Radio host Bill Press is determined to win the title of most useful idiot to the jihad.
With his most recent lunacy this past Friday, Press is well on his way. (Audio clip after page break)
Now here's the question though and the question that I ask you and it's not an easy one, I understand that. What, if anything, should happen to the people who made this video? I gotta tell you, I think they are as guilty, that's my opinion, I think they are as guilty as the terrorists who carried out those attacks against our embassy in Libya. Look, we don't know everybody who was involved, but we've seen, I've seen some of them on television. This is a group of extremist, Muslim-hating, so-called Christians in southern California who are using their religion to stir up hatred against Islam. They're basing this on their Christian beliefs. They are, I believe, every bit as guilty as al Qaeda members who, think about it, who use the Koran and abuse their religion to stir up hatred against the United States. These so-called Christians, anybody who uses religion to stir up hate, is not a true believer. And certainly Christians who do so are not true Christians.
So these so-called Christians using their faith to stir up hatred against another of the world's great religions, it is absolutely disgusting and they've gotta know, they had to know what would result in that. After what happened with those Danish cartoons, right, or cartoons drawn for that Danish newspaper. After what happened with that nutjob Terry Jones down in Florida burning the Koran and people getting killed in Afghanistan over the protest that that, that that triggered. After what happened when we saw the video of American troops urinating on Muslim soldiers, right? After that, you had, they had to know that a video like this, not saying that the Muslims are not overreacting. I mean, they're hypersensitive about this stuff, I mean, Jesus, you know, just cool it, right? I mean, we show Jesus naked all the time hanging on the cross.
But, at any rate, their reaction is way overblown. But these, I hate to call them Christians, these so-called Christians had to know that that video would result in certain parts of the world, it would result in violence, it would result in lives being lost. I think, again, they are every bit as guilty and I think the United States, this is not freedom of speech. It's just the old thing, you can't cry fire in a crowded theater and have people trampled to death and say, oh, I was just exercising my freedom of speech. This is an abuse of the First Amendment. It's using, abusing their freedom of speech to cost innocent lives and to cause the taking of innocent lives in certain parts of the world. So, I think the United States ought to identify, yeah, we oughta be going after these terrorists that carried out the attacks in Libya and we are. I think we also ought to be identifying the people who made this video and go after them with the full force of the law and lock their ass up.
Press starts with a shaky premise and it's downhill from there. By the end of the week, as even the most oblivious had to be aware, it looked more likely that the attack on the US consulate in Libya was retaliation for the drone killing of al Qaeda's second in command, a native-born Libyan.
But even if the attackers in Libya were motivated by anger over the "Innocence of Muslims" video, does Bill Press actually want to allow "hypersensitive" Islamists to dictate what Westerners are allowed to upload to YouTube? Surely it doesn't take much imagination to see the censorious demands not ending there.
After "The Satanic Verses" came out in 1988 and the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of its author, Salman Rushdie, enraged Muslims murdered a Japanese translator and tried to kill two other people connected to the book's publication. Was Rushdie complicit in that onslaught, Mr. Press? Seeing how there cannot possibly be a statute of limitation for offenses against Islam, Rushdie must still be as guilty as those who responded to his book with violence against others, at least by Press's illogic.
Arguably the most bizarre of Press's remarks is that the filmmakers behind this video are "every bit as guilty as al Qaeda members" who "abuse their religion to stir up hatred against the United States." That's a rather tepid description of what al Qaeda has actually done over the last decade and a half, don't you think? I'd venture to say they went far beyond the "stir" stage some time ago in favor of full-scale mass murder.
Anyone who equates drawing a provocative cartoon as akin to beheading the cartoonist was lost to relativism a long, long time ago. Sigmund Freud once observed that civilization began with the first man hurling an insult instead of a rock.
This isn't yelling fire in a crowded theater, as Press claims. It's about being able to show a movie in that theater without jihadists burning it down.
