By Andrew L. Jaffee

Bestowing us with her infinite wisdom, CNN’s Gloria Borger told us what the American presidential election is all about. According to Gloria, all women are voting for Hillary, all black people are voting for Obama, and all the rest of the electorate — white men — will decide the outcome. Thanks, Gloria, I’ve seen the light. I understand. Things are so simple. If you feel like a good laugh, watch Ms. Borger for yourself. (I think I need to add a blog category for “Political Idiots.”)

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PHILADELPHIA* — The Muslim Weekly, a London-based publication, issued an apology today to Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, concerning a defamatory article it published in February 2007.

That article repeated a false allegation made by Tariq Ramadan that Daniel Pipes had lied to a conference hosted by London mayor Ken Livingstone in January 2007. (For details of what did occur, see the article by Mr. Pipes, “Is Tariq Ramadan Lying [about Magdi Allam]?“)

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By Barry Rubin

Keep repeating to yourself what the media institution’s spokespeople tell us: Coverage is fair, coverage is fair, coverage is fair. But as you do so be sure not to look at the actual articles.

Journalism has changed. It is a tool for advocacy. For a lot of reporters, writing articles is what they do instead of demonstrating or lobbying for a cause, and against another one. Behavior that twenty years ago would have been quickly condemned and resulted in either editorial changes or summary firings is accepted and defended routinely.

Just look at the texts. They are so skewed that even while being horrified one wants to laugh at the clumsy and obvious tricks employed.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I so admire these Danish newspapers for standing up to Islamist intimidation (terrorism):

Denmark’s five major daily newspapers republished on Wednesday one of the 12 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad which angered Muslims around the world, as a protest against a plot to murder one of the cartoonists.

A Danish citizen of Moroccan descent and two Tunisians were arrested on Tuesday in western Denmark for planning to murder 73-year-old Kurt Westergaard, a cartoonist at Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that originally published the drawings in September 2005. …

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By Phyllis Chesler

On Friday, February 8th, I wrote about Professor Noah Feldman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he viewed a long-standing Turkish ban on the wearing of head-scarves in universities as a ban against religious “freedom.” On Saturday, February 9th, I noted here that on the very next day, February 9th, the New York Times (page A4) featured an interview with a Turkish woman lawyer, Fatma Benli, titled: “Under a Scarf, a Turkish Lawyer Fighting to Wear It.”

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By Phyllis Chesler

Why has the NY Times published an article today (“Veiled Democracy”), written by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, in which Feldman explains that if Turkey allows Muslim women to wear the Islamic headscarf in universities, that Turkey will be that much closer to a liberal democracy?

Pinch me. I must be dreaming.

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By Barry Rubin

The New York Times coverage of the Middle East, especially Steven Erlanger (who will soon be leaving) has often been terrible. Naturally, the Times and Mr. Erlanger will dispute this, but they will not do so by examining the specific stories filed and what these articles do–and do not–say.

Anyone who analyzes the articles themselves will find many points which seem slanted, and all the slants seem to lean in the same way.

Consider, for example, the January 28 article, “Israel Vows Not to Block Supplies to Gaza.” By presenting this decision as a negative rather than a positive (Israel will let supplies flow; Israel wants to avoid any humanitarian crisis in Gaza, etc) it seems as if the newspaper is grudgingly admitting that Israel is doing something good but trying to minimize it.

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By Phyllis Chesler

The Grey Lady editors just slipped it right in there—the magazine spread was so big (eight pages,with eight huge color photos), and so unbelievable, that I actually missed it. I am talking about the Sunday New York Times magazine article about female genital mutilation in Indonesia.

Not until Dr. Andrew Bostom called it to my attention, did I stop, look, and let the headline sink in: “A Cutting Tradition.” I probably thought it was a rather long article about a recipe—not for a lifetime of agony, but for another way to cut and prepare a meal. Something Asian, maybe Fusion. The women’s faces were Asian faces.

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By Phyllis Chesler

PHYLLIS CHESLER’ S PREPARED REMARKS 1/15/08

(I will write up the press conference which took place at the American Jewish Congress later.)

You may also see the press conference on U Tube:
http://youtube.com/profile?user=AJCongress

Recently, in the pages of the New York Times, Gloria Steinem wrote that we should not hold the only female Presidential candidate to a higher and different standard than we hold male politicians; when we do, Gloria explained, that’s sexism. From 1972 on, I have been explaining to Gloria and to other Ms. feminists that we should not hold the only Jewish state to a higher or different standard than we hold all other nations states; when we do, it is called racism or Jew-hatred or anti-Semitism.

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by Winfield Myers*

Writing in his well-trafficked blog on Friday, University of Michigan Middle East studies professor Juan Cole illustrates the baleful consequences of the media’s reliance on Cole and other Middle East studies professors of his ilk to explain the Middle East to Americans: it makes possible the wide dissemination of a distorted, conspiracy-laden picture of that highly volatile region.

For in just a few paragraphs, Cole proposed or implied that:

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By Phyllis Chesler

Ms was always hard to keep going. Gloria Steinem had to devote almost all her time to fund-raising to keep it afloat. Editors had to threaten to sue for medical benefits and writers had to threaten lawsuits because they had not been paid. Despite appearances, it was always a shoe-string operation. But it had a good run. Over time, the magazine got smaller and less influential—something which is typical of many magazines. Until now, Ms continued to enjoy considerable “girlish” acclaim and a nearly spotless reputation—at least among its followers, certainly not among its opponents. And, every major liberal Jewish organization viewed their aims as similar to that of Ms magazine’s.

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By Phyllis Chesler

This story out of Dallas is an awful one. The mainstream media has certainly failed their task but so did the local police and social service agencies—at least according to the (still only local) report published yesterday in the Dallas Morning News and picked up today only by Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs.

In 1998, when they were 8 and 9 years-old, these slaughtered girls accused their father of sexual abuse. Their mother swore it was true. The girls then said that they had lied. The authorities believed them.

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By Phyllis Chesler

First, they came for the Saudi blogger—alright, he lives in Saudi Arabia, a bastion of barbarism ruled by Shari’a law. Actually, before the Saudi blogger (and an Egyptian blogger too) were arrested, one Saudi billionaire had already come for American author Rachel Ehrenfeld and he sued her in London where free speech or truth speech is not protected by any First Amendment rights. This is why the UK is so well suited for such “libel tourism”— but even so, the UK is not ruled by Shari’a law.

Or is it?

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by Daniel Pipes*

Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron — or a term for conservatives to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells, who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis.” Really.

His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing socialism with fascism: Mussolini was a leading socialist figure who, during World War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend Fascism. Likewise, Hitler headed the National Socialist German Workers Party.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Full Circle: A Memoir, by Edith Kurzweil (Transaction Publishers, 312 pp., $34.95)

Edith Kurzweil has lived many lives and prevailed against tremendous odds. As an Austrian Jew, she was not meant to live at all; as a first-generation immigrant in America, she wasn’t expected to succeed; as a woman, who was also a 1950s-style wife and mother, she was not supposed to become a scholar in her own right. But Kurzweil refused to identify herself as a victim, choosing instead to view adversity as a useful challenge. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology, became a professor, and published a number of thoughtful books including The Freudians: A Comparative Perspective, The Age of Structuralism, and Nazi Laws and Jewish Lives: Letters from Vienna. She also married three times, the final time to William Phillips, the founder of Partisan Review. Kurzweil served as executive editor of this highly influential magazine from the late 1970s until its demise in 2003.

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