Shameful media

Brent Bozell:

There are moments where it becomes painfully apparent that the media elites think that the only thing redeeming about Western culture is its ability to regret its existence. Their dream president is a lip-biting man from Arkansas, traveling the globe apologizing for every historic fault, real or imagined, America has ever committed.

This was exactly their mentality with Pope Benedict XVI over his remarks at the University of Regensburg. One wonders if any of his critics had bothered to read his address, the theme of which was the inseparability of faith and reason.

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You would think that this call for a religion based on love and peace, not force, would ring well in peace-loving liberal newsrooms. But this lecture was ignored by the secular press until Muslim riots and threats broke out. Then, predictably and incredibly, the media demanded apologies -- but only from the pope. They treated him like a bumbling candidate for political office, a man too unschooled in the art of public relations, which they know so well. They called him "heavy-handed" and "clumsy." They auditioned on TV and radio shows to explain how the pontiff could be less "tone deaf."

They did not ponder how Muslim violence, from assassinating a nun in Somalia to blowing up Canadian solders in Afghanistan as they hand out candy to children, might be, to say the very least, "tone deaf."

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Pope Benedict has long noted that majority-Christian countries tolerate the free exercise of Islam, but Muslim-dominated countries often do not tolerate the free exercise of anything but Islam. The reaction to his address reveals that Western journalists don't care about this. They have elevated Islam to a special standard, an unofficial Victim Religion, which is only the victimized and never the victimizer. Even the forced Islamic conversion of American journalists taken hostage does not stir their ardor.

As I file this piece, I've read that a Palestinian cleric in Gaza, Dr. Imad Hamto, has declared "Aslim Taslam" on Pope Benedict XVI. It is a phrase taken from the letters of the prophet Muhammad to rival tribal chiefs -- urging them to convert to Islam to spare their lives.

You know there is something wrong with a religion that does what those representing Islam are doing. Why can't those in the media see that and say that?