#AntiChristianBacklash? Compare and Contrast the Media's Reactions to "Allahu Akbar" -- Something Said in "Beautiful Circumstances" -- With Their Seething Hatred of Christian "Thoughts and Prayers"

And this is even more disgraceful than Wil Wheaton, and yeah, it turns out, it is possible to be more disgraceful than Wil Wheaton:

And of course you know, if people are acting crazy, the lunatic Olbermann has to get in on that action:

He went full CAPS-LOCK.

You never go full CAPS-LOCK, man.

So: Christian prayers are valueless and cowardly.

On the other hand, the media class is pretty certain that Muslim prayers, most notably "Allahu akbar," are usually said in "beautiful circumstances," as nonpartisan truth-teller Jake Tapper recently scolded/reported. We then had all the typical BlueCheckmarkMafia type swarm out to insist that Jake was right and to suggest otherwise was Not Okay.

Then we had not one but two New York Times think pieces about the beauty of the phrase "Allahu Akbar."

Tell me:

Do you think Jake Tapper and the New York Times will be doing news analyses stating that Christian prayers are also beautiful? Will they castigate those (like ABC News Chief Political Analyst Matthew J. Dowd) suggesting otherwise?

Speaking of: A commenter asked--

When did tru-cons become anti faith? I'm not aware of any Christian tenet saying all we do is pray. My actions might, after all, be the answer to somebody else's prayer.

I answered:

this is a statement against my own interest but an oddly high percentage of pundits representing a largely-religious party are atheists, or even actively hostile to religion.

I'm not saying there should be a religious test, certainly not. But I do see this as representative of the general schism in what's left of the movement, where we have a dominant "thought leader"/political/donor class which is in most significant ways opposed to the desires of the voter base.

Angelo Codevilla calls this schism between the Country and the Courtier factions.

Glenn Reynolds has a somewhat-related (but only somewhat related) piece about the grotesquely comical ineptitude of our "elites."

Even David Brooks is admitting it: "Our elites really do stink." And he's right. But why? In part because they’re inbred, and care too much about each other’s opinions.

I’ve been watching a lot of institutions fail lately, from Hollywood, to the news media, to the NFL and ESPN, to political parties and academia, and I see a common factor. The problem is that whatever job its members are supposed to be doing at the moment, our ruling class cares more about what the rest of the ruling class thinks about it, than about the job it’s supposed to be doing. The result, quite often, is a debacle.

...

The current hip term for this behavior is "virtue signaling" -- the effort to demonstrate to one's peer groups that one holds all the right views and positions. But of course, all humans virtue signal to a degree. What makes it worse today is that our ruling class is such a monoculture. In the words of Angelo Codevilla:

Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity.

And it’s an intensely tribal group, one with great fear of ostracism. A century ago, America had different, overlapping ruling classes with different values: Corporate moguls seldom sought the approval of press barons who seldom cared what academics thought about them and vice versa. Now they’re all cut from the same cloth, which makes this phenomenon much more pronounced, and much more dangerous.

Our ruling class has a diversity problem. But I think it's about to get more diverse. Which is good. Because the current one, as Brooks says, stinks.

Yeah, as far as diversity goes, it sure would have been nice to have a more diverse GOP leadership class before 2016, huh? Like one actually in touch with and sympathetic to the aspirations of actual GOP voters.

I think the conservative leadership class would do well to increase diversity by bringing in some actual conservatives and not just cruise cabin sales representatives.

More unhinged media (or "media" -- some of these people are barely in the media, like Joy Ann Reid) reactions here.

posted by Ace at 06:08 PM

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