Dayhoff Soundtrack: TimesWatch: 'South Park,' Muhammad, and NYT Double Standards

Friday, April 23, 2010

TimesWatch: 'South Park,' Muhammad, and NYT Double Standards

'South Park,' Muhammad, and NYT Double Standards

Documenting and Exposing the Liberal Political Agenda of the New York Times
Friday April 23, 2010 @ 03:53 PM EDT

Classy: NYT Executive Editor Uses Book Review to Call Murdoch 'Corrosive'
Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, uses a book review to make a crack at his right-leaning newspaper rival Rupert Murdoch: "The last of his breed of media tycoon is a 79-year-old Australian billionaire whose impact has been more corrosive than cohesive."

'South Park,' Muhammad, and Double Standards
The creators of the Comedy Central cartoon “South Park” creators had their lives threatened by a Muslim group for insulting the prophet Muhammad, but two Times headlines said they were merely being “warned." It's not the first time the paper has expressed a double standard regarding insults of Islam versus Christianity.

John Harwood to Obama: Is Wall Street As 'Harmful' to Us as Big Tobacco?
NYT writer and CNBC personality John Harwood pressed Barack Obama about the need to regulate Wall Street as he questioned the president if Americans needed to view financial companies in the same way they view Big Tobacco as "companies whose core activities are harmful to the country?"

Classy: NYT Executive Editor Uses Book Review to Call Murdoch 'Corrosive'

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller has a review of legendary magazine tycoon Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life, in this Sunday's book review section. The Times posted it online Friday under the heading “The Editor in Chief.”

Keller took advantage of the book review acreage to take an arbitary shot at present-day media mogul (and soon to be a direct-competitor as the Wall Street Journal expands its Manhattan coverage) Rupert Murdoch, at the end of his review of historian Alan Brinkley's biography of Luce.

Keller found Brinkley's book helpful in fleshing out the oft-caricatured Luce, “restoring missing dimensions to figures who have been flattened into caricature.” He also approved of revelations showing Luce was not as conservative as his reputation would imply:

Nor was Luce all that conservative. He supported the growth of government power, including the welfare state. He championed civil rights for minorities and was less chauvinistic than his peers on the subject of women’s freedom. He favored trade unions. Though zealously anti-Communist, he was scornful of Joseph McCarthy’s excesses.

....

By the time of his death, in 1967, that consensus had been torn asunder, and today there is no vehicle, no voice with the coherent power of Luce’s magazines in their heyday. The last of his breed of media tycoon is a 79-year-old Australian billionaire whose impact has been more corrosive than cohesive.

That would be Rupert Murdoch, publisher of the New York Post and creator of Fox News and other conservative media outlets.

Keller has made a habit out of taking arbitrary cracks at Fox figures. In a “Talk to the Newsroom” Q&A in January 2009 hosted on nytimes.com, Keller cracked:

Lunch at the Four Seasons is always a high point. Today it's my weekly tête-à-tête with Bill O'Reilly. He's really not the Neanderthal blowhard he plays on TV. He's totally in on the joke.

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'South Park,' Muhammad, and Double Standards

A recent episode of Comedy Central's animated comedy show “South Park” caused an Islamic group to send a veiled death threat to show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, accusing them of insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Comedy Central reacted by censoring a later episode that also had scenes involving the cartoon version of the Islamic prophet.

Two Times stories on this free speech issue by Arts reporter Dave Itzkoff were buried on the inside pages of the paper's Arts section, under whitewashed headlines alleging that the “South Park” creators were being “warned” by Muslims, not having their lives threatened.

The issue first came up in Thursday's “Arts, Briefly” column under the lame headline “Muslim Group Warns 'South Park.'” (A more accurate headline would have been “Muslim Group Sends Veiled Death Threat to 'South Park.'”)

Itzkoff summarized the controversy:

An Islamic group based in New York said that a recent episode of “South Park,” the satirical animated series, insulted the Prophet Muhammad, and compared the show’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, to Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who was killed in 2004 by an Islamic militant, CNN reported.

When Comedy Central then bowed to pressure and censored the show's next episode with audio bleeps, Itzkoff ran a longer story Friday, though it too was relegated to page three of the Arts section under an incomplete headline: “'South Park' Episode Altered After Muslim Group's Warning.”

The accompanying text box put the blame on the show's creators, not the group that issued the death threat: “At Comedy Central, reining in a show that pushes buttons.”

Itzkoff explained:

“South Park,” the Comedy Central series, is an animated show that tries its best to push buttons and the boundaries of free speech by mocking every high-profile target in sight, from Hollywood celebrities to religious figures. But its creators may have gotten more than they bargained for with two recent episodes that satirized the Prophet Muhammad -- one that elicited an ominous message from an Islamic group based in New York, and one that was censored by the cable network that shows it.

On April 14 Comedy Central broadcast the 200th episode of “South Park,” a cartoon that Trey Parker and Matt Stone have produced for that channel since 1997. In honor of the occasion, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone populated the episode with nearly all the famous people their show has lampooned in its history, including celebrities like Tom Cruise and Barbra Streisand, as well as major religious figures, like Moses, Jesus and Buddha.

(Actually, South Park's latest episode featured Jesus Christ as a porn freak, according to Lachlan Markay at Newsbusters: “...in last night's episode Parker and Stone showed Buddha snorting cocaine, and vulgarly bickering with Jesus Christ, who, it is suggested, is a compulsive consumer of pornography. So while Comedy Central gave into demands the word Muhammed not even be mentioned, other prophets were portrayed in tremendously offensive ways.”)

Itzkoff continued:

Cognizant that Islam forbids the depiction of its holiest prophet, Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker showed their “South Park” characters agonizing over how to bring Muhammad to their fictional Colorado town. At first the character said to be Muhammad is confined to a U-Haul trailer, and is heard speaking but is not shown. Later in the episode the character is let out of the trailer, dressed in a bear costume.

The next day the “South Park” episode was criticized by the group Revolution Muslim in a post at its Web site, revolutionmuslim.com. The post, written by a member named Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, said the episode “outright insulted” the prophet, adding: “We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid, and they will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

Mr. van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker and a critic of religions including Islam, was killed by an Islamic militant in Amsterdam in 2004 after he made a film that discussed the abuse of Muslim women in some Islamic societies.

....

...in 2006, when “South Park” wanted to weigh in on a controversy that erupted after Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, published cartoons satirizing Muhammad, it was not given the same latitude: a character said to be Muhammad was concealed behind a large black box labeled “CENSORED.” The measure was taken by the “South Park” producers partly at the insistence of Comedy Central, and partly as a commentary on the network’s policy of not allowing them to show the character, which the episode equated with giving in to the demands of extremists.

Yet while the Times respected the Muslim ban on images of Muhammad, it has no fear of dishonoring other religions.

In February 2006, after a Danish newspaper published cartoons mocking Muhammad, death threats were issued to the cartoonists and radical Muslims instigated rioting.

The Times not only failed to stick up for free speech by running the cartoons itself, it actually attacked news organizations that bravely did so, while pretending it was an issue of religious respect in an editorial:

That seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words.”

But that excuse was revealed as bogus the very next day, when the paper ran a photo of painter Chris Ofili's controversial painting of a dung-clotted Virgin Mary.

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John Harwood to Obama: Is Wall Street As 'Harmful' To Us as Big Tobacco?

New York Times writer and CNBC contributor John Harwood, in an interview aired on Thursday's Today show, pressed Barack Obama about the need to regulate Wall Street as he questioned the President if Americans needed to view them in the same way they view Big Tobacco as "companies whose core activities are harmful to the country?" Obama declined to make the comparison to the tobacco companies, but went on to insist Wall Street needed new rules to protect against "excess."

JOHN HARWOOD: Should average Americans think about big Wall Street institutions the way that some have come to think about tobacco companies, that is, companies whose core activities are harmful to the country?

BARACK OBAMA: No. We have to have a thriving financial sector. But, we also have to have basic rules of the road in place to make sure that investors, consumers, shareholders, the economy as a whole, are protected against excess. We have gotten into one of those places where we need to update those rules of the road, and if we do so, not only is that good for the economy, not only does it protect consumers and investors, it's also good for the financial sector.

Harwood did manage to ask Obama about contributions he received from Goldman Sachs and the fact that his former White House counsel is representing them as he pried: "In the 2008 campaign you got a lot of money, about $1 million, from employees of Goldman Sachs. Your former White House counsel Greg Craig is apparently going to represent Goldman Sachs. In light of this case, do either of those things embarrass you?"

However at the end of the segment Today co-anchor Meredith Vieira claimed Republicans were "warming up" to a financial reform bill and did the White House have "a sense" of "victory over this?" To which Harwood responded "Average Americans dislike Wall Street...so this is a case where public opinion's on the President's side. He was hitting Republicans over the head with that and they're finally coming to the table..." And just before signing off Harwood ominously warned higher middle class taxes could be on the way:

MEREDITH VIEIRA: You know Republicans are warming up to this reform bill where they were adamantly opposed to it before some revisions were introduced. Was there a sense at the White House of, of victory over this?

HARWOOD: I think so. Look this is an issue, unlike health care, where public opinion was divided. Average Americans dislike Wall Street, in many cases as much as they dislike Washington. So this is a case where public opinion's on the President's side. He was hitting Republicans over the head with that and they're finally coming to the table and looks like they're gonna make a deal pretty soon.

VIEIRA: And on a very different note, during your interview the President did not rule out the possibility of raising taxes on the middle class, something he has always opposed in the past. Was he sending up a trial balloon?

HARWOOD: Watch this story, Meredith. This is likely to be the biggest -- next big debate in American politics in 2011 because as the economy recovers, many on the President's team believe we need a serious assault on the deficit, and the amount of revenue that's needed can't all be gotten from the rich.

-- Geoffrey Dickens is the senior news analyst at the Media Research Center.

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