The Point to Take Away From L'Affaire Williams

Matt Welch:

Williams’ firing is a clarifying moment in media mores. You can be Islamophobic, in the form of refusing to run the most innocuous imaginable political cartoons out of a broad-brush fear of Muslims, but you can’t admit it, even when the fear is expressed as a personal feeling and not a group description, winnowed down to the very specific and nightmare-exhuming act of riding on an airplane, and uttered in a context of otherwise repudiating collective guilt and overbroad fearmongering.

Right. We can twist and contort ourselves in fear of Muslims, but we can never admit the reason we are twisting and contorting ourselves -- and repudiating our highest principles -- is out of fear of Muslims. That might make them feel bad about scaring the shit out of us.

I guess the ultimate sort of coercion is the coercion where you're not even permitted to say "I'm doing this because I'm being forced to," but are forced to contrive some fake reason, some claim you're doing it just because you want to.

Hey, a lot of us rightwing bloggers are anonymous for different reasons, but high on the list is Muslims might cut our heads off if they knew where to find us.

But I guess we're not supposed to say that.

Other good stuff at Hot Air, including Megyn Kelly grilling Ibrahim "I'm Offended!" Hooper of CAIR.

posted by Ace at 08:14 PM

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