyze whether PM Kevin Rudd gave The Miserable Failure a 'deputy sheriff' salute at NATO talks in Romania, a remarkable story goes unreported in the US. One that involves Sept 11, a previously unreported warning about the attack, and a US Attorney General who either doesn't understand the laws he's empowered to enforce or is making sh*t up about the most investigated event of the 21st century. Either way, US Attorney General Michael Mukasey -- successor to disgraced Bush lackey Alberto Gonzalez -- has spilled a grain silo of beans that screams for scrutiny.

Where's the tsunami of media coverage?

Keith Olbermann explained the blood-boiling details on Countdown (above) and Glenn Greenwald has been doing his usual outstanding job of banging the drum since Mukasey's speech in San Francisco last Thursday. There's more here, here and here. [Note: None of these sources are the MSM.]

Here's how the SF Chronicle reported his remarks:

Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, he (Mukasey) said, "we knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went. You've got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn't come home, to show for that."

What????????? Huh????????????? Is the Attorney General of the United States claiming the US had a chance to learn about the attacks beforehand but didn't act due to a faulty understanding of FISA law?

The media's role in disappearing this startling pronouncement best described by Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media:

A truly extraordinary example of journalistic malfeasance is playing out right now. Attorney General Michael Mukasey told a San Francisco audience last week that the Bush administration was aware in the days before the 9/11 attacks that an Al Qaeda official was making calls from a 'safe house in Afghanistan' to U.S. but that our government failed to act on that. Mukasey said the U.S. lacked the legal authority, a flat falsehood as legal commentators have pointed out.

It's so easy and lazy and stupid and un-American to glaze one's eyes at the thought of another Bush administration scandal. So much cooler to pass it all off as partisan witchhuntery. Not this. Not when it involves 9/11 and a top Bush official exploiting the lives lost on that day and a nonplussed media that can't be bothered to do its goddamned job.

WaPo wonk

I am a wonk.

Every bloody day I read a half dozen online US newspapers, at least 2 print Aussie papers (cafes have piles of periodicals), 2 or 3 Fiji news sites, at least a dozen blogs, a half-dozen online magazines and a cornucopia of film, music and writing sites. This doesn't make me special. It just makes me a wonk.

Occasionally, a right-wing columnist will twist a nob in my brain and I'll post a comment. So it was this morning when Glenn Greenwald eviscerated a rotting fish of a column by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz. In brief, Kurtz listed several scurrilous, right-wing talking points that have been raised about Obama's candidacy. I posted a comment (below) to the WaPo site. Strangely, Kurtz's column was re-headlined a few hours later and all comments were deleted. So ... I resent it (I always copy my comments). At this moment it's still on the WaPo site.

Another DC cocktail hour winds down. 'Little' Howie Kurtz sits at a table, alone, 3 empty hurricane glasses a testament to a fondness for frozen margaritas. At the bar huddle Post colleagues from the Op-Ed page. Howie's nose twitches from their cigar smoke. He sucks the last of his drink through a straw and musters the courage to walk up to the guffawing men.

"Mr Novak," he says, "I read your latest column on Obama and thought ..."

"Go away, kid, ya bother me," Novak says through the side of his mouth.

Demurely, Little Howie tries again.

"Your last column was pure genius, Mr Krauthammer, and I was wondering ..."

"Do I KNOW you?" Krauthammer barks, causing Little Howie to jump backwards.

Remembering a prep school teacher's lecture on social entitlement, Little Howie drops his head, bites his lip, takes a deep breath.

"Mr Will, I read your column on Sen McCain, and have to say you really weren't fair to such a great ..."

"Who said you could come over here?" Will demands. "Go back to your corner, Media Notes urchin." The men laugh and clink tumblers.

Little Howie runs, pushing his way through the well-dressed cocktail crowd until he stands on an empty sidewalk. Tears well in his eyes as he shoves tiny, soft hands deep into his pockets and walks toward a taxi stand.

"I'll show 'em," Little Howie says to the night air. "I'll show 'em but good." A delirious smile curls across his face. "I'll write a column called ... called ... 'Scratching Obama's Teflon'. Yeah ... then they'll HAVE to let me in ..."

Pigeons launch from a rooftop as a screeching laugh cuts the DC night.

Candidate Pheromone

Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald poses an excellent question: What's up with the mainstream media's obsession with the faux-masculinity of GOP presidential candidates?