American Media

Iranian Quds Force

It’s time to choose sides ...

Turning the Other Cheek

Why am I not outraged at the recently-revealed lewd comments made by Donald Trump? It's not that they were made eleven years ago. It's not that these comments were made in expected privacy. And it's not even to excuse such locker room banter as machismo. It IS because I have grown weary of the double standard that the American media always applies to Republican vis a vis Democrat indiscretions. Republicans have demanded much higher standards of their office holders than the party of Jefferson and Jackson. So, anytime a politician from the Right seems to be getting too uppity, the New York Times or the Washington Post or 60 Minutes trots out a real or even manufactured scandal ... knowing that fellow Republicans will often arise with moral rectitude and ostracize their compatriot.

This seldom happens with "progressives" ... only in the most egregious cases of clear criminality do such excisings occur ... usually out of the spotlight of national media coverage ... even when the Democrat is quietly secreted behind bars. (One notable exception is Anthony Weiner who was repeatedly and publically too maliciously deviant to hide.) This dichotomy of media coverage has finally snapped my Puritan suspenders and, I believe, those in much of Middle America. We are now going out on strike and will ignore any existing or new Trump scandals until at least a few prominent Democrats denounce Hellary Clinton for her many and more serious breaches of law and protocol.

We are tired of turning the other cheek ... particularly since the media bashers seem to derive so much pleasure out of their sadistic spin. We are now assuming the tactics of the enemy ... particularly since it seems to have worked so well for them. Let them gnash their teeth and wear sack cloth for a change ... to bring things back in balance.

The Impossible Dream

Why is it that the American media is so myopic in its coverage of world events? Or are they propounding an agenda that restricts what they chose to report? Did you know that Egypt recently offered the Palestinian Authority (PA) 618 square miles of the Sinai adjacent to the Gaza Strip for the settlement of Palestinian refugees. I didn’t … until I just read about it in Commentary Magazine. This offer should have made banner headlines in the New York Times but, as of yet, this newspaper and other American media outlets seem to have run out of ink for such a startling revelation (see: Commentary Magazine Article.) After all the Gaza Strip itself is only 139 square miles. This Egyptian offer would have more the quintupled the living space in Gaza.

Of course, Mahmoud Abbas of the PA rejected this offer with the feeble excuse that “[I]t’s illogical for the problem to be solved at Egypt’s expense. We won’t have it.” Of course the real reason that Abbas rejected this extremely generous offer is that the presence of these all-suffering Palestinian refugee pawns in an over-crowded Gaza Strip is what keeps fulminating the PA’s attacks on Israel … and what elicits the sympathy of the world to their plight. If a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian eternal conflict is ever going to be achieved, it will never be done by carving up Israel. This Egyptian proposal would have opened the door to a real two-state solution and a lasting peace in this area.

But I guess peace is not what is deep-down desired. Even for the “moderates” such as Abbas, the objective clearly is the ultimate destruction of this Jewish state. The sooner the world comes to accept this reality, the sooner it will stop dreaming the impossible dream.