What if a Gainesville yahoo masquerading as a red neck preacher with a couple of dozen congregant cretins and an outrageous, self-serving agenda threw a press conference, and no one showed? Just Terry Jones, a U-Haul, a Wally Watt shed and the remnants of a Deliverance II casting call.
Obviously that’s a rhetorical question.
Since when does the media turn down red meat? Especially now that local goes global in a YouTube click. This is Hearst on steroids. Think any outlet–or delusional blogger–wants to get beat on “Attention-Attracting Dolt Threatens Harmful Gimmick”? So what if the Rev(iled) Terry Jones is hijacking the news to the world’s detriment? Slop the presses.
And, no, there’s no turning back. Genies rebottle more easily. The Faustian media can now parlay iniquity and ubiquity, a daily double to die for.
Ironically, the U.S. Constitution is an enabler. We worship freedom of speech in the Thomas Paine abstract and tolerate its eclectic, sometimes offending, manifestations–from lap-dancing to flag- and -holy book burning. The price we pay to live in a free society. We know it by heart.
But, of course, there are exceptions. The classic yelling of “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Even if an Adam Sandler movie is playing. The right of a pro-Castro crowd to assemble and march in Little Havana. It’s clear-and-present-danger stuff. It’s also common-sense stuff. Too bad they aren’t synonymous.
From President Barack Obama to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Gen. David Petraeus, the response to Jones’ Koran-burning threat was more than finger-wagging, furrowed-brow disapproval. It was a plea to refrain from doing something beyond the blatantly stupid, geopolitically counterproductive and culturally insulting. And it was an entreaty to not present a propaganda bonanza to Islamic fanatics and the Muslim “street.” But most of all, it was an appeal to not put lives needlessly at risk. American lives. Overseas, American G.I. lives, for openers.
As sure as American lives were lost in the aftermath of the viscerally outrageous Abu Ghraib torture-and-humiliation footage, more would be sacrificed as a result of Jihadist pep rallies that would not have stopped with burning effigies of Uncle Sam.
Surely, such a predictably tragic scenario can’t be an extension of the price we’ve agreed to pay for allowing the freedom of expression for the unpopular and the objectionable. Would that unnecessary American deaths were merely unpopular or objectionable outcomes — and not Exhibit A for clear-and-present dangers.
Americans are already in harm’s way. Why take the side of harm?