Politico: The Word Most Associated With Islam Is “Terrorism”
There’s lots to like about The Politico — the bloggers, the newsbreaks, the big-picture pieces that can change the conversation, etc.
But this is the current lede on the Web site’s lead story on Obama’s Cairo speech:
In a nearly 6,000-word address Thursday extending an olive branch to the Muslim world, President Barack Obama managed never to utter the one word that comes to mind most often when many Americans think about Islam: terrorism.
Now, there may well be a poll somewhere finding that the word most associated with Islam is “terrorism.” Even so, it’s an awfully weird news judgment to lead with a formulation this crass on a day as historic as this one.
The story — which is presented as a look at Obama’s efforts to pull off a rhetorical shift — also says the omission of the word “terrorism” is “sure to draw fire from conservatives.” Translation: Links! Links! Links!
The idea, as it happens, echoes almost word for word what Rush Limbaugh said yesterday: That the “terrorist wing of Islam” is what Islam “is most known for today.”
For what it’s worth, Obama did use the phrase “violent extremists” or its variants six times.
Update: Fox News is playing the same game.
Update: I should have noted that The New Argument caught this one first.
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Conservatives seem to have chosen to undermine confidence in our Government to regain power. News organizations have become complicit in the game by acting under a cloak of balanced journalism.
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Rather unfortunate, don’t you think?
I’d be interested to collect examples of this, so if you see ‘em, pls don’t hesitate to pass them along…
I once spoke to a bunch of Republicans without using the word ********. Well, only a couple times.
I can’t be sure, but it seems Mike from Arlington is right. The righties don’t think that their policies destroyed the world, they think it was the liberal media accusing them of stuff and they were too busy keeping us safe to notice that they, “the little people” at the head of our governmentat the time, were being tarnished. WaPo addresses this issue twice today actually; EJ Dionne this morning (though JMM at TPM said it, and Dionne is paraphrasing), “Washington is wired for Republicans”, and ‘newbie’ Ezra Klein simplified it, “It’s called Overton’s Window”.
When we were fighting amongst ourselves back in December, tradmedia had on Chris Bowers yelling about how mod Obama is, and since then, where are any unelected leftist being heard in response to the torture squad? Hayes, Huffington, Sirota, Aravosis, Maddow, and Olbermann are the only ones that I can name that we ever hear from on cable, and 2 of them host shows.
Why?
Greg, I must say you are being very nice to Politico.
You know full well that they do stenography with the best of them, as well as do some shoddy reporting to go along. You’ve know that from your TPM days.
Republicans didn’t hear the very specific (and multiple) references that President Obama made to Al Qaeda, the group that actually declared war on us and attacked us on 9/11.
I think that’s because Bush and Cheney failed so miserably at defending us against Al Qaeda on 9/11.
They need to make the enemy much, much bigger than Al Qaeda, so they don’t look so utterly incompetent by comparison.
I’m so damn sick of so-called journalists making chit up that I really am going to puke.
For what it’s worth, the absence of the word “terrorism” was pretty striking, and probably a conscious effort on the part of Obama and co. to delink the term from Islam as a whole, or at least mainstream Islam. I think Gerstein’s lede really says that many, not necessarily most, Americans associate Islam primarily with terrorism. But clumsy construction and a conjectural feel make this lede provocative where it shouldn’t be.
That said, Gerstein is a sharp dude. I find it disappointing that Politico has done little to promote “Under the Radar,” his aptly titled blog. Check it out.
For many of them, especially the non-elected wingnuts in their peanut gallery, it’s not about regaining power. It’s about money and strokes. Mad Rush is after ratings, which translates into money — for him. Leaders of wingnut orgs are after donations.
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Whatever power they’re after, it’s not electoral power; it’s their individual power within their orgs, including the GOP. Everybody wants to be a big fish in an ever-smaller pond.
Why do I think that there’s another speech coming from Obama at some point?–one in which he tells all these inflamers in the media that it’s time they grew up and stopped undermining democracy by trying to trainwreck the national conversation through their absurd little word games and hosting people like Liz Cheney. I would like to hope all this garbage is in its last throes.
ABC — it’s interesting to note that Obama has made that argument — that the media is dumbing down the discourse in all sorts of petty little ways — in many contexts.
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And jzap, I didn’t know you were a west coaster. though maybe I shoulda, what with the lava lamps and such.
The reality is IF the word most Americans associated with a Islam WAS terrorism then that would be failure of our “librul” media, GOPolitico included.
Greg, I think that’s right that Obama has alluded to this media phenomenon often. I am thinking it will take a bigger platform in which he pulls all kinds of observations together–the responsibility that comes with free speech, cause and effect in our political life, what it means to be given such access to the public airwaves. I haven’t done much big picture thinking on this, but I’m sure he could. If he’s willing to talk candidly to Israelis and Egyptians, I think he’d be willing to take on our own media who’ve had such carte blanche to wreak havoc. They like to throw the word terrorist around, but back at them, the lying fearmongers.
I find it extraordinarily sad that the GOP and the Israelis are so invested in promoting rampant Islamaphopia in this way. They must feel it is the only way they are going to get public support for their plan to conquer all of Israel’s enemies.
Why do I think that there’s another speech coming from Obama at some point?–one in which he tells all these inflamers in the media that it’s time they grew up and stopped undermining democracy by trying to trainwreck the national conversation through their absurd little word games and hosting people like Liz Cheney.
Obama should just get John Stewart to deliver that speech.
Okay,
The only 3 people I can seem to tolerate on CNN is Cafferty, Christiane Amanpour, and Fareed Zakaria.
Cafferty because I still remember his put down of Palin it was…wait for it…LEGENDARY.
Fareed because just now on Campbell Brown’s show, He just shut down some Bushite on CNN and Bill Bennett who tried to hate on Obama’s speech because he didn’t say the word “terrorist”.
Fareed: “Excuse, but isn’t it the right who said that we should not call the individuals “terrorists”, because “terrorism” is just a tactic, we are not fighting the tactics (”terrorism”), we are fighting the “extremism”!!!
Even Bill Bennett had to sorta agree.
he also shot down Bill Bennett who was on that “apology” meme that the right has been on since the last trip. Fareed basically said that obviously Bennett missed the point of the speech.
Fareed: “The speech wasn’t directed at trying to covert Osama Bin Laden. The speech was directed at the moderate people of the Muslim world who throught polls and statements do not like Bin Laden, but who still feel uncomfortable showing support of the US”
Amanpour because this morning on CNN before and after Obama’s speech, whenever she is on CNN, she corrects the person wheneve they try state a talking point about the Muslin & Arab world that she knows isn’t correct from her own experiences and reporting.
lamh31 – I’m all for shout outs for the people who are pushing back against the nonsense.
I wish I could remember where this hit first today, but it was a meme in development before Politico picked it up.
Smacks of Republican or neo-con talking point.
Shameful in a lede for a major news org like Politico.
But their conservative bias has been popping up a fair amount lately, IMO.