Scrapbook
Scrapbook The Imams and the Jews For an extremely disturbing portrait of the political climate in one of the premier mosques in America, see the interview by the Forward's Rachel Donadio with Imam...
...When the patriotism police should be kept at bay and that people understand that Bill Maher is every bit as much an American as you or I and let's remember the values that we are protecting in the first place...
...I would not, for example, accuse any party...
...Now, while it may be admirable on the one hand to show a spirit of defiance to the anthrax attacker(s), it's a form of defiance that someone with a personal physician on call is in a uniquely cossetted position to send...
...Anchors Away There have been lots of jokes among newspeople about "anthrax envy"—the feeling on the part of TV anchors who didn't receive deadly envelopes of the bacteria that they had been left out...
...but since it is difficult to mix them together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two must be lacking...
...In fact, no such letter existed...
...Lesson to young anchors-in-training: When you "dine out on a story," make sure it's a true one...
...Rather's posturing aside, it might, after all, prove useful to epidemiologists and the FBI to know whether the letter that infected his assistant had also exposed him...
...But I have to tell you I don't think there's a party line out there...
...Producer Sean Daniel—a Hollywood Democrat who hereby wins a place on our Surprisingly Good Guys List™—pricked Sorkin's balloon with this timely observation: "My father was blacklisted, and I know the era very well...
...government] would like to be the one and the other...
...As a matter of fact, in the absence of definitive pieces of evidence, nobody can say for sure...
...As reported by USA Today TV columnist Peter Johnson, Simpson disclosed private details about a colleague's infant who had contracted cutaneous anthrax...
...I think the reports were not precise, not 100 percent accurate...
...Q: Would you rule out that Jews did it...
...Q: What about the 19 men who the government says took over the planes...
...Machiavelli for Dummies Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has already taken plenty of flak for his warning that if the U.S...
...CBS's Dan Rather made headlines last week by refusing to be tested for anthrax—despite the fact that his assistant had contracted the skin form...
...Hard as it may be for anchors to accept, the story isn't always about them...
...A: (laughs) That is, as a matter of fact, a question that I cannot say, that it was committed by Jews or non-Jews, because I don't have any evidence...
...As Donadio explains, "Omar Saleem Abu-Namous became chief imam this month at New York's Islamic Cultural Center after his predecessor, Imam Mohammad Al-Gamei'a, mysteriously returned to Egypt" and subsequently blamed the September 11 attack on an international Jewish conspiracy headed by Israel's secret police...
...But what further angered [ABC execs] was that Simpson, who is based in ABC's Washington bureau, told the group that the anthrax attack had hit home in her very office...
...But the only documented case so far appears to be that of ABC's Carole Simpson, who has been suspended for two weeks from that network's Sunday edition of World News Tonight for a variety of indiscretions she uttered as the speaker at an International Women's Media Foundation luncheon...
...The "risk" of appearing a bully seems one well worth incurring...
...What's more, it's probably the wrong message to send at a time when investigators are desperately trying to learn all they can about the anthrax attacks...
...Just to be clear, this is from the spiritual leader of a mosque, located at 96th Street and 3rd Ave...
...A: His argument was that that kind of attack required technology beyond the capability of Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan...
...A Chattering Ass & a Surprisingly Good Guy Mickey Kaus, editor, publisher, and CEO of Kausfiles.com, first drew our attention to West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin "for living up to his stereotype as a Hollywood-liberal fool...
...King, you won't be surprised to learn, responded with this cliché du jour: "Hemingway described class as grace under pressure...
...Sorkin's unique contribution to an Occidental College forum on Hollywood's reaction to September 11 was to warn of incipient McCarthyism because his pal Bill Maher had lost sponsors for Politically Incorrect and been generally raked over the coals...
...bombing of Afghanistan doesn't end "sooner rather than later" the United States risks appearing to be a "high-tech bully...
...So is the new guy an improvement...
...But let's send more his way...
...Well, it's happening all over again...
...Scrapbook The Imams and the Jews For an extremely disturbing portrait of the political climate in one of the premier mosques in America, see the interview by the Forward's Rachel Donadio with Imam Abu-Namous, which is available on the web at www.forward.com/issues/2001/01.10.26/ news5.html...
...A: According to reports, many of those 19 young men who were supposed to have died, many of them are still living, in point of fact...
...To be fair, I'd not accuse the Jews or the Muslims...
...What September 11 should have taught us is that appearing to be a bully is better than most of the alternatives—appearing to be a wimp or a doormat or a high-tech coward, for instance...
...Hardly, as these excerpts from Donadio's interview make clear: Q: Imam Al-Gamei'a said that he thought the Jews were behind the attack and the Zionist media was trying to cover it up...
...This makes Sorkin the premier chattering ass of the week...
...Men [bin Laden, the Taliban, and more generally what our president calls "the evildoers"] are less concerned with hurting someone who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared, because love is held by a link of obligation, which, since men are wretched creatures, is broken every time their own interests are involved...
...They reported to the mass media that they're still living...
...As Rather told Larry King, "We are absolutely determined that we are not going to run scared...
...Plus which, Rather was consulting regularly with his personal doctor and with the New York City health department...
...Biden needs to reread his Machiavelli, but we realize he's a busy man, so we'll hereby inaugurate a semi-regular feature—The Scrapbook's condensation and annotation of the political classics for talking heads—with Chapter 17 of The Prince, which answers the question: Whether It Is Better to Be Loved Than Feared or the Opposite: "I answer that a person [or, in this case, the U.S...
...What do you think of those views...
...on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and catering to an upscale community that includes Islamic members of the diplomatic corps...
...The Islamic Cultural Center," Donadio explains, "opened in 1991 and was paid for by the governments of Kuwait, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia...
...Said Sorkin: "In the fifties there was a blacklist, and it ruined lives...
...I think it's right now when it's most important that there be dissent...
...Because no definitive proof has been given that any specific quarter or authority or organization did that...
...Simpson said that ABC News anchor Cokie Roberts had gotten a letter postmarked Trenton, N.J.—where several letters containing anthrax, sent to other media and to Capitol Hill, originated...
...but fear is held by a dread of punishment [i.e., bombs and other deadly ordnance] which will never leave you...
...Meanwhile, network newsrooms have also suffered their first case of anthrax bravado...
Vol. 7 • November 2001 • No. 8
