Hatchet jobs dressed up as journalism

Spencer has had to suffer hatchet jobs from PC MC journalists many a time over the years.  Two latest ones involve, as usual, a breezily grevious misunderstanding of the problem of Islam and of our responsibility as a society (which, one would think, emblematically involves the profession of journalism) to defend ourselves from those who put Islam into practice, and from those trying to hoodwink us into thinking there is no problem.  

Two recent hatchet-jobs have been purveyed by reporters Tina Sfondeles of the Chicago Sun-Times, and by Manya Brachear of the Chicago Tribune (why can't American reporters have normal names anymore...?).

While Spencer overall is doing an admirable job fending them off, he continues to have an oddly baffled tonality to his defenses, as though he doesn't fully understand the PC MC context which structures the worldview of mediatizers like Sfondeles and Brachear.

About Sfondeles, he remarked:

"By equating those who are undeniably savages with all Muslims, Sfondeles is painting all Muslims with a broad brush and committing "Islamophobia," no?" 

Well, it's slightly more complicated than that. Sfondeles is not directly equating the savages with all Muslims; she's implying that the equation exists as a possibility in the mind, which she contextualizes in the framework of dismissing the equation and demonizing those whom she accuses of indulging that equation (viz., Robert Spencer and Pam Geller, among others). This framework of dismissal and demonization in this regard is, so to speak, one major department within the sociopolitical complex we can call Politically Correct Multi-Culturalism (PC MC). 

Among other things, this framework feeds off of the demographic fact that the term "Muslims" designates a group of massively numerous (over a billion), ostensibly diverse, and geographically widespread people all over the globe. This by itself tends to be vulnerable to those general bromides of human decency such as “innocent until proven guilty” and “don’t paint with a broad brush”; etc. (which have, in the past few decades under the fashionable regime of PC MC, morphed into an irrational aversion to anything remotely smelling of “bias” or “prejudice” or “discrimination” -- with regard to ethnic minorities, that is). 

With inexorable logic, the framework adjusts its gears to integrate the PC MC perspective that tends to perceive Muslims as an ethnic group (or a wonderfully diverse "tapestry" or "mosaic" or "rainbow" of ethnic peoples). For the person afflicted with PC MC, this perception immediately and automatically triggers the defense mechanism which is irrationally hypersensitive to any criticism (let alone condemnation) of ethnic peoples -- while, furthermore (if that wasn't bad enough), this defense mechanism over the past few years has been revamped and super-charged to privilege Muslims over all other ethnic peoples; and so the hypersensivity in this regard has become even more irrational (if that is conceivable). 

Closely related to the above is the TMOEWATHI doctrine ("Tiny Minority of Extremists Who Are Trying to Hijack Islam") which, in turn, is logically informed (even if largely incoherently, let alone ignorantly) by the belief that Islam is mostly okay, if not downright peachy keen. 

Also (we're not done yet), there is an important factor operative in this regard -- namely, that the line separating the fanatically dangerous (not to mention fanatically unjust and evil) Muslims from the nice decent upstanding (and wonderfully diverse) Muslims is not a solid immoveable barrier, but is rather porous (to say the least) and functions more like an imaginary Maginot line. While one (even Hesperado) cannot strictly say that "all Muslims are dangerously fanatical" -- if only because of the sheer numbers of over one billion, coupled with the ostensible fact that most of them are not currently exploding or stabbing or threatening anyone -- one cannot, at the same time, coming from the other end of the problem, say with certainty that only a specific x number of Muslims are dangerously fanatical and that the rest -- also specified with certainty -- are harmless. This is so, regardless of whether the dangerous fanatics are a "tiny minority" or a large minority or a slim majority, etc. The unavoidable uncertainty implicit in this factor ruins any effort at stemming the logic that leads to rational prejudice against all Muslims -- though that, of course, doesn't stop the PC MCs from going full steam ahead with that effort anyway. They never let little things like intellectual honesty or the love of truth get in the way of their far more important propaganda agenda. 

Finally, it is apposite to note that this framework used by Sfondeles and Brachear (whether overtly or between the lines) has a particularly perverse twist to it -- for Spencer has regularly insisted that he is not against all Muslims. Aside from the conclusion one feels compelled to come to in this regard -- namely, that Spencer's insistence seems to be having no useful effect in disabusing all those who think he's a "bigot" -- and aside from the dementia it reveals about PC MC types like Sfondeles and Brachear, one can't help but notice that these mediatizers imply insult to injury in their application of the framework to Spencer, by clearly implying that Spencer is not merely in error, but is also a liar, with further overtones of being some kind of mendacious (if not dangerous) demagogue.