The sweetest lady called me the other day, wanting to make sure that I did something on the preacher over in Gainesville who got all the attention after planning his little Koran BBQ. I’m afraid I may have angered her, at first, because my first reaction was, “No ma’am, that nut is getting too much attention as it is.” Which is what he was after, obviously, and the mainstream media lapped it up like stray cats under a fish-cleaning sink, because it worked with their “southern Christians=ignorant, possum-eating, cousin-marrying, six-toed morons” storyline to a T.
The media were played, clear and simple. You don’t start a Facebook page for something like that in a church of 50 people, unless you’re trying to attract attention. You’d just call them all or announce it at Sunday morning service. He wanted the big kerfluffle. He wanted to be on CNN. He consciously worked towards trying to enflame and enrage people, while primping for he cameras. What is that, two deadly sins? Pride and wrath in one act? And the guy was encouraging his church to join in? Yeah, that’s Godly behavior right there, I’m telling you what.
The media, though, was so busy spinning their “dumb religious redneck” agenda into round-the-clock coverage that they missed the real story. The FBI was sent to this preacher’s church not once, but twice, to “talk him out of it.” I don’t know about you, but if two government guys in an unmarked Ford, suits, sidearms and sunglasses showed up at my house to “persuade” me into not doing something, I’d be intimidated. Which is, undoubtedly, the effect that the administration was going for. It apparently worked, because he’s cancelled the event.
This preacher’s idea, as wrongheaded as it undoubtedly was, was a completely, 100% legal excercise of his God-given rights under the Constitution of the United States, and the government sent two goons to “make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” How scary, Big Brother is that? Why were the headlines not “Government attempts to strong-arm minister” and “Civil rights and separation of church and state violated!!” Yeah, why is that? If George Bush’s FBI had shown up at the New York Times to try to get them not to expose troop movements or whatever, the media would have been screaming to the high heavens about brown shirts and gestappo tactics. And yet, on this attempt at silencing a small little nobody cog in the weirdo machine, all we’re getting is crickets. Nada. Nothing. Nobody is standing up for his right to be stupid in public.
I’d mark it down as an isolated incident or just bad judgment, but there was another one this week. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the insurance lobby that if they don’t shut up about the premium increases that Obamacare is forcing upon them, that they’ll be locked out of the insurance market exchanges by the government in 2014. She wrote, “There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases,” and any insurance company who dares to say otherwise will be forced out of business by the government.
Excuse me, but did I fall asleep and somehow the Gambino family took over the country? Where is the media outrage? When did it become acceptable for the government to use their power of force and law enforcement to silence opposition? When a government official can destroy a business or an industry in a fit of pique, how are we different from China or Cuba?
We’re supposed to be different, because we’re supposed to have a “free press” to act as a watchdog on the government and to scream to high heaven when abuses like this happen. We’re supposed to be able to trust the “fourth estate” and the courts to keep the government from violating the rights of citizens and businesses. If your Constitutional rights fall in the forest, and there’s nobody there to hear them, does it make a sound, or is that just the ghost of Thomas Jefferson weeping and wailing in torment?
Sadly, most of the American media is buried so deep in it’s Obama uber alles agenda, that it can’t see the forest for the trees. It sure as heck won’t pull the fire alarm.
