“Conformist, Conservative” Australian PM Too Square for Gay Activists
 

     Breaking news from Australia: Australian Prime Minister John Howard is a conformist conservative and doesn’t party as hard as gay activists on Mardi Gras.

     Jane Perlez’s Sydney Journal for Monday is titled “Coming Out for Mardi Gras, to the Delight of Australia.” The text box reads: “As Australia takes gays to its heart, politicians stand back.”

     “Tom Sellers busily adjusted white cowboy chaps over the underwear of dozens of gay men, handed out sequin-trimmed pink and blue cowboy hats and tied glittery bandannas to best effect around everyone's necks,” opens Monday’s prominent page 3 story.

     Perlez manages to hook the street party to a political anniversary in order to make anti-conservative cracks and to conjure up conflict: “But this year the festivities took place against the backdrop of the 10th anniversary of the election of Australia's conservative, and conformist, prime minister, John Howard, who is now one of the nation's longest-running leaders.”

     Perlez compares the gay celebration to Howard commemorating his ten years of leadership, and feigns surprise the parties went down a little differently.

     “Just days before Mardi Gras, Mr. Howard, 66, who prides himself on being a ‘suburban solicitor,’ and has made ordinariness a social virtue, was celebrated on the front pages of the newspapers. He was described as a peerless prime minister who has led an unparalleled economic boom and who has done little wrong. In contrast to Saturday night's raucous street party, well-to-do supporters of Mr. Howard celebrated his anniversary last Wednesday in a staid Sydney hotel, and at Mr. Howard's orders drank only inexpensive bubbly white wine and did not dance. At the parade, partygoers said they regarded Mr. Howard as the outsider.”

     After exposing Australia’s leader as a square compared to partying gay activists (that’s a shock), Perlez probes a benign statement from Howard for signs of homophobia and racism: “Even as Mr. Howard adopted as an election slogan ‘for all of us,’ a motto that political commentators said subliminally telegraphed to Australian ears that true Australians were heterosexual and white, homosexuals increasingly felt part of the larger society, [Author David] Marr said.”

     A silly caption to a photo of bare-chested gays dancing down a street wearing cowboy hats and glittery bandannas claims: “Australia’s gays seem increasingly mainstream, even as the prime minister just looks the other way.”

     He’s probably not the only one “looking the other way,” rather than examining nipple-piercings over morning coffee.

For more Perlez, click here.

Words of Wisdom from a Hamas Supporter on the Front Page
 

     Monday’s front-page takeout by Andrea Elliott, “To Lead the Faithful in a Faith Under Fire” focuses on a purportedly moderate Muslim imam in Brooklyn.

     It opens with this slant: “The F.B.I. agent and the imam sat across a long wooden table at a Brooklyn youth center last August. Would the imam, the agent asked, report anyone who seemed prone to terrorism? Sheik Reda Shata leaned back in his chair and studied the agent. Nearly a year had passed since the authorities had charged two young men, one of whom prayed at Mr. Shata's mosque, with plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in Manhattan. The mosque had come under siege. Television news trucks circled the block. Threats were made. The imam's congregants became angry themselves after learning that a police informer had spent months in their midst.”

     Here’s Elliott’s summing-up of the post-9-11 mood, portraying the imam as put-upon: “The competing demands on [Imam Sheik Reda] Shata became plain when he arrived in Bay Ridge about a year after Sept. 11. Crisis gripped the city's Muslim neighborhoods. Law enforcement agents searched businesses and homes, and held hundreds of men for questioning. Women were harassed in the subway. Elementary schools lost Muslim children as their families packed up and left.”

     And here’s another one-sided snapshot: “The imam now rises to deliver his Friday khutba, or sermon, before rows of young men, some in low-hanging jeans and baseball caps turned backward. Many have come to learn more about their religion so they can defend it at work or at school. Others no longer feel at home elsewhere. They have been passed over for jobs, or stopped and questioned by the authorities too many times.”

     But deep, deep into the article, under the benign subheading “One Imam, Many Audiences” is the revelation that Shata isn’t exactly the ideal Muslim moderate. He supports the anti-Israeli terrorist group Hamas: “Like Arabs around the world, Mr. Shata disagrees profoundly with the United States' steadfast support of Israel, and views the militant group Hamas as a powerful symbol of resistance.

     “When Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed by Israelis in March 2004, Mr. Shata told hundreds who gathered at a memorial service in Brooklyn that the ‘lion of Palestine has been martyred.’

     “Mr. Shata is also acutely aware that the United States classifies Hamas as a terrorist group. In the same speech, he condemned all violence. ‘We don't hate Jews,’ he recalled saying. ‘To kill one man is to kill all mankind.’

     “Yet in another sermon, the imam exalted a young Palestinian mother, Reem Al-Reyashi, who blew herself up in 2004 at a crossing point between Gaza and Israel, killing four Israelis. Mr. Shata described the woman as a martyr.

     Elliott soft-pedals the imam’s support of Hamas. “When asked about the speech, Mr. Shata seemed unusually conflicted. He has forged friendships with rabbis in New York -- something he never imagined in Egypt. Engaging in a discussion about the Arab-Israeli struggle would invite controversy, he said, both within his mosque and outside it. ‘I worry this will cause trouble with my Jewish brothers,’ he said. He rarely broaches the topic in sermons and addressed it only reluctantly in interviews.”

     Yet the Times gives Shata credibility as an anti-terror spokesperson: “Mr. Shata is forceful in his condemnation of terrorism in the West, a message he feels is rarely heard. After the suicide bombings in London last year, he and other Muslims called a news conference in Brooklyn to denounce the violence. Nobody came.”

     If the reason no one came was that reporters judged a supporter of Hamas to have zero credibility in denouncing terrorism, then bravo.

For more from Elliott on the Brooklyn imam, click here.

Hollywood Not Really That Liberal? Could Have Fooled Us
 

     Editorial board member/stereotypical liberal Adam Cohen’s Sunday Week in Review editorial, “And This Year’s Oscar Goes to…A Movie That Takes a Stand,” claims “reports of Hollywood's liberalism are greatly exaggerated. According to Variety, 56 percent of Disney's contributions in the 2006 election cycle have gone to Republicans, and the second-biggest recipient of Hollywood money has been Ted Stevens, the conservative Republican who heads the Senate Commerce Committee.”

     And the Times accuses war supporters of cherry-picking data!

     Yet later Cohen seems to admit, without appearing to, that the crop of movies up for Best Picture are quite liberal (you can kind of tell, judging by Cohen’s approval of their subject matter).

      “Movies are not just entertainment; they also help to shape the public discourse. Oscar voters seem to be resisting today's increasingly impoverished political debate -- one that badly distorts, or leaves out, issues like gay rights, race relations, the possibility of peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the media's role in safeguarding democracy. They may also be starting to move away from Hollywood's real ideology -- not liberalism, but Groucho Marx's credo: ‘Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I've got others.’”

To read Cohen in full, click here.

Did God “Influence” Tony Blair’s War Deliberations?

 

     Tony Blair-baiting reporter Alan Cowell on Saturday files “Blair Invokes God in Decision To Send British Troops to Iraq.”

     “Prime Minister Tony Blair has indicated that God influenced his deliberations when he committed British troops to fight alongside American forces in Iraq. The remarks, which surprised some antiwar campaigners, were made in an Independent Television talk show to be broadcast Saturday night. A transcript was released by the ITV station on Friday. Mr. Blair has made no secret of his Christian faith, but he has not previously ascribed policy decisions to his religion. In the past, he refused to answer persistent questions by an interviewer about whether he had prayed with President Bush.”

     Putting aside Cowell’s fear, Blair did not in fact say “God influenced his deliberations,” as revealed in Cowell’s own reporting.

     “In the interview on the widely followed ‘Parkinson’ show, Mr. Blair was asked about sending troops to Iraq, ITV said.

     “‘That decision has to be taken and has to be lived with,’ he said, according to the ITV transcript, ‘and in the end there is a judgment that -- well, I think if you have faith about these things, then you realize that judgment is made by other people.’

     “Asked to explain what he meant, he replied, ‘If you believe in God, it's made by God as well.’

     ‘This is not just a matter of a policy here or a thing there, but of their lives and in some case their death,’ he said. ‘The only way you can take a decision like that is to try to do the right thing, according to your conscience, and for the rest of it you leave it to the judgment that history will make.’”

     Blair was saying God would judge his decision, not that God had made it.

For more Cowell, click here.