SIXTH COLUMN: Refreshing TRUTH from the New York Times Editorial Page

In his editorial of May 19, 2005, Bashing Newsweek, columnist David Brooks properly bashes all of the USA melodramatists in this Newsweek FUBAR, and he resets CONTEXT.

First, to the woodshed goes Mr. Brooks with the misbehaving children of the right and the left:

...Newsweek's retracted atrocity story has sent everybody into cloud-cuckoo-land. Every faction up and down the political spectrum has used the magazine's blunder as a chance to open fire on its favorite targets, turning this into a fevered hunting season for the straw men. Many of my friends on the right have decided that the Newsweek episode exposes the rotten core of the liberal media. Meanwhile, the left side of the blogosphere has erupted with fury over the possibility that American interrogators might not have flushed a Koran down the toilet. The Nation and leftish Web sites are in a frenzy to prove that the story is probably true even if Newsweek is retracting it. This, too, is unhinged.

With his strop now warmed up, he takes the administration to the woodshed:

Then ... over to the transcripts of administration statements and I can't believe what I'm seeing. We're in the middle of an ideological war against people who want to destroy us, and what have the most powerful people on earth become? Whining media bashers. They're attacking Newsweek while bending over backward to show sensitivity to the Afghans who just went on a murderous rampage. Talk about the bigotry of low expectations.

Then, he and Truth sit down for a cool long-neck:

Maybe we should all focus on what's important. Newsweek's little item was seized and exploited by America's enemies in a way that was characteristically cynical,delusional and fascistic. The people who seized upon this item, like the radical clerics in Afghanistan, are cynical in the way they manipulate episodes like this to whip up hatred and so magnify their own standing. At the same time, they believe everything that could be alleged about America - and more. They've spent so many years inhabiting a delusional mental landscape filled with conspiracy theories and paranoia that you could drill deep into their minds without ever touching reality. Finally, they are strategically ruthless. Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker, who has spent years reporting on extremists, says they use manufactured spasms of hatred to desensitize their followers. After followers spend a few years living through rabid riots and vicious sermons, killing an American or a Jew or even a fellow Muslim seems no more consequential than killing a mosquito. That's how suicide bombers are made.

The sychophantia coming from Washington is appeasing and brown-nosing the real enemy as though a sin had really been committed, when it had not, even if a billion Korans had been used for toilet paper:

The rioters are the real enemy, not Newsweek and not the American soldiers serving as prison guards. Just to restore some proper perspective, let me quote a snippet from a sermon delivered by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, which ran last weekend on the Palestinian Authority's official TV station:

"The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world - except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquillity under our rule because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relieved of the Jews - even the stones and trees which were harmed by them. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew."

Mr. Brooks properly does not absolve Newsweek of its error, but he does not turn that error into the entire issue and make more of the error per se than it merits. Thank you, Mr. Brooks. We could not agree more with your final statements: