MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named MRC president Brent Bozell Wednesday's "Worst Person in the World" for my NewsBusters post on Jon Stewart's sneering attack on conservatives as supposedly being opponents of religious freedom over the Ground Zero Mosque controversy. (Audio here.)
Predictably, in choosing this dishonor, Olbermann was playing rip-and-read from certain Hillary Clinton-founded Fox-and-Rush watchdogs, as he routinely acts as the TV Xerox of the Bush-Hating Left-Wing Blogosphere. Olbermann also re-tweeted them yesterday. None of these analysts on the left evaluated their own tendency to see grave threats to freedom of religion and church-state separation from Christian evangelists, but nothing at all threatening to their swaggering secular coolness from Islamic advocates of "dialogue." (See, for example, one take on the Ground Zero Imam Feisal Abdul-Rauf's views on America's "Shariah compliance." Hello, Barry Lynn?)
Here's the transcript:
Except, of course, when Comedy Central folded in front of Muslim protests over an episode of SouthPark, Stewart mocked Comedy Central. You know how I know that? Graham’s own MediaResearchCenter and NewsBusters applauded Stewart for doing it. One Lachlan Markay wrote, “Jon Stewart noted the blatant censorship his employer Comedy Central exercised against its popular show South Park by banning it from showing and even uttering the word ‘Mohammed’ in this week’s episode after a threat came forward from an Islamic group. His extensive recap of all the religions the show has made fun of over the years was clearly a critique of Comedy Central's decision.”
OLBERMANN: But our winner, Brent Bozell of the hilarious Media Research Center and NewsBusters -- not happy that John Stewart criticized the anti-American frenzy by conservatives to stop the building of houses of worship for Muslims. “Stewart,” writes Tim Graham on NewsBusters, quote, “mocked conservatives for having no respect for freedom of religion. This from Comedy Central, the network that mocks Jesus and Christians relentlessly but censors whenever the radical Muslims threaten them? Yes, Stewart was arguing for the greatness of Islam that it should be accepted with great tolerance as a global religion.”
Clearly, people at NewsBusters are not relying on their own Web site for information. Then again, with their kind of track record, who would? Brent Bozell of the somewhat self-destructive NewsBusters and Media Research Council [sic], today's “Worst Person” – hey, beard – “in the World”!
I wrote that Stewart and his network shouldn't "cower" before Muslim critics as they trash Christians. But it's clear that Lachlan reported that Stewart mocked radical Islam (sort of) over the Comedy Central censorship in April. He lightly made fun of the bosses, and then lightly mocked the Muslim death-threateners with Jewish-deli-and-Frisbee jokes: They "try to intimidate the creators of South Park all while enjoying our lovely theater district, our many diverse restaurants including really the best Jewish delis you'll find and our new high line park. It's a park made out of an elevated train line. It's a super-thin park in the sky. Let's play Frisbee." Radical Muslims make death threats; Stewart makes Frisbee jokes and mocks gospel choirs with his "F-You" song. That hardly compares in tone and temper to another April bit, Stewart trashing the 21st-century Catholic Church for heinous massacres in the 13th as well as everything from Galileo to the Spanish Inquisition:
SAMANTHA BEE: The Cathars, the gnostic sect in 13th century France.
STEWART: I still got nothing there.
BEE: Tens of thousands of them were massacred under the direct authority of Pope Innocent III, persecuted out of existence by the Catholic Church.
STEWART: Oh, I see.
BEE: Well, that's what you're doing now.
STEWART: Sam, see, if any other organization had done anything close to what the church is being accused of, they'd be done! The church is barely showing any contrition.
Stewart also made fun of Christian "Islamophobes" and Fox News in early July when the bizarre story of NASA administrator Charles Bolden's Islamic outreach broke. Clearly, the cable news stars on the Left plays the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend game. Just like they were anti-anti-Communist, now they're anti-anti-Islamist.