Newsweek
251 W. 57th St.
New York, NY 10019-1894
Dear Sir,
If it bleeds it leads, right? So there you are, Newsweek. You have a great story to pursue. Don’t let the fact that you also have the blood of many lives on your hands get in your way. In your moral universe, that’s a small price to pay for the story. Especially if it’s a story that makes your country look bad. Just make sure you spell the names correctly:
ISLAMIC TACTICS TO ATTRACT READERS
The ‘Islamic tactic’ you used in this case is called taqiyya. More than a millennium old, taqiyya is lying for the sake of your cause. It’s a useful tool in the quest for making America look bad, one that has been employed successfully by your fellow “journalists” Eason Jordan and Dan Rather. Not to mention the declarations of the “Afghan quagmire” crowd, or the endless lamentations of the New York Times over Abu Ghraib. You are in esteemed company. And how many people died as a result of all these machinations? Do you care?
Vietnam is over. Unfortunately, you and your ilk don’t appear to grasp this. You are stuck in a time-warp quagmire of your own making, the one you helped create back then to turn the hearts and minds of your fellow citizens against your own soldiers. But your fellow citizens aren’t virgins anymore. Having been lied to, led on, fed half-truths and canned dissembling, having been assured that gossip and rumor is fact-checked truth with a big “T”, we no longer believe anything you have to say.
And for that, for your slanted, morally obtuse search for muck and for what-might-be-so-let’s-pretend-it-is, you have made us all into fact-checkers. After all the lies and misleading, if you claimed it was raining outside, we’d still go to the window to check.
New motto for dealing with the MSM: distrust and then dig for the truth. It might not be in your version of the story; it’s surely in the steaming pile you made nearby.
Sincerely yours,
Gates of Vienna
(hat tip: Ledger at Belmont Club)
Excellent letter.
Thanks. I’m hoping people use it as a template for their own epistles to Newsweek.
A tsunami of letters would be just the right amount.
That was a concise and hard-hitting letter. Let’s hope the MSM gets the message before others get killed.
Well said.
Newsweek has had so few really decent articles that it is hardly worth the comment. The insanity and mayhem condemnation belongs to those who incited the riots. Newsweek is guilty of what it frequently is guilty of, bad reporting.
Bloggers and conservative pundits are angry at the false report because it caused so many innocents hurt? What if a comment or action by a conservative is considered blasphemy by a foreign religious group and folks riot and kill. Will we then blame the deaths on the conservative?
One question though seems left out of the mix.
WHAT KIND OF A RELIGIOUS CULTURE KILLS AND MAIMS INNOCENTS BECAUSE OF A DEFACED BOOK!
God wants his adherents to riot and kill and maim because a book containing his words is defaced? How about defacing the meaning of his words by the actions of your being? Or is this God of theirs instigating a culture of murder, violence, and maiming through his words in that very book (or at least the interpretation of their scholars).
Newsweek is bearing the brunt of too many years of too many slanted stories by the MSM. They are the designated scapegoat.
Perhaps they will serve as an example for the rest of the MSM when they are tempted once more to subsitute shoddy “journalism” for real stories about real events.
A pox on all their houses.