printThat blithering idiot Glenn Beck interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali (transcripts are here). In contrast to the slobbering incoherence of her host —my father has recently ventured that ours is The Age of the Idiot —Hirsi Ali was a model of lucidity. It helps that she looks like a model too. However, when asked by the hyperbolic host whether anyone in the USA was warning of the dangers of “radical Islam” —a redundancy Beck adheres to religiously —Hirsi Ali took full credit for being The Only One.
How did she do so? I repeat, when Beck asked her if anyone in the US was warning of “radical Islam,” she conceded only that we were slightly more aware of the dangers than were the Europeans, but not much.
Now that the transcripts are up, I can excerpt from the exchange:
BECK: Have you met with anyone here in the United States that you thinks — that you think really gets it and is willing to stand up next to you? Is there — is there anybody here? Is there a woman’s organization? Is there a Muslim organization that says, we’re with you?
ALI: I’ve met several individuals, several organizations and all very concerned. To be honest, I think vigilance in the United States seems to me to be today better than the one in Europe. What I haven’t seen in the United States is people who are aware of the problem here today in the U.S. Most Islam, as a foreign policy (ph), jihad in this country.
She clearly failed to acknowledge some heroic scholars-cum-warriors I’m proud to call friends: Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom. (Spencer has even been addressed by an al Qaida emissary in a propaganda broadcast.) Nor was there any mention of Bat Ye’or, who was the first to expose the Islamization of Europe, and whose terminology we all use. Hirsi Ali cannot claim ignorance of another European woman on whose shoulders she stands.
Nor did Hirsi Ali offer a nod to Daniel Pipes’ efforts (he departs from the rest, and myself, in holding to a belief in a moderate Islam). The host is too dim to know much about anything, so he just effused and gawked and demonstrated that the force of his intellect matches his social etiquette: Beck told his guest that she was “not going to die of natural causes.”
Updated: I clean forgot Paul Sperry. He has done his share of courageous reporting and has received little TV time. Read my review of his Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington.
My sources also confirm that Hirsi Ali knows a number of the aforementioned individuals. That they were not credited for their indefatigable efforts was no innocent mistake. In any case, intellectual dishonestly is inexcusable and ought to be exposed.
my father has recently ventured that ours is The Age of the Idiot
Oh please, may I borrow this–with proper attribution of course. What a fitting summation of our society! [He’d be delighted]
I suspect that ideas, such as those presented by Bat Ye’or, Bostom, and yourself, are quite frankly beyond the ability of Mr. Beck’s capability to understand. Seriously. An understanding of history, culture, the ways in which the two have and do interact, the motivating forces (complex as they often are) of societies and cultures, are just a bit too much for a fourth-rate intellect to handle.
There is much about this that is pathetic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that one reason Beck, Olbermann, O’Reilly and company spew to the masses is because they speak at a level the masses can understand. We are a nation of third and fourth rate intellects and this doesn’t bode well for the future.
I would never be so foolish as to consider myself an intellectual, because I am not one. But sometimes, listening to the screeds and reading the missives of those that pass for the popular intelligentsia in our society, I feel like Einstein.
By the way, Ilana, I have been traveling extensively the last few months and have missed reading your blog regularly. I have been catching up on your past posts and columns today and they are as delightful as ever. I have missed this place!
Sorry I didn’t get to participate in the Hornbeck discussion. I would have some choice words for the little “shit” myself!
P.S. I don’t mean this as a comment for posting, just wanted to say it is nice to be back and see that you are still you!
[Welcome back; I missed you. There is another very bright lady I miss: Barbara Grant. She “left” after my “Job” entry. (Comments were lost after the blog crashed.) I don’t blame her, but wish she would forgive, forget, and come back.]
I guess I was one of those people that was on extended leave from this place… sometimes computers work, sometimes they dont.
I missed reading this blog because it somehow manages to avoid the drearyness of most libertarian pieces that I used to read. I don’t know how it does that, but I had to stop reading Mises.org and LRC because I felt damned depressed afterwards. I know that they enjoy telling it like it is, and I’m not faulting the sites, but.. well you know.
Plus I posted a post that made letter of the week here. Not that I wouldn’t have come back if this were not the case.. 😛
[Glad you’re back. I know what you mean about that robotic, tinny tone in libertarian discourse that gets so dreary]
Two days after the Hirsi Ali interview, Beck spent an entire hour with Irshad Manji. Remarkable! CNN has posted a transcript here:[http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0702/09/gb.01.html]
By the way, Beck is joining forces with Manji. He is participating in her upcoming “Secular Islam Summit” in St. Petersburg on Monday, March 5th. Of the summit, Manji said:
“What you can expect to see are Muslims from around the world – – for the first time in history, I believe — coming together, openly and publicly, to say that Islam must be opened up and reconciled with freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression.
“And that`s obviously a huge statement to make. And you better believe that there will be a lot of people there who are living under the kinds of daily threats that I`m living under, except I have the privilege of doing this from a free part of the world. Many of them don`t. So kudos to our heroes.”
Beck can be frustrating and blathering on occasion, but I think “blithering idiot” is a bit harsh.
[This comment proves how low standards have fallen in public debate. Suffice it for Beck to have a show, and, as a sign of their host’s smarts, all his viewers expect are good intentions and ample huffing about Islam. However, Beck accepts the nonsensical notion that Islam, a religion of peace, has been hijacked by bad guys. And he doesn’t invite the likes of Spencer and Bostom on. Oh, Spencer was once invited to speak about something other than Islam and the Quran. The man, Beck, is incapable of so much as stringing a coherent sentence together. He is so obviously a simpleton. Yet his intelligence, not his intentions, is defended. This tells me that very many Americans are not even able to assess intelligence any longer. Why am I not surprised?]
I appreciate your article on hirsi, I assume you’ve read oriana fallaci.
I like green footballs, power line [actually i hardly read them; should take them down], volokh conspiracy, and will check out some others you’ve listed. Classical liberal made me pause till I read ‘inflation 101’. I’m a carpenter who read Rand as a kid. don’t be to hard on Beck, embarrassing at times, but we can’t all be clever.
[The tyranny of no expectations! More and more people want to see themselves in public figures. Smart people make them uneasy. The Founders would have been despised today.]
I’m not an intellectual, either. But I’m drawn to reading Ilana, Lawrence Auster, Robert Spencer, LRC (some of it) and others, instead of the junk food of O’Reilly and other fake conservatives. That way what intellect I have is nourished.
[I’m convinced that good, predictive commentary does draw people in. It’s just that mainstream fools want us truthful types to go away.]
If Islam is a religion of violence, why are so many are drawn to it? Why are there so many believers of this violent, uncivilized, anti-intellectual doctrine? [Human nature is a good start] Is there any hope for these people or are they a lost cause? Is it used as an excuse to justify actions? If I convince myself that I have the blessings of the Lord/Allah in anything I do, I could probably do horrendous things on a dime.
As a religious outsider, this is all very confusing to me. How would Spencer or Bostom explain the enormous attraction to such an allegedly vile doctrine?
Thank God for this new, open discussion on Islam. These commentators are nothing short of heroic and yes, that includes you Ilana. And we are all paying a price for this terror, whether it’s being manhandled at the airport, or the upcoming and rather sinister abuses of Homeland Security.
Chuck DeVore’s (R-Irvine) AB137 bill will require that all state and federal employees in California, including your hapless public school teachers of course, to be questioned (interrogated)about their opinions on the “War on Terror.” These employees will be subject to dismissal if their answers do not sufficiently placate the inquisitors suspicions, and they would risk being put on a ‘subversives’ list. This is how I interpret the bill, anyhow.
I would love to know your opinion on this–would you consider this a tad overreaching, or is this level of intrusion necessary, as the infiltration of terrorists in our government and schools is so ubiquitous that we must surrender our constituional rights? What’s really going on? I did not provide a link because I don’t know the protocol of your site. [What do you mean? I ask repeatedly that people substantiate their claims with links to recognized news sources. Why would I prefer otherwise?]
Here is the proposed bill for your cutting and pasting pleasure: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/07-08/bill/asm/ab_0101-0150/ab_137_bill_20070116_introduced.html
Of course the bill never addresses Islamic terrorism, it merely refers to “terrorist networks” which could allude to many animal, environmental, or peace movements, or really, any ideology that has gotten in the craw of some bureaucrat.
So, instead of addressing Islamic terrorism, which is our true concern, it is just an invitation to conduct witchhunts, personal revenge, and tyranny. This is just another piece of fraudulant legistlation, imho.
Another link: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_5083323
I respect Mr. Devore’s service to our country and his keen political savvy. He is a proud American patriot, no doubt about it. We must remain vigilant, however, when it comes to tricky constitutional maneuvering.
You mentioned Beck’s lack of “social etiquette.” I came across this interesting bit about Ali’s ‘acceptance speech’ at a Jewish award event which makes Beck look like an Emily Post finishing school graduate! Notes in brackets:
Unlike Mel Gibson, self proclaimed ex-antisemite Hirsi Ali didn’t need alcohol to reveal she (still) despises Jews. In a Jerusalem Post interview, the future American Enterprise Institute think tank fellow stated; “The ultra-Orthodox will cause a demographic problem because these fanatics have more children than the secular and the regular Orthodox.”
Ali’s [latent]anti-semitism was also manifest at an American Jewish Committee event [which gave her an award for “Moral Courage”], where she launched into a bizarre ‘confession’ of anti-semitic carnards for the benefit of “the Jews in the audience” which had all the charm of a a ministral show by whites in black face at an NAACP conference:
“… I hated you because I thought you were responsible for the war that took my father from me for so long. When the Soviet Union allied with our home-grown dictator in Somalia, I was told the Jews were behind that. In Saudi Arabia I saw poor people from a place called Palestine. Men women and children huddled together in despair. I was told you drove them out of their homes. I hated you for that. When we had no water, I thought you closed the tap. I don’t know how you did it, but you did it. If my mother was unkind to me I knew you were definitely behind it. Even when I failed an exam I knew it was your fault. I don’t know how you did all these things. But then I didn’t need proof. You are by nature evil. And you had evil powers and you used them to evil ends.
Learning to hate you was easy…”
[To me it seems absolutely obvious she was presenting a reductio ad absurdum of common prejudices she once held. Please proved links to the article quoted.]