Topic: Media Research Center
In his Sept. 8 column, the Media Research Center's Dan Gainor is quick to throw around blame for post-9/11 divisions -- but is careful not to blame conservatives. He writes:
Soon after fire fighters raised a flag in the ruins of New York, the fingerpointing began. George Bush was to blame, though he only recently had taken office. America was to blame because of its longstanding friendship with Israel. Everyone was to blame it seemed, except the monsters driven by hate to harm the innocent.
Gainor seems to have forgotten that conservatives were not interested in only blaming the terrorists. As we documented at the time, thebodies of the victims weren't even cold yet before WorldNetDaily and Newsmax were blaming Bill Clinton's supposed national security lapses for the attacks.
Gainor also goes after conspiracy theorists, lamenting that "the 9/11 truther industry" has "spread like the plague it is." Gainor overlooks the fact that the organization condones conspiracy theories when it suits their political agenda -- it has done little to counter the fallacious notion that President Obama is a Muslim or not eligible to be president, the promotion of which is raison d'etre for such right-wingers as WorldNetDaily.
Gainor then sent after Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria for claiming the U.S. overreacted after 9/11: "Did we overreact after Pearl Harbor? Perhaps America should have tried to find peace with Imperial Japan instead of fighting for freedom." That's a straw man, of course; most people would consider the internment of Japanese-Americans an overreaction. And we don't recall Gainor or his fellow MRC employees expressing any alarm over the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program, despite its apparent contrvention of existing law.
Gainor concludes: "That’s the kind of 20-20 hindsight easy for those in the media who think themselves so above the pain and anguish that they remove flags and patriotism from their broadcasts. This year, journalists will once again try to understand the lingering wound that is 9/11. And once again they will fail."
Apparently Gainor is so pained and anguished by 9/11 that he's stuck in projection mode, unable to see fault with anything he or his fellow conservatives have done and eager to blame everyone else for dividing America.
